Upgrade tower windows xp to Linux?

Robisere

Don't suppose any advice about XP being out of Support and wide open to malware, will ring any warning bells?

smudger1964

Similar spec to my pc...I ditched XP when they stopped support and have been running Linux Mint successfully since

Aesop

Friend can't afford to buy a new tower and updates haven't mentioned anything about win 10. So thought would try and improve her pc.

Robisere wrote: »

Don't suppose any advice about XP being out of Support and wide open to malware, will ring any warning bells?

Gillor

Robisere wrote: »

Don't suppose any advice about XP being out of Support and wide open to malware, will ring any warning bells?

Purely from a malware point of view, simply running XP with Sandboxie and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit alongside a half-decent anti-virus and firewall will give you a system that is at least as safe as any later Window OS/Windows Defender combo.

And add something like Voodooshield or Appguard to this combination and you have a pretty watertight set up.

However, how long XP will continue to work with the latest software developments is a different matter.

debitcardmayhem

The other question of course is if the owner wants to install something new how will that work with XP (oh of course Linux too) ?
Most things (not apple perhaps) work one way or the other with both or there are alternatives. We are of course trying to find water in the sahara or speculating if we could guarantee whether the end user will win the lottery/euro millions/El Gordo or powerball :cool:

As I said on post 2 suck it and see .....

Edited: Oh and how would a SSD help cut the cost ? Just saying that SSD is just not the be all and end all for making things faster, some users that define that their PC's are so slow and then state that they boot up faster but then their ISP/connection has given them a 1Mbit connection which an SSD will never cure....

Edited again: Oh and it could be that there are bloatware/toolbars/other PUPs that are slowing things down.

Aesop

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

The other question of course is if the owner wants to install something new how will that work with XP (oh of course Linux too) ?
Most things (not apple perhaps) work one way or the other with both or there are alternatives. We are of course trying to find water in the sahara or speculating if we could guarantee whether the end user will win the lottery/euro millions/El Gordo or powerball :cool:

As I said on post 2 suck it and see .....

Edited: Oh and how would a SSD help cut the cost ? Just saying that SSD is just not the be all and end all for making things faster, some users that define that their PC's are so slow and then state that they boot up faster but then their ISP/connection has given them a 1Mbit connection which an SSD will never cure....

Edited again: Oh and it could be that there are bloatware/toolbars/other PUPs that are slowing things down.

I am not techy enough to understand linux etc but am techy enough to check for bloatware /malware/pup etc.

Done all that. Cleaned up her system, cleared caches, temp files, removed things, reinstalled new version of things. Make sure she runs malwarebytes and cc cleaner weekly etc.

Happy to trial linux by putting on cd first. Anything to make the darn pc faster

googler

Robisere wrote: »

Don't suppose any advice about XP being out of Support and wide open to malware, will ring any warning bells?

Is it XP that's open, or the Internet Explorer browser that's embedded within it?

I'm running two XP machines, with Chrome and/or Firefox, and I can honestly say that the only time I've been brought to a halt by Malware was when one of said machines was running Vista.

forgotmyname

I considered converting a few people to Linux. Mint wont be much of a change over Windows for most.

Until it comes to a time to install a driver, are they happy to do that with command prompt?

XP maybe out of support, but most of the naughty people will be working on finding bugs in the latest operating systems and Linux is not as safe as you may think.

Poorly setup its like running XP with no AV and no firewall and setting every download to auto install.

esuhl

googler wrote: »

Is it XP that's open, or the Internet Explorer browser that's embedded within it?

Both. Vista (and later OSes) use registry shims and virtualisation to effectively run unelevated programs in a sandbox to improve security.

If you're still using XP, I'd definitely recommend Sandboxie. It allows you to run your web browser (and any other programs) in a sandbox that's isolated from your real system. If you install any malware in the sandbox, you can just close and delete the sandbox.

With Sandboxie and decent anti-malware apps (SpywareBlaster, the AdBlock Plus "Malware Domains" subscription, an antivirus, etc.), I don't think you need to be worried about using Windows XP.

http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?DownloadSandboxie

spud17

googler wrote: »

I have a desktop and laptop, both with Samsung SSDs, both with XP, which installed without issue.

TRIM?
How have you implemented this ?