Ubuntu (or my riddance of Windows)

[Southpaw]

Linux is free (As are Open Office and Libre Office), no need to buy a distro. You can check out http://www.distrowatch.com to see which distros are the most popular at the moment. Although I guess they simplify it a bit by mailing a DVD?

My favorite, and the one I use daily on my laptop, is Elementary OS. It's super simple and clean. I've even installed it for family members who only browse the web and check email, but somehow end up with all sorts of malware. Total success so far. If you can live outside of the Windows ecosystem, and don't NEED to run anything that requires Windows, then there is absolutely no reason to be running it. The biggest plus with Linux is freeing yourself of all the garbage and security issues that plague Windows.

Bought it because I wanted a DVD.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[JS22]

Bought it because I wanted a DVD.

Thanks for the feedback.

No worries. Soon enough you will be distro hopping and have a shoebox full of linux flash drives.

"Let me try this distro. Last one, I swear..."

But yeah, Ubuntu is pretty much the standard and really, really solid. Can't go wrong there.

 

[NoelPHX]

I just download and launched a VHD of ubuntu on Windows 10 in under 5 minutes. I also have no problems with Windows and don't need to change either though.

 

[Chaz]

Just had another thought. Since SSD hard drives are the rage now, the old style spindrives are very cheap. I can pick one up stick it in a portable case and run the UNIX/Linux OS through a USB port and boot off of that. On to page 24.

That will work but USB is very slow.

If you have the room in the computer case installing the drive on the internal bus is preferred.


To dual boot between them more permanently Linux will install something called grub. This is a boot section on the active, primary disk that will boot and provide the list for which OS you want to boot from.


Also look at virtualbox. You can mount the disk (DVD) in the virtual machine and install it to a vhd file on your hard drive.

And seriously get off of XP. Make it a vhd (disk2vhd) to back it up and move on.