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Topic: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP? (Read 29644 times)

After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

I have a 'nettop' — a smaller type of laptop with a somehow weaker processor and all.
Now it runs by Windows XP Home edition, I somehow like this shit and at the same time don't get, eg, Windows 7.
I guess that there's Windows 8 which is proposed to upgrade the system — but will it be an UPgrade? What does that Windows 8 look like? Does it resemble 7 or rather something else? Is it worth taking or are there any other such OSs one could well use on such a thing as a Samsung NP?

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #1 –
I haven't tried Windows 8 on any netbooks nor do I have a license, but Xubuntu gives me better battery life than Windows 7—especially with TLP.

Instead of a LiveCD you can make a LiveUSB to test it out on your hardware.

If you decide to go with Windows 8, you might want to install Classic Shell.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #2 –
I care least about batteries because I run it out of the socket. What I care is the user interface (and also file system). Sustainability with most software is desireable.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Josh on
I care least about batteries because I run it out of the socket. What I care is the user interface (and also file system). Sustainability with most software is desireable.

If you want compatibility with your current software, Windows 8 is likely to be better—but not necessarily. One of the reasons I upgraded from Windows XP to Debian Squeeze (6) is simply because upgrading to Vista/7 broke tons of things regardless, so I had no real reason to stay with Windows. Note that you can also lock down your XP significantly which may mitigate alleged security dangers.

Quote from: Josh on
I have no idea what [a LiveCD] is.

You can simply follow the instructions on the website I linked to. It allows you to test a Linux distro without affecting your system in any way. For my recommendations of distros to test see here.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
Note that you can also lock down your XP significantly which may mitigate alleged security dangers.
Quote from: Dedoimedo
By now, you know that Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit is the best security software for the Windows operating system.
I have a MSE up and running now.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #7 –
ׂ

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #9 –
I've used Win 7 since it first came out and I love it. It's much better than XP in that it barely ever crashes - in fact, I haven't seen it crash yet, come to think of it.

I find Win 8 is made for tablets and phones, NOT desktops/laptops. I think Win 8 is ridiculous and stupid. I hate touch screen and have no use for touch screen plus you have to learn Windows all over again. I doubt I'll update for years, if ever.

Win 7 runs beautifully on all my computers but I don't have any low end old computers so I really don't know how well it works if you don't have lots of ram.  I just know I really like it, I still use it all the time.

I also note Win 7 is very compatible with most hardware and software I've used over the years. I still run Office 2003, for example, as I prefer it.  I still use a ton of old programs I've had for years and they run well on Win 7.

I've never noticed Win 7 is slow but, then again, I have pretty new computers so they have lots of capability.

If you don't have a touch screen and don't want to relearn Windows again, I'd stay away from 8 for awhile at least. It might be good for brand new users but, to me, it's just wrong.

I've never tried Linux and I hate Mac/Apple so Win 7 it is for me.

I'm sorry, I don't know what Samsung NP is :(

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: myminpins on
I've used Win 7 since it first came out and I love it. It's much better than XP in that it barely ever crashes - in fact, I haven't seen it crash yet, come to think of it.

I'm inclined to think it mostly comes down to hardware and drivers. In that sense the Microsoft verification process is probably the most important improvement they ever made, despite the general stability of the NT kernel.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #11 –
@Josh

I don't think it makes sense to upgrade your XP because you probably won't have much joy with Win7 (or even less with Win8) and your old hardware.

@Frenzie

I had w2k before but no XP. However your link made me curious.

Quote
EMET v4 needs Microsoft .NET Framework v4. How poetic.


Indeed poetic :)   At this point I stopped reading on.
Install a risky framework so you can harden better your system ;)

The .Net Framework might ease the life of programmers at some cost. This cost in form of an additionally risk has to be payed by the user.

Reminds me of Java which gets praised by many programmers because it works on all platforms.
It's like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #12 –
For best results you do still need Windows 7. The point remains that if you run applications as restricted as possible, they can't do much harm either. And it's surely telling that Chrome won't run with restrictions enabled while Opera and Firefox will. :D

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #13 –
ׂ

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #14 –
For what it's worth, I'm running Windows 8 now. I wouldn't let horror stories of having to re-learn Windows throw you, it turns out that you can live with 8's worst touch-screen habits (I use the keyboard a bit more because the built-in mouse is a bit "touchy") and in truth I hardly touch the screen at all.

Whether you'll even have to deal with "touch" on an older unit depends on whether your unit has the hardware support for it. If not, then Windows 8 will look a little different but will act similar to what you're used to on the older OS.

Note: I made the jump from a machine that ran XP Media Center Edition (based on XP Pro but with a few more "toys") to this machine which runs Windows 8, and am at a loss to figure what the problem was "having to learn Windows again". It just wasn't that hard to work my way through, though finding some of the things-- like Control Panel for example-- took a bit of "feel and grope" the first time through. It would help if they would ship these things with at least a six-page book showing where to find stuff, but they don't so you just have to muddle through. Much of the stuff you're reading about the difficulties of learning 8 is that it's a little different in appearance. Much the same sort of thing happened when Windows 95 came out-- I remember hearing people say it was hard to learn hard to understand and so on and so on, what it was is-- different. We've been running on Windows 95 type user interfaces since then until 8 came along, and the changes made in 8 are mainly cosmetic. If you have enough on the ball to successfully turn on a computer, sign on to a browser and get to this website, you should be able to figure out Windows 8 without too much trouble.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: mjmsprt40 on
If you have enough on the ball to successfully turn on a computer, sign on to a browser and get to this website, you should be able to figure out Windows 8 without too much trouble.
  Probably, but it's not always about learning how to use a new GUI. We Linux users might notice this more than Windows users because of the many desktop environments available for the former OS, but sometimes the GUI in some environments might be easy enough to figure out but are inefficient to work with. An example of this would be Gnome . The reason for the inefficiency is that it requires am extra step or two to do simple tasks. I'm just wondering if Win 8 has that same issue, since it, like Gnome, really seems to be designed for a tablet instead of desktop. 

