I did this for my sister this Christmas. Every holiday she visits and hands me her laptop to be fixed or reformated. So I got fed up, installed eOS and the tweaks plugin, got Netflix and mp3/aac support working, and told her I had installed Mac OSX on her laptop.
If I had told her it was Linux, she would be too scared to touch the thing, but she honestly believes she has a Mac now (in a Dell laptop), and hasn't complained at all so far.
Absolutely, that was a huge reason I decided to make the switch to Linux. Coming home and getting a stack of laptops from family and friends, becomes a hassle. I didn't come here to spend my day reinstalling Windows!
After I reformatted the machine, I just handed it over and didn't even mention that it was running Linux, just to see if there be any reaction like, "this is not Windows!" and the only question I was asked was "what is the password to unlock the screensaver".
It's a real drag having to go to like Dell to find and download all the drivers, and then download and install things like Java, Flash, etc.
Having a package manager is a huge win, I can write a ansible playbook to configure the machine and make sure the packages are always up to date with something like unattended-upgrades and then call it a day.
I'm just glad my parents don't use online banking, so I get some peace of mind there.
If I had told her it was Linux, she would be too scared to touch the thing, but she honestly believes she has a Mac now (in a Dell laptop), and hasn't complained at all so far.