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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: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @08:50AM
This solution is good if you don't need any specialized software. If you use your computer for web browsing, e-mail and creating office documents, Linux will work for you.
If you use a CAD system, or even something as simple as Lego Mindstorms EV3 Home Edition, native Linux versions (_not_ alternatives) are not always available. You can try running it under WINE, but the results are not always great [winehq.org], or you are forced to use outdated versions [winehq.org]. So some of us are stuck with Windows.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday March 31 2014, @09:16AM
^^^^This^^^^
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 31 2014, @09:21AM
"even something as simple as Lego Mindstorms EV3 Home Edition"
I'm totally confused. This URL seems to imply the first step for installing mindstorms is installing virtualbox and putting linux mint in the virtualbox and then doing stuff in the virtualbox to program your legos.
http://www.legomindstormsev3.com/linux-programming /installing-virtualbox.ev3 [legomindstormsev3.com]
So rather than installing virtualbox under windows to install linux mint, why not install virtualbox under linux mint to install a specific version of linux mint as your dev environment? Its easier, if anything, to install under linux than under windows. Or for that matter just install windows under virtualbox and use the windows software?
I do feel the pain, I own a great eprom programmer thats windows only, so on a secondary box I have to reboot occasionally into windows XP to program stuff. Very annoying. Also some steam games are still legacy windows only, although all the new stuff seems to be linux.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 31 2014, @09:42AM
What on earth do you need an EPROM programmer for these days? If you're making anything new, all modern microcontrollers have built-in flash which can be programmed in-circuit. The only reason you'd need a separate EPROM programmer is if you're messing around with decades-old vintage hardware.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 31 2014, @10:56AM
"The only reason you'd need a separate EPROM programmer is if you're messing around with decades-old vintage hardware."
AKA Fun! Or a minor correction, any hardware with a vintage design.
Admittedly I have little tolerance for sitting around the UV light for a half hour or whatever so everything I get my hands on is converted to EEPROM. Have to be careful with that.
(Score: 1) by pjbgravely on Monday March 31 2014, @10:41AM
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday March 31 2014, @12:43PM
I think the proper term is "the site has been soiled", at least that's what I hope we start using.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 31 2014, @02:08PM
Gotta get the L into it.
The site's server has soyled itself, and ...
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday March 31 2014, @02:53PM
I like it. Let it be known from now on when a site breaks down because of link on soylent it has soyled itself.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Monday March 31 2014, @09:39AM
I would prefer to have this broken down to how many are stuck with Windows as a native OS? What keeps one bound to Windows where running it in a VM on a Linux host OS would not suffice?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @09:56AM
Hi, same AC here.
I think the logic is as follows: Computers that have XP have hardware that's rather outdated, otherwise you'd be running Windows 7 or 8. So running a VM and two operating systems on an machine that's got one gigabyte of RAM seems like suicide. If you upgrade hardware and can change operating systems, you might as well run native Windows (7 or 8) instead of Linux and a VM with XP in it. It's a lot less complicated.
I'm not trying to justify the use of Windows for everyone, I'm just saying that for those who need Windows to run specific software, adding an extra layer or two (VM/Linux) is not needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:13PM
I resisted the move to Linux for a long time because my stocks/futures trading platform was Windows only. Several years back I decided I'd have enough and took the plunge to Linux. My trading platform went into a Win7 VirtualBox VM, and I haven't looked back.
...still have to use Windows at work though...
(Score: 1) by gitano on Monday March 31 2014, @06:13PM
Me for example as heavy AutoCAD user need windows native. Windows 7 its a very solid OS for me. But i use debian also on another machine at home.
One family member have a old thosiba laptop on only 1 Gb ram so upgrading XP to W7 not looked like a good idea, i put Linux Mint on it and its happy. For web-browsing, media playback and some random facebook game, Linux Mint its allready well setup from default for those tasks. I like Debian but want the less time possible spent on "family" computers, and i think Linux Mint its the best choice in this particular case on the Ram limitation, if the laptop had 2gb ram minimum, i prolly choosed upgrade to windows 7 :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @02:21AM
heavy AutoCAD user
Pretty much everything imports and exports DXF these days.
