Microsoft and windows 10 again

[shaper]

All day today there was a notice from Microsoft on my computer screen. In January they will stop supporting windows 7. And they have a list of which computer I should buy with 10 loaded on it.
I had 10 on a couple computers and hated it. I confess my computers are dated but they still have life in them. And I can't afford to change computers now.
Or is this some kind of scam?

[frkelly74]

In the AARP magazine there was an article about how you need a new computer because if you don't have one it is like driving around in a 66 chevy. I kind of liked the 66 chevy my dad had.

My opinion is that you "need" all that computer power to support all the advertising that gets shoved at you. Bah!

[DougGuy]

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...

[Walks]

Tech Companies stop supporting anything after 3 years.
That way you have to keep buying new hardware/software. They're built to start acting up after 3-5 years.
Planned Obsolescence.

Same thing they've done for cars for over 40yrs.
If you can't fix your Computer at home, ya gotta lug the tower into a service center.

Cars are going the same way. In 25--30yrs you won't be able to take your car to an Independent Garage. They won't be able to afford the Diagnostic Equipment.

Hey the OLD cars will still run as long as you can find parts.

And yeah, I'm still pissed my Mother sold my 1965 Mustang w/factory air conditioning, while I was overseas.

[Traffer]

I am a retired PC Tech. I uninstalled or turned off that awful "upgrade to Windows 10" annoyance that they used to try and get everyone switched. I am still using Windows 7. I personally believe that Windows 10 is the most intrusive, data gathering, privacy destroying piece of software out there. In my opinion it is far worse than Google or Facebook. Microsoft has the ability to know practically every nuance of every user out there. Maybe I will switch to Windows 10 eventually but not just because they stop supporting Windows 7
With that said, If your machines run Windows 7 they are very likely powerful enough to run Windows 10 also. Most likely you could upgrade your current machines to Windows 10 and all would be well. (except you would have to go through the learning curve for a new operating system.)
The Windows 10 operating system is quite similar to the "app" based operating systems that are used on phones. It is actually pretty easy to learn.
I haven't done much with computers in a few years but I could probably still help you out with an upgrade to Windows 10. PM me if you would like some assistance.

[fiberoptik]

I hate windaze. I have a lot of XP software and my XP tower took a dump on me. Dell didn’t even send me the disk to reinstall it. I too prefer Linux. If I want to use my Bible software and games, I need to reinstall XP somehow.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DougGuy]

If your machines run Windows 7 they are very likely powerful enough to run Windows 10 also. Most likely you could upgrade your current machines to Windows 10 and all would be well. (except you would have to go through the learning curve for a new operating system.)

Herein lies the rub. M$ has been systematically "mothballing" classes of hardware by removing driver support for things like graphics chipsets and motherboard chipsets, they simply remove the support for the hardware architecture so Win10 FORCES you to buy newer hardware so it will run. It is akin to an unwritten unspoken conspiracy, it keeps the hardware makers busy so that M$ has new hardware to run windows on, one hand greases the other.

Basically as soon as shaper installs or tries to install win10, he will get a message saying things are not supported and the install will fail, or it may install with graphics at 800x600 and no option to change until he upgrades his video card... This scenario is very likely to be the end of either windows 10 on his hardware, or the end of his hardware so he can buy something else that will run windows 10.

If you want to buy into this, be my guest. Many of us have woke up and smelled the coffee and avoided windows 10, and even moreso, avoided windows completely.


If I want to use my Bible software and games, I need to reinstall XP somehow.

Have you tried installing WINE into Linux and running the install for your software in the wine windows software loader? A lot of windows programs and games runs in Linux these days courtesy of the wine windows emulator. It's pretty easy.

[dangitgriff]

Planned Obsolescence.
Right on the money.
It’s a racket...burn it with fire [emoji91]!!

[kungfustyle]

you don't have to buy a machine here are the specs for window's 10
Latest OS: Make sure you're running the latest version—either Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 Update.

Find out which version you're running.

