Software for a first-time user

My uncle decided he wants a computer so that he can look stuff up online. Strange as it sounds to us, he's never used a computer before. I happened to have some parts lying around (p3 933, 256mb sdram, cd-rom, 4gb hdd, mobo, psu, case) and decided to build him a rig. Since he has absolutely NO prior computer experience, as in "what's a mouse?" whatever I set up is going to be his first impression, so if it's breaking a lot or requires a lot of maintenance, he's gonna end up throwing it out.

I've narrowed it down to two choices. One, Windows XP, the other, Debian.

XP scares be because of spyware and it's difficult for me to take the 2 hour drive down to where he is if he borks something. I was thinking I could use an old copy of DeepFreeze that's been lying around work for awhile, that way he can't permanently mess anything up, leaving him with a zero-maintainance computer.

Debian seems good because I can tweak it to be as simple as possible, install anything he'd ever want and have it all not cost me anything, and if something dies I can SSH in. Not having access to the root account will prevent him from changing anything too serious, and a user account will allow him to mess with some things if he figures out how, whereas deepfreeze will undo everything every time.

If I go XP, I can install my old copy of office2k, firefox, and of course folding. With debian, I can put openoffice, firefox, and of course folding. Software-wise it seems like no difference.

I'm leaning towards debian because of linux's superior help files. Microsoft help is like using a brick to drive a screw. The prospect of him not having ANY chance of screwing anything up is nice though, so deepfreeze seems quite appealing.

Suggestions?

First of all...what is deepfreeze?

Deepfreeze is a program that, when installed, loads a disk image instead of the actual hard drive. You can do whatever you want to the computer, destroy it mange it anything, and the next time it starts up it's exactly the same as the last time it started up. It's primarily used for public access compputers, like school libraries for example. That way the kids can screw with the computers and install junk but it won't matter since it'll all be back to normal after reboot.

I work for a computer repair place that handles quite a few schools' systems around here, so I'm very familiar with setting it up.

I'd recommend going with Debian. If your uncle has no prior computng experience then learning Linux should be just as easy as learning Windows. Even if you don't give him access to the root account you may wish to add him to a group with privs to use apt so he could install software himself if he wanted, although you could always do that over ssh too.