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from the can't-resist-that-minty-freshness dept.
prospectacle writes:
How to best replace Windows XP has become interesting to a much wider group of people, due to the end of official support for the product. (a previous story mentioned an Indian state government that urged its departments to use India's home-grown linux distro "BOSS Linux").
Some people may be using XP because it came with their computer and they never gave it a second thought, but there are probably plenty of others who don't want to spend the money, don't like the look of Windows 8, have older hardware, or are just used to the XP interface.
To these people, ZDNet humbly offers Linux Mint as a suggestion to replace XP.
They provide fairly compelling arguments to their target audience like:
- You can make it look almost exactly like XP
- It's free
- You can boot the live CD to try before you "buy".
- Decent, free alternatives exist for email, office, book-keeping and web-browsing.
- Virtually no need for any anti-virus for home users.
- Installation is quite easy these days.
- Works on fairly modest hardwar
Ending free support for a 12 year old product seems like a sensible policy for a for-profit entity like microsoft. In the past they've been able to count on people upgrading from old microsoft products to new microsoft products, and so any measure that would encourage (or pressure) people to upgrade would increase their sales.
Seems like a winning formula.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday March 31 2014, @12:40PM
Yet another "everyone using XP should switch to My Favorite Flavor of Linux!" articles.
Here why individuals who use XP will almost certainly have a hard time switching to Linux:
* If you're on XP, your hard drive, with all your files on it, is formatted NTFS. You can't install Linux on NTFS sanely, and can't even mount it read/write safely under Linux. Switching to Linux means moving all your files (and possibly repartitioning your hard drive), then reformatting for the install. In theory, that's easy. In practice, it's easy to get wrong, and if you do you can lose all your files. (And most users don't back up well).
* While I like Mint, there are a ton of ways that the ultra-configurability of linux makes it easy to make things works the way you don't want in non-obvious ways. Sure, you can make it look mostly like XP IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. If you're still using XP, you're likely not on the cutting edge, and you're likely to do something wrong that's hard to fix.
* Asserting GnuCash is as good as Quicken, or LibreOffice is as good as MS Office is simple partisanship. They're nice apps, and there are a lot of reasons to like them (free as in freedom file formats, for example), but they're not close to as mature as their commercial alternatives. If you're using Office for business, you're going to be surprised when many of your docs have their formatting "messed up" the first time you open them in Libre.
* Suggesting "You'll never need AV again!" is a dangerous assertion.
Look, I like Linux. I even run Mint on my linux box. It's a really nice OS. But it takes some know-how to get up and running, even from scratch. Adding the challenges of migrating from a working and well-known Windows install and you've got a considerably bigger challenge.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 31 2014, @12:52PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Monday March 31 2014, @01:20PM
Windows 8 and 8.1 are both just Windows 7 with a couple tweaks and a second desktop environment stapled on.
(Score: 1) by broggyr on Monday March 31 2014, @02:08PM
...and Windows 7 was just an update for Vista (Windows 6.1, anyone?)
Taking things out of context since 1972.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @02:13PM
You can read and write NTFS quite safely under Linux and have been able to for a long time
Only if you dont like your CPU.
I switched out a few of my 'old' computers to ext4 from NTFS. CPU usage before was usually 80-90%. After nearly 5-10%. On newer computers NTFS usage is fairly negligible. But on the older computers that this is aiming for the fuse ntfs driver can be a significant overhead. Just because you can does not mean you should.
XP was pretty good for its day. It is time to buy a new computer. This is how most people get the OS. My dad has used every single version of windows since 95. He never installed it. He would just buy a new computer. These days he just buys the cheapest computer he can get and adds a bit of memory (sometimes). The cost is usually 200-400 dollars.
People do not want you to fix their issues usually (unless they are really in the weeds). They just want you to validate they made an 'ok' choice.
(Score: 1) by pjbgravely on Monday March 31 2014, @02:28PM
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday March 31 2014, @04:28PM
Someone who has multiple computers running at once (e.g. my computer, spouse's computer, family/kids computer, htpc), but only replaces one at a time?
