Online alternatives to XP after April

[cattletruck]

Never thought there would be a time when I was defending Windows...

Hahah, neither did I but they are improving their game security wise otherwise they will rapidly become history.

BTW, anyone seen a SCOM/SCCM implementation that actually works in practical sense?

Sometimes I think devs should not have admin rights over their machines

They shouldn't period. Most devs know or care sweet F.A. about maintaining a managed environment and a significant percentage of them are short sighted.

[rh200]

You can set Windows Update to download updates but let you choose whether to install them.

But can you get windows to not download updates automatically. Frankly installing once its already nuked the bandwidth you may have can be less painful.

[Mac the Knife]

"But can you get windows to not download updates automatically?"

Yes, easily.

[FullOppositeRudder]

Thanks everyone for your very helpful insights into this aspect of the various operating systems. Much appreciated.

FOR

[llondel]

Quote:
Sometimes I think devs should not have admin rights over their machines
They shouldn't period. Most devs know or care sweet F.A. about maintaining a managed environment and a significant percentage of them are short sighted.

You end up with a standoff where the dev says he needs something installed on his machine in order to do his job and the IT department refusing to allow it, or taking a couple of days to get around to it. Especially as "need" can vary from "yes, absolutely" to "my life would be much easier with this utility". One could argue that for best productivity they should all be allowed if known not to be malware because productive devs are better than unproductive ones.

[cattletruck]

You end up with a standoff...

Not really, proper tooling is done at the initial phase of a project by experienced people and usually involves senior devs. Costs are factored and scopes are set. If anything needs to be changed along the way then there is a formal process for that too.

The days of the BOFH are long gone.

[llondel]

Not really, proper tooling is done at the initial phase of a project by experienced people and usually involves senior devs.

I have yet to work anywhere that this happens. Usually it's a case of "here's a standard machine, go install the stuff you need, install images are stored here". Obviously there's no concept of a lock-down involved in these cases.

The one place I did work with a proper lockdown, I couldn't fault the process, it's just that the sysadmin chose defaults for everything that were not what I'd choose and it was highly irritating. A perfectly valid set-up, just wrong for me. Even there, the devs ended up with admin rights to our own machines.


HP has re-introduced Windows 7 as an option on a lot of their PCs "due to customer demand".

[Mike X]

Do yourself a favour and move to Linux (Olivia 15 Mint).

Spent the last week installing Win 8/8.1. I TRULY understand why Ballmer took the hint. STAY AWAY from windows for now. As a coder, I can only say it is an abomination.

25 years and ms screws you.

I am an MS scholar, but they truly dropped the ball with Vista and never recovered. Emotion plays no part here. Win 8 is a bloated, dishonest piece of software, PERIOD.

HP has re-introduced Windows 7 as an option on a lot of their PCs "due to customer demand".

I rest my case.

[seacue]

Dell never abandoned Win 7 on their "Business" site.

[ChrisJ800]

If I understand the latest announcements, security patches for XP will now continue till July 2015. Hope thats the case as I dont want to upgrade till the last moment! Eg:

Microsoft keeps chipping away at Windows XP's end-of-life deadline | Microsoft windows - InfoWorld

[le Pingouin]

You lot really are clutching at straws. Why on Earth would MS do that? Of what possible benefit would it be to them?

The truth is it's only support for MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials), their anti-virus product, and MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool) that has been extended. Nothing more.

I particularly liked this "I still think it's beholden on Microsoft to provide some sort of inexpensive update subscription for all XP users". C'mon guys, you've had how many years notice that this was coming? Five!!!

It is the last moment so get on with it!

[mixture]

ChrisJ800,

That has already been covered on this thread http://www.pprune.org/computer-inter...upport-xp.html


In summary. You are mistaken. Just stop clutching at straws and get on with it.

[Saab Dastard]

Another vote for Linux Mint.

I spent some of the weekend playing around with a very old laptop (Compaq N610c, 1.8GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 40GB HDD) and decided to try installing Linux Mint 16 with the MATE desktop.

It was altogether a very positive experience - no installation problems at all, it even found and configured an equally old D-Link cardbus wifi adapter (wireless card support had been a major stumbling block in the past). The only issue I had was that the laptop doesn't support boot from USB, so I had to burn the ISO to a DVD and the installation was a lot slower off DVD.

For a Windows user I found the MATE desktop very easy to navigate.

OK, it's not blisteringly quick, but for a 12 year old laptop it's not at all bad. The last time I had used it was 2008, and XP & office XP performance seemed acceptable - it's a bit slower, but not much, with libre office.

I intend to use it as a learning tool, to get under the bonnet of Linux, so performance isn't that important.

I downloaded and installed a few packages - very slick.

A complete OS and application suite for zero cost, very easy to install, configure and use - what's not to like?

Impressed.

SD

[rgbrock1]

Saab:

Also keep in mind that the Linux Mint user community can be very helpful.

Linux Mint Community

If you like the Mate desktop then you might like the Cinnamon alternative even more so. You can even install Cinnamon afterwards and choose between the two at startup!

[seacue]

While I've asked here about Win 7 Pro, that's for a commercial office which needs MS compatibility.... For my own use, I mostly switched to Linux Mint (Mate) a few months ago. Mint is fine for me, but I'm not sure that Little Old Ladies [LOL] could adapt.

I've put a Mint machine in a public-use location mostly used by such LOLs. The desktop has Icons for Firefox browser, four of their browser-based email programs, three Solitaire programs (including Spider), Google Earth, Picasa, LibreOffice writer and spreadsheet, etc. I've received zero reaction and there are indications that it has at least been tried.

I'm sticking with Mint 13 LTS (Long Term Support) until the next LTS version (17?) comes out. I find that even Mint 16 doesn't have an "approved" driver for a very recent Brother laser printer.

Please don't bite my head off, but the Office which will get the Win 7 Pro is going to keep an off-line XP for some of its vital software that doesn't have a newer version and is far too hard to rewrite (people have tried and failed). As an alternative, I have the ancient software running under DOSbox on Win 7 and Linux Mint, but ordinary DOSbox can't directly write to a printer.

[rgbrock1]

seacue:

DOSbox might not be able to directly address a printer but if you ran Win 7, or any other version of Windows for that matter, in VirtualBox hosted by Linux Mint a printer can indeed be directly addressed. I do it all the time.

[le Pingouin]

Well, my dear old Dad at 79 is coping fine with Linux and he's quite the computerphobe (he curls into a ball at the drop of a hat with new things). His needs are fairly basic - word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, browsing and a few games. I ran him through things over several days and he hasn't looked back at WinXP once.

I did ease the way by making sure over the last few years that he was using programs that had Linux versions (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird) so the transition wasn't complicated by learning a new program as well.

He needs a bit of assistance for time to time or forgets how to do things, but then he did that with Windows too and it's not really any more frequent.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Mac the Knife

Windows Update releases once a month (Patch Tuesday - the second Tuesday of each month)

With an up-to-date system there are rarely more than 3-7 updates which take 10-15 minutes to install.

So bull**** to that.

Actually, whilst you'll not find anyone more pro Windows than me, my up-to-date Win7 laptop required 20 updates last night and it took 45 minutes to install them, due to two of the updates being mahoosive ones.

[Andy_P]

My opinion as a software dev that uses osx, win and linux. There are all the same these days.

Most people use and internet browser and email program, and all OS's will do that just fine.

The nitpicking is just bull****, its all personal preference.

[FullOppositeRudder]

You simply must meet some of the people I work with sometime