Slackware This Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
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04-20-2014, 06:36 PM
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#16
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Member
Registered: Mar 2013
Location: Florida, USA
Distribution: Slackware, FreeBSD
Posts: 210
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by onebuck
Hi,
I have been catching up with some reading & research this holiday weekend. From http://opensource.com/business/14/4/...-install-linux With all this XP dieing has caused users to wonder what can or should be done. Of course Microsoft's position is to 'UPGRADE' for Xp users.
Sadly, not everyone can afford to upgrade or even purchase new hardware & software. World users do have the option to install a Gnu/Linux and not worrying about the faults for a Microsoft OS.
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The choices are simple: - Somehow take those Windows XP computers off of public networks; or
- Get a new PC with Windows 7 or Windows 8 pre-loaded; or
- Upgrade the PC with something Windows Vista or higher, probably Windows 7 due to hardware constraints; or
- Put some other operating system on the existing PCs.
Sure, if you see a convert in your midst, push Linux on them. If you're serious, any Linux will end up being hard somehow. My time looking at Debian was less hard than my ongoing 16 years with Slackware or my current time looking at Fedora. However, the differences aren't that huge in terms of time spent to make everything work *perfectly* while still being reasonably current.
Otherwise, let it alone. Microsoft gave some of these people over 12 years to upgrade, but there were excuses. There were excuses at the start of Windows 95, and there were excuses at the beginning of Windows XP. Beneath the excuses is the same story: A lot of people are cheapskates that are unwilling to change. Most of them cling to some obscure program like Navel Lint Art 7.1 Pro Gold Ultimate Professional that isn't even on the new Windows, let alone Linux. Either that or the new version of the program is inferior somehow. [Here's the part where I scream, "Why did Office replace traditional menus with a bunch of pictures and start using crappy style sheets? If Open Office isn't around, I'll dig around for an old copy of WordPerfect instead..."] Choose your path carefully, so that you don't waste your time and theirs with Linux.
Windows XP was good by the time all the patches were made. It will be just fine without a connection to a public network. Let it still do good work offline, and get something else to go on the Internet and catch a stray virus.
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04-20-2014, 06:44 PM
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#17
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Guru
Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Canada
Distribution: Slackware (desktops), Void (thinkpad)
Posts: 7,424
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mlslk31
Let it still do good work offline, and get something else to go on the Internet and catch a stray virus.
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The trouble is there are a number of users who will continue to use XP online. Those users may cause issues if and when they're compromised.
Linux is a viable alternative for them. Slackware may be too difficult, but, distros like Mint, OpenSUSE, and Fedora may fit the bill. I am hopeful that some XP users opt for Slackware.
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04-20-2014, 11:41 PM
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#18
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Member
Registered: Dec 2013
Location: NJ / USA
Distribution: Slackware 64 -Current
Posts: 232
Rep:
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The one thing I read in this thread is "Windows just works" (since when) "Slackware is hard" (if you have half a brain you can figure it out or just ask someone for help) "Other Linux distros are easier" (Yea just because most people write that on the internet and the internet is 100% truth).
In my short 34 years of using computers. The only OS that "just works" comes on a new pc pre-installed, and in the case of windows they even tend to break and or slow down over time. If they didn't we wouldn't have all these "tune up your PC" ads. Anyone changing their OS from XP to win 7 or win 8.1 will have to do some reading and tweaking or even praying to get their older systems working anyway. Just because you move from a "working" XP system doesn't guarantee that it will work on 7 or 8.1. That being said the time spent moving over to any linux distro may be even less work then upgrading to win7 or win 8.1 . You even may have a better chance getting that old system working on Linux.
In the case of Slackware being difficult, I have only been on slackware for 2 months , and it doing more in less time than any other distro I have used.
IMHO the only real issue people/corporations should have getting off xp is if they have that one old/Proprietary program they can't live without, which i find it difficult that the average user would even have that problem. As for corporations its just poor planning and or greed if they cant afford to keep their systems up to date that they rely on. Really a bank not updating their ATM's off of XP, what's their excuse they had no money or alternatives? Really ...if they couldn't figure out the solution or get it done on time then I suggest everyone move their money to a "smarter" more forward thinking bank.
This is Y2k all over again much to do about nothing. Just suck it up XP users.. get a new system , try some Slack, Live on the wild side and keep that XP running, Hell or even do all three.
My 1 cent
FYI I did 2 ,I upgraded an old system to Slack (got the same functionality in 1 day), and have another system running XP.. I'll let ya all know when that one truly fails.
