Microsoft and windows 10 again

[DougGuy]

Lol. I wish I had known you about 20 years ago. I learned everything by myself on the internet. No buddies to help. Your idea with the drivers is slick. I just made up a DVD with yadyada and set up machines with that. I spent most of my time teaching customers how to use computers. I was by far better with hardware. I got like 96% on the first part A+ test when I took it. Barely scraped a pass on the software part.

I got sorta stuck in Rochester MN many years ago, and I got into some state funded Comp Tia programs. I went through Network+ and Inet+, tested through A+ and Server+ when there were great jobs open migrating state machines to Windows 2000 but you know they wouldn't hire me, they hired these IDIOTS that had 2yr degrees and some others that merely had years at IBM, and couldn't do much more than turn a computer on and then their hands were tied. I watched two monkeys at a clinic one day, one is trying to find Outlook Express on the windows 98 cd, the other is telling him how to search for it. I finally couldn't stand it anymore and informed them that Outlook Express was a windows component that was installed with windows and they could not install it standalone from the windows cd, the clerk had deleted the shortcut for Outlook Express and neither one of these idiots could figure out how to find it, and open it. Unbelievable.

[Traffer]

I got sorta stuck in Rochester MN many years ago, and I got into some state funded Comp Tia programs. I went through Network+ and Inet+, tested through A+ and Server+ when there were great jobs open migrating state machines to Windows 2000 but you know they wouldn't hire me, they hired these IDIOTS that had 2yr degrees and some others that merely had years at IBM, and couldn't do much more than turn a computer on and then their hands were tied. I watched two monkeys at a clinic one day, one is trying to find Outlook Express on the windows 98 cd, the other is telling him how to search for it. I finally couldn't stand it anymore and informed them that Outlook Express was a windows component that was installed with windows and they could not install it standalone from the windows cd, the clerk had deleted the shortcut for Outlook Express and neither one of these idiots could figure out how to find it, and open it. Unbelievable.

I would have liked to sit at your feet and learn. I asked a guy a question on the internet once when I was getting started. He said ..."gee it sucks to be you ...LEARN". After that I asked no more questions.

[dangitgriff]

What a dick that guy was. The whole principle of an open, worldwide internet is for the purpose of sharing knowledge.
He had to be a politician to miss the irony of his remarks.

[Goatwhiskers]

Well I dunno what the heck is happening. I've been using IE for years, then a few days back it suddenly disappeared from my screen. Google Chrome has been there forever so investigated and started using it. so far so good. Then yesterday GC along with all my favorite web sites was gone. I'm left with Edge and a weak memory of the list of sites and passwords. Guess I'll have to start using my wife's Apple, that'll be a whole new learning process for an old goat. I knew when I out lived my warranty period that I was in trouble. GW

[DougGuy]

Well GW, let me say it again....

Perfect time to migrate to Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It's very windows 7 similar in looks and feel, it offers everything windows offers except the headaches and it's free. Comes with a full office suite already built in. And it will happily run on your current hardware...

If you gotta go through any learning curve, migrate to Linux Mint with the Cinnamon Desktop envionment. They make LM with several different user interfaces, Cinnamon is the most windows like one of the bunch and is very intuitive for a windows user to move to. It comes with Firefox installed but you can install GC and that runs great in linux too.


You might have a virus, which could possibly require professional skill to remove it, and also may involve a total reinstall of windows where everything is gone anyway, yet another reason for Linux is that there are no known virii written for it, it is very secure, they don't even have an antivirus for linux, none needed.

I knew when I out lived my warranty period that I was in trouble. GW

Heh I got a chuckle when I read this, in my mind I was looking in the mirror at my old *** looking back at me and thinking this comment..

Believe it or not, DOS is still used today for the user interface on some radar systems. Any idea where to get working legacy IBM machines?
Or a working Macintosh fx with legacy architecture?

Ebay can supply you these old machines but there is a cult following these days that collect them, 8088s, Commodores, Atari, on and on. It's like Star Trek, they have shows that they go to just like gun shows.

