[vox] Distribution for an adventurous newbie?

[Paul]

donw at examen.com wrote:
> A friend of mine wants to give Linux a try, and she being the type that
> she is, wants to do the installation herself -- she has a spare hard
> drive, so she probably won't blow away her data, and I've already given
> her the standard list of cautions, as well as an offer to do the
> installation for her.  Still, she wants to do it.
> 
> So -- what distribution should I burn to a CD for her?  I'm a Debian
> man, but I know that the Debian installer isn't friendly unless you know
> Linux.  In fact, because I've been a computer type since the age of six,
> I'm pretty much guaranteed to give her something difficult to install.
> 
> So -- which distribution?  Focus is on ease of installation and use; as
> she progresses, she will learn more, and eventually I might move her to
> Debian.  Anything bundled with OpenOffice.org is a plus, and she has a
> card reader and a camera (both supported by gPhoto2 and usb-storage)
> which would be nice to have working.
> 
Xandros Open Circulation is pretty "newbie proof", easy to install, has 
lots of features, is debian based and it's free (beer). The downside, 
it's not quite free (speech), it's a little hard to "get under the hood" 
and you're locked into xandros' packages.
Paul