I think the curve of learning will be greatly accelerated but will take some time to make everything seem "easy" to most.
i know what you mean, the first time i used dsl i was like, "
really?" but when i came back i appreciated how wonderful it was. now i wish xubuntu was more like dsl that way. still, there should not be a learning curve on starting the distro.
we can decide based on what we know, which method is easiest to start with, and the order they're listed in makes a difference, but ultimately listing the "modes" at the forefront may not be the best idea. it's important that the modes exist, how someone new to the distro selects one is secondary, to the distro not the user.
but if they are listed, there are also advantages there, and in that case, there may be a better way to do that. i have not made suggestions about that, yet, because despite reading as much of getting started as i could, i just couldn't sort through it all the first time around. finally i tried tinycore toram nopcmcia and that was good. also, i didn't need the nopcmcia option.