Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2014 10:43:57 GMT
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Dave
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Post by Dave on Aug 19, 2014 13:22:09 GMT
Just stuck this on my Samsung NC-10 - easy enough for even me to do unaided - and it seems to have been accepted OK. Many thanks for the heads-up. Dave.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2014 21:27:20 GMT
Just stuck this on my Samsung NC-10 - easy enough for even me to do unaided - and it seems to have been accepted OK. Many thanks for the heads-up. Dave. Dave, your welcome. I've had it running for about a month now and I'm constantly updating with security patches/fixes etc, so I don't think MS is going to close this loop-hole anytime soon . . . Jeff
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Post by elysion on Jan 13, 2015 21:41:09 GMT
Hi Jeff, if Microsoft should end support for the embedded industrial variant of XP somewhen, you'll still have alternatives. Those alternatives aren't from Microsoft however, but they are worth a closer look. I'm always amused how resource hungry newer commercial operating systems are. I guess the idea behind that is to sell also new hardware (together with a new OS). A stupid and very non-ecologial idea, if you ask me. Although I don't like XP personally (and everything else from Microsoft), I DO unterstand why people love their old XP. It was sufficient for their purposes and it simply did the job. There is also an open-source attempt to create an operating system which is almost fully compatible to XP (and its drivers): www.reactos.orgUnfortunately, it's in a very early stage of development (since years) and it is far from being usable for productive tasks. ReactOS is completely unrelated to Linux or other UNIX-like operating systems. Christian
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2015 4:43:21 GMT
Hi Jeff, if Microsoft should end support for the embedded industrial variant of XP somewhen, you'll still have alternatives. Those alternatives aren't from Microsoft however, but they are worth a closer look. Christian Hi Christian, so nice to see you posting again! When I heard that MS were going to stop support for XP I looked around at the options and thought I could try Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon, since it seems to well well inside an XP-user's comfort zone. I was unable to install it on my Acer. I tried to install it with both YUMI, and Linux-live USB creator following the instructions to the letter but I got an error message. Can't remember what it was now but before I started really trying to find out what the problem was, I found the Embedded industry support. It has worked well so far, and as I type this I have a notification to say there are updates ready to be installed. When MS stop support of the embedded variant, and I guess they will at some point, then I will definitely install a Linux Mint variant. Jeff
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solderdude
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measureutternutter
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Post by solderdude on Jan 14, 2015 5:49:39 GMT
I have a small Acer Aspire one and it is triple boot. It runs the original XP (now very slow but still works), ubuntu and Linux mint.
Will have to do the XP trick as well.
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Post by hifidez on Jan 14, 2015 8:41:38 GMT
I was running XP on my home office PC. The PC I had put together myself after reading an article in a computer mag on how to build a half-decent machine for £150. I built it to slightly higher spec than the mag suggested in that I ended up with a quad-core Athlon chip instead of the specified single core one. Anyhow, nice machine and quite quick compared to the dated DEll it replaced.
Then Microsoft said XP was to be scratched so I thought 'no problem, I'll upgrade to Win 8' even though I didn't like the look of 8 and couldn't see the point of just moving to 7. But 8.1 looked a little better so I planned to go ahead.
BUT the budget Asus motherboard I had used was not compatible with Win 8... so I upgraded the motherboard. Which, in turn, didn't come with on-board graphics so I had to get a graphics card as well. Plus there was the cost of Win 8 too .. so what started as a very inexpensive PC project has become a bit of a pain. For all the expenditure on, initially, the '£150' project and then the new mo-bo, graphics card and OS, I could have bought a pretty decent ready-built machine at higher spec, no doubt.
Derek
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Post by hifidez on Jan 14, 2015 8:57:06 GMT
When I heard that MS were going to stop support for XP I looked around at the options and thought I could try Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon, since it seems to well well inside an XP-user's comfort zone. I was unable to install it on my Acer. I tried to install it with both YUMI, and Linux-live USB creator following the instructions to the letter but I got an error message. Can't remember what it was now but before I started really trying to find out what the problem was, I found the Embedded industry support. It has worked well so far, and as I type this I have a notification to say there are updates ready to be installed. When MS stop support of the embedded variant, and I guess they will at some point, then I will definitely install a Linux Mint variant. Jeff I've been using an Acer Aspire laptop since 2009. It came with Vista plus an upgrade to Win 7 on its release. All had been fine until about six months ago. Then the machine started to slow to a near stop; endless hard disc reads & writes was the problem. I did install some sytem monitoring software to try and see what the prob. was but I couldn't interpret the results. Meanwhile, unplugging from the mains and taking out the battery 'killed' the machine and after one or two re-boots the laptop would be usable for the rest of that particular day. Enough is enough so it was time to back up my files and do a complete re-install. But before I did that I thought I'd give Linux a go. But no go. My router (a BT Home Hub 4) does not like Linux. Or maybe it's the other way round. Anyway it didn't work. So I re-installed Win 7. The laptop is now running like new, which is the good news. The bad news is, even after it updating itself to Win 7.1, it still wants me to allow about 150 updates! I'm not sure it needs all of these but what choice do I have? I have been reading about Win 10 and the free 'technical preview'. I could try that out on the laptop before I re-install all my favourite software. Anyone taken a look at Win 10 yet? Derek
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Javier
Administrator
Digital bytes
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Post by Javier on Jan 14, 2015 10:12:30 GMT
Be careful with Windows 10 previews. They send back home every thing you do, it says so in the agreement so you can't complain.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using proboards
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Post by hifidez on Jan 14, 2015 10:48:57 GMT
Be careful with Windows 10 previews. They send back home every thing you do, it says so in the agreement so you can't complain. Sent from my GT-I9100 using proboards Hi J, Yes, I had read the Ts & Cs and noted that. I probably won't bother seeing as I have reinstalled 7 on the laptop. But it does seem that W10 will be a better choice than 8 for a non-touch-screen device. Possibly offered as a free 'upgrade' too. We'll see.
