Say Goodbye to Windows XP - StartUbuntu Project

[amjjawad]

The Dutch IT news site Webwereld mentioned Start Ubuntu!

http://translate.google.com/translat...ijvers&act=url
(Google Translate link. Translation is pretty horrible. It also changed Start Ubuntu to Ubuntu Start for some weird reason)

Good to see we are getting some publicity

Original: http://webwereld.nl/beveiliging/7929...achterblijvers

And, Web Upd8 has published about StartUbuntu too

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/webupd8/pos...51870366336203

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/10191298...ts/5mK5Vp6UEuj

[Erik1984]

Nice to read about this in Dutch Good work to attract so much publicity for it.

[amjjawad]

Another website but this time, with Italian Language

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StartUbuntu/...pread_The_Word

[monkeybrain20122]

Good initiative, though I don't think it should be targeting just xp users, like others say many XP machines are old and in need of upgrading anyway and true that there are people with newer hardware running XP (my brother) but they are probably rare or have special reasons (x program or printer only work with XP etc) By focusing just on XP it may give the inaccurate impression that Linux is a 2nd tier OS good only for very old hardware.Maybe you can add a statement "Ubuntu will be great too if you hate Windows 8!" Indeed if I have a very old XP machine my choice wouldn't be Ubuntu, something like debian with a light desktop (LXDE or xfce) would make more sense (I had one of these which finally died. Couldn't get any *buntu after 11.10 to work on it probably because kernel dropped support for something very old, Debian Lenny worked though)

[amjjawad]

Good initiative, though I don't think it should be targeting just xp users

For now, StartUbuntu is focusing on Windows XP, simply because: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StartUbuntu#Why

like others say many XP machines are old and in need of upgrading anyway

"Do not fix it if it is not yet broken" - I do believe in this

My personal theory: if any upgrade would even cost 1$ and that upgrade is pointless as long as there is a Linux System that can be installed on that machine and breathe new life into it, then why to upgrade when the current available resources are more than enough?

Another theory (which is Linux Arch's way of thinking): Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
As most Hardware Upgrade is related to RAM Upgrade. Changing a HDD is not a real upgrade IMHO beside HDDs could die faster than RAM. As for CPU, again, if it works and do the tasks I want, I would never upgrade.

But yes, this is really depend on the user him/her self. What exactly that user is doing? Graphics? Gaming? Browsing and Emails?

and true that there are people with newer hardware running XP (my brother) but they are probably rare or have special reasons (x program or printer only work with XP etc)

We have no data or numbers. There is no time to run a survey nor waste any second and energy to do that. So, we don't know how many with newer Hardware are using Windows XP? and to be honest, no need to go into this discussion. The whole project is to make life easier not complicated

By focusing just on XP it may give the inaccurate impression that Linux is a 2nd tier OS good only for very old hardware.

Again, it could appear this is focusing on Windows XP Users only and that is true, that is the main focus but no one says 'ONLY' for Windows XP
When websites with different languages publish articles about StartUbuntu, many users will read that and surely they have different kinds of systems. So, who said we are ONLY targeting Windows XP? but definitely, we should focus on that because April 2014 is not far away!

Maybe you can add a statement "Ubuntu will be great too if you hate Windows 8!"

We are spreading 'Love' not 'Hate'.

Indeed if I have a very old XP machine my choice wouldn't be Ubuntu, something like debian with a light desktop (LXDE or xfce) would make more sense

You are speaking about 'yourself' but for someone who never heard nor seen Linux? I don't think that would be an easy option but that would push him miles away and make him/her go for Windows 7/8 and this is not what we want to do.

(I had one of these which finally died. Couldn't get any *buntu after 11.10 to work on it probably because kernel dropped support for something very old, Debian Lenny worked though)

For 3 years with Lubuntu, I've seen so rare cases when someone has a machine that can't run Lubuntu. We are not talking here about P2 with 64MB RAM, simply because, these machines can not be used nowadays. Why? not because there is no system to be installed on such hardware BUT, the real main reason is: EVEN if you have installed Linux on such machine, what exactly are you expecting to do? we are in 2013 and P2 with 64MB RAM can not perform any task. I have P2 with 64MB RAM. I have installed 11.10 and it worked. But, that was the as far as I managed to go. Beyond that, it is impossible. Any application you may think of, it will need much more a P2 and 64MB RAM and I don't think Windows XP can be installed on that machine because it was installed on my P2 and 64MB RAM and I had to wait 10mins for a right click!!!!