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04-21-2014, 04:13 AM
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#19
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Member
Registered: Oct 2009
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 534
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Quote:
Originally Posted by onebuck
Hi,
I would not use 'Typical'. Most early users of Microsoft can/should be aware of '*' as a wild card and that '.txt' relates to text content files. Not all Microsoft users are as dumb as some elitist seem to think.
I certainly would give the average user the aptitude & general understanding of computer usage. Not all are just point & click users while some do not have basic understanding of operations let alone the desire to learn.
Sometimes things are look at too broadly.
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Actually I meant that they don't want to read it...
But thinking about it... no, Windows users that haven't needed DOS or the command shell don't typicaly know about the '*' wildcard, nor do they know about extensions (but, to be fair, they do know what '.txt', '.jpg', and the common extentions mean even if years of Windows have separated that extension from the filename --- most do have a problem with '.exe')..
It's not any kind of elitist view.. I don't think they are dumb because they don't know.. The point is they don't care and they don't need to know this stuff to use a computer.. It's as simple as that..
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04-21-2014, 06:59 AM
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#20
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Moderator
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Central Florida 20 minutes from Disney World
Distribution: Slackware®
Posts: 13,956
Original Poster
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Member Response
Hi,
To general of a statement. You can not know how many user that do nor how much a Microsoft user does know. You could flip your statement for a general Gnu/Linux user. Some Gnu/Linux users pick a particular distribution to fit their needs while some will choose Slackware because it feels UNIX-like. Does that make a Slackware user a UNIX user?
Some Microsoft users never open a command line while some may.
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04-21-2014, 07:06 AM
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#21
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Moderator
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Central Florida 20 minutes from Disney World
Distribution: Slackware®
Posts: 13,956
Original Poster
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Member Response
Hi,
Nice article that does relate too what we are discussing;
Quote:
From 50 Open Source Replacements for Windows XP
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. That means the company is no longer patching newly discovered security vulnerabilities in the operating system, and people who continue to use it are opening themselves up to security risks.
However, according to NetMarketShare, more than a quarter of all PCs (27.69 percent) were still running Windows XP in March of this year.
Why would people continue using a twelve-year-old operating system that would put them at risk?
No doubt, many are home users who simply aren't very technology savvy and/or may not have the desire or the money to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Some probably have older, underpowered PCs that can't run Windows 7 or 8. And others have specific software—often custom business applications—that only runs on Windows XP.
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04-21-2014, 09:40 PM
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#22
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jul 2011
Location: California
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0 Multilib
Posts: 6,564
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Not to be offending on this statement but when I first started into Linux this was my mindset:
If 10,000,000 geeks and nerds can use this thing... I'm going to 10,000,001. After 5 hours, I had Slackware up and running... and the rest was history.
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04-24-2014, 03:32 PM
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#23
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Member
Registered: Mar 2011
Distribution: Slackware 64 -current,
Posts: 550
Rep:
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Slackware doesnt need pretension, it actually IS cool
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1 members found this post helpful.
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04-24-2014, 07:27 PM
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#24
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Member
Registered: Mar 2013
Location: Florida, USA
Distribution: Slackware, FreeBSD
Posts: 210
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hitest
The trouble is there are a number of users who will continue to use XP online. Those users may cause issues if and when they're compromised.
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That's the trend I'm seeing here. I have to remind people that these PCs are on much better Internet connections than in the early Windows 95 days (28.8k dialup) or early Windows XP days (we had 768k DSL). These days, a bad guy could get a lot of your data very quickly, given an unpatched PC and the wrong circumstances.
Quote:
Linux is a viable alternative for them. Slackware may be too difficult, but, distros like Mint, OpenSUSE, and Fedora may fit the bill. I am hopeful that some XP users opt for Slackware.
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Slackware might be easy enough as long as you don't make it too hard. My goal to have a PAM/Windbind Slackware as a full Samba client, all while rebuilding the X11 chain until KMS/DRM stopped crapping out on so-called "stable" kernels, that was like being boiled in wax. However, my standard home PC is default Slackware with not much added. It's Xfce, Fluxbox, Windowmaker, Firefox, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader, CUPS, SANE, GIMP, Open Office, Samba, SGT-puzzles, kpat, and NTP, not too much else. I'd put that PC out there and listen for user complaints about what's missing. Not exciting, but I can use it every day and not get too angry. Even when I do get angry, it's not Pat's fault...
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04-24-2014, 08:35 PM
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#25
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Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2013
Location: Brazil
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 1,223
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ReaperX7
Not to be offending on this statement but when I first started into Linux this was my mindset:
If 10,000,000 geeks and nerds can use this thing... I'm going to 10,000,001. After 5 hours, I had Slackware up and running... and the rest was history.
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Mine was like "I can read, I can do this shit"
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