When XP finally got killed, I set my dad up on Ubuntu LTS with MATE and he ran that way for many years with no issues. Occasionally hardware would fail (like the soundcard) which I would replace with a USB option. All in all though it was great for him. A couple years ago Ubuntu started demanding a "Pro" account/license (which shouldn't have been needed, it was the most recent LTS at the time) and making updates a pain for him, so I switched him to Gnome on Fedora (same setup I use) and it took a few minutes of orientation, but now he absolutely loves it. Absolutely I would recommend Linux instead.