So, if someone really really still has such very ancient Hardware, I'd suggest he/she keeps it as a history because it would be a total waste of time to recruit that. We are talking about machines which can perform at least the nowadays tasks. Having that said, we should not look below 256MB RAM.

I struggled ONE month just to install Linux on this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=152
I did that to learn, prove something to myself and to others that nothing impossible with Linux but that was just a test for fun, learning and maybe promoting Linux. That was 2 years ago. If I have the same machine toady, I would not waste my time with it.

[monkeybrain20122]

We have no data or numbers. There is no time to run a survey nor waste any second and energy to do that. So, we don't know how many with newer Hardware are using Windows XP? and to be honest, no need to go into this discussion. The whole project is to make life easier not complicated


.

You don't need to actually do a survey to take a stab at estimating the percentage. After all science makes predictions before you confirm (or refute) them with data.

How do people acquire Windows? Either OEM or they install it themselves. If You have post Vista hardware then OEM would not have put xp in there, how many Windows users who buy OEM machines would go through the troubles of swapping out the default OS? if you purchase a non OEM machine after Windows 7 release what would be the reason for you to go out of your way to buy a retail copy of XP while Windows 7 was the featured OS everywhere? I was in Asia in 2009 and I had a hard time finding XP in retail and it was actually more expensive than 7 or Vista because of the short supply.

So people who are running Windows XP are people who acquired their hardware before 2009 and haven't upgraded the OS (granted that Vista sucks so there would be incentive to stay with XP even if Vista is available), and a small number who need to get XP "out of the way" for some reasons, but it is reasonable to assume that *some* people who have pre Windows vista hardware did end upgrading so that left even less XP users.

The only people left out are those running unauthorized copies of XP (i.e cracked versions), it is hard to estimate how many such people are out there, but in countries like China and India it probably accounts for a very large proportion if not the majority of XP use today. Not sure if they really worry about MS support if they run a cracked OS.

EDITED: there are of course enterprise or business users that are still using XP, but they have their own upgrade logic and schedules so the campaign is not targeting these people anyway.

[walterorlin]

Some people might have multiple sets of hardware and kept the old computers around some. I know I did with one of my lubuntu machines. The first one is an old xp computer the internal hard drive broke on but with a workaround with plop so I have a machine that has 512 mb ram and a 2tb hard drive because that was the only external one I had around. I bought another comp in 2009 so it not just don't upgrade hardware it can be not getting rid of old stuff as well.

[mastablasta]

well i planned to upgrade before (max out the ram at 16GB, add SSD, better dual core CPU and yes windows 7 :-p), but at the time i had no money to spend on that. while later RAM got a lot more expencive (i still upgraded it a little to 4 GB). but CPU remained single core as they stopped selling duals and hexas for my slot. so in the end i decided not to upgrade and continue to run XP for some time. i will probably add Kubuntu to one partition.
i used to run win98 SE ifor a really long tie. i would probably not switch to XP at the time on that old maschine but the 98 couldn't read the 1GB stick of ram porpperly.

[sudodus]

Old personal computers are often desktops (some years ago you got more performance per euro than with a laptop). And it is fairly easy to find another used hard disk drive (for example from a scrapped old machine). So if you want dual boot, it may be easier to install a second internal drive and install Lubuntu or another Ubuntu flavour into it. Much easier and less risky than to house-clean and shrink the Windows partition, that might be rather full

And the installation would be done easily with the One Button Installer

[makitso]

I belong to a computer club with guys with an age group of 45-74. It's interesting that quite a few are on winxp. I just sent out an email to the guys asking why; is it cost, HW, games, or what? Will post responses.