I run SuSE 7.1 at home, have installed it on several different machines and 
find it, overall, excellent.

But why not start by giving him a copy of DemoLinux?

DemoLinux is a distro that loads into a RAM drive and runs from the CD-ROM. 
It includes KDE, Gnome and StarOffice so he can get a good feel how it could 
replace Windows without any danger of harming his Windows installation.

Since it doesn't touch the HDD he can play with it for as long as he likes 
then reboot to the HDD and be safely (?) back in the arms of Bill.

Downside is that DemoLinux is a little dated and coming from France some of 
the menus (notebly StarOffice) are in French. 

The ISO can be downloaded from www.demolinux.org

I think Derek has an excellent idea in getting started looking for 
peer-to-peer support. That reallyis one of the strengths of Linux and OSS in 
general.

Grüße,

Dennis Kibbe
PS - I'll new to the list and Linux although I've "played" with various 
distros since about 1996.