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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 tangomargarine on Monday March 31 2014, @11:30AM
A) I didn't get the vibe that the article was really targetted at company use.
B) You should kind of be following that same procedure no matter what OS you're talking about.
C) Mint *did* (does?) have a rolling-release version. In fact, it was also based on Debian [helpsite.org]. Unfortunately the XFCE-Debian-rolling combination seems rather flaky as to the schedule if/when they actually release it.
For personal home use, I would agree with the proposition of recommending Linux Mint.
A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @07:57PM
the article was[n't] really [targeted]{1} at company use
FTFS: Virtually no need for any anti-virus for home users
This is the bone I came here to pick. "Virtually" is unnecessary in that sentence.
If you're not running a (e.g. for-profit mail) server, you have no need of an anti-virus app on your Linux box.
Any AV app that runs under Linux DOES NOT look for Linux-specific malware;
that's NOT how Linux handles these things.{2}
Those apps are looking for WINDOZE-SPECIFIC malware.
If you're just Joe Average running a Linux desktop system, let those folks who choose to run Windoze use their own resources and scan their own boxes for that Windoze-specific nonsense.
{1} Try a spellchecker, guy. They're free and very cool.
{2} Once an exploit against a FOSS app is discovered, the dev(s) patch their vulnerable code QUICKLY and release the patches QUICKLY.
To ward off malware under Linux, simply keep your box patched.
(You don't have to wait until the 2nd Tuesday of next month
and you don't need some 3rd party vendor supplying band-aids to paste all over your system.)
When a file hits a *n?x box, it isn't automagically executable; only MICROS~1 has chosen to do things that way.
-- gewg_