Windows 10

[Refugee]

The KDE desktop offered by Linux is pretty close to XP in looks and functionality.
I have been using it for a few years now.
If you install to a new hard drive the old hard drive can be put back in after the install has been completed and updated with the slave jumper fitted or the boot sequence set accordingly. It can also be set to dual boot from a single hard drive subject to there being enough space and you are prepared to risk a big mistake even though the risk is pretty low and it is the default is to keep the old copy of your disk operating system.
I use PClLinuxOS with the KDE desktop.

[Mark Hennessy]

[rant]
Call me a luddite but I like the look of W2K (and W95, W98 before it) and have XP in "classic" view. No gimmicks,  no slides,  no fades, just everything happening as fast as possible when you ask for it. The more I hear about W8 and W10 the more I feel the pull of Linux. The question is: "Which Linux?" I think the answer for me is one that looks and feels as much like W2K as possible. I'm not scared of command line stuff - I did MSDOS back in the 1980s and still use the command prompt on occasion.

I still use Office 2000 and see no reason to move on. They seem to do everyting I need of them. Though DOCX and XLSX files are a nuisance. I've got the add-on that allows Office 2000 to view them. Otherwise it's Libreoffice which feels slow by comparison.
[/rant]

Luddite!

I quite liked the XP "Luna" theme. The blue and green does feel a bit dated, but a few years back I discovered the "Zune" theme, which is a free download from Microsoft, and feels a bit more modern, being a bit more monochrome. With a bit of gentle customisation, it's very nice.

I've never liked XP in classic mode. But I'm quite happy with that look on my Windows 98 machine. In fact, I spent an age copying the (subtly different) colours from W2k to my W98 machine, which are a bit warmer and nicer. I have a .reg file that W98 users can merge to get the theme - works well...

Generally, I switch off most animation and other screen effects - they mostly just get in the way. I don't mind the Aero transparency in W7, but I change the opacity setting to make it less transparent, and usually choose a monochrome theme rather than the default bright blue.

We have Office 2010 at work, and I must admit that I think it's a big improvement on earlier versions. That wasn't my first impression by any means, but it's a big part of the job, so you just have to get on with learning how to use it. I honestly wouldn't go back. LibreOffice is good for the price, but after 10+ years of development they still can't fix the screen drawing routines! Perhaps they need to move away from Java?

As for Linux, be careful what you wish for. Like you, I'm not afraid of the command line, and as well as DOS, I became quite familiar with OpenVMS, which is a lovely OS. However, the Linux command line is absolutely terrible - I hate it with a complete and all-consuming passion. The total lack of consistency between commands is the main bugbear. I do the absolute minimum possible with it, and resent having to touch it at all (because if I need to do something at the command line, then the GUI tools have failed me). With Windows, I generally do things at the command line because it's a quicker alternative to wading through the GUI, but it's a positive choice I make, rather than a path I'm forced to go down. And in practice, you have a problem, you search the forums, and in-between the usual rabid "newbie haters" you'll eventually find something that looks promising, so you'll copy and paste that into a terminal window and perhaps it'll fix your problem. In the process, you've learnt precisely nothing, and you'll probably never run into that exact thing again anyway. And anything clever you do pick up probably won't be applicable to another distro anyway. Horrible!

But, I have several Linux machines, and I use them daily. I appreciate the Windows-like stability (yes, really), and the fact it's free. I don't appreciate how resource-heavy most builds are, and although I'm trying my best, I'm not convinced by Ubuntu's ideas about GUI design. A few years back I was quite impressed with L-Ubuntu, but it had no way to set a proxy server via the GUI (and I wasn't going to do it at the command line, thank you very much!), so it was no use for work. Generally, I prefer distros based on Debian, and think the package management is very good indeed.

In short, it's far easier to have lots of machines so that you can get the advantages of all of them, and you're not tied in to a particular bit of hardware or a particular OS. KVMs are great bits of kit for that! I pick up second-hand machines for peanuts - and keep a stock of spares. But then I find it interesting. I can understand that many regard PCs as tools, and just want them to work. Understandable, but not the reality, sadly. Like all tools, the better you understand them, the easier life is.

[Nick]

Actually, the thing that I REALLY hate is MS's implementation of User Access Control (UAC)

When UAC is enabled (the default on W7 and later), applications cannot write into Windows Protected file trees, e.g. Program Files.

This is done to prevent virus and other unpleasantness, such as over-writing a Windows DLL or something used by another application. It also allows different users on a machine to have distinct settings files for a given application when that application by default puts its setting in a shared folder (typically the application's installation folder).

