What is a simple user? The article was too long for me...
I have put my mother on Ubuntu and it works great. Most things are a lot easier easy than with Windows, and most importantly, security updates take care of themselves, too. Under windows it is just big mess. Usually applications come with their own updater software, which is ugly and spyware-ish by itself, and also very unreliable.
Right now my grandfather is using Ubuntu with iGoogle. All he does is go and look at his stocks and the news, but it works really well for him for that. Every now and then he googles something. He uses a trackball because we couldn't afford a big touchscreen and mice are extremely hard to use once you get beyond a certain age (which my experience shows to be curved around 70).
In other words -- my 90 year old grandfather is successfully using the internet through a dynamic home page and a command prompt.
I have put my mother on Ubuntu and it works great. Most things are a lot easier easy than with Windows, and most importantly, security updates take care of themselves, too. Under windows it is just big mess. Usually applications come with their own updater software, which is ugly and spyware-ish by itself, and also very unreliable.