[GTALUG] Advice -- Building Debian 8 PC To Replace Win XP PC;

[Steve Petrie, P.Eng.]

Hello Loui,

Thanks for your message.

My comments are inline below.

Steve

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Loui Chang" <louipc.ist at gmail.com>
To: "Steve Petrie, P.Eng." <apetrie at aspetrie.net>; "GTALUG Talk" 
<talk at gtalug.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2016 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Advice -- Building Debian 8 PC To Replace Win XP 
PC;


> On Mon 25 Jul 2016 10:47 -0400, Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk wrote:

<snip>

>> I have almost no Linux / Unix experience.
>
> After reading this thread for awhile I feel like I need to be some 
> kind of voice
> of reason here. I think it would be unwise to replace your main PC by 
> struggling
> with a new OS, struggling with hardware/build, etc.
>
> My advice:
> - Get yourself an inexpensive off the shelf Windows 10 computer.
>   Windows 10 isn't really the nightmare that Win 8 was in terms of UI.
>   You should do just fine with it.
> - Use free and open source software on Windows as much as you can.
> - Here you can figure out how to export your emails into a 
> free/universal format
> - If you still feel like trying Linux, then make yourself some Live 
> USB flash
>   drives to play around with.
> - etc...
>

It would certainly be a lot less work for me, simply to get an 
off-the-shelf Windows 10 PC, to replace the existing Windows XP PC. But 
there would still be a lot of work, considering that there is no 
transparent upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 10.

I do not want to continue to use a Microsoft OS as my primary OS.

My concession to Microsoft, is to purchase an OEM-license Windows 7 for 
installation on the new Linux PC, as a fall-back environment for Windows 
apps (from the existing Win XP PC or not).

The main reasons I want to get away from Microsoft:

1. From what I understand, Microsoft has been known to sneakily 
automatically "update" a PC to Windows 10 from an earlier version of 
Windows. Is this true? Regardless, I already loathe Microsoft enough 
that I have no desire to continue using a MS OS.

2, I have read that Windows 10 gathers usage statistics and delivers 
them to Microsoft. No thanks !!

3. Linux, being open source, is known to be more secure than a Microsoft 
OS. Plus, considering that so few desktops run Linux, as compared to 
Windows, this makes Linux a much less "interesting" target for malware 
practitioners.

* * *
* * *

Although I have little hands-on Linux experience, I am a "retired" 
software engineer, with over 30 years independent contract programming 
experience.

I have already confirmed that the critical apps I use on Win XP, have 
suitable versions / replacements on Linux.

Years ago, I did some extensive progamming work on a large insurance 
company's IBM AIX (flavour of Unix), using the Korn shell. Hooked up 
that company, to an online securities trading service network, so 3rd. 
party stockbrokers can sell to their clients, the insurance co's 
financial products (GICs, annuities).

I have plenty of command line experience on Win XP: cmd.exe, MySQL 
client, PostgreSQL client.

Also, I am already doing some work on debian Linux and DragonFlyBSD, on 
cloud-hosted KVM VMs.

So I'm not at all afraid of Linux. In fact I look forward to the 
stimulating challenge of learning Linux.

Finally, I look forward to enjoying a tremendous sense of moral 
satisfaction, from having refused to bend the knee to the Microsoft 
monopoly. This will be the last time I pay money to MS (Windows 7 on the 
new Linux PC, will not be the primary OS, the debian 8 will be the 
primary OS).