An interesting discussion was started by Andrew Doran on the NetBSD mailing list regarding the ease of install of a "modern" desktop for users.

The primary goal for the Desktop NetBSD project is:
Given a NetBSD CD and a reasonably modern x86 computer, make it possible to install a useful desktop system in under 15 minutes, responding to only a few prompts in the process.

All seems to be neatly centralized on a wiki page.

Mailing list post | Wiki entry