> So I am recommending a GNOME desktop, of version 2.6 or later. Clean, > simple, and easy to use.
I would disagree with the recommendation and suggest to use KDE. It's deliberately designed to be similar to windows and will appear to be more familiar to computer-illiterate users who are familiar with 9x. Openoffice is the only really usable free office suite, so that's an easy suggestion. (Forget about koffice, and there isn't even a gnome office. abiword is no good if you expect to exchange office documents as its userbase is effectively non-existant.) kmail is dead-easy to use and set up, I know several Linux novices using it and none has a problem. konqueror is a good filemanager and a nice to use web browser for basic sites, but loses it when it gets to javascript. Any other moz-based alternative will do. What I would be more concerned with is that if "the parents" have some hardware which was "designed for 9x", one would have to explain to them that this hardware has no practical usefulness for any contemporary software discussed in this thread. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
