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I think maybe it's better to have the two machines as radiorahim has outlined rather than the dual boot arrangement that I've been using. It's too easy to be lazy with what I've got. I actually have a family member who is obstinately determined to buy a new PC with Windows 7 and so I will get myself a good tower, P4 and over 1 GB RAM, which is fine for say Edubuntu 12.04, an educational oriented Linux OS and is close to Ubuntu which is what Im used to.
The anti-virus software on the Windows XP system noted above had MS Security Essentials as the anti-virus software. That comes to an end on the 8th of April. So I just installed the Malwarebytes AntiMalware, after uninstalling the MS Security Essentials, and everything is fine for now. By the time the trial period for the MalwareBytes AM expires, the tower will be in my hands, wiped clean and with a new Linux OS and nothing else. hell yeah.
It's actually becoming rather difficult to find a new computer with Windows 7 pre-installed on it. Most consumer level PC's now come with (yuk!) Windows 8.
Most of the old neighbourhood desktop clone builders have gone out of business. So if you want to buy a computer with pre-installed Windows 7 now you have to buy the more expensive business line of desktops from Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. Consumer grade PC's all come with pre-installed Windows 8.
PC's that are certified by Microsoft for Windows 8 all had to implement the UEFI "secure boot" system. That means a whole bunch of extra steps are involved in installing GNU/Linux on a Windows 8 certified PC. It's also I understand a real pain in the ass for folks who dual boot both systems. Fortunately my computers are old and I haven't yet had to deal with this problem
Well, perhaps because I live in the country I can still find a local desktop clone builder who does sell towers with Windows 7. Actually, the local guy, while not a Linux evangelist, doesnt really encourage customers to upgrade from Windows XP at all.
I think a dedicated Linux OS on a PC is the way to go for me anyway. The dual boot was just too much back and forth to be practical.
For a little while I kept a spare Winbox kicking around for the odd proprietary "gotcha" thing but gradually I found that I had no use for it.
Yeah, I crossed that bridge about six years ago. Hadn't actually used it for a few years before that. There was a bit of a lag after that because the kids needed a partition for windows games on their computer. But I just didn't bother to do it on their latest machine and haven't heard a peep.
I suppose I will sooner or later have to learn that UEFI workaround. Any good tutorials?
With UEFI I understand the workaround varies from distro to distro and also how UEFI has been implemented by the hardware manufacturer.
But, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it and just Duckduckgo it.
The article from the OP is burning up the rabble.ca stats chart this weekend. It's almost like the author should write more often!
To tell you the truth it had been sitting in half finished state on my (GNU/Linux powered) desktop hard drive since about January. I realized the funeral for XP was this week...had the weekend to myself and voila!!!
Today was the very last day of Windows XP patches. From here on in, you're on your own folks...or make the switch!
Sales of Windows 7 climbs, Microsoft baffled as to why its not windows 8
My strategy to deal with the end of Windows XP support was to install Lubuntu on my Netbook. It's a dual core atom 1.6 Ghz with 1Gb RAM and 160Gb HDD so it is not too shabby really. So far the install working pretty well for me. Installation and connecting to the Internet was much smoother than my previous forays into the linux world.
I am running Firefox as a browser as before. I downloaded VLC Player which is supported but not included using the built in Lubuntu Software Centre. I will download Thunderbird later and my road warrior machine will be pretty much functioning as before.
On of the features of this Distro is that it is very minimal, so it supposedly runs well on older or slower equipment. You can build it up though with more full featured apps. Since this machine worked well with Thunderbird and VLC on Windows XP I am not worried about running the same apps on Lubuntu.
The 14.04 versions of Ubuntu GNU/Linux and it's variants...Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, Edubuntu , Ubuntu Studio Edition, and Ubuntu Gnome were all released today!
Version 14.04 is a "Long Term Service" release with five years of updates available (3 years on Lubuntu).
Other GNU/Linux distros that are built from Ubuntu will probably have their "14.04 based" releases out fairly shortly i.e. Linux Mint, Bodhi Linux, Elementary OS, Zorin OS etc.
Moving to free software gives you choices!
For those using Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, there is a nasty Zero day vulnerability in it. If you're still using Windows XP, your version of Internet Explorer is not going to be fixed.
