Replace XP with Linux Mint 13 Xfce

cinderfella

This version of Linux Mint is actually better than XP. It is free plus of course no worries about hackers & virus problems.
In fact it is great value for the price of £0. The only problem is that when something is free, peeps think that the OS is inferior when in fact it is actually better.
Comes with Libre Office & a mass of free applications.

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint-xfce:beer:

C_Mababejive

My advice would be not to replace but of course to dual boot...

bod1467

Why 13 when Mint is up at 16 now? (Granted 13 has long term support until 2017).

emptybox

Yes, if you are thinking of installing specifically a long term support version of Mint, then might be better to wait a month, till the end of May, and install Mint 17 LTS.

elektra

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint-xfce

correct link without the beer !

teleaddict

I'll have to give a thumbs up for mint. I changed over about 6 months ago initially doing the dual boot method, but have now gone soley with mint on my main pc. not only is it more secure & free, but I find it is much much quicker

esuhl

I haven't tried Mint (or... I don't remember if I have -- I've lost count of the number of Linux distros I've tried!) but XFCE is an awesome desktop environment. It's so quick and easy-to-use.

http://www.xfce.org/

Arch Linux is my distro of choice. I tried loads of other ones, but ended up breaking them all the time! Arch is the first one I've actually been able to get my head round because you set almost everything up yourself. It's simple, minimalist and you just install what you need. It's lightning fast! Much quicker than Windows -- especially on old hardware and netbooks. And it uses a "rolling release" model so you'll never have to install a new "version" of the OS.

https://www.archlinux.org/

Most non-techie home users are probably better off sticking to Windows but for the curious, Linux is definitely worth a look. There are huge differences between the various distributions available, so it's worth having a look at as many as you can to find the "perfect" one for you.

elektra wrote: »

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint-xfce

correct link without the beer !

Ha ha! Don't worry though, everyone. Even beer is available in open source variants now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Beer_Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer

:beer:

AshleyPomeroy

esuhl wrote: »

Arch Linux is my distro of choice. I tried loads of other ones, but ended up breaking them all the time!

This is my experience of Linux as well. Provided it installs correctly it will probably continue to work unless you try to change something. At which point you're a short step away from having to pop open a terminal and type in sudo apt-get install libccid and then edit /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_module and then adding SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES sdhci_pci sdhci" but it still doesn't work properly.

Or alternatively you have to edit /etc/default/grub so that GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" becomes GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash reboot=pci" or alternatively GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi=off nomodeset". Or alternatively you add pci-noacpi to /boot/grub/menu.lst then adding modprobe -r vboxdrv to /etc/rc.local.shutdown and so on for several paragraphs etc and it works until you run the upgrade wizard.

Etc. I remember my first installation of Ubuntu; it didn't support widescreen resolutions unless you edited xorg.conf, which in my case totalled the installation. I was impressed that Ubuntu installed and worked before that point; if I was younger and more enthusiastic I would probably have written a glowing blog post about it. I would have ignored the failures. And that's what Linux evangelists tend to do. They're enthused by their new toy and come across as "love bombers". Ubuntu has got better over the years and then recently it got worse; Linux Mint, Lubuntu, and Peppermint are much better but I don't care. I just want something that manages the computer's memory and operates the hardware in the background.

My experience is that Linux is great if you want your senile dad to surf the internet and maybe use the BBC's iplayer stream provided neither the BBC nor Linux Mint nor get-iplayer changes. It has a mass of software development tools and notepad replacements, and it has a dominant presence in the world of web hosting. If that's what you do, spectacular. As a mainstream general-purpose operating system for the common man it still has a long way to go. In my opinion it will never make it on the desktop; the effort should have been diverted under the hood. Yes, Linux is the foundation of Android and Chrome etc, but they're mostly closed systems running on fixed hardware.

If we're being honest the top modern Linux distributions generally work out of the box on a wide range of modern hardware. The packages are for the most part shoddy imitations of commercial software weighted massively towards software development and final-year university projects. The "support" is a mixture of six-year-old blog posts and defensive, passive-aggressive hostility from kids who think you're insulting their girlfriend.

And there's a huge void in the creative sector, but of course that doesn't count because your world consists entirely of software development. You want to believe that the GIMP is equal or superior to Adobe PhotoShop because admitting otherwise would be admitting that your entire weltanschauung is wrong. It's the kind of mindset that would have something like Adobe Premiere or Ableton Live suppressed and banned for being unmutual.

I'm reminded of Rick Wakeman's often-told saying that Yes (the prog rock band) was on a mission to save the planet while living on a different one entirely.

Also, it's raining outside, I hate that as well.

tweeter

As a kid in the forties and fifties there weren't any computers to buy off the shelf as everyone knows, but I built/slung together my own desktop in 2007 with a linux os - reclaim the toys from the men and boys I say.

henm2

All versions of Linux Mint are well recommended. However if your computer/laptop is of a vintage such that it has been using Windows XP then Linux Mint xfce is probably going to be the most suitable version as it less demanding of resources.
The current version is Linux Mint 16 xfce but the next long term support version Linux Mint 17 xfce will be available end of May.
If you want to dual boot it with XP so that you can still conveniently use some old windows programs then follow these instructions
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/dual-boot-windows-7-ubuntu.html
I know it mentions Windows 7 but the same principles apply