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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: 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