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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the unplugging-the-network-cable dept.

Appalbarry writes:

"Microsoft is about to abandon Windows XP to the wolves. Fair enough it's ancient. However, there are still going to be a lot of XP boxes out there, and a fair number of them are unlikely to ever get upgraded until the hardware dies.

My question is: what's available to help make this old OS stay reasonably secure and safe for the people who can't or won't abandon it?

Over the years I've been through Central Point Antivirus, Norton, McAfee, AVG, stuff like Zone Alarm, and of course the various Microsoft anti-malware offerings. But since moving over to Linux I really haven't kept up on the wild and wonderful world of Windows security tools.

Suggestions?"

 
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  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:22PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:22PM (#11940) Journal

    lentilla (1770) wrote:

    This will be your experience whilst ever you stay with Windows. Let's say you port to Windows 7. In ten years time you will have THIRTY years worth of batch files, will be worrying about porting to Windows 13 and will be considering "moving to Linux".

    The only way to circumvent this "Groundhog Day" of computing is to make the break - waiting will only make the switch more complex and will make the cost higher (as you write more scripts).

    Excellent point. That's exactly where I'm at.


    If I were you and I really wanted to ditch Windows? I'd do it as soon as possible. Put your existing installation into a virtual machine and run any "mission critical" scripts from there. Force yourself to do day-to-day tasks in the new OS.

    At the moment, running in a VM is not an option on my current system. Don't have the compute power or memory to handle it. I'm in the market for a new box and will definitely keep this in mind.


    The only way to break the addiction is to stop feeding it. I guarantee that if this is what you actually want you will not regret making the leap.

    Makes sense to me.... thanks for summing it up so succinctly.


    One last piece: when you buy a new computer, resist the urge to "try out" the new version of Windows. Nuke it immediately. Install it as a virtual machine if you must but don't make the mistake of thinking "I'll just try it out...".

    Duly noted! Thanks for the feedback. I guess my hangup is finding a distro that has some staying power (e.g. no gratuitous UI changes), and that is supported on whatever new box I get.

    I'm leaning towards a laptop and am open to hearing people's experiences with running Linux on their system. I've heard various things about driver support, especially with respect to video AMD vs NVidia.

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
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