UAC will then create a hidden virtual mirror directory, typically C:\Users\\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\ where it will put read-write data for the application.

This can cause real confusion, as the AppData directory is normally hidden. When you try to look for the settings file in the expected directory under C:\Program Files\ its not there, yet it is really but hidden in the mirror copy

Mind you, UNIX does something remarkably similar to solve the same problem...

[Mark Hennessy]

The library shortcuts etc. are called symlinks - there are two types: soft & hard.

Mostly, you will only see "soft" symlinks, e.g. "My Documents" or "Downloads" - a soft link simply transparently redirectls the access to the real location of the files/directory.

This is not so important on a domestic Windows system, but on commercial systems that are organised as domains where users have "roaming profiles" where their data follows them regardless what machine in the domain they login to, symlinks are vital.

Typically, in a domain with roaming user profiles, all a user's personal data resides on a network file share that can be accessed from any machine in the domain - when a domain user logs into a host, their "My Documents", "Downloads" etc. links are set automatically to refer to the domain data (though it can also be cached on the local host too). All very cunning...

Yes, that we have here. On my work machine, "Documents" isn't within the usual C:\Users\ area; it's a server share. The Sync Centre is used to ensure the files are available off-line. It works reasonably well, but I preferred the old system of knowing that we had an F drive which was on the server, and anything that we wanted off-line had to be manually copied to our local D drive and copied back later. I much prefer to keep control of things rather than letting the computer do it.

That said, it is possible to to solve this problem - for about 5 years now I've used Dropbox, and it's never missed a trick. I don't understand why Microsoft can't come up with something of its own that works as well. It's one of those unusual bits of software that "just works". I'm on the verge of actually paying them to use it now, but if anyone would allow me to send them a referral, I'll get another half a GB of free storage space

[Nick]

+1 for Dropbox.

Simple. Effective. Works. Used it for years.

I'll also be happy to do referals for folks who want to try it out

[ppppenguin]

My main PC is a Quad core (Q6600 CPU I think) that is probably 7 or 8 years old. It all runs well but could be faster when I'm doing VHDL synthesis and Xilinx place/route. At some point I'll get back to my "new" PC. which was a friend's cast off dating from late 2009. CPU is Intel i7-860 2.8GHz. It has a W7 home premium licence. I did some experiments with it, both 64 and 32 bit versions. I also fitted a couple of 500GB SSDs in RAID1 (mirror).

I would like to go to W7 64 bit but the version of the Xilinx tools I'm using doesn't like it. I can go to a newer version of the Xilinx tools which should be OK but I will still need the older one from time to time. I did some experiments with Virtualbox https://www.virtualbox.org/ which is a brilliant bit of software though with something of a learning curve. I fitted an XP VM and ran the Xilinx tools. Still faster than my current main PC but rather slower than the new PC in native 32 bit W7. Hence I really want to run the Xilinx software on the host OS without a VM.

The way I'm heading is W7 64 bit as host OS, newer XIlinx tools and as many other programs as possible running native in W7 64 bit. Then a VM with XP for stuff that doesn't like W7 64 bit and possibly a VM with W98 for DOS stuff that was never 100% happy under XP.

The trouble with all this is that it seems to take ages doing OS instals etc and I'm not that sort of geek. Better things to do with my life.

I also wonder how much of the performance boost was due to the SSDs.

[Refugee]

How good are SSDs now?
Last time I looked at them they were expensive and not very reliable.

[Nick]

How good are SSDs now?
Last time I looked at them they were expensive and not very reliable.

Good and cheap now

I have just bought a load of Crucial MX200s (256Gb) - GBP 73 incl VAT - Crucial is the retail arm of Micron, one of the top 5 semiconductor companies in the world.

These are not cheap SSDs - they are full SATAIII - 555MB/s read and 500MB/s write. Never had a premium SSD fail on me yet (and we have 100s).

They'll outlive you

You can get cheaper SSDs but they will be a compromise - SSDs consist of a mix of memory technologies and very clever "wear leveling" controllers - "hot-spot" disk locations are mapped to special faster and more expensive/longer lasting memory - the cheap drives have none or very little of this fater/longer lasting memory.

I love them, both as boot disks and data disks for our developers (they make big system builds/recompiles a factor of 10 faster).

[ppppenguin]

My pair of Crucial 500GB cost me about £150 each last year. That's a lot more than spinning rust but I reckon it will be worth it.

[Refugee]

The block of fast memory appears to have made them a lot more reliable.
The branded ones are certainly the way to go and they are not that far out of my budget now.