The last thing an inexperienced terminal user should be doing is installing a bunch of software without understanding how it fits together, how it is used, or how it is actually configured. If you want to understand your terminal stack, build it; don't have it built for you. The better approach is to start from a basic setup. For example, with vim, don't use vim-sensible right off the bat. Instead, just use vim. If a…
You sound like average people should not start from Windows but from Slackware, so they will have better understanding of what's comprised of their machine. It's a good start to give people the sense of what can be achieved by customization. If they don't like it from there they can certainly learn and tune to their needs, which should give more motivation than getting stuck googling for hours without any results fro…
From my perspective, a stripped-down system is like a set of wood blocks, and a batteries-included system is like a doll house.
If you give a child a doll house, the child could reverse-engineer the doll house to figure out how it was built, and to customise it, but the child will probably just play with it as-is, and focus on setting up doll furniture and re-enacting domestic life.
If you give the child wood blocks, the child will have to build a house for the dolls. The child will have to figure out how to make it structurally sound, how to make a gabled roof, how to make holes in a wall for windows, how to make a porch, etc. Of course, if they have never seen a doll house, it may never occur to them to build one, but they will probably build something. Later the child may progress to customising blocks, or making new blocks, or even full carpentry, building upon the earlier skill-set.
But, like you say, if you just give the child a felled tree, it is unlikely that they will figure out how to turn it into blocks, or into a doll house, or anything really. It's too big of a leap for them to make.