Linux vs Windows ...why would anybody do this pt 2

Lets set the stage for what go me going on this long winded set of posts. I came across some surplus computers for sale via my local Craigslist site. They are government surplus of some sort or another and are Dell desktop style cases holding Celeron chips at around 2GHz with 20-40GB IDE Hardrives. They also have 128mb DDR Ram minimum and a CD or DVD Rom drive. Also included are a v90 winmodem and a builtin 8mb Video card as well as floppy drive and Lan and about 6 USB ports. Overall they have proven to be about 5-7yrs old. My old PC is 8, but it was top of the line when I set about building it. I replaced it 6 months ago and don't feel bad with how it held up.

My issue is, what to put on these boxes when I buy them for folks I know who need a low cost PC. I forgot to mention everyone of them I have seen has a XP COA on it. They are <$100, which would be a good price for a genuine copy of XP, let alone the hardware. I made one into a plain XP box for my son who has toddler and other educational games that require windows.

Then I came across another one of those and decided to make it a dual boot box. I am planning on it going to a relative who uses XP presently and needs little extra pizzaz when using a computer.

So I jotted down what I wanted on the XP side and went to look for a linux distro to put on there. I thought of DSL, but I decided this relative is too old to learn everything over again about how they use a computer, so scratch that. I also should be fair and say I only mentioned a few distros I have played with, as I decided the canidate for the Linux side would be my new and emerging favorite ditro PCLinuxOS2007! I had used this distro for a few laptops that proved too finicky to install Kubuntu on and I liked the ease of use and fast install times. Its one CD for goodness sake!

So the test is this: Which would be the better overall choice for a user with both those OS discs lying around? Now this is a biased test since I do know windows better. I had some programs to install on top of the base system that I did not in linux. They were:

• Office 2003 (Just the version I use now, I am not sold on 2007..yet)
• A Good image viewer and basic scanning package
• media codecs to view mpeg2 and mp3 etc
• a good media player that is not WMP
• anti-virus software (XP Essential is using IE)
• PDF Viewer software
• Secondary File manager software (I have directories explorer chokes on)
• Firefox..I will admin this box, I must have Firefox!
• Plus any missing drivers and whatever automatic updates XP throws on

I timed from the boot of the CD with a bare unformatted HDD until I was satiasfied that I could deploy this system and be confident of it working for the user from Power on. (I must have low standards, as I think finish too fast) I also configred Outlook Express for Email and installed some powertoys I like.

Then I turned the box off and installed PCLinuxOS as a second option. I did not do anything too special to its config, in fact I did nothing really as it has tools to do all I needed:

• It has Open Office..works for me
• Image and Scanning included
• Played my files without bitching about it, so no codecs needed as of yet
• Good media players included
• I know they have anit-virus for Linux, I don't see a need....so I didn't install any
• PDF Viewer included
• No 2nd File manager needed, Linux does not seem to mind obnoxious size directories at all
• Firefox is included by default
• No drivers were missing and I saw no auto update feature popping up at me, so I did nothing

Onto the Install