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Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: > Quoting James Fidell <james@xxxxxxxxxxxx>: > > >> ...as people were in another thread just now. >> > > <snip> > > >> Anyone care to share thoughts on how easy lifelong Windows users find >> Ubuntu to pick up and just "get on with doing stuff" (IM clients are >> another thing she uses a lot from the laptop). Of the many and varied >> distributions, is it likely to be the "best" choice in this situation? >> > > If she's a windows user and you want to make it easy, use Kubuntu > (gives her a "start" button) , install pidgeon for IM, configure > OpenOffice to open/save in MSOffice formats by default and tell her > it's windows... :oP > > If you want her to embrace an version of linux that works, use Ubuntu, > use Gnome and let her get used to the differences. I upgraded my > wife's laptop to Ubuntu from XP a few years ago and now she gets > frustrated by windows because the buttons aren't in the right place! > > M. > A fairly good comprimise between Ubuntu and Kubuntu would be something like Linux Mint (www.linuxmint.com) which IIRC has a more of an XP ish looking interface and it's based on Gnome but with a few extra custom configuration tools added. It looks pretty polished although when I tried it last they didn't have a 64-Bit version (or at least I couldn't find one), I think they do have one now though by the looks of things. With regards to instant messaging, I'd also say go for Pidgin as it supports MSN/Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC, Jabber all in the one program. You can even add a Facebook chat plugin too. I tried transferring both my wife and my dad over to Ubuntu. My dad couldn't get on very well with it (not sure why) so he's back on XP for now (at least until Microsoft stop supporting it) and my wife can use Ubuntu easily enough but she's not keen on it. She's also on XP (funnily enough she doesn't like Vista either) and it looks like she'll be on XP for the foreseeable future. You may be worth dual booting the notebook so she can have a look at it. You may find that she just won't want to switch. Another thing you could try if she won't let go of Office and Outlook is try running them in Crossover Office. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html