Hmm, that would be the ideal thing to do. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to go through that many distros in a short space of time! I'm just going with the general concensus for the most nwebie-friendly distro out there. If I install Mandriva and it seems awful though, I'll probably go with Kubuntu (which also seems good). I want KDE really, because I generally think it's better (aesthetically and functionally). Sorry, Gnome folks!

I'd consider XFCE still as an option for limited h/w. You can make some folks real happy if their slow-slow 128 MB box suddenly becomes alive.
And you should set up a simple web site where people can read a bit more about Linux in case they are interested. A good argument pro Linux is it's usability anywhere. So letting them know how all the servers, routers etc. are running Linux because these are the places where hackers hit hardest and max security is essential. And when using Linux they can get all this security for free (plus an affordable setup fee indeed). Things like that.

OK, I'll definately consider XFCE - especially since part of my whole idea is to "rejuvinate" ageing PCs.

As for the website... I'd prefer to see what the demand is like before I shell out for a domain name and a hosting subscription. Unless I know I'm going to get a lot of work, the expenses (and effort) of a website don't really seem justified.

This is up to you of course. Just for the sake of truth, setting up a web server for serving static pages does not take much effort nor expenses. Any h/w, even 386 with 32 MB of RAM will do if you use some lightweight http server as webfsd. Domainnames are free from DynDNS and similar services and writing simple html pages with some html editor is a piece of cake. After all the business textbook says all means should be used to be successful. Good luck.

Shilo has a tutorial aimed at Slackware users that covers web hosting, but there's pretty general stuff in there that you could use as a Gentooer. I know I took some advice when I ran Gentoo. So just point your browser here and get yourself a net presence.

Hello. Well I just thought you might read this. Read it through, really. It is highly interesting and it made me change my opinion completely. I myself still love linux, and wouldnt go back for anything. But I just understood that it is NOT my task to make everyone switch to it. If they are sick of viruses spyware etc how you say, but do NOT necessarily want to learn and understand their computer and OS, then maybe they should try OS X for example. It's just my opinion on the subject...