Good bye XP, Hello Linux? HELP!

[ray schrauwen]

So it sounds like the most stable platform Microsoft has ever created, used by 95% of bank machines around the world is about to get the shove to the trash can.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dashboard/windows-xp-deadline-puts-bank-atms-risk-175152847.html

As of April this year Microsoft will not support XP anymore, no more security updates, etc.

Now, I know people run Linux but, how do I figure out how to setup my PC with Linux? Is there a Linux for dummies web site or maybe I could buy a book (if books still exist, lol). Seriously, I'm never going to pay Microsoft taxes anymore, they can bite me.

Any and all help is appreciated. I do know how to re-format my PC with my current XP so, I'm not a complete Newbie.

[photohoward1]

Ray Google is a wonderful thing. Look it up and I'm sure they will tell you exactly how to do it.

[ray schrauwen]

Working on it. I dislike Google but, I'll use it in this case. I usually use Yahoo... not the greatest results there.

[siberianhusky]

I haven't run Linux in years, no quality music production software.
Now a days it's really not much different than windows pop in the CD and follow the instructions, it will even partition your HD for you properly.
Unless it will run in a windows simulator you will find the software lacking for a lot of what we do, like programming escs, data logging etc.
I gave up on it because there was really nothing in it for me in regards to what I need a computer for. Found I was restarting the computer too often back in windows.
Great OS but the lack of any standardization and commercialization has kept the big software companies from porting their software over, too bad because it kicks both Windows and whatever the Apple OS is called even though it is based on FreeBSD and Linux....Apple has made enough changes that a lot of Linux hardware won't run or install, damn proprietary Apple desktop!
See you later this week.
Cheers

[NativePaul]

I have Linux on my laptop, I use Ubuntu which has a user interface similar to windows or OSX and requires very little real Linux knowledge, 99%+ of what I have done is common sense using the visual user interface, but I have had to search how to do a couple of things in command lines, but both had examples on the net that I just copied out once worked and I never had to touch again.

I like it because it is smaller than OSX and way smaller than windows, so it boots up much quicker and uses less of your system memory to run than the others leaving more memory and processing power for what you actually want to do. If you have a shiny new PC running the other OSs will be no problem, but Older models like my second hand laptop will love you for running Linux and everything will be much faster. I chose to keep windows and install Ubuntu in addition to it (I have done this on two PCs and windows and all the stored data was fine both times, but backup everything you want to keep just in case something goes wrong or you press the wrong button). When I start the PC it asks me if I want to use windows or Ubuntu, most of the time I pick Ubuntu. I have Firefox installed to surf the web, Openoffice for productivity stuff, VLC to watch movies, Skype to chat to my sister and Gimp to edit photos, which covers nearly all my laptop usage and all the mentioned software is available for free perfectly legally. As mentioned above the Castle ESC software is not Linux compatible as yet and using it is pretty much the only time I boot into Windows.

[ray schrauwen]

Thanks Paul, that's the kind of info I was looking for. Sounds like a good plan.

Thanks Mark, see you soon!