As I suspected at the time, he didn't intend to be around long. Only 2 post total as of now, and none since that thread.expat_tony wrote:Well, Colonial John, you're obviously still visiting or you wouldn't have seen spearmint's post.
I'd just like to say that my experience with these forums is completely the opposite of yours.....
You'll get through the hard times, believe me.....
I was sold on the concept of Linux back when Knoppix was the first LIVE CD available. "Initiating Startup Sequence" lol. I didn't however try to switch over completely at the time, because Win 2000 wasn't burdened down with all the Activation and Genuine (we don't trust anyone) Advantage. I kept an eye on Linux over the intervening years, even gritting my teeth every time XP would want WPA again because I'd changed some internal card or updated the motherboard, etc. Vista same along, and by the time I turned off everything I didn't want on it, ("are you sure....") I pretty much ended up with Vista Basic instead. I had loaded it to double boot with XP, used a couple months, finally couldn't stand it anymore and removed it and restore the XP bootloader.
Windows 7 came out, I ended up letting it sit in the box almost 2 years, didn't need it since XP was sufficient, finally loaded onto wife's computer since her work had upgraded from XP to it. Tried it out some, but didn't like the divided networking situation between Home Group and Business setups. Didn't care for the iconography, nor the coloring that much. A grown daughter brought her laptop over with windows 8 and I nearly puked when I played around in it and decided that would be the end of the Windows for me, even Vista looked good compared to W8.
A year before XP was due to expire I started trying out many LIVE CD and DVD of Linux varieties and was happily surprised by how the desktop environment had improved so much. I'd been attracted to Ubuntu, but then the Unity reminded me somewhat of the W8 approach and I was turned off to that, so ended up at Kubuntu. That's a great system too, with the KDE on it. Over the next 6 months it slowly morphed into the system I was using the most. I'd not exactly planned it that way, I still considered it a trial, but realized I preferred it even over XP in most things, but still XP had third party software I liked that didn't run under WINE.
I continued testing Linux distros and moved from using LIVE DVD's to running in a virtual environment, all the "buntus", Easy Peasy, newest Knoppix, I didn't Zorin due to larger download size, but I was curious about the ranking at distrowatch and saw Mint at the top and I'd not even tried it yet. Seemed like an odd name for a computer operating system. I tried the Mint 14 LIVE DVD, liked it, set for a triple boot with XP, Kubuntu. The more I played around in it, the more attached I was to it, and by this time XP was almost not being used at all.
Finally the day came when XP was no longer supported and I realized I didn't really care about that anymore, I had what I wanted to use, Mint Linux.
What I liked about it;
1) it's simplicity of look and use
2) no virus, but yet I could add CLAMav and CLAMtk and still check for virus (which found an pdf exploit that MSE even to this day doesn't see). The CLAM is light weight compared to AVG and other AV.
3) Small footprint
4) Speed of execution
5) the repository to insure third party software was safe
6) No suspicious "dial home" activities going on, other than the weather/date and software update program, which I could turn off anyway till needed. I check once a week and then turn it back off.
7) No Genuine Advantage "virus" locking one out at unexpected time, and after SP3 needing a registry change just to get it out of a loop so one could activate it again.
8 ) Root in Linux is like System in permissions for Windows, except Microsoft can access and control SYSTEM, which is why Activation works anyway. That gives Microsoft complete control anytime they want it.
9) People have mentioned cost, but that wasn't a big factor to me, I've several retail copies of Vista, one of W7 and never wanted anything past that. However Linux allows one to sample the product for free, something not easily done in Windows (I think there's a 30 day trial on their software now) and at no cost.
10) A big one for me is the LIVE DVD concept. A fully capable (because it CAN write to a drive or flash media) operating system one can boot into from the DVD and use before ever installing it. Windows still doesn't do that. If Linux system has a problem booting, pop in the DVD and do what's needed till you can fix what's wrong later when you have time. In Windows you just can't do that, and even the DVD's Repair options are barely functional at times.
11) I'm not a "gamer", so can't make any comparison there, but I've heard that Windows is the best for such pursuits. Gaming is not a "game changer" for me between the two systems.
12) Windows is limited to two file systems, the NTFS and the FAT types. Just the use of any EXT file system already puts one ahead on security from windows users since they can't even view a file on such a system. Both windows and linux can use TrueCrypt, so that's cross platform when needed. Windows can't install to anything but hard drive, Linux can install to USB drives.
13) Windows Media Player seems limited at times due to DRM, whereas other media players don't have that monkey on their back.
14) I never liked and therefore rarely used IE browser, preferring Netscape, then later Firefox even in Windows, so that was natural progression over to Linux for web browsing. I still have the disc from Netscape 2, I purchased in a store box ages ago, before all browsers were free. I think the box is gone, but the disc remain. I like keeping stuff like that for historical purposes.
15) My email clients had always been Netscape Messenger and then Thunderbird, so another natural progression over to using same in Linux.
16 ) Linux can be used to rescue windows systems, backup files from windows before reloading it. Windows can barely rescue itself.
17) Preference. I like it better. Even on XP I always used the classic menu and theme, didn't like the cartoon look of the default theme and start menu.