Some nuke power plants and also nuke subs and a lot of banks still use IBM's OS/2 which is basically DOS on steroids. You can't hack it. As soon as a process becomes weird, the OS/2 kernel kills it and spawns a new instance of the process. If IBM would EVER let the OS/2 kernel become open source, every computer OS as we know it would instantly go the way of the dinosaur. The OS/2 kernel is the best of the best, and it remains to be seen what IBM will let Red Hat do with it, if anything at all, since they just bought Red Hat. Red Hat runs a GOB of social media so Big Brother is indeed at the controls...

[David2011]

With all the complaints about hardware and software becoming obsolete consider that the alternative is that development might have stopped at DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Even that required going from 5-1/4” floppies to 3.5” floppies plus a hard drive. I have a couple of CAD programs that exceed my abilities but won’t run on anything newer than XP. I keep an old 2GB Sony laptop with XP for those programs. I don’t like Win 10 but I use it on a laptop capable of 3D CAD animation.

[BigMagShooter]

I upgraded to windows 10 recently. I loved Win 7 and hated to go. Fortunately Win 10 is pretty easy to figure out.

I believe you can set the display to mimic Win 7 so it should be easy.

no it's not a scam. They are just telling you they will not support it anymore. Just like they stopped making 55 chevy parts, the only difference was, Chevy didn't tell you when they stopped, they just phased it out. Planned obsolescence....

[shaper]

OK, how do I change up to Linux?

[charlie3tuna]

OK, how do I change up to Linux?

Me too. Have a 12 year old laptop that was given to me. Has Windows 7 on it. Should I wipe it completely and then download from the official site? Thanks....charlie

[William Yanda]

I updated to Win 10 when prompted and recently had to refresh. I detest Win 10. as a previous poster said; "I personally believe that Windows 10 is the most intrusive, data gathering, privacy destroying piece of software out there." When I search for ebay, it offers its preferred alternative. It probably "guides" my other searches as well. I am going to abandon edge as a browser, probably for Mozilla Firefox, if I can find out how to export my passwords. If that doesn't work I will have to screw up the courage to go to Linux.

[Mal Paso]

There is a limit to the really old systems. Floppy disks are dying and no longer in production. I bought NOS Verbatem disks 2 years ago and could not get them to write and read.

I was trying to install Win XP on a modern hard drive which requires an floppy as the XP disk doesn't have the right disk drivers.

Microsoft has threatened to end support for Win7 a number of times but Does Not Have a Replacement. Business isn't buying Win 10 for good reasons. I suspect support will have to be extended for Win 7 until Microsoft comes up with a working business OS.

[dangitgriff]

I updated to Win 10 when prompted and recently had to refresh. I detest Win 10. as a previous poster said; "I personally believe that Windows 10 is the most intrusive, data gathering, privacy destroying piece of software out there." When I search for ebay, it offers its preferred alternative. It probably "guides" my other searches as well. I am going to abandon edge as a browser, probably for Mozilla Firefox, if I can find out how to export my passwords. If that doesn't work I will have to screw up the courage to go to Linux.

Try the DuckDuckGo search engine before Firefox.

[DougGuy]

OK, how do I change up to Linux?

Me too. Have a 12 year old laptop that was given to me. Has Windows 7 on it. Should I wipe it completely and then download from the official site? Thanks....charlie

Hopefully your machine can boot from a USB stick. I download a free program called Etcher, there is an install version and a portable version both do the same thing, this program will burn the linux .iso to the usb drive so it will be bootable and you can install linux from it.

Download the Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition .iso file for 64bit and hopefully your hardware will run a 64bit OS, I don't recommend migrating to the 32bit version of linux, it's not well supported and is on the way out. Many linux distros have already dropped their 32bit version.

Link to the linux mint download page: https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Link to the page where you choose which mirror to download from (I choose a college near me, usually James Madison) once you click this, a dialog box opens asking where you want to save the file, -OR- it will automatically start downloading to the default location if you haven't changed it to ask you where to save files. This link is for the 64bit version of Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=261

Once you have made the USB stick, boot to it and it will start up and you can get to a fully operating desktop, running linux. This is not yet installed to hard drive, but you can run a full version of it to see how you like it. So far, you have not changed or hosed your windows partitions. I do not recommend dual booting windows with linux, it is a pita that more advanced users can negotiate fairly easy but gets the novice users in more trouble then they don't like linux. Otoh, the more advanced users already have ditched windows totally..

