Great info rightcoast!! Everybody has their own favorites when it comes to distros, but for new users, I would agree with your premises and with your choices.
There are distros that are very easy to manage, and there are distros that require a great deal of fundamental understanding of Unix-like commands, substantial user generated configuration, and extensive compiling from source. I've tried Slack, I haven't tried Gentoo, I have compiled programs with success, and have installed from the command line. I now use one of the easy-to-use distros (Kubuntu 6.06) with great pleasure and with marvelous ease. I also have a console window open at all times on my KDE desktop.
It's a mistake to equate power with memorizing a bunch of oddly named, esoteric command line inputs. It's also a mistake to forget that a lot of GUI based apps are entirely based on those very same command line executables. A lot of people equate "learning" with command line expertise - it ain't necessarily so
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In terms of a user-friendly, home use OS, Linux cannot be beat. In terms of home use, the easy-to-use distros are, hands down, the best - unless you want to spend a lot of time in slavery to your machine rather than having your machine helping you doing your tasks. There is in fact only one home-based task that I cannot easily do on Linux. That's dealing with Uncle Sam's annual income and tax reporting work. There have been attempts at Linux solutions, but none come close to Taxcut or Turbotax. The biggest fault there is the complexity of, and yearly changes to, the U.S. tax code. Beyond that, nothing happens that cannot be done in a Linux environment.