That said, currently two problems that would stop me installing Fedora
for very non-technical users:
- Auto update is not reliable/graphical enough, or never has been for me.
Maybe it's fixed in FC4.
- Auto update breaks nvidia drivers every few weeks
well the moment you use the (probably illegal) nvidia binary drivers you
gave up all advantages of open source already. Especially on the
security front, binary drivers have a really bad reputation and history
there.
If Fedora was more like Ubuntu in these aspects (fully graphical/automatic
auto update, supporting nvidia drivers out of the box) I'd be confident
enough to install it for a friend and then go away on holiday or
whatever, and not come back expecting trouble.
so don't install the binary drivers.