I'm weaning myself off windows piece by piece and, with my growing linux skills, hope to eventually do the same for my mother, brother, and sister.
My mother's needs are basic: she doesn't understand what an operating system is and uses her computer almost exclusively for surfing the net and reading email, though has started playing with google earth. Runs XP, not that she knows it...
Brother surfs, emails, and creates digital videos with his canon camera, edits them, & uploads to youtube. He also plays Medal of Honor, has become a google earth fanatic, and has a basic understanding of file management under XP.
Sister & her husband surf, email, write papers an make lists in Word, burn disks of music and videos, and manage photos. They're using a factory install of Vista on an HP.
My mother's thinking of buying new machine to replace her laptop, my brother's always up for new things, my sister & brother-in-law want to learn more about virtual machines, and all are (or will be) running Core 2 Duo CPUs, so it seems like the time is ripe for all of them. I'm wondering if anyone else in the group has considered the same thing & if so, what distro? So far, Mandriva and OpenSuse seem to have the most polished look and feel for someone used to windows. Jonathan had good things to say about Mandriva early on, and I'll be installing itafter the (first) final to see what it's like...