Need the latest version? Download Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 Update.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit

Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS or 20 GB for 64-bit OS

Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver

Display: 800 x 600
Download windows 10 and have a 8 gig thumb drive ready or a dvd burner
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485
download and run this and it will created a bootable windows 10 usb or dvd and you can install on your machine for free. You can buy a product key from ebay if you like but it will work either way.
or you can buy a great system from https://www.blairtg.com/
been using them for about 15 years and we buy a computer about once every 4 years or so for about $200 to $300 They come with a year warranty for $5 and customer service is in Kentucky as is the company. They are a Microsoft reseller, so you get a licensed computer with a coa. Any questions shoot me a pm and I'll try to help out.

[Traffer]

If you tell us the make and model of your computer along with some basic specs (type and speed of cpu, amount of ram, size of hard drive) it will be easy to tell you for sure if your machine will support Windows 10.

[FredBuddy]

I took Doug Guy's advice several years ago
and switched to LINUX.
I can't do the installation myself, so
I ask the folks at a small town computer
shop to do it. At first they were reluctant, but
now use LINUX themselves for some applications.
It's great for giving new life to old hardware.

[popper]

Your computer will die and your life will be ruined if you don't get a new computer with MS10 loaded - immediately!!!
Naw, they are just going to stop fixing the errors in Win7. Your Win7 works on your computer until the motherboard or hard drive dies.

[Smoke4320]

Like DougGuy said ….Perfect time to migrate to Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. Its real easy to learn FREE all the programs are FREE and most work quite well
wine installed on Linux will allow many windows programs to run

[Idz]

I was amazed at how stable Win XP became once MS stopped supporting it. The biggest problem all the Windows systems have is the automatic background programs continually 'updating'. Old time programs were self contained but the new system is to have a program linking to and changing subprograms all over the place. It makes it easier for bad programmers to write code but makes a slow and unstable product for users.

[RED BEAR]

Yea i still have one running win 98 one running xp. I refuse to go to win 10. My son gives me his old ones and they work just fine for me. Although he does rib me a bit about using fossils.

[DougGuy]

I was amazed at how stable Win XP became once MS stopped supporting it.

Hehe, years ago I looked up kernel32.dll errors, guess what was the cause of 97% of them? Other M$ products! I kid you not. There were hundreds of pages of hits on this one error, and dozens of the pages were ALL caused by Office and it's various components. You had to scroll and scroll and scroll to find kernel32.dll errors caused by other applications.

Now.. I used to do a robust business keeping windows machines stable and running, I would build an image from an installed version, complete with added applications, include the windows CD on the root of the drive, strip out all the hardware, uninstall EVERYTHING in device manager (which we lovingly called device mangler), then shut down and ghost this to an .iso file, and burn it to a bootable CD. All you had to do was stick the cd in the drive, turn the machine on, and sit back and watch it go hunting for new hardware and installing drivers, etc, we nicknamed the image JAWS because it came up snapping for drivers and resources. It didn't need windows installed, all it needed was a hard drive with an active primary partition on it, and it would find it and off to the races it went! It was almost funny to watch.

XP.. Some folks got the same ideas I had, and they would use a program to remove windows components from XP, then burn this as a new .iso file and post it on the newsgroups. You download it, burn it to CD, boot from it and install a stripped down race ready version of XP that had all the eye candy and bloatware ripped out of it. The whole .iso was only 184mb, and the installed footprint was 585mb on hard drive, and it RAN LIKE A RACE HORSE! Very stable, very fast. Basically all you had was a primer gray car with all the money under the hood. What could be better? They did a windows 7 version too that reacted the same way.

I had long hoped that M$ would have the sense to compartmentalize things and let the user login, choose which features they wanted, then M$ would figure the dependencies, include those in the build, then you pay for your .iso and download it, much like FreeBSD. No need for all the garbage and bloatware which sickens every version of windows ever released, and instead of letting you have a powerhouse computer with quad cores and lots of ram, they bog it down with evreything running at once, they could take the most powerful Intel processor and slug it down to the speed of a 486.

