Mandrake, SuSe and Redhat are deffinitely made for newbies...
(as is Xandros, Lycoris and Lindows )

Problem remains : If you're REALLY new to linux, you just perform a "normal" setup of one of those distributions... This means you end up with about 3 office suits, 3-4 messengers (with probably only gaim supporting MSN) and lots of applications you just don't use...
In other words : you still have to KNOW about those applications before you're able to determin which one best suits your needs...

In this scenario, Knoppix is as good as any other newbie distro, or even better...
If you know which software you want (or don't want), just run something like Synaptic on your HDD-install and you'll get all the options you could think about.
(APT with it's .deb files is MUCH easier then .rpm's for newbies !)

Everybody has been (or is) a newbie... for me, Knoppix (and Morphix) were the first distro's to show me how powerfull linux can be for newbies...