As a new user who does not know Linux, I do not find the fora (I do know Latin) unfriendly, just intimidating.

One suggestion would be to pull the Newbie forum up from the basement and put them at or near the top of the home page.

Also make it a policy not to criticize (or get snarky about) questions asked there that have already been answered before. As one who tries to research answers myself, it is sometimes hard to determine which posts are applicable to your question because many answers assume knowledge that you may not have from the particular version of software or hardware that existed on the date of the answer to what the heck is a sudo.

Still, I find this an incredibly useful site for learning.