Goodbye Windows

Well, the time has arrived. Goodbye Windows.

A little history. I started with PC's back when the Z-80 chip was establishing it's place and well before DOS as we knew it. A small rubber keyboard thing using the TV as a monitor. And loading and saving to a cassette player.
Enter the 286 and 386 chip and the world of DOS and the rise of Microsoft. Microsoft DOS in all it's versions and the first Windows, Windows 3. Then Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, ME, and then XP. Onwards through Vista, 8, 8.1 and 10. And now Windows 11. Used them all and had them all.

With Windows it seemed that as the world of Operating Systems changed Windows became more dependent on regular "clean up's" and virus, trojan, PUP's, trackers, and other nasties always striking again no matter how strong an Antivirus application was/is.

I do have a genuine install of Windows 10 on a hard disk but that is out of my machine now and put in a bottom drawer. Windows 10 seems to me to be too close to the dystopian world of George Orwell's "1984" in ways that data is fed back to Microsoft even though the correct options have been selected to disable this reverse data feed. This also applies to many sites harvesting personal data. Too much of my time spent chasing and blocking/disabling/killing nasties or fine tuning the Windows "system" to keep things working. Enough. !.

For many years I have been dabbling with Linux and now Linux operating systems have matured significantly to the point where one questions the reason for using Windows as the preferred operating system.

I now have Linux Mint MATE ver 20.2 on an SSD and the speed and stability is tremendous. All of the programs I want or need are there in Linux form and open source, free. The only thing I will miss a little is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and FSX. However for these flight simulators I can use Wine or Virtual Box/Vmware running either XP 32 bit or Vista 64 bit as the "guest" OS. However, there is another way to run these Windows based programs under Linux without Wine or a virtual machine. I am looking at the code to use to make it happen.

Yes, the time has come to simply use my machine for what I want and give away all the tinkering/chasing/fixing up and data "theft", is that too strong a word, with Windows.

So it is goodbye Windows after nearly forty years.

Cheers,

Aunty Jack.

 

I started with a 6502 on a Commodore 64, then Amiga/Atari ST. Then DOS, Windows 95-10. Never used an anti-virus, never needed one.

I have my internet-facing Windows XP SP3 box which hasn't been updated since 2009 malware-free. No nasties, trojans, etc. You can't just click on any link because the internet is NOT the shiny, happy, trustworthy place you think it is. My experience is those that have issues with malware click on the first download link that comes up in the seach engines/E-mail attachments/fake anti-virus warning in their web browser.

True that the default options in Windows 7 & higher like to send data to MS. Those of us in the know have all that disabled thanks to forums such as this one.

Linux isn't going to stop websites from harvesting data, that happens regardless of OS. Use private browsing/privacy extensions.

I hope you don't think that you are shielded from malware because you're on Linux, there's plenty of Linux baddies out there. The chances of getting infected are simply much lower because malware writers target Windows/MAC primarily.

I use WIndows because all my favorite apps/games are there, not because I'm loyal to Microsoft. I don't update. Ever. None of my Windows PC's have anti-virus, I have it disabled in Windows 10. Never had any problems in over 30 years. I did download a virus once on purpose because I wanted to test my disaster recovery scheme. The malware ground my PC to a halt. I restored it to the previous state, like nothing happened thus giving a giant middle finger to malware writers.

 

For similar reasons, I will not be taking up Windows11.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I gather that the requirement to use 'secure boot' and 'trusted platform module' locks you in and prevents you from running a different OS.
I have a handful of different versions of Windows OS, and similarly a handful of different flavours of Linux. They are all on plug-in HDDs or plug-in SSDs to allow me maximum convenience when choosing the OS I want to use. I have no intention of giving up this just to suit Microsoft!

 

I am pretty sure you can disable the requirement for both of them. You can disable TPM 10%, not sure bout secure boot. After doing some research, it seems that you can disable the tpm requirement before installing win11, but you'll need to have secure boot enabled before installing win11. It seems that you can disable it afterwards though

 

it seems 11 is only for 64 bit comps ,( ah what a shame lmao) also why do you want ms to keep tabs on you 24/7 ? 2025 is when they kill 10, thats a while away yet , someone will have a cracked version of 11 for us poor old timers to use before then , they killed xp a long time ago and its still here and still going what the rush

long live xp

 

I think my next build might be a Linux OS called Zorin 16. I still have the 4 desktop pc's with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and an older Zorin 9. I hate throwing stuff away if it still works fine.

 

I've been using Zorin 16 Lite https://zorin.com/os/download/

As well as:

Endeavour OS https://endeavouros.com/

I find them both to be quite good for my live sessions and they will fit on a DVD. I wouldn't pay for the pro versions, though. If by some chance you would like a decent Linux environment that will fit on a 700 CD, you can head over to:

https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/#

Scroll down to "alternative downloads" - scroll down to "live" and you'll see the rescue media is available with a basic browser with little (to no) features - only basic.

Still going to hold on (by a shoestring ... hehe) to XP and freak out later.

 

Have used both Zorin and SUSE. Had tried the original Red Hat (prior to the splitting off of Fedora) but it did not run well on machine that I then had. So SUSE was my first usable Linux. Things may well have changed by now, but attraction was the claim that SUSE was more well documented than other OSs.

Eventually, I settled on Linux Mint. I have Cinnamon, Mate, and some of the lightweights on various different machines. This range, from lite to full featured, along with ease of keeping up to date and acquiring apps, I think is the attraction leading to me adopting Mint as default.

 

Awesome!

Just a side note: Sorry about my typos, I realized afterwards and it was too late to correct them ... tends to be my curse ... Lol!

I'm still clutching on (barely) to XP, and trust me, getting harder and harder to do given the limitations in the current internet environment. I've only installed Linux a few times and had issues (well, I still have my share of "issues" far beyond the scope of technology; okay, back on track) with dual-booting, so I've just been using live DVDs if I need to, and, of course, deal with the clock being wrong (sometimes date as well) booting back to XP ... but very hard to acquire apps and programs nowadays so more just about sticking with old software (not much fun), but yeah, would need to upgrade my computers (not an option for me and both are about to fall apart any day) as I'm in the dark ages still. I do like Cinnamon, but xfce is about all I can run without going nuts ... the latter I've actually got covered, hate to admit it

 

I used to use dual/multi boot. I have changed to having my Operating Systems on plug-in HDDs/SSDs.
I find it a lot simpler: I no longer have any need to keep track of which OS is supplying Boot functions, or the need to replace the latter when removing an OS.

Someone posted a thread in the past illustrating the plug in tech. (maybe if he sees this, he might post link to it)

 

look under the postings of Cornemuse, he uses plugins.

 

This one works ok I have 4 of 'em. WOO! price has gone up.

https://allgateshop.com/product/5-2...-hot-swap-mobile-rack-for-2-5-3-5-hdd-or-ssd/

Same as above but cheaper!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Single-Bay...-Swap-Mobile-Rack-Enclosure-I5V9/254650063663

FWIW, most Newegg stuff is more expensive than, , , , everyone else

I have moved to 2.5" hdds, use less power, run a bit cooler.

If you install 2 of these, 1 = C:\, 2nd = *:\ removable storage (* = E:\,F:\,G:\ etc)

 

Thank you, cornemuse