Linux/BSD replacement fow WinXP for Newbie?

This topic was created by Long John Baldrick .

[Long John Baldrick]

Linux/BSD replacement fow WinXP for Newbie?

I need to bring a friend up to the latest clotting edge of OS technology. Years ago I got him to buy a used HP xw9300 workstation. It is monstrous but still running well, but time marches on. In the past I have seen commentards suggest Mint, but I don't know if that is still appropriate. So, any suggestions will be appreciated. My UNIX is quite rusty, its been 15 years ago since I touched it, so install needs to be fairly simple as I am 300 miles away from him and would be doing this over the phone.

Any ideas?

[Lotaresco]

Re: Linux/BSD replacement fow WinXP for Newbie?

After fiddling with several flavours of Unix recently I would go with Mint with Xfce desktop or possibly MATE. I'd avoid Cinnamon since even on a quad i7 system with a decent graphics card it's painfully slow. Xfce is close enough to XP to be familiar and it works well on even modest hardware.

I tried Elementary OS which can look good for a few minutes but is far too irritating to use.