[Johnno]

I've been using Microsoft products all my IT life - ie since about 1996.  I guess I'm not the only member here who has or does.

[snip] 

Recently I've read of someone using Linux.  To be honest I didn't understand a lot of the language, but it seems to be a case of "install it and forget it".  No forced updates to deal with - or learn to live with.  But is it useable enough for a technophobe?  I bricked a laptop years ago and don't want to risk doing it again.

As an IT person you should know better than not installing updates... that behaviour is cause for instant dismissal under security implications. 

As for 8.1 omg man... move on up to W10 at minimum all the garbage that some useless coder added into 8 and 8.1 is simply stupid and only that person showing what they can't do, code. New is good only if it is implemented correctly. As an IT person myself I completely refused to rollout W8 and W8.1 due to the garbage coding, I went back to W7, wited until W10 came out and have been happy again having a stable computer and software platform. 

Hell, I'd love to be using MS-DOS 3 and Desqview but that technology has been superseded and killed off by full blown Windows OS. 

As for moving over to another OS good luck with that as support will be extremely limited on forums such as this, you will need to head on over to several Linux forums for assistance, another huge PITA for something that should be simple. I do know Linux is NOT a 'install and forget' OS.

You essentially need to be a coder to utilise Linux to it's fullest, can you code? Yes? No? Do you want to spend dozens of hours learning to code? 

Good luck with the project