On 02/05/2018 05:19 PM, Newgene McMensa wrote:
I'm looking for the super easy way for a feller with basic computer skills to (a) acquire the software, (b) install it and (c) install the basic applications. I would like to stay with MS Word & Excel, just because they do fine for me and I don't need to learn anything else new dammit. LOL.


People will chime in with their favorite distros but I would start he

https://www.ubuntu.com/download

The tutorial will get you started but the basics are download the iso,
burn it to a DVD, and boot from the DVD. There are a few questions but
the install basically takes care of itself. I'm a software developer so
I have to load other tools and packages as well as set up services but
for the home user it pretty much provides most of what you'll want.

LibreOffice can load Word and Excel documents. I don't use Word or Excel
but you can determine if the LibreOffice versions will work for you.

My mail/newsgroup client is Thunderbird and my preferred browser is
Firefox both of which I run on Linux and Windows so there is no
difference for me.

I've been using Linux for around 20 years and I've got to say the modern
distros are fantastic. Unless you've got some really strange hardware
they will recognize the display, wireless, nic, and so forth and go on
about their business. In fact, early in the install it will configure
your network connection and download most of the packages from the net.
That way you get the freshest versions rather than stuff that was shrink
wrapped last year.