Making Plans 929 Posted March 28, 2016 My wife still uses Vista. It''s a bit slow now but it''s fine for what she needs to do and she''s very happy with it.She runs her PC around 3 or 4 hours a day everyday and has no desire to upgrade her PC or her operating system.She''s never had any major problems with Vista - it has never ever crashed, it doesn''t freeze and she''s never had a blue screen once since she bought the PC in 2008. But then again she doesn''t try to be too clever and mess about with things that she don''t understand. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hogesar 9,502 Posted March 29, 2016 [quote user="alex_ncfc"]Makes me laugh when people slate Windows 10 as containing "spyware" that phones home to Microsoft, analyses keystrokes, etc - this has been in Windows for years, at least since 7 and partly in XP and Vista before it. It''s only now you get the opportunity in 10 to switch these things off, so if anything, it''s an advantage to move to 10. 7 and 8/8.1 both do exactly the same telemetry gathering as 10 does by default.As for Vista, nothing wrong with it, its only mistake was being way ahead of its time - was solid as a rock on at least 3 machines I had and never crashed, froze or BSOD''d once. Nothing wrong with the OS, but everything wrong with people trying to install it on their ancient machines and then wondering why it didn''t play ball. Go figure.[/quote]Partially true, but not really the users fault. If you''re going to release an OS to the public as an upgrade to XP (which, let''s be honest, Vista was rushed and hurried as Microsoft were planning on completely changing the OS business model), you make sure it''s compatible with most of the hardware running on current XP machines. You also try to improve performance of OS''s, not reduce them. If i remember correctly Vista had something like 20 million more lines of code than XP - was a much bigger install and then to top it all off, there was a lot of software which didn''t run properly on Vista either. Again, probably down to the rushed release of the OS meaning developers had limited time to ensure compatibility.The operating system itself wasn''t that bad but what it wanted to do (eat resources, constantly access the hard drive) wasn''t realistic against the typical components in peoples PC''s at the time. In business - no IT team with half a braincell would migrate from XP to Vista and hence, it failed. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain Obvious 1 Posted March 29, 2016 Windows 10 is fine. The reported ''spying'' is blown out of proportion.If some anonymised telemetry bothers you, just download Spybot Anti-Beacon and it''ll turn that all off.Linux is fine if you don''t mind wrestling with niggling issues. I''ve yet to encounter a default Linux install that isn''t riddled with loose ends, even with a beginner-friendly distro like Ubuntu. If you''re tech savvy that''s fine, but for your average Joe it''d be a bit much. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
93vintage 16 Posted March 30, 2016 Linux is getting more and more commercialised via the control exerted by Red Hat. Google ''anti systemd'' to get an idea of what''s happening, and you''ll see that it''s not all freedom of choice anymore.What might surprise people is that a couple of years ago Microsoft was ahead of both Apple and Linux in terms of security mitigations, which simply put is the ability to prevent software bugs from being turned into security exploits.Linux in general doesn''t care much about security, and most distros don''t bother to employ hardening techniques. That said, unless you''re running a server you''re probably not much of a target.Windows however is much more popular and hence much more of a target. I''m unsure as to the exact timeline of MS''s increased security, but I''d have thought that Vista users might benefit in this area if they upgraded to Windows 8 or 10. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
littleyellowbirdie 2,412 Posted March 30, 2016 I just installed Linux Mint on an old laptop for somebody and I must say, I thought it was pretty tidy. Only bit where I had to get my hands slightly dirty was installing a proprietary Broadcom driver. Generally though, if Linux is ever going to get any serious traction with run-of-the-mill users, it''s going to have to start converging and I think that''s where systemd comes in. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites