Do You Think XP will be Phased Out Eventually- Alternative OS?

[zaq.sr163]

Hi Guys,

I run my PC on XP.

Do you think XP will be phased out eventually?

What would you say is a good alternative?

(Btw I hate Vista, did try it for a month or two, went straight back to XP).

What about Linux? Heard it's less resource hungry and faster, but not many
apps are compatible.

Was browsing this site: http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=10
mentioned on the BBC Click Online programme.

They have a Linux desktop suite worth considering.

Any thoughts from the community welcomed.
Cheers.

[carl6969]

Do you think XP will be phased out eventually?

Phased out? Microsoft will eventually stop offering support and updates for XP. However, that does not mean the product will be unavailable. I have a copy WIN 3.1.

What would you say is a good alternative?

If you want to stick with then Microsoft WIN 7 would be a logical choice.
If you are considering Linux I would recommend Ubuntu 10.10 but there are some other good choices with Linux.

What about Linux? Heard it's less resource hungry and faster, but not many apps are compatible.

I switched from Windows to Ubuntu a couple of years ago and have been very pleased with the performance, security, and available applications. If you are a gamer you will want to stick with Windows. I am not a big game person so that is not an issue for me. The only other small problem I have had with Ubuntu is that Netflix streaming movies do not currently work with Linux systems, but a good quality Blu-Ray DVD with Internet apps built in will solve that little nuisance. If you find that there are Windows apps which you simply must have and cannot find similar Linux version of those apps you can install Wine or even setup a dual boot system with both Windows and Linux on the same machine.

[benleeder16]

The updates will stop April 8, 2014. Linux is well worth considering, I switched when Microsoft released Vista because I hated it. I recommend you download a couple of Linux distros and try them out by running them live from the cd before you install any of them on your hard drive. Ubuntu is my personal favourite, PClinuxOS is also meant to be very good but I haven't tried it. Another option is to dual boot With Linux and windows so you can run windows only programs if you need to.

[vol7ron]

Do you think XP will be phased out eventually?

Phased out? Sort of. The official license support will be dropped in 2014. A virtual WinXP comes with Win7, which is how the compatibility mode works. That is also why support is lasting out to 2014, it would be dropped sooner, otherwise.

What would you say is a good alternative?

Win7 if you use a lot of MS products or "game", and Ubuntu is a good free alternative. Really it depends on what you want to do and what kind of hardware you have. W7 might be less resource demanding than Vista, but it still requires more than XP.

(Btw I hate Vista, did try it for a month or two, went straight back to XP).

You're not alone. Vista was very resource intensive and poorly managed. Actually, I take that back. The early versions of Vista were bad. After the service packs Vista in its later days ran similar to Win7.

What about Linux? Heard it's less resource hungry and faster, but not many apps are compatible.

Ubuntu is a form of Linux. The "speed" is relative and it all depends on what you're doing. BTW apps might not be compatible, but Linux has a bunch of free apps, which make it similar to the Apple App Store. There is a learning curve with Linux if you want to do anything advanced - the power is in the command line.

[zaq.sr163]

Hey Guys!
Great feedback. Really great.
I think i will consider Ubuntu. Try off the CD first then see how it goes.

@carl6969 hi, what is the "Wine" app you mention?
And can you point or direct to please a step-by-step resource
that shows how to "setup a dual boot system with both Windows and Linux"

[carl6969]

Wine allows you to run many Windows programs on Linux.
Some good documentation on Wine including download links, installation, setup, etc., can be found here .
Information on Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows can be found here .

[badgehunter59]

Windows XP will definitely be phased out someday, just like Windows 98, 2000, etc have.
Most likely whenever Windows 8 comes out, Windows XP will be on it's way out. More and more people have been switching to Windows 7 already.

[techairlines]

I definitely think Windows XP will be phased out eventually. Even though its the favorite Windows OS of many, everyone will eventually have to move on.

Even if its phased out, there will still be a handful of people still using it, just like many people still use the long outdated IE6. My school just got a handful of new computers running Windows 7 and downgraded to XP...

About Linux, I have Ubuntu installed on my laptop and the performance is noticeably better than Windows, although a lot of the applications you're used to might not work. I bought the laptop during a Black Friday sale and it came with Vista Basic and having only 512 mb of RAM and an Intel Celeron processor, the performance was horrible and the trial software preinstalled only made things worse. The computer was nearly unusable and instead of trying to remove all the junk, I just reformatted the entire disk and installed Ubuntu.

[ravik]

Take a look at Linux Mint. Good GNU/Linux distro to start with. Transition from XP should be smoother. Bundled VLC player can play almost all media files . A little bit learning curve though. Specially the way programs/apps are installed.

[rolandr]

My laptop dual boots in Window 7 and Linux (Ubuntu). I would say 95% of the time I'm using Ubuntu due to the free apps.

The things I use Window 7 is my M-Audio Fastrack since M-Audio doesn't have driver in Linux although there's some scripts I could run in Linux that may configure my M-Audio Fast Track.
Another thing I miss Windows is Adobe PhotoShop. I'm proficient at this image editor. Linux GIMP is fairly powerful too but like PhotoShop, there's a learning curve. But GIMP is free while the Adobe PhotoShop is $500+. maybe I'll take a college course and get a student version.

I do miss doing Visual Basic Application (I'm a computer programmer analysts) on Office Apps.

But I needed to Linux for Apache, MySQL, PHP. Yes, I suppose I could have installed IIS in Windows.

... but there's so many free apps to play with Linux. ... and I do feel at home with Linux because I've learned computer with UNIX ... but Ubuntu is very "Window" like environment you should feel quite comfortable from the get go.

One thing, check your peripherals from digital cameras, printers, camcorders, etc ... if they have Linux drivers. If they don't, some Linux gurus wrote scripts to make these devices run on Linux.

Just something to think about.