[Sussex] Linux for simplicity

[Adam Smith]

As some of you may know, when I'm not at college, I'm repairing/upgrading/troubleshooting computers.  It's mainly the latter these days, and a large chunk of my customers are elderly and have zero computer knowledge whatsoever.  All a lot of them want is a simple way to send/receive email, word process and browse the internet.....

For a while I've been thinking about somehow implementing linux with a minimalist Window manager and just 3 menu options (Email, Web, Office).  In an ideal world I could spend hours compiling Gentoo from source and configuring the hardware but that's just not practical (I don't charge by the hour - hehe).  I've been racking my brains trying to come up with a simple way to get linux onto the machine and configured to work with their hardware in a short enough space of time to make it worthwhile.  I'd welcome any suggestions on this.

My second idea was to sell brand new linux systems a-la Evesham.  I regularly sell a pretty basic system with parts from eBuyer as a cheap upgrade option, without an OS.  It would be simple enough to do an linux install/config then keep an image to copy over to each new machine using the same hardware.  We're only talking one machine a week here but every little helps.

The aim of this is to give customers exactly what they want, a simple to use, stable system that does what they want - no more, no less at minimal cost (i.e. free).  Windows cannot offer this, linux can, it's just a question of implementation. 

The question is - am I mad or could this really work?  Any input welcome.  

Adam Smith
adamjsmith at clara.co.uk
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