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Javier
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Digital bytes
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Post by Javier on Jan 14, 2015 13:58:34 GMT
MS has the habit of releasing good and bad OSs alternetively. Vista was poor, W7 is quite nice, W8/8.1 again poor so (hopefuly) there is a chance W10 is in the good category.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using proboards
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Post by elysion on Jan 14, 2015 19:10:27 GMT
MS has the habit of releasing good and bad OSs alternetively. Vista was poor, W7 is quite nice, W8/8.1 again poor so (hopefuly) there is a chance W10 is in the good category. In the past, it was exactly that. But my guess is, that it doesn't get better as long as a guy, named Satya Nadella, is heading M$. He's the one behind M$' cloud strategy and he's at least partially responsible for the W8/W8.1 disaster. The tile interface ("Metro") was intended to be used on all devices, beginning with smartphones and going up to big servers. On mobile devices, the tile interface isn't too bad at all (I don't like it though), but on a desktop computers, it's totally wrong and most people don't like it. The tile interface also isn't the only interface to deal with on the desktop. When you're not within the tile interface, you have to use almost the same interface as with W7. This switching between two almost independent interfaces is additionally annoying. Appl€ on the other hand, is making almost as much mistakes as M$. I've seen 10.10 (which they call also "Yosemite") already and the user interface is a real step backwards. Just as it was with W8, but not as bad though. The foundation of OSX has been botched also. While they were using formerly mostly (good) open-source software in the foundation, they've replaced more and more components with software written by themselves, which led to various problems. An example is SAMBA which was replaced by smbfs, a very immature project under BSD license. They took the smbfs code, did an overwork of it and now everyone has to live with this craptastic piece of software. It's all about licensing. They don't want an "open" operating system. It's their intention to go backwards. Ironically, they haven't been able to write a real OS by themselves before and therefore they took the FreeBSD base as foundation for OSX. Appl€'s intention is to close the OS as much as possible, so everyone has to buy software in their AppStore. M$ was trying to do something similar, but with almost no success so far. Even on the Linux side, you'll find similar approaches: One of the main problems is that some guys are still believing that a "universal" user interface could cover all kinds of devices. Ubuntu has invented "Unity" for that purpose and M$ came up with the "Metro" tile-interface. Before Ubuntu used "Unity", it was the most used Linux distro (using GNOME 2). After Unity, a lot of people (including me) have switched to Ubuntu derivates which do not use Unity. For example Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), Kubuntu (KDE), Linux Mint (with different flavours, including XFCE, MATE etc.) and many others. Appl€ is also trying to merge the OSX GUI with that of iOS, but to a lesser extent (so far). GNOME is also a story for itself: GNOME 2 was very much appreciated by a lot of people because it was slim and it did the job. GNOME 3 was a complete turnaround and it was also a disaster because most former GNOME 2 user didn't like it. The result have been some forks of GNOME 2 which led amongst other things to the MATE desktop. Beside GNOME 2 forks like MATE or Cinnamon, XFCE or LXDE are probably the most usable GUI's for Linux and BSD derivates. With Linux, it's also possible to use more than one GUI on the same computer. You can install the GUI and while logging in, you can select which GUI to use. Personally, I'm quite a fan of XFCE, but perhaps it's not everyone's cup of tea.
