I read a lot on Ubuntu and still cannot decide what to do. Everyone says that xp is slow etc. which is true. You need to update soft/s manually (unless you are ok with 5 additional apps running in the background “waiting” for new updates)

..but aside from all that. I need help from you guys. I have Hp Pavilion dv6700:

- OS – XP Pro SP3
-Intel Pentium III Xeon, 2500 MHz (9.5 x 263)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300, 800 MHz
-3072 MB RAM dimm1 dimm2 respectively:
Size 2048 MB
Speed 667 MHz
Total Width 64-bit

Size 1024 MB
Speed 667 MHz
Total Width 64-bit

-NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS (512 MB)
-FUJITSU MHY2250BH (232 GB, IDE)(NTFS)

Having all this in my Hp with all unnecessary apps installed by default is practically sad. with 3GB ram it should fly. With my vista which was there initially well it definitely didn’t. 2 weeks later I had xp pro sp2 then I upgraded into sp3.

Now having nLite-1.4.9.1. software and original XP installation cd I can decide what I actually want and need on my OS cd (1st choose then burn cd and reinstall OS- the one that suits me) afterwards I will have more space less applications running etc. but still should i change to Ubuntu? will all my apps run on it? Can I customize its look themes etc as I do in xp? I love the feature of file access-customization. So overall there are things that attracts me to Ubuntu but still, I can’t “jump the gap” as one of the guys said.

Will spybot, malwarebytes, nod, spywareblaster work on Ubuntu….I have netbeans, orcad10 quartus….(electrical enginerring if someone asks….so i need multitasking(Ubuntu is very nice at that I know)) Or will I be just fine after nlite and just keeping my pc clean on daily basis. I just need some kind of push into a right direction. should I go with latest Ubuntu or strip my Xp and just have the things I want and keep it clean( files organized, defragmentation from time to time, Cclean it, clean firefox, use adware and TuneupUtilities(one click maitanance) and all that)

p.s. I read that Ubuntu is safe(yet the reason was that there is just few viruses) which is unreasonable to conclude with such comment as” Ubuntu is safe”. Well I guess it is ok to say it is “safe”(being around few viruses out there) but not secure as a system.

aside: if the structure of my post is somewhat illegible then just forgive me please.

ha ha. HA!

Oh wait…you’re SERIOUS aren’t you. Wow.

Nice article. Thanks.

Having taught operating system courses at the graduate level, I don’t think Simon’s criticisms of this article are based on sound computer science. It appears to be a “laundry list” form of partisan attack, rather than a sincere contribution to the discussion.

I agree with Uppereast. It’s a rational perspective.

Also, your experience level as being obviously competent but not an extreme geek — absolutely no offense intended for those who are — gives me more confidence that I could succeed in switching OS’s. I have tried over the years and, as was your experience, continued switching back to Windows (sadly and reluctantly, I might add).

Lastly, again I agree with Uppereast about any harsh criticism. Of course, it’s likely there will be people with different experiences, perspectives and conclusions. And, there will be those who know more and have a deeper understanding of certain issues. But, there’s no reason for people to be rudely dismissive (in effect ironically illustrating the opposite of your calm and rational approach).

Great job. Thanks once again.

You wrote ” I couldn’t keep any Linux installation for more than a few weeks” and however you convince yourself with paragraph such as “why not windows” and “why linux”.

I’ m a rationalist myself so I encourage you to continue in questionning:
- Is it mandatory for you to know the motor plan to have pleasure when driving ? ( of biology when Fck… , or …etc)
- Are using only office app ( never games, never video editing) ?
- Do you refuse Wifi because insecure ? or do you enjoy spending hours to know the chipset version of your device to cope with?
- Are you unemployed ? (so you can surf hours to get something free)
- Are you a SCP ? ( note: SCP are strictly copyright practising ,ie in their religion they pass away immediately if they are in contact with something not legal).

Very interested by linux and after having answered myself to these questions, I ‘m investigating now what is my real personal need to have a complete OS in a 4 G USB key …

We will keep in touch Mohamed . And don’t mind about harsh criticism. You had a question; you imagined a process to answer ( or to bring some useful elements); you clearly documented your process. You show results.
Don’t worry for conclusion : in any scientific paper discussion is the more interesting paragraph and whatever you do believers will remain believers….
With such a smart and clever mind I’m happy that you were not burnt by them.

Thank you again for your work.

A discrete SWAP partition gives you less I/O performance because the disk heads needs to seek further. But I agree that a fragmented pagefile is bad too. But I never defragmented my XP box (running for 4 years now) and my pagefile consists of 3 extends. That’s not gonna impact performance noticeably.

Linux’s security model is inferior to that of Windows. Windows has a very detailed and rich security subsystem, controlling everything with ACLs. The thing is just that most vendors don’t respect that and assume their applications are run by Administrators, because Microsoft didn’t force them to think otherwise. UAC is just a warning dialog to make those apps nevertheless. It doesn’t give you more security.

Having less virii (“virusses”, whatever) doesn’t mean an OS is more secure. If that were true then CP/M is more secure than Linux even if it doesn’t have access control or any other security-related things.

If fragmentation increased by 1% every day my drive would be 100% fragmented in 4 Months. Which is clearly not the case. Fragmentation happens with any filesystem.

Storing files distributed over several folders doesn’t waste ressources. Storing them in a single directory needs the same space.

The benefits of the registry are that it is a single format all applications can use. Apps no longer have to use their own parser or anything like that. You can access the registry concurrently. You have fine-grained security (every single key has it’s own security descriptor).

A “bloated” (=many keys) registry isn’t (measurable) slower than a not-bloated registry. The german computer magazine c’t did some tests some years ago where they created millions of unneccessary keys and then benchmarked the system. Without any difference. It’s because the registry is not a linear but a tree. The operations run in O(log N), just like in most filesystems.

Windows is no longer crashy. If Windows crashes it is most of the time because of a driver (ATI? nVidia?). Linux crashes the very same way if a driver has a problem. Actually, with Vista the situation improved quite a bit. Because graphics drivers are now split between usermode and kernel-mode. And the usermode-part is automatically restarted if it crashes.