tommyp

BudwS - You nailed it. I had doubts about running linux and thought software would not work and I would not be productive. But I tried anyway and was extremely pleased. I opted for debian. The OS started as a commandline and added packages to make a desktop environment of my choice along with various programs I liked. I have equivalent programs that work with my important data files. Libreoffice isn't ms-office, but then again libreoffice doesn't have a ribbon that takes up half my working space. Linux means no phoning home either. What's nice with linux is that you can choose what type of software you want. Do you want stable applications? Bleeding edge applications? Well, I don't like crashes so I opt for stable which have programs that are a bit older. No big deal. Bleeding edge? Well, Win10 seems bleeding edge reading through the threads on this forum. Need a newer software? Run a few commands to compile it. Desktop environment? Pick your own and modify accordingly if you do not like the default settings. Using linux opened up a whole new world of possibilities, things I never dreamed of. And the kicker of it all? The not so computer literate wife prefers linux over windows.

I've already upgraded to debian and am more than satisfied with the result.

I thought the two taskbars were odd too, but right clicking it and deleting it fixed that nuisance (it worked on the different distributions I've tested). What's nice about linux is that you can configure your desktop the way you like.

I've been using debian lately and love it! It can be set-up as lean or as fat as you like. Out of the box it does everything a daily workhorse should do. It took me a little bit of time to learn a new OS, but changing from winxp to win7 also took a bit of time. I've tested other distros too. The 'buntus were a bit bloated and the software seemed buggy. Mint had a great feel to it and was very polished but the software repositories also seemed to have buggy software. I have not found buggy software in the "stable" debian distro & repositories. Overall debian isn't hard to use. The wife uses debian like a champ and she is far from computer literate!! One thing I've learned about installing debian - I've had better luck using the unofficial netinstall wtih the firmware drivers. To each their own though.

tomasz86 - Best of luck porting the slip. As a background, hfslip started as a w2k only project and expanded into xp. One thing I found particularly useful was the hfcleanup. Using hfcleanup, the source can be reduced pretty good thus providing an OS with very little overhead. It worked great for me back in the day. Regarding the wm codecs (and codecs in general), they were a pain. Too many versions and variations of wm codecs. Another oddity was that the slip discovered many msft hotfix errors thanks to the other-than english testers. Testing the slip out now should be much faster with today's machines. Again, best of luck.

Hey, that's pretty slick. (but didn't test it)

I don't remember which version of steady state I found. It was a year or two ago. I just remember that it just didn't work well, or work at all, or allow me to select a partition. Honestly I forgot. The free version of reboot restore worked as advertised and it did a great job at it too.

I found an old version of steady state. It was a traditional half hearted attempt at making something decent. Rebootrestore is one of those freebee programs too, but unlike MSFT's steady state, I found it work very very well. I've tested it out on a few test boxes to see how it works. I was quite surprised how well the free version works. My standard PC setup is a partitioned drive with the "my documents", "cookies" and "favorites" folders located on a different partition. So whenever I reload an OS, I won't lose data. With reboot restore, I was able to select to write protect the C drive while letting me write to the D drive where my data files were. So all in all, nothing of importance was lost after a reboot. If there was a remote event where I had to change somethign on the OS, a right click on the systray icon let me allow the system changes to C. I didn't see a need to run virus scanners or other bloatware because the OS could not be contaminated. The only thing I saw was that there was an additional spash screen when the PC booted (not a big deal). I would entertain using reboot restore if I really had to stick with XP.