I spent my whole drive to work looking for apps to prevent me from using my phone. I gave up after parking my car.

The only problem with giving them Linux is a lack of support for some applications. For example, I had installed Arch on my livingroom PC for my family, and set it up so that the kids can just click on their picture to log in. My wife needed applications that are not well-supported by Wine, such as iTunes. I was able to find workarounds, but they weren't very elegant, and weren't things I could have my wife do. Taking iTunes as an example, I had to manually mount the volume, extract her pictures, and reset her photo roll. It became a very messy monthly project to have to do for her, and one of the reasons she would state she hates Linux. Also, she likes photo editing, and there wasn't an application/suite that she could find that she really liked and could edit easily. After 2 years, she finally won and we got Windows 8.1 for the family PC. If the person you are trying to help doesn't have a preference for applications, and isn't set in their ways for a certain application, any distro with a good graphical package system should work. Mint is very good for beginners, as well as Ubuntu. If you need to meet lower system requirements, take a look at XFCE and LXDE alternatives.

These are imperial Gigabytes. They're worth approximately 1.6 metric.

Routine maintenance. Every 3,000 Gb. Didn't use a mechanic, so I probably voided my warranty.

I live in the U.S., and most people believe that cable/satellite TV is as much of a necessity as power and water. I cut my cable a year and a half ago, and haven't looked back. I have a Linux distribution that finds TV shows and stores them on a network share (semi-autonomous), then the family can use raspbmc to watch what they want using an Android as a remote. I was concerned that my family wouldn't be able to use it, but then my son turned it on and watched Pokémon by himself. It's been chugging along by itself for quite some time now; I am quite pleased.

You're perfectly right. That's why I scrapped Ubuntu some time ago for my 2 ghz Celeron laptop with Intel Brookdale graphics (i915). I have to thank ArchLinux for allowing me to take the install one step at a time so I could find out why Ubuntu would not configure the graphics correctly. Now that I've got an LXDE destop, I don't feel the need to go back. Besides, who'd want to leave a distro that uses pacman to install software?

Thank God I'm not the only person who read it this way. The Internet has ruined me, but I'm not alone.

Will be disappointed, as I will not be home.

I can see this replacing windshields for a full HUD. Billboards will be blue/green screens, with ads superimposed by the HUD. Coming soon, male enhancement graffiti.

I agree, and it's very rare that I agree with Microsoft decision making.