My best advice is to get a new SSD solid state drive, disconnect the drive with windows running on it, connect the SSD, boot from the USB, once at the desktop you can click on "Install linux mint" icon and the install will start. You will have to answer questions like time zone, user name, host name (your computer's name, all lowercase, 15 characters or less) and a good password. Pick an easy to type password as linux is very secure and you will be required to type that password many times but this is the security linux offers. Linux Mint will partition the hard drive during install. You can run linux this way, it will be totally installed, without windows. If you want to go back to windows, simply disconnect the linux drive and reconnect the windows drive and boot the machine. It won't even know linux was ever running on it. This is the BEST way to manage both windows and linux.

For a laptop, you should seek out local help that could swap the drive out for you, or help you with the install. You can connect an external SSD and install linux to this.

If you have any computer geeks in your circle of friends, especially ones that already run linux, most would be glad to assist.

_______________________________

Linux Mint Debian Edition.. The Linux Mint team decided they would create a debian fork in the event Ubuntu (which linux mint is built on) ever becomes unavailable, i.e. Canonical (the company that owns Ubuntu) made things tough or wanted to cash in on the success and make life hard, etc... The Linux Mint Debian Edition, known as LMDE3, it a "rolling edition" which means that it doesn't get an incremental upgrade, like going from 18.0 to 19.0 which requires a new upgrade, the rolling edition updates itself as developers release new packages, and so it will never need to be reinstalled, it will always be up to date to the latest version. I use this on two machines and I use Linux Mint 19.x on two others. Both run good both work, it is a bit of work upgrading the 19.x machines when a new version is released but so far Linux has upgraded itself just fine to the newer releases without issues.

The LMDE3 install is a little different, it boots from USB like the other one, but you must manually partition the drive and assign the correct boot flag and specify the "/" partition. This version runs a little faster for me, it seems more stable, but does require a slightly elevated level of competence over the casual user to install it.

[DougGuy]

Here is yet one more alternative to getting to know linux. Used laptops are now very very affordable. You can buy a really decent used Dell Inspiron or Precision for $100 - $150 - $200 bucks from ebay or craigslist, use this for installing linux and learning it, you can gradually make it your daily user as you progress. When it's too hot to cast, you can sit in AC and immerse your brain in a new adventure. Look Ma! No fumes!!

[roadie]

Me too. Have a 12 year old laptop that was given to me. Has Windows 7 on it. Should I wipe it completely and then download from the official site? Thanks....charlie

As mentioned, get a USB stick and whatever Linux distribution you want and install it to the stick. I've never used Etcher but have read good things about it. Check in Windows information, it'll say if you have 32 bit or 64 bit, it's pointless to go to the work of installing a 64 bit if your machine is 32 bit cause there ain't no way it's gonna boot.

Play with the USB install and see if you even want to install Linux. You'll probably have to change the boot order in the bios to boot from the USB, otherwise it'll go straight to Windows. Pressing F2 repeatedly after powering on the laptop works on mine.....YMMV......

If you don't care about possibly dosing the Windows install, then you can install as a dual boot, nothing to lose if something doesn't go just right. What usually happens is that the Windows bootloader gets overwritten and if things didn't install right, you end up with a machine that doesn't want to boot anything.

As to which Linux.....I'm sure Mint Linux is okay, never used it myself. For a newcomer, it's probably as good as any to start....but Mint is bigly.....lots of bloat and if you dual boot, Windows is already sucking up a pile of room and if you have a smallish drive, it just doesn't pan out real good......no room for the goodies after Mint is installed......most 12 year old laptops didn't have huge drives.

As mentioned, 32 bit is being phased out, I don't know which big name distributions build it now......the one I use will drop it eventually, kinda a shame cause there are lots of good machines around and they just fly with Linux.

