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posted by
janrinok
on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:46PM
from the but-not-the-year-of-the-Linux-desktop dept.
from the but-not-the-year-of-the-Linux-desktop dept.
A recent poll by The Inquirer asked, "Which operating system will you use after Windows XP support ends on 8 April?"
Among respondents, 33 percent said they will move to Windows 7, 17 percent will stick with XP, 13 percent will switch to Linux, 11 percent will get Windows 8, and 5 percent said OS X.
So most will switch to Windows 7, but many would rather stay with Win XP without support than switch to Linux.
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Poll: More Will Switch to Linux Than to Win8
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A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
Buy the negatives at any price.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:02PM
FUD works, everyone knows that Linux is full of daemons! It is better to stick with XP without any security (which is actually not that much of a change) than to go to the dark side!
(This said, my decision was to abandon Win95 for Linux in around 1995. Have never looked back. And have been persistently bothered by poor programming and implementation of standards by the makers of Windows. It gets better.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:32PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by caseih on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:59PM
True, but Windows was also pretty horrid back then. Also many Windows users, including me, still pined for the good old days of dos. For me the release of kde 1.x was the tipping point. That made Linux easy enough to use that I switched and never looked back.
Nowadays, Linux is of course much better. But I doubt we'll see huge Linux adoption. Most likely people will buy a new Wal-Mart special running Windows 8, install classic shell and be done with it.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday April 06 2014, @10:28PM
I switched to NT back then, but really should have switched to Linux. It took me another 10 years. I hope lots more take the opportunity now that it's (in my opinion) at least as usable as Windows 7 and more than Windows 8.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday April 07 2014, @12:02AM
No, most will buy a new wally world lappy and do nothing at all to the interface.
Classic shell or even booting into the desktop to avoid Metro seems to be something only the tech sites know of.
I have Shelled or redone the boot on ALL of my friends computers (9 all total have purchased new equipment since 8 came out. I am not a tech, just that guy they know who's good with their 'puters)
Everyone, without exception was ecstatic afterwords. Not one had ANY IDEA it could be done that way. None asked me to do it. All of them were me going "You know, you don't HAVE to use that ungodly interface, if you want it to boot strait to desktop, I can do it for you..." All accepted, none believed they had the choice in the first place. NONE had watched the instructional video that appeared when they first turned on their new machine.
Yes, next time I move I think I have 9 favors to call in....Muhahahahaha!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 07 2014, @01:11AM
Not really.
We were using it as our file server back then with no particular problems.
Samba was in its early releases back in 95, and it was at least as stable as Windows and a whole
lot cheaper than Netware.
True, its windowing system was primitive then, but for our uses, Linux (First RedHat, then S.u.S.E. in 64) were spot on for the task we needed.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by ko on Monday April 07 2014, @12:28AM
I switched a couple years after you did. I think it was RedHat 5.2 at the time. I remember downloading the source to KDE over a dial-up connection and then waiting for it to build. Despite occasionally running a Windows instance (virtual or otherwise) when I really had to use a Windows-only version of software, Linux has been my primary desktop operating system since then.
The vast majority of casual Windows users (who use their machines for email, web browsing, Facebook, slinging around pictures, etc.) would find all of the functionality and ease of use they're accustomed to in pretty much any modern Linux distribution.
Oh, well.... Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.
(Score: 1) by number11 on Monday April 07 2014, @03:03AM
It's a threatening change for the average non-techie user. The ones in corporate environments ask "Does it have Outlook?" The individuals, "Will my MSOffice [2003|2007|2014] work with it?" AFAIK LibreOffice doesn't have ribbon menus. Not that I'm complaining, but I deal with some people who are remarkably resistant to change.
However, I see that some places (e.g. the UK gov't) have contracted for 12 months more support for XP. What do you figure the chances are of those patches becoming generally available? If not from MS, then from someplace else that has access to copies of them? I'd lay money that the patches will be on Pirate Bay a few hours after they come from MS.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:57AM
the UK gov't) have contracted for 12 months more support for XP
The per-machine numbers on that are just STUPID. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [theregister.co.uk]
Someone deserves to not simply be fired, but publicly flogged.
(I just took someone to task about medieval behavior, but in this case it's completely deserved.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dilbert on Monday April 07 2014, @12:59PM
You're probably right about this, but I see two problems here.
First, there will immediately be copycat patches available that are actually rootkits.
Second, assuming an XP user was clueful enough to find a non-rootkit update for XP on TPB, wouldn't that imply they understand tech enough to not be using XP in the first place?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 07 2014, @02:45PM
AFAIK LibreOffice doesn't have ribbon menus
IMO that's one of its strong points; lack of having to deal with MS Office any more is one of the nice things about being retired. I'm using Open Office to write my books as L.O. won't do full justification.
I love KDE and Linux but some OS software can be maddening. GIMP's interface is a mess, and I tried to turn a text log file into a table. I finally gave up in frustration; O.O. would only open it in Write, its spreadsheet won't import a text file and its database requires Java, which I refuse to install on my machines.
I'm happy with O.O. Write, but does anyone know of a good open source spreadsheet or database?
And they lived happily ever after.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 07 2014, @03:13PM
GIMP is the poster child for bad interface design. If there's a more horrid interface out there, I'd be interested to hear about it. "Funny" enough, there actually used to be a single-window plugin for it that they dropped. Did they finally compile that option into the mainstream release yet?
My first thought is to wangle up a bash script to make the log into a CSV and then import that...but I'm pretty sure I just heard "normal" computer users everywhere scream out in agony at bash-caused melty eyeballs. Barring bash, I'd think you could do a find-and-replace to CSVatize it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Monday April 07 2014, @05:14PM
Does Office still have those super annoying paper clip and dog animations? They were so annoying.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 07 2014, @05:54PM
No, that went away ten years or more ago. They have much more subtle ways of infuriating you now.
And they lived happily ever after.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12 2014, @09:54PM
does anyone know of a good open source spreadsheetr l:Linux [google.com]
Bookmark this link as a boilerplate for future needs:
search?q=site:alternativeto.net+intitle:Excel+inu
Resulting page [alternativeto.net]
or database?+ intitle:Access+inurl:Linux [google.com]
search?q=site:alternativeto.net+intitle:Microsoft
I'm shocked that as a Linux user you haven't encountered pointers to that site before.
[LibreOffice's and OpenOffice's] database requires Java
Keep an eye on LibreOffice. They're working like Hell to get rid of that dependency.
LibreOffice Calc also recently got a new engine.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 07 2014, @03:06PM
I think you're saying they're now resistant to switching away from the Ribbon, but that still makes my eye twitch.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday April 07 2014, @05:00PM
Funny you should mention that; (some) Office applications are the support mussion for WINE (feature parity is the v. 1.0 spec).
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"