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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, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 31 2014, @08:52AM
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(Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Monday March 31 2014, @09:20AM
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, @10:08AM
...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, @10:13AM
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, @10:28AM
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday March 31 2014, @12:28PM
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.
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by michealpwalls on Monday March 31 2014, @10:38AM
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 Monday March 31 2014, @11:54PM
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_