I only know what iptables are because I've done a lot of reading in the two years
If you know what iptables are and what are they good for, then you are not an average Vladimir or Olga, who will use this in his office ... That is a fact.
..the "average" user can't set it up. At the same time, once it is set up, it's virtually maintenance free.
I agree with you on that point. I should only add, that in my personal experience, Fedora is a bit more prone to update bugs then Ubuntu. Fedora will make KDE 4.2 available in Fedora 10, I don't think any other distro will make such upgrade inside a release. They want to test it, before releasing it. I expect some minor problems, but that is why I like it ;) ... I only want to have it soon. The problems won't be big, but for some average Joe it could be deadly and nonresolvable. I think, there are other distros out there, that are more suitable for dull office work than Fedora. But if Olga wants to learn something new ... if she is also open minded and wants to meet Vladimir that knows how to work with Linux, she should go for Fedora ... She will have a lot of good time with both of them ...