Well- Mandrake 8.1 and StarOffice would be fine anyway...we just thought about XP because he uses it at school and has special needs--so some familiarity with the interface etc would have "helped" a little.
I'm not a great expert at the Linux stuff fairly new - but I dont know if youve tried Redmond for your son - its is very very xp like - a friend and I tried it and it kept crashing on his - (but no one else seems to have the same complaints) - have a look or ask other Redmond users (there is a copy on this months Linuxformat) I asked about it no replies yet from other users. We have got Redhat 7.2 at school (primary)and at home and you can really get it to look very windows like if that is what you want - if you have user level - depending on your sons ability in kde etc he can play around and get the desktop etc to look how he wants - there are load of options I'm a great believer in doing up desktop to suit yourself I dont know the age of your son - my 14yr old (non techie) has got laod of desktop rubbish I hate using his M Ali, B Lee, etc. I have a hard job reading the icons hope thats help Ronald __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com