It's a bit of a stretch, but not implausible.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by michealpwalls on Monday March 31 2014, @02:38PM
This is all true, as ntfs-3g is implemented using FUSE, the Filesystem in USErland.
However I think you and the original complainer are failing to see the forest from all the pesky trees.
Running a distribution of Linux from an NTFS volume is a pretty silly idea. You can easily resize an NTFS volume and migrate the system to a more appropriate filesystem. Even if you're strapped for free space, it can still be done progressively..
This entire discussion thread about Linux's support of NTFS is so 1990s it's really quite simply moot. Old copies of GParted LiveCD can solve this problem very quickly.. Most installers that ship with linux distributions are based on parted or something similar and can also easily solve this "problem".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @03:54AM
ntfs-3g
That's the big one. If you're reading *data* from or writing *data* to a drive that's already NTFS, you're golden. Been that way since 2007.
GParted
That's another other big one. The Gnome PARTition EDitor (think: FOSS Partition Magic) comes with pretty much every distro these days.
Windoze users looking to switch should first defrag their partitions.
Next, pop in the disc/thumbdrive with your bootable Linux ISO and resize your partitions so that you can make a partition for Linux.
CAVEAT: I understand that the most recent versions of Windoze really hate it when you don't use MICROS~1's tools for this. You should investigate that further. (Full disclosure: I've never had an OS that required Product Activation.)
When you have your partitions squared away, install Linux BESIDE your Windoze install (dual boot).
When you're confident that all your needs are fulfilled with Linux, use GParted again to reclaim the space you had alloted to your Windoze partition.
Now, that wasn't so difficult, was it?
Finally, the one that all you guys have missed mentioning so far is that NTFS does not support *n?x permissions.
If you want to put executables on an NTFS partition (a dumb idea, but, hey, it's YOUR box), you'll need to jump through some hoops. [google.com]
Now, why someone would WANT to keep an filesystem that still requires DEFRAGGING is the thing that perplexes me. I'm going to guess it's just cluelessness.
I'm having a hard time imagining that user NOT calling in a tech for anything even mildly complicated.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 31 2014, @01:13PM
If the user has been on XP for a good part of a decade, they're already used to the whole "lose everything and reinstall" every time they get a virus or a hard drive crash or whatever. So this is irrelevant.
In my circle no one uses MS office except business users who got stuck there. Google drive/docs has taken over the non-business world. There's some libre office / open office whatever, but the whole world has gone google because its free and ubiquitous and easy to share. School, cub scouts, volunteer work, no one uses uses MS office unless they have to because of some legacy stuff.
As far as configuration, the windoze world has no standards and everythings random and unpredictable. So a microscopic change in something no one uses is not an issue in linux. For a good laugh send a XP user to windows 8, LOL. After that, linux will seem a relative paradise.
Just make sure it runs Chrome, and runs it well. And has flash player. That's all you typically need.
(Score: 2) by akinliat on Monday March 31 2014, @05:47PM
Heh. My brother would regularly call me up every year or two to ask where to find NIC drivers for a machine I got him. He did reinstalls just because it was the only way to keep cruft from slowing the machine to unusability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:16AM
[Windoze] cruft[...]slowing the machine to unusability
This is a good place to mention that, unlike M$'s dreck, Linux get FASTER with use (memory management and filesystems).
A filesystem that first looks for a space large enough to write the ENTIRE file is a filesystem that doesn't require defragging.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @01:19PM
Posting as anonymous coward because I can't remember my logon :)
Linux Mint does not take a lot of out-of-the-box config, especially if you don't insist on it looking exactly like XP. The task bar and "start" menu are in the same place. The other thing that bears mentioning is that I have used Office 2003 and Office 2007 extensively with Crossover Linux and both work very, very well. Not everything is perfect, but for a lot of use cases you'd never notice. So if Office is the only thing holding you back, I wouldn't let it stop you. My wife uses Xubuntu with Office 2007 and has no complaints - she is a researcher who writes a lot of peer-reviewed articles and uses some of the advanced features such as tracking changes and auto-referencing. Much of the Windows software I have that is as old as XP works well under Crossover. An LTS Ubuntu (or derivative) is a decent solution for a lot of people. This is a decent solution for a lot of small businesses OR personal users --- I'm not advocating enterprise-wide deployments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday March 31 2014, @03:41PM
i.e., Linux Mint looks more like Windows than Windows 8 does.
