"something running if you cant get it running"
there is NO difference in installing a modern distro then installing a fresh copy of XP.
plus with liveCDs you can try it out first and make sure everything is going to work first. try that with XP.
ROTFLMAO. Yeah, unless you wanna do something crazy like connect to a network. I spent hours - about 10 of 'em - trying to get five different Linux builds to connect to a home Wi-fi network, with no success. And I'm kind of a geek. Try to get the average user to ''compile binaries'' or whatever is needed.
Meanwhile, the XP boxes at my office require exactly zero hours of maintenance time. Every few months I run an antispyware program on them for fun, but in five years I have yet to find any problems.
I like the idea of Linux, but it's about 15 years behind Windows in terms of ease of use.