This has been discussed before. Bitcoin-Qt is not suitable for most users (downloading the whole blockchain does not make sense, and it will get even worse with time). My initial design had the nice download button with OS autodetect, and most of people disagreed.
Did anyone think of the fact that most people disagreed is because most of the people that voiced their opinion is advanced users that care very much about bitcoin, and probably have good tech knowledge ? How will they be able to see how things should be from the 'not that interested - but still interested'-user point of view ? Heck, for most people on this forum, if you had to telnet into a remote machine and do a reverse ssh-tunnel to get the software, they would still do it.
If the Bitcoin-QT client is not suited for most people, then people could chose something else, but how do we do that, and how do we not favour one client over the other, and how the heck do we verify that some of the clients don't turn evil at one point and steal all the coins ?
Before any client is linked to from the official page, then it should well be ensured that there's nothing nefarious in it. What's to stop someone from making a slick client, building up a nice fan base, and then all of a sudden implement some sneaky feature that steals coins or send coins to the wrong address ?
What we need is someone to verify the integrity of a client, and then for a subsequent release a review of the diff for that new release. The easiest way to do this would be to remove all 3rd-party clients from the main site and rather link to a review site of some sort, I'm sure some would be willing to run that.
The more clients we get, the larger is the chance for something to go pear shaped at one point.
The information at bitcoin.org is great, but if you just want to get started, there should be a 'lazy quick-start guide' of sorts. We don't need to make the barrier to entry too high. Not that I don't think ppl who are really interested will not find their way, but imagine we have 10K visitors. With a big fat download button with OS-autodetect on the frontpage, all of these 10K visitors will immediately see that they in fact can download the software.
However, the more difficult we make it, ie. browse to one section, then a subsection, and then a subsection again, and then what client to chose ? And is it safe ? So many questions, not easy.. Then I guess a certain percentage of that 10K visitors rather give up and go to youtube to see failvids.