China excludes Windows 8 from government computers
They might want to try Ubuntu Kylin...hot off the press in April. It's a specialized version of Ubuntu Linux, optimized for the Chinese market.
I have ditched my Lubuntu install and installed Xubuntu instead. This one is a keeper I think. I had trouble getting my network printers and VPN service working on Lubuntu. Not being able to print from my netbook is a deal breaker. Not being able to use my VPN was an annoyance, but with moderate effort I now have all the capabilities of my old XP road warrior running Linux.
To be fair I probably could have got Lubuntu to work eventually. You just get better at installing drivers and configuring connections the second time around. I had previously run Xubuntu on a Desktop a few years ago so I was somwhat familiar with the XFCE desktop that comes with Xubuntu. Lubuntu comes with the LXDE desktop which I was not familiar with.
Much is made of how lightweight Lubuntu is but a dual Atom with 1GB of ram is still pretty serviceable equipment. I was running Microsoft Office previously, so I may try LibreOffice, or at least the Writer (Word) part, to replace the somewhat less capable Abword which is pretty common in the lightweight distributions
Lubuntu vs Xubuntu
..lately i've been using solydX which is a fairly recent linux xfce os. based on debian it's a rolling system that upgrades through udates rather than a new instalation. it's a very light system and can work well with older comps. i find it faster than systems based on ubuntu and a solid os. and of course free to use.
http://solydxk.com/homeedition/solydx/
eta: i began my migration to linux with ubuntu. and moved on trying several other linux systems. i must say that if your thinking of going linux..then this would be a great os to learn on. it is very clean and uncluttered as well as lean. the menus you open, on a left corner click, are plenty and quiet easy to follow once you decide to go exploring.
@ epaulo13 Funny enough I'm running SolydX on the IBM Thinkpad Im typing this message on. It had been running the XFCE version of Linux Mint Debian Edition for a while, but the LMDE team dropped support for the XFCE and KDE versions.
But, a group of nice folks in the Netherlands picked it up and created SolydXK!
So far, so good with SolydX. i like the "rolling release" or at least semi "rolling release" idea although because some things can break, I wouldn't recommend it for a newbie Windows refugee. But if you've been using GNU/Linux for a while and are comfy with it, then I think it's well worth trying.
One very nice thing I found is that it seems to handle MTP devices very well...particularly when I'm dumping photos off of my Android phone.
On the Xubuntu 12.04 variant I'm using on my main desktop, I usually have to do command line stuff to get it to talk to my smartphone.
The one issue I am having with any XFCE based distro is with network file transfers. I'm always moving files around the house from machine to machine and I find that the XFCE file manager "Thunar" seems to hang during transfers and I haven't found a solution yet. It doesn't matter whether it's Xubuntu or something Debian based there's still the same problem. I've also read about the problem with XFCE on Arch and Fedora as well.
With the LXDE desktop (i.e. Lubuntu) I don't have this problem...and from what I've read it's unique to XFCE.
So if your machine is mainly "stand alone" and you're not moving files around much on your home network, then XFCE's little bug shouldn't be a problem. But if you are, then use a distro with a different desktop.
@ scott I would use Libre Office instead of Abiword for any serious word processing tasks. Abiword is okay for smallish stuff but a bit limited in features.
Hey rr - any opinion about Kingsoft?
I have heard of Kingsoft Office but never tried it.
It is free as in free beer but as Richard Stallman would say "negative in the freedom dimension"... in otherwords it's proprietary software.
Another "free as in freedom" office suite is Calligra. But it only really seriously runs on free operating systems like GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. Support for Windows and MacOSX is there but very experimental. Calligra has had some fairly good reviews.
..scroll down for download links
Tor Messenger Beta: Chat over Tor, Easily
Today we are releasing a new, beta version of Tor Messenger, based on Instantbird, an instant messaging client developed in the Mozilla community. What is it?
Tor Messenger is a cross-platform chat program that aims to be secure by default and sends all of its traffic over Tor. It supports a wide variety of transport networks, including Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Yahoo, and others; enables Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging automatically; and has an easy-to-use graphical user interface localized into multiple languages....