[Traffer]

Hopefully your machine can boot from a USB stick. I download a free program called Etcher, there is an install version and a portable version both do the same thing, this program will burn the linux .iso to the usb drive so it will be bootable and you can install linux from it.

Download the Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition .iso file for 64bit and hopefully your hardware will run a 64bit OS, I don't recommend migrating to the 32bit version of linux, it's not well supported and is on the way out. Many linux distros have already dropped their 32bit version.

Link to the linux mint download page: https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Link to the page where you choose which mirror to download from (I choose a college near me, usually James Madison) once you click this, a dialog box opens asking where you want to save the file, -OR- it will automatically start downloading to the default location if you haven't changed it to ask you where to save files. This link is for the 64bit version of Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=261

Once you have made the USB stick, boot to it and it will start up and you can get to a fully operating desktop, running linux. This is not yet installed to hard drive, but you can run a full version of it to see how you like it. So far, you have not changed or hosed your windows partitions. I do not recommend dual booting windows with linux, it is a pita that more advanced users can negotiate fairly easy but gets the novice users in more trouble then they don't like linux. Otoh, the more advanced users already have ditched windows totally..

My best advice is to get a new SSD solid state drive, disconnect the drive with windows running on it, connect the SSD, boot from the USB, once at the desktop you can click on "Install linux mint" icon and the install will start. You will have to answer questions like time zone, user name, host name (your computer's name, all lowercase, 15 characters or less) and a good password. Pick an easy to type password as linux is very secure and you will be required to type that password many times but this is the security linux offers. Linux Mint will partition the hard drive during install. You can run linux this way, it will be totally installed, without windows. If you want to go back to windows, simply disconnect the linux drive and reconnect the windows drive and boot the machine. It won't even know linux was ever running on it. This is the BEST way to manage both windows and linux.

For a laptop, you should seek out local help that could swap the drive out for you, or help you with the install. You can connect an external SSD and install linux to this.

If you have any computer geeks in your circle of friends, especially ones that already run linux, most would be glad to assist.

_______________________________

Linux Mint Debian Edition.. The Linux Mint team decided they would create a debian fork in the event Ubuntu (which linux mint is built on) ever becomes unavailable, i.e. Canonical (the company that owns Ubuntu) made things tough or wanted to cash in on the success and make life hard, etc... The Linux Mint Debian Edition, known as LMDE3, it a "rolling edition" which means that it doesn't get an incremental upgrade, like going from 18.0 to 19.0 which requires a new upgrade, the rolling edition updates itself as developers release new packages, and so it will never need to be reinstalled, it will always be up to date to the latest version. I use this on two machines and I use Linux Mint 19.x on two others. Both run good both work, it is a bit of work upgrading the 19.x machines when a new version is released but so far Linux has upgraded itself just fine to the newer releases without issues.

The LMDE3 install is a little different, it boots from USB like the other one, but you must manually partition the drive and assign the correct boot flag and specify the "/" partition. This version runs a little faster for me, it seems more stable, but does require a slightly elevated level of competence over the casual user to install it.

Doug...see what you got yourself into. Might as well make a video on Linux now for all the people you convinced to switch.

[dangitgriff]

I’ve been following this. I’m interested in a linux machine. A software engineer at work said he loaded a version of linux onto a raspberry pi. Which version of linux is best for that?

[gnostic]

I went to the darkside, Chromebook three laptops back and wouldn't be caught dead with windows. Windows is slow, expensive, prone to virus and needlessly complicated....

[DougGuy]

I’ve been following this. I’m interested in a linux machine. A software engineer at work said he loaded a version of linux onto a raspberry pi. Which version of linux is best for that?

She would be the one to ask about that! If you have an android phone, you are a linux user believe it or not...

[DougGuy]

Doug...see what you got yourself into. Might as well make a video on Linux now for all the people you convinced to switch.

There are youtubes that are already doing this, here is one for LM 19:



LM 19 "Tara" is already now 19.1 "Tessa" and will soon enough become 19.2, so download the latest one, the install is the same as installing 19 like the video is installing.