Posted on 04/21/2014 5:26:29 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Thanks...I need to get my act together and get a new op system.
Hopefully, this list will assist in that decision.
I put Linux Mint on an older Toshiba laptop. It works great.
Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, besides being ugly as homemade sin, is just as unusable as Macrosuck’s Windows 8 Metro abomination.
I’m running openSUSE 13.1 and I’m happy with it.
Bookmark
I had been wondering what to do, you have made my life a lot easier.
I’ve got Win XP and have never downloaded a patch in 6 years.
No issues whatsoever. The key, stay away from questionable sites period.
bttt
You’re welcome.
I do all of my general internet stuff with Linux. I only use Windows when I have something that just won’t run on Linux and then only for very specific purposes.
I’ve tried a bunch of Linux distros starting with Ubuntu. I don’t like the user interface on that too much. My next was Linux Mint. With the Cinnamon desktop it was a bit buggy - text characters would not fill in correctly and, most of all, I didn’t like the idea of reinstalling every 6 mos to update.
I ended up with Linux Mint Debian Edition (LDME) which has rolling updates. Does all that I need it to do.
I have several XP machines that I use for ham radio (no internet) and some other work. Any Windows system that gets on the net is Windows 7. I plan to at least skip Windows 8 and might never go back to Windows.
There are probably 3 main areas of differences between the various Linuxes I've used. The big one is the "window manager" - it may be Ubuntu's unity (not a fan); Gnome (not a fan); Gnome classic (not bad IMHO); and KDE (wildly configurable but quite usable out of the box). I haven't used the xface etc. interfaces. For basics, Gnome classic and KDE are very usable, not exactly like windows but pretty close. The average user will pick up the differences quickly.
The next area of differences is in the supporting applications/configuration. Each distro seems to have its own take on where to put various configuration options. Generally it is somewhere under the main menus, in some kind of system/settings/etc. A little annoying to find where your distro puts them, but once found no problem.
Finally, the other difference is in the updates/packaging. Generally these fall into .deb or .rpm camps. For some users you may never know or care. Some will eventually end up at a command line, cutting/pasting arcane commands from a website trying to configure something or other.
I don't miss windows at home. I've been running one flavor or another of Linux as my primary home desktop OS for 6 or 8 years now. I'm writing this on an old Dell Dimension e510 running Mint 16.
Oh, and thanks for the post/sources. I'll be installing one of those on my laptop. For business/banking, I simply bought a new computer with Windows 7. Little did I know my fav Bible program is now unusable.
No--These are not XP--they are XP replacements. Equivalent functionality, but NOT Windows.
Are the above sites/programs free?
Yes.
Is that what "open source" implies?
Not technically, but most people take it that way since the vast majority of open source programs are free (as in beer).
Oh, and thanks for the post/sources.
No problem. Glad to help.
What would you say could serve as a decent ‘winxp’ empulator?
empulator = emulator
Nice list with brief descriptions, but 50 of them?
That is one of the main problems with Linux distros — 50?
Several years ago, I tried several different distros. They were okay for basics, but none of them fully recognized all of my peripherals.
Well, a number of the recent spins of Linux support virtualization, which means you can have Windows XP as a “guest” OS for those few apps that won’t run under anything else. This assumes your hardware has the virtualization support necessary — I recently bought a used Dell desktop for $60 that has this support.
That is the beauty of Linux--it is infinitely customizable to meet any need out there. It does not insist that you alter your work flow/method/design to the OS--you can customize the OS to meet your needs.
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