Tried BRL-CAD? FreeCAD? LibreCAD? OpenSCAD? QCAD? [wikipedia.org]
What kinds of shortcomings did you find?
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by gitano on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:15AM
My area of work on AutoCAD its design of buildings, mainly 2D plains, and the shortcoming its i not only use AutoCAD but also other propietary software added to it (like add-ons), to help on installation plans, plumbing, hvac, electricity, and prices/measurement of elements, etc. Even have some autolisp sowftare writed myself. I love Linux but theres no real alternative to all of this in a professional environement. I tried hard :)
DXF its a thing of the past, the DWG format its more 'open' today, and a lot of open source software allredy reads it, its really not needed anymore to export to DXF. The problem on DWG its more about trademarks.
AutoCAD had UNIX and Apple versions in the past. Last Apple version was version 12 in 1992 and last Unix one was version 13 on 1994, i installed (not whitout problems) one version 12 in a Debian Sarge, but more for the fun factor, in that time i was still using the DOS version for the real work :) The workstation used on DOS had a very expensive Matrox graphic card (16 colours) on no support on linux :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:02AM
AutoCAD[...]also other [proprietary]{1} software added
Ah. The plot thickens.
design of buildings, mainly 2D [plans]{1}
Yes, I wondered about your niche.
There was a guy who haunted the Mint forum that made a point of the fact that he did all his tasks as an architect using only FOSS. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [linuxmint.com]
I now wish I had pulled up that old bookmark earlier because he mentioned 2 apps that the Wikipedia page doesn't mention: Archimedes and SagCAD.
He also mentions Blender, which I don't correlate with dimensioned drawings.
Now, he is in New Mexico, so perhaps renovating pueblos or building earthen abodes for washed-up actors [google.com] is significantly different than designing skyscrapers or what it is that you do.
DXF its a thing of the past
+1 Informative. It sure does get mentioned a lot, however.
AutoCAD had UNIX and Apple versions
Yes, it was initially a UNIX-only app.
{1} Looking at your username, I wonder if English is a second language for you.
The browser that I use allows multiple profiles and each can be configured differently.
A profile set up to access English sites and outfitted with a spellchecker could help you make your points even more clearly.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by tadas on Monday March 31 2014, @09:18PM
I'd love to go all Linux, but the thing that stops me is Microsoft Word's Outline mode. The Open/Libre Office people claim they have something equivalent; they don't. Every 6 months, I go looking for a good outline processor, and, going back 10 years or so, nobody except MS Word has one. I wish somebody could port the old CP/M outliner, KAMAS, to Linux. Did everything I need, and in 64K to boot....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @10:42PM
I saw ahead to XP running out when Vista bombed and 7 became very invasive and acting quite homesick (calling Redmond, a lot). It was more like: "After XP, no more Wndows or anything from Microsoft. So now where to?"
That was around 2009. At that point had tried various Linux distros for over a decade but found it quite flaky. By 2009 Ubuntu looked functional, but I soon ran into some issues. Someone suggested Mint and I got off to a realistic start with the then-current release, "Felicia". I ran dual-boot for a while, kept up with the releases and re-learned the ropes I needed. Having worked with Unix/Linux for years helped. I could finally run things at home the way I wanted to.
By 2011 my old desktop was, old. I found a used laptop that had 7 on it - replaced that with Mint and switched more processes over.
Even if things may look wierd the 1st time around, I prefer using Libre/Open Office over being held ransom to MS-ware. For graphics / photography there are some wonderful choices. It has taken 2 years but I am fully weaned off of PhotoShop!
BUT - the gaping holes still exist. No proper CAD, though there is a whole specialized distro around that very thing, CAE-Linux. I would prefer having my favourite distro and adding the apps on top, but at least *A* solution now exists.
Looking forward over the next 5-10 years, I see MS falling apart and people will move to Android or Apple. Nobody should miss them. Life will (i) go on, and (ii) improve. Those with the particular skills or knowledge might move to Linux - or are most likely already there.