Ron Loftin wrote:
difficulty. CentOS on the desktop is what I use, therefore I am in a good position to answer their questions ( which have been very few, so far ) where if I put another distro on their machines, I would have to flail around when some minor point about the desktop or menu comes up.
That is a fair point. Having to support something you're not familiar with can be difficult.
This also gives the long support cycle, as others have noted in this
Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) is similar to Red Hat in that regard, if that's what you want (but the advantages of a slow-moving distro are less clear for this kind of situation).
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.04-lts-desktop
I forgot to mention something: The end-user support for Ubuntu is phenomenal. With CentOS or Red Hat, you do get info on the mailing lists and wikis, but it's for geeks like you and me. Ubuntu has plenty of information on the Web, including forums and blogs and whatnot, much more accessible to the average Joe/Jane. The difference is gigantic, orders of magnitude really, it was the most striking feature when I started to use Ubuntu (besides the fact that you almost never have to compile anything, ever - any software you can imagine is just an "apt-get install" away, or rather, click on Synaptic Package Manager, Search, double-click). The low-tech crowd using Ubuntu is huge, they clearly have the largest user base in that segment. And if you're a non-techie you want to stay with the crowd.
What I'm saying is, they will be able to figure out more things by themselves on Ubuntu, if they can use a browser. Maybe even become totally independent after a while.