> Ofcourse my thoughts went directly out to Debian, as a personal > favorite. It would take some time to create an enviroment where all > these (simple) users would be content in, it would take even more time, > testing and support for them to be glad with it, but that wouldnt be > much of a problem. The problem is that it should be simple to > install/administer/configure/upgrade (not everyone likes digging in > /etc/ or answering all these questions to install an OS), and using it > should feel like second nature! Most of these things are not yet here or > easy in Debian GNU/Linux, or in any distro in general, and that is a > pity, from a user-perspective.
I think for the kind of money you are talking about, you can hire administrators who know Unix. Honestly: wouldn't you want professional (or at least competent) adminstrators for Windows, too? Ease of Windows administration is a myth; hardware upgrades are fairly minor administration, and most people who have tried know how difficult this can be under Windows. It only gets worse if you want to set up network services, and perhaps even (gasp) some sort of security to protect users from each other. So, real question is whether you can make *using* the systems easy, not whether installing and maintaining them can be easy. The answer is probably yes, but your admin will have to make it a priority (which many Unix admins do not). -Lex