[1911sw45]

Hey now I had a 386 12mhz with 1mb hard drive with one 5.25 and 3.5" Floppy drives. Pre mouse days. Though was the days.

[bruce drake]

Yea i still have one running win 98 one running xp. I refuse to go to win 10. My son gives me his old ones and they work just fine for me. Although he does rib me a bit about using fossils.

fossils? I have a windows 3.11/DOS 6.22 (AMD 100MHz processor with 16MB of memory and a 125MB hard drive) running offline in the garage that works 100% of the time, every time when I power it up.

I still prefer this system for several legacy programs and printers. They only thing I've had to replace over the years besides the original keyboard, wired mouse and the CMOS battery.

Bruce

[Traffer]

Hehe, years ago I looked up kernel32.dll errors, guess what was the cause of 97% of them? Other M$ products! I kid you not. There were hundreds of pages of hits on this one error, and dozens of the pages were ALL caused by Office and it's various components. You had to scroll and scroll and scroll to find kernel32.dll errors caused by other applications.

Now.. I used to do a robust business keeping windows machines stable and running, I would build an image from an installed version, complete with added applications, include the windows CD on the root of the drive, strip out all the hardware, uninstall EVERYTHING in device manager (which we lovingly called device mangler), then shut down and ghost this to an .iso file, and burn it to a bootable CD. All you had to do was stick the cd in the drive, turn the machine on, and sit back and watch it go hunting for new hardware and installing drivers, etc, we nicknamed the image JAWS because it came up snapping for drivers and resources. It didn't need windows installed, all it needed was a hard drive with an active primary partition on it, and it would find it and off to the races it went! It was almost funny to watch.

XP.. Some folks got the same ideas I had, and they would use a program to remove windows components from XP, then burn this as a new .iso file and post it on the newsgroups. You download it, burn it to CD, boot from it and install a stripped down race ready version of XP that had all the eye candy and bloatware ripped out of it. The whole .iso was only 184mb, and the installed footprint was 585mb on hard drive, and it RAN LIKE A RACE HORSE! Very stable, very fast. Basically all you had was a primer gray car with all the money under the hood. What could be better? They did a windows 7 version too that reacted the same way.

I had long hoped that M$ would have the sense to compartmentalize things and let the user login, choose which features they wanted, then M$ would figure the dependencies, include those in the build, then you pay for your .iso and download it, much like FreeBSD. No need for all the garbage and bloatware which sickens every version of windows ever released, and instead of letting you have a powerhouse computer with quad cores and lots of ram, they bog it down with evreything running at once, they could take the most powerful Intel processor and slug it down to the speed of a 486.

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.

[dangitgriff]

fossils? I have a windows 3.11/DOS 6.22 (AMD 100MHz processor with 16MB of memory and a 125MB hard drive) running offline in the garage that works 100% of the time, every time when I power it up.

I still prefer this system for several legacy programs and printers. They only thing I've had to replace over the years besides the original keyboard, wired mouse and the CMOS battery.

Bruce

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?

[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!! :bigsmyl2:

[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:


http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=G0AFuhVSvEk

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.

[FISH4BUGS]

I used XP until my programs no longer worked with it....about a year ago....and I make my living with computers......:)

[David2011]

Another option to consider if you’re considering Linux is to remove your current hard drive and get a new one for the new operating system. That will preserve your old operating system and data so a rollback is as simple as swapping drives. New hard drives are pretty cheap. Don’t use an old hard drive with unknown history for anything you can’t afford to lose.

[Blammer]

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.


when it comes to upgrading tech, businesses are cheap, that is the reason they didn't suddenly all go out and buy the lastest OS.
Your assumption that they Have to extend support is flawed. They do not have to. Just like Ford does not Have to keep making
1970 truck parts. With no support, business will finally get around to upgrading when they have to. Most likely when the current computer they are using dies or gets infected or something catastophic.

[roadie]

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?