Now if Josh should upgrade a newer version of Windows or maybe try Linux depends on a couple factors. First of all, can his machine even handle Windows 8? As I recall, the Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit can tell him if machine can theoretically use it and what on his machine might be compatible. I'm not sure that it can tell him if the OS will bog down his system.  j7n already mentioned slow GUI, but what I mean taking up so much ram and CPU that it makes the entire machine slow. Another factor is if he really needs his Windows software. It's doubtful he really needs WMP, since there are a multitude of media players for Linux (some, like Banshee to me are superior to anything on Windows* .) However, if something is vital to him, he's better off sticking with Windows. If his machine barely meets the specs for Win 8, but he really needs Windows software, he might be better of just sticking with XP until he buys a new computer.

I personally like Xubuntu. I can run Firefox, LibreOffice, a few misc apps for the same system resources that the Win 7 OS alone typically requires. The only exception to this is when Fx refuses to release memory even though I closed the tabs. In addition, it's noticeably faster on a 2.8 GHZ X2 processor with 3 gigs ram. Those are modest specs, but most likely better than Josh's nettop.  Plus, I can customise it more to my eccentric tastes more than I can Windows (without installing dodgy third party themes that probably install a few "presents." ) :p

*note: There is a version available for Windows, but it's alpha software that didn't work all that well for me under Windows 7.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: mjmsprt40 on

I made the jump from a machine that ran XP Media Center Edition (based on XP Pro but with a few more "toys") to this machine which runs Windows 8, and am at a loss to figure what the problem was "having to learn Windows again".


Well, it depends on what one understands by 'learn Windows' ;)

I knew xp because I've worked with computers with xp on them and had kind of knowledge about Vista because I helped some friends to set it up.
Private, I made the jump from w2k to win7 and it took me a few days until I 'learned' how to configure win7 according to my needs and according to my concept of how the OS should perform. (uninstalling some MS and others trash, disabling unneeded services, hardening the system/network and so on)
BTW, Windows Explorer in win7 is an impertinence but there are alternatives for this peace of crap.

Of course, without any personal needs or concept of how the OS should perform I could have started to use win7 as it was, right out of the box, immediately.
In that case you don't have to 'learn' anything about the OS you are using and you don't need any understanding for how the OS performs.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #17 –
Here's a useful tutorial on Win 8 interface https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi8NpwiEuzc You will learn how to find the taskbar and desktop from among the tiles, and how to snap windows so that you can open multiple apps/windows on screen, not just one full-screen app.

I personally am happy to have been able to dump Windows. I ditched it at Vista. I have a few friends who use 7. Nobody uses 8.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #18 –
Erf. Looks like a nightmare in three minutes. I'm not sure why I would want to click on the top left and pull down when I can just have a taskbar to easily see what applications I have running and switch between them (maybe for saving a few pixels of screenspace, an issue less relevant has resolution and screensizes continue to climb?) or click on an invisible Start button, for example.

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: Sanguinemoon on
Probably, but it's not always about learning how to use a new GUI. We Linux users might notice this more than Windows users because of the many desktop environments available for the former OS, but sometimes the GUI in some environments might be easy enough to figure out but are inefficient to work with. An example of this would be Gnome . The reason for the inefficiency is that it requires am extra step or two to do simple tasks.

This. So much.

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=15040722
Quote from: Frenzie
I usually have no need for the menubar per se either. I toggle it in Opera with Ctrl + F8, but for the most part I simply know that Alt+C opens my CSS menu and Alt+U opens my Unicode menu. They open in the locations where they would if the menubar were enabled. However, that's just because I'm intimately familiar with it. In LibreOffice I do generally need the menubar to be visible, and think it's (slightly) more efficient than the ribbon in MS Office.

In Opera/Blink none of this works because it's all under Alt+F. So it's either more clicks and more mouse movement or more keypresses. Hardly good for preventing RSI.


I think what we can now call classical interfaces are intuitive while allowing for efficiency. Efficiency comes in the form of keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys in MS speech) and menu access keys—rarely with the mouse. Even if there is no predefined shortcut to page formatting in LibreOffice, Alt+O, P is almost no worse. I'll point out that unlike Chropera and Chromium, Microsoft actually bothered to properly preserve such functionality. But I find it convoluted and messy compared to a simple list.

On the flipside, Windows 8 and Gnome Shell seem to feel the mouse by itself isn't nearly inefficient enough already—they add several extra required movements and clicks!

Re: After XP — OS alternatives for Samsung NP?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: krake on
Well, it depends on what one understands by 'learn Windows'
(Frans, your "Quick quote" stopped cping smilies!:/)
I need it customisable.
The interface - customisable. The appearance - customisable. The orders, icons, metadata - customisable.
I need that the "switch the damn machine off" button opens THE THREE-BUTTON MENU rather than - EVER - just shut the machine down... Without any confirmation asked from me!..