How to ease the pain of transition from XP to Linux?

Question

I am an XP user, and have been for years. I use Win7 at work, so am used to it, but still like some of the features in XP vs Win7. Basically, I like them both for different reasons. Anyway -- I know XP is losing support next spring, and I could upgrade to Win7, but I run some applications that don't really play well in the Win7 environment, and I refuse to spend another $200+ for a new version, JUST so it won't throw sand at Win7. I also play an MMO, which I am noticing is getting more and more laggy, etc. I have been reading it is possible to install and successfully this particular MMO, and I have played around with Linux in the past (Mandrake w/ KDE), just never really made the transition.

So now -- given I am a big XP/7 user, which would be the easiest transition to Linux? ike I said, I play an MMO, I listen to a lot of music, watch videos, and do a ton of Photoshop stuff, just not really into command line or coding (shudder). And I like my start button and menus.

I have narrowed my choices down to Zorin, NetRunner, Mint or maybe Arch? Any thoughts or recommendations? I realize it will be Linux and that it is NOT Windows, but I am looking for as smooth of a transition as possible, because I just don't have the time nor patience for something if I have to have a manual to navigate around. Thanks in advance! Looking forward to your input =)

Answer 1

== KDE3 - the (alternative) Desktop Environment ==



one of the most annoying thing when moving from xP to Linux is... the GUIs



Gnome (3) is known for being restrictive (initiated by Canonical, the "company" behind *buntu which is sadely renown for... imposing their views on the users, mostly because they always considered that Linux users are idiots unable to handle... Linux



KDE4... well, if you stayed w/ XP because of vista, you definitely don't want to go down THAT path

its gratuitous effects which bring to its knees even decently powerful PCs...



KDE3? two ways to get this proven UI



-1- is to install Trinity Desktop Environment ( http://www.trinitydesktop.org/ ) a distro independent community lead by Timothy Pearson that maintains the code of KDE3

as the community is independent of KDE.org they are not allowed to use the KDE acronym anymore and thus use TDE instead

installation of TDE can be a little tricky as it is independent of any distro; TDE makes a good effort maintaining repositories for many common distros but are not always available for the latests version of each distro which forces the user to stay w/ an older release; furthermore distro upgrades are often problematic as they require a tight integration of all the repositories which TDE can not provide.



== -2- openSUSE ==



you don't mention it at all thus maybe you already tried it and discarded it?

or maybe you didn't bother?

in either case, the openSUSE community has continued the development of KDE3 (even though openSUSE was a precursor in the KDE4 development) and for each new release / version, the KDE3 repository is updated and available for install as well as upgrade from previous versions (i recently did an upgrade from 11.4 evergreen to 12.3 just by updating all the repository URLs in YaST2 (Yet another Setup Tool - i'll get to that) and hitting the update [all packages] if newer version available

independently of that i also made a new install of openSUSE 13.1 without any other DE (thus KDE4, Gnome or so) then KDE3 and got a "clean" KDE3 install with a minimum of libraries from other DEs

post a specific question if interested



YaST2 - Yet another Setup Tool or... THE setup tool?

i choose openSUSE instead of vista as my primary OS after having been playing around w/ various Linux distributions - at the time, the openSUSE DVD (10.x) was the only one able to start the installation w/out having to tweak the install command line with extra parameters / options ~:o}

admittedly my PC wasn't exactly your run of the mill XP comp ¦-)

the beauty of YaST2 is that the install starts right into it (you can even choose the native resolution of your screen!) and lets you set up the installation in an easy consistent graphical environment.

i have been trying out several other distros (debian or fedora based mostly) in the past few months and YaST2 is really a (distro) setup tool in a class of its own

also for upgrades, as outlined above; for each install / update it has a thorough dependencies check & a nice integrated window offering solutions in case of dependencies conflicts - very nice & unknown from any other distro (with that nice integration WITHOUT COMMAND LINE)





== smoothen transition - VirtualBox ==



instead of "live CDs / DVDs" why not installing VirtualBox on your XP environment and give various distros a run for their "money" in it

of course, the 32 bit of XP limit the amount of VRAM you can assign to a virtual machine, but for the install RAM isn't that critical - and the "tight memory" situation will give you better feel of how ressource hungry the various distro / configs are after setup

Answer 2

if you use photoshop, you may not get that working in linux. perhaps you could keep the xp for that, or use crossover linux, its your best chance of using it.



my recommendation (without knowing the hardware specs) is linux mint xfce edition. xfce is a lighter desktop environment (user interface), yet has plenty of features, is easy to use and can be made to look like almost anything.

using a long term support (LTS) release version would be best too, so version 13 (which is based on ubuntu 12.04). this will mean better stability and longer support (not EOL until april 2017). there is also a chance it might be your only option if the computer cant run newer versions.

you could try the mate edition instead, i'm not sure what features it has, besides the mint tools. it may or may not have lag problems or glitches due to being based on an obsolete desktop. it really just depends, people get different eexperiences with different systems.



or linux lite:

https://www.linuxliteos.com/

Answer 3

Hi There,



You have narrowed your selection to at least three good choices.



I have tried a few versions of Linux Mint ( all versions were very nice ) and Zorin ( I liked Zorin too ).

Both of these distributions worked "out of the box" and had good applications. Either should be a good choice.



Tried Arch but it did not even run as a live Cd and there seems to be the need for using the command line a lot. I tried on a laptop and desktop but results were not good.



Have not tried Netrunner but after reading reviews it sounds very interesting. Probably will download and try that one myself.



My recommendations: first try Netrunner but if it does not work for you then go for Mint.

Hope this helps,

Al

Answer 4

I'm not giving up XP just because Microsoft is dropping it.



Do you want to learn linux, or just use it?



If you want to learn, stay away from Ubuntu and Mint and the other Debian derivatives. Go for a more pure distro like Slackware. It is ideal for the beginner and seasoned pro alike.



If you just want to use it with minimal learning, go with Ubuntu. There is a very large user community to help you. Ubuntu isn't all that great, but it is linux for the masses, and is far better than Windows will ever be. It gets the job done.