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Post by elysion on Jan 14, 2015 19:45:42 GMT
I've been using an Acer Aspire laptop since 2009. It came with Vista plus an upgrade to Win 7 on its release. All had been fine until about six months ago. Then the machine started to slow to a near stop; endless hard disc reads & writes was the problem. I did install some sytem monitoring software to try and see what the prob. was but I couldn't interpret the results. Meanwhile, unplugging from the mains and taking out the battery 'killed' the machine and after one or two re-boots the laptop would be usable for the rest of that particular day. Enough is enough so it was time to back up my files and do a complete re-install. But before I did that I thought I'd give Linux a go. But no go. My router (a BT Home Hub 4) does not like Linux. Or maybe it's the other way round. Anyway it didn't work. So I re-installed Win 7. The laptop is now running like new, which is the good news. The bad news is, even after it updating itself to Win 7.1, it still wants me to allow about 150 updates! I'm not sure it needs all of these but what choice do I have? I have been reading about Win 10 and the free 'technical preview'. I could try that out on the laptop before I re-install all my favourite software. Anyone taken a look at Win 10 yet? Derek I'm thinking about making a tutorial about installing an Ubuntu-based Linux somewhen. I've had the idea already, when I was active on RG. But there are a few problems: - I can use a particular Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, but others perhaps do not like it. If I choose Xubuntu (my favourite distro), there are still too much differences in other Ubuntu-based distros to make the tutorial universal. It would be more of an example and you can already find such examples on the internet. If a new version is released, then some things will change. - It depends a lot on the used hardware. If the hardware is not supported well, then problems are pre-programmed. Usually, most problems come from using very new hardware and notebooks are always a bit tricky (it depends on the exact model and the components used). Some stuff isn't supported at all, because there's not enough documentation about it available for the Linux programmers. I choose my hardware carefully for compatibility with Linux. It's not bad however: A lot of hardware is supported very well, including (for example) many audio cards, which you can't use with newer Windows releases at all. Here is a list with the audio interfaces supported by ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture): www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:MainYou'll find a lot of well supported audio hardware there. The Xonar cards from ASUS are almost perfectly supported. Also cards which use chips from the VIA Envy24 series (still a very good IC). A lot of Creative cards aren't supported well (or at all) though, because there isn't enough documentation available for the developers. I hope this list will make you a bit curious. - From my viewpoint, installing an Ubuntu derivate isn't to difficult at all. But for people, who make their first steps, it IS difficult. I've read a lot of stuff about it and I've spent many hours with it in the last few years. Sometimes there are also bugs/problems and you have to find individual solutions/workarounds by yourself. This isn't a real problem for me, because there is also a lot of information available on the internet. But sometimes, it needs a lot of time to do that. At the beginning, it can be very frustrating. It's also not a good idea to switch completely to a new operating systems while you don't have much practice with it.
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Post by elysion on Jan 17, 2015 10:37:06 GMT
I have subscribed a couple of mailing lists. One of them is the "xubuntu-users" mailing list which is a support mailing list for Xubuntu users. Today, I've noticed a mail from Rob Ward and found the following link in the mail: www.laketyersbeach.net.au/XP2XU.htmlRob Ward is talking here about his experiences when moving from Windows XP to Xubuntu. While I do not agree with everything mentioned therein, I think it is a very good description of the practical experience he made when switching. Rob Ward is rather new to Linux and his experiences are a very good example. He had to solve a few problems, but he found solutions for them. I got the impression that he is quite happy with the move. XFCE (the GUI of Xubuntu) isn't exactly the same as the GUI of Windows XP. But it is slim and not resource hungry. I've been thinking again about how a good tutorial could be done, which would really be a help for interested members. Meanwhile, I came to the conclusion that a "theoretical" tutorial in a general form does not help much. There are also many similar tutorials already available on the internet. Maybe this is a better approach: If a DIYAH member would like to switch to an Ubuntu derivivate, then we could start a thread and I'm willing to help in the particular case. I think this would be a real help for someone that is trying to move and it would be a good example for other interested member. We could also focus better on audio if needed. Of course, there are other Linux distributions beside Ubuntu and its spin-offs, but often they are not as easy to use. ArchLinux and Gentoo, for example, are very interesting (and good) Linux distributions, but they require much more knowledge. A general "problem" is also that you can define almost everything as you like (and as you are able to do that), but often, you also HAVE to define things which are pre-defined in other (commercial) operating systems. I'd like to bring out a quote from Rob Ward's article. He's IMHO absolutely right with his advise: It's not a good idea to switch to a completely new and unknown operating system, when you only have one computer and you depend strongly on it. Dual-Boot Systems are possible, but personally, I do not recommend them for unexperiened user. Simply because much more can go wrong. Ideally, we should start such a thread, when someone is willing to switch and can use a computer for this on which he's not depending. I'd suggest that we also have a look on the hardware compatibility and the desired objectives before we start. But be warned: Such a thread could get quite long, will take its time and I can't promise that I can satisfy every wish. I know, there are other members with an IT background and I hope they will also participate. I'm not without fail and I do not know everything. It's also not possible to help everyone directly to move. If, for example, ten members like to start an individual thread, then my resources will be quickly exhausted. I'd favour one good example and after that, we can certainly discuss if a follow-up makes sense.
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