Linux Mint on an old machine

I was given an old machine by a friend and I took it to work, where we have very few machines for people to use. It's a drop-in centre with very little money.

I put Windows on it to start with (XP Home) because that's what all our service users are used to. Every day a nag popped up telling us that we had nn days until the system expired and we'd have to register it.

I don't blame Microsoft for doing this. I can understand that they want people to pay for using their software.

We don't have any money to pay for licences though, so I asked around and friends advised that for Windows users Mint was a good introduction to Linux.

I installed it this afternoon and can see the similarities with how Windows feels to use, including the "Start" menu layout.

Given that it's an old machine and so a bit clunky I'm pleased with how it performs, slow but predictable. And I feel so much more confident about system security than I do with the Windows machines.

I'm going to listen to people's reactions to the system and perhaps we'll roll out Linux on all the publicly accessible machines.