There are dozens of Linux distro's that run on the Raspberry Pi.....Raspbian was designed for it......Ubuntu, Arch, CentOS, Kali......dozens more. As to which is best, that's the same as which truck is best, or which gun......just too many variables.

I've had nothing to do with a Raspberry Pi, but I think installing Linux onto one might be a bit of a heavy lift for anyone without Linux experience, not something I'd suggest to a newcomer.

[David2011]

when it comes to upgrading tech, businesses are cheap, that is the reason they didn't suddenly all go out and buy the lastest OS.
Your assumption that they Have to extend support is flawed. They do not have to. Just like Ford does not Have to keep making
1970 truck parts. With no support, business will finally get around to upgrading when they have to. Most likely when the current computer they are using dies or gets infected or something catastophic.

Businesses, especially very large ones, can't afford the losses in productivity that can be caused by jumping on a bandwagon of "latest and greatest" caused by driver incompatibilities and software conflicts. I worked for a company (I'm now retired) that had thousands of servers and over 40,000 personal computers. The software developer team would start testing a new operating system as soon as the beta versions were made available but it was typically 1-1/2 to 2 years after the first production release before the software was distributed to the employees' computers. Users of some software packages had to hold off on moving to newer operating systems until their specialty software was modified to work with the new OS. Automated or semi-automated distribution of the new OS had to be implemented because there weren't enough local techs to update every computer manually. Every piece of software already in use (numbering in the hundreds) had to be tested with the new OS to assure compatibility. Changing to a new OS is a very expensive venture for large companies and done improperly can be even more expensive. The company for which I worked had an employee at Microsoft dedicated to them. Large companies can definitely influence software producers.

A very small business might update one computer at a time as you suggest when they die or get infected. Big business can't use that model and would just repair computers that "die" or become infected. We had a compatibility list that changed with each OS change, showing which computers would not be able to run the new OS. Compatibility typically extended to computers as much as 5-7 years old.

[KMac]

I've had nothing to do with a Raspberry Pi, but I think installing Linux onto one might be a bit of a heavy lift for anyone without Linux experience, not something I'd suggest to a newcomer.
Pretty easy to install Raspian on a Raspberry Pi. Not sure about the other distro's. Way easier than installing Linux Mint on a PC. Doing some testing on a Raspberry Pi right now for a customer and Raspian runs pretty good on a Raspberry Pi.

[454PB]

Another vote for Linux Mint. Here's a link to their forum, and detailed instructions for downloading and installation:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php?sid=0153c986f131a6636915bafd12fc6e85

I also suggest purchasing a small (128 GB) SSD to use for the new operating system. As was already said, that allows reverting back to the original drive and OS if desired. I think I only paid $30 for my first SSD. You can also set up for dual booting if desired.

[fiberoptik]

I have a used laptop with Windows 10 that has an unknown password and won’t boot from USB or let me change settings on boot. Hate the stinking thing; it’s jacked up and I’ve been “forbidden” from installing Linux on it by my daughter who gifted it to me. I’d be happy with XP as that’s what all my software is for. Very stuck!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bruce drake]

I work for a government agency that still uses COBOL programming for several of their accounting programs and mainframe systems. COBOL has been around since 1959 and has seen upgrades all the way to 2014.

That said, they are starting to shift legacy systems like COBOL and legacy x86 programs to the Military Secure Cloud, so it could be interesting in a few years.

Bruce

[454PB]

I have a used laptop with Windows 10 that has an unknown password and won’t boot from USB or let me change settings on boot. Hate the stinking thing; it’s jacked up and I’ve been “forbidden” from installing Linux on it by my daughter who gifted it to me. I’d be happy with XP as that’s what all my software is for. Very stuck!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you have access to another working computer, you can download and reinstall Win 10. Once Win 10 has been installed on a computer, Microsoft has a record of that and will allow you to do a fresh install.

Take a look here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10startfresh

[trebor44]

The never ending cycle from the "marketing corporation" Yes, Windows 7 is done with and 10 will follow in 2025. Chrome is no longer supported on a Windows 7 machine but MS Edge is. Go figure?