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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: 1) by lentilla on Monday March 31 2014, @05:32PM
And it is those very people that are still running XP that are exactly the kind of "customers" that one doesn't want.
Sure, they won't really be "customers", in-so-far as they won't pay for you to do the conversion for them, neither will they appreciate the hours spent nor the caution with which you make sure they don't lose files. They will; however; be your customers, and customers of the worst kind:
The simple truth is that staying on WinXP is not an option. The only appropriate response is "you need to buy a new computer". This is one of those times that it is kinder to be cruel.
There is one circumstance under which we might entertain an "upgrade" to Linux Mint: in conjunction with new hardware. Offer to get your loved one a new computer. Buy one, install Linux Mint (or your favourite flavour), configure it, and deliver it along with the invoice for the purchase. This has three clear benefits:
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday March 31 2014, @06:21PM
I absolutely agree with you on most of that, but...
I don't know about your file cabinets, but the ones I'm familiar with look like
You might go nuts and use an expanding file folder with tabs inside it for a fourth level, but that's about the max. The key, though, is not that there's only three, or at most four, levels. The key is that each level is unlike every other level.
Whereas hierarchical filesystems look like: (I'm afraid slash is limiting my nesting, which is not cool...)
Or IOW, "a maze of twisty little cabinets, all alike".
Filing cabinets all but enforce structure -- a drawer is not the same as a cabinet nor as a folder, so to have any meaningful organization, it's almost necessary to give each level a semantic binding. (e.g. Cabinet:year, Drawer:section-of-alphabet, Folder:customer name, or maybe Cabinet: customer, Drawer:year, Folder: week, etc.) Many bindings are possible, and you can even simultaneously use different ones in different file cabinets or drawers, but in a given context, it's impossible to drop a year into a drawer full of customers (assuming the year/alphabet-segment/customer model), because you can't put a file cabinet into a drawer.
This semantic binding to levels of hierarchy is possible in a filesystem, and is often beneficial, but using it that way requires a certain level of self-discipline not needed in the physical space. For people who've acquired the habit of using a filesystem haphazardly, without ever using that particular form of self-discipline, their existing habits interfere with grasping the concept, even if someone else has already created and populated the structure. And graphical file managers that let you drag a folder into that folder's sibling or grandparent folder (both of which break a structured hierarchy) in the same way as into that folder's parent's sibling (which can be correct and useful) do nothing to help. (I'm not saying it should be harder to move things up/down levels than across, merely that it might be helpful to have lateral and vertical moves represented as distinct operations that are both easy.)