"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 Thexalon on Monday March 31 2014, @02:22PM
Although I have some know-how, I didn't need it for the pre-installed Linux box I picked up a couple months ago. Here was my entire process for getting it up and running:
1. Plug in the power, network, and peripherals.
2. Turn it on.
3. Tell it about my time zone.
4. Tell it my locale preferences like keyboard layout and decimal formats. Defaults were US English in both cases.
5. Set up a username and password for my primary account.
6. Reboot.
Here's the process I recall going through to set up a new Windows box:
1. Plug in the power, network, and peripherals.
2. Turn it on.
3. Tell it about my time zone.
4. Tell it my locale preferences like keyboard layout and decimal formats. Defaults were US English in both cases.
5. Set up a username and password for my primary account.
6. Reboot.
1. Plug in the power, network, and peripherals.
2. Turn it on.3. Tell it about my time zone.
4. Tell it my locale preferences like keyboard layout and decimal formats. Defaults were US English in both cases.
5. Set up a username and password for my primary account.
6. Reboot.
Please explain to me why Linux requires more know-how. If you compare pre-installed Windows with installing Linux over an existing OS, that's apples versus oranges. The equivalent task to installing Linux over an existing OS would be installing Windows on what has previously been a Linux box, without losing data - doable, but also a pain in the keister.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday March 31 2014, @02:38PM
You have to know how to find a pre-installed Linux box. Sure, it's not hard, but it's not as easy as getting a pre-installed Windows box, for which the procedure basically is: "Buy any non-Apple computer you happen to find."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday March 31 2014, @03:40PM
Or be able to use Google [google.com] and consider the option.
The real problem is that desktop Linux simply doesn't have the marketing capabilities that Apple and Microsoft do.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by emg on Monday March 31 2014, @05:50PM
But then you boot it, see the Metro screen, and say 'oh crap, I thought this thing ran Windows' and take it back to the store.
Mint's UI is much closer to XP than Window 8 is. The only reason not to switch is when you have some Windows application you really, absolutely must run which doesn't run in Wine and has no Linux equivalent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @05:54AM
...and the final case is that that must-have Windoze-only app won't do its thing inside a virtual machine.
The *necessity* for running Windoze on bare metal is such a small segment of the market as to be noise.
Guys interfacing with really specialized industrial/scientific equipment is that tiny subset.
Anyone who has had to do a reinstall of Windoze on bare metal and has also replaced a snapshot of a VM install knows which one makes infinitely more sense.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday March 31 2014, @05:55PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by cykros on Monday March 31 2014, @10:17PM
More like only 100-150 or so of their games are going to work. Unless we're talking about emulated games, in which case all of those will still work as well.
Also, what gamers are still running windows XP?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday March 31 2014, @10:31PM
Take it from me as a long time Windows user: If you want to entice somebody to swith to Linux stop playing the "it's almost as good!" card and start telling them why it's better. Wanna impress a Windows guy? Show them Knoppix. Wanna piss of a Windows guy? Say it works just as well then leave him to fight with
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:39AM
fight with Wine
Boy, I thought *I* was a curmudgeon until I came here and started reading **your** posts.
What's the old line? Were you toilet trained at gunpoint?
Now, if a Linux user has his box prepared by a pro--y'know, like the Windoze users do--everything is going to be equal to the Windoze UX.
If it's obvious that you aren't up to the task, just tell the guy what you need then stand back and let him work.
Oh, and the parent forgot to mention that -some- games will be quicker running under WINE than under Windoze.
Every time I hear that one verified yet again, I just smile.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:50AM
Heh. And you are strong enough of the Linux faith to do this for a few converts?
So... after you dick around with getting them working, and assuming they work, SOME might run faster ... because that was obviously so important that they held onto their machine this long. Nice rebuttal.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