Horrible experience with Windows XP...

[Kdar]

Recently I was building HTPC for one of our family friends, and because of Netflix, I installed my Windows license for them, since I don't use it for almost 2 year.

After that, I realized how much I forgot about Windows, what a horrible piece of cr*p it is.
The installation of Windows XP was just horrible. First of all, to my initial surprise, I realized that I actually need a CD from motherboard to install drivers for Ethernet, audio and few other things (something that usually just works under Ubuntu/Linux). For the moment I was kind of confused... "Why I can't connect to a wired connection?"
Then it reminded me of all those reboots that I need to do under Windows, for even a small patch or update, wasting huge amount of it.
Then I was fighting battle with SP3, trying to install it almost 5 times, with each trial lasting 3-4 hours (with failure at the end).
Then I opened up Start menu and wow.. what unorganized mess!... You don't have "Applications, Games, Graphics... etc" like you do in Gnome or KDE, just everything piled together.

Fresh install of Ubuntu at least provides you with most basic things, you can actually start using it, without having to install anything. With Windows you get almost nothing, or at least very very very limited amount of things.

I don't know how it is with Windows 7, but after this, I am sure I will not go back to Windows.

[Bachstelze]

Oh, look, it's this thread again...

[Kdar]

Could not restrain myself from letting go of all those emotions.

[donkyhotay]

Welcome to the club, we get lots of disgruntled ex-windows users here (myself included). There are some that don't mind windows and dual-boot. Admittedly this probably will end up in recurring discussions.

[Quake]

Come on! You can't compare Windows XP, a 2001 OS, to today's linux! It doesn't make sense, it's like comparing a 2001 Mandrake distro with Windows 7.

To truly compare Windows and Linux, try Windows 7.

[Spice Weasel]

Come on! You can't compare Windows XP, a 2001 OS, to today's linux! It doesn't make sense, it's like comparing a 2001 Mandrake distro with Windows 7.

To truly compare Windows and Linux, try Windows 7.

XP was still worse than 2001 Linux distributions.

[Brunellus]

This is an OLD thread, and should not have been revived.


EDIT:

This thread was inadvertently closed for necromancy. That was my mistake. I am re-opening the thread.

Forgive the inadvertent closure, but it does look like yet another manifestation of what is, essentially, the same thread complaining about WinXP that I've seen everywhere on the Internet for years now.

[drawkcab]

I was going to put my xp license on my HTPC for similar reasons but I have SP2 and I needed to slipstream some drivers to run my dual core atom nettop.

At that point I became really lazy and just fired up Ubuntu.

[Kdar]

What do you mean by slipstream?
I have Atom ion too.

[linux18]

Come on! You can't compare Windows XP, a 2001 OS, to today's linux! It doesn't make sense, it's like comparing a 2001 Mandrake distro with Windows 7.

To truly compare Windows and Linux, try Windows 7.
2001 mandrake is better than windows 7

[Khakilang]

Been there, done that, see it, kill it and now I move on.

[drawkcab]

What do you mean by slipstream?
I have Atom ion too.

You can use this program called nlite to effectively edit the xp .iso--a lot of people use it to shave down the bloat too.

http://www.nliteos.com/

So if you want xp to run on your ion nettop, you need to slipstream a few drivers into it (I forget which ones but there are howtos to found via google) in order to facilitate the installation process. (I'm not even sure xp sp3 will install)

In other words, if you have an xp license then you can get xp sp2 to install on your atom ion with some fussing around.

Netflix will love you!