LiveCD try out for newbies

I've spent a few weeks fixing a laptop for my uncle; it appears the hard disk was buggered. Anyway, after fitting a new one, I've installed Windows XP and patched it to hell in the hope that it will stay reasonably secure and virus/spyware free (before I get it back again in 2 weeks to fix, full of malware and nasty stuff...)

Anyway, although my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins are far from the type of people interested in changing o/s, I'm thinking about giving them a LiveCD to try out when they feel like it.

They are non-technical, fairly computer illiterate people, who just want to surf the net, do some word processing, download some music, and play some games. Does anybody recommend a LiveCD distro for this scenario?

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro A40 series P4/2.66Ghz, 256Mb RAM/40Gb Hd/CD-r/w

I’ve just realised I’ve formatted the Windows partition as NTFS, perhaps I should change that to FAT32 for Linux compatibility, or should I leave it as it is for added Windows security/stability, as that is what they will be using 95% of the time?

have a look at distrowatch.com they have a long list of distro's there,then you can make a decision on what livecd to use. as fo formatting, if you are using a livecd, it doesn't matter as it doesn't touch the hard drive. or you could make a 1gb fat32 partition just to save settings from the livecd so that when it boots they don't have to configure it to their taste

andy

I am fairly certain that once you change the fs to NTFS, you can't go back without re-formatting and partioning the drive...so unless you do that, it may not be a choice to go back to FAT32...

knoppix is my favourite live cd