Migrating from Windows to Linux

[jmelson]

I'll keep using Windows XP and 7 for as long as I possibly can, but there will come a point where I will no longer be able to activate them if I format/reinstall. I've already found this with an older version of Microsoft Office which was more than capable and did everything I needed.

I have used both Ubuntu and Mint before and didn't mind them. I currently run Ubuntu on my media centre machine, but at times it can be a little "quirky" for reasons unknown. I think it's just an old version with issues that I haven't bothered to update.

You can run XP and Win 7 forever in a virtual environment.  Never "format/reinstall", just use the same virtual disk image.  In fact, at least XP runs SO MUCH BETTER as a virtual guest OS than on real hardware.

I have a couple big CAD packages that are Windows only, and I run them on XP.  Now, my tax program requires Win 7 as a minimum, so I run that as a virtual guest OS, too, under VirtualBox.  I used to use VMWare, but their support is the worst in the industry, I ended up calling them and telling them how to fix issues with their software.  It does work, however.  But, other than that, I do everything under Linux.  I tend to run old versions, and don't update until FORCED to.  I have used various Ubuntu versions for some time, and am currently on 12.04, which is a 2012 version (as seen by the version #).
One thing I do NOT like is their "Unity" desktop, so I figured out how to revert to the old Gnome desktop.  That's one great thing about Linux, if there's something you don't like, you CAN change it.  And, there are tons of helpful articles with instructions on how to do it.

Anyway, my whole family runs linux for general desktop user web surfing, etc.  There are few things that they can't do with it.

Jon

[bd139]

I was lucky. Before Windows even existed, I started with the most commercially successful Unix of the time.

Now guess who made that UNIX.

First cert on Solaris 2.6 

[orin]

I was lucky. Before Windows even existed, I started with the most commercially successful Unix of the time.

Now guess who made that UNIX.

I'd have guessed Xenix.  And in 1996, it was claimed that for a long time that company in question had the highest-volume AT&T Unix license.

Whether true or not, Xenix has an interesting history.

[bd139]

It wouldn't surprise me. For example Xenix ran most doctors' surgeries in the UK for a number of years until they switched over to Windows in the late 1990s.

[orin]

It wouldn't surprise me. For example Xenix ran most doctors' surgeries in the UK for a number of years until they switched over to Windows in the late 1990s.

I didn't know that.  My experience was with Logica selling Xenix in the 1980s, before the group in question was sold off to SCO.

[tggzzz]

I was lucky. Before Windows even existed, I started with the most commercially successful Unix of the time.

Now guess who made that UNIX.

First cert on Solaris 2.6 

Nope, Xenix, as others have guessed. But nobody has mentioned the company behind Xenix - and I don't mean ma Bell!

When I last used windows I still put all my files in /users/tggzzz, out of habit/homage.

[Avacee]

Xenix did indeed run most doctor's surgeries. I used to work for AAH Meditel which sold System 5 which was on Xenix. I think we were one of their biggest licensees with ~2,500 sites.
Replaced by System 6000 on Windows 3.1->95 with SCO Unix servers and a Borland Interbase database.

iirc Xenix was from AT&T .. hmm your home folder hint and the all-knowing Wikipedia says Microsoft, I did not know that :p

[orin]

I was lucky. Before Windows even existed, I started with the most commercially successful Unix of the time.

Now guess who made that UNIX.

First cert on Solaris 2.6 

Nope, Xenix, as others have guessed. But nobody has mentioned the company behind Xenix - and I don't mean ma Bell!

When I last used windows I still put all my files in /users/tggzzz, out of habit/homage.

The quote I gave was from Bill Gates - which I left out to maintain the suspense...

Yes, Xenix was Microsoft's version of Unix.

A relatively little known fact is that Microsoft kept stealing people from Logica in the early to mid 1980s.  Some of whom ended up working in the Windows group!

[amspire]

You can run XP and Win 7 forever in a virtual environment.  Never "format/reinstall", just use the same virtual disk image.  In fact, at least XP runs SO MUCH BETTER as a virtual guest OS than on real hardware.

It may not be that easy. Most VMs are relying on the CPU's compatibility with the XP/Win7 CPU instruction set.

If Microsoft can move to an situation where the only Windows is the latest updated Windows, then it may become easier for Intel to move to newer non-compatible instruction sets. Perhaps retire 32 bit support totally.

At this point, you have to start fully emulating a whole XP/Win7 compatible CPU in code. It can still work, but it can be a dog to use.

You can probably bank on running your VMs for another 10 years. After that, who knows? At some point in the future, we will be using processors that do not look anything like current processors.

The other thing that will happen is that new programs will just stop running on Xp and Win7. Just try and run any current program on Windows NT4 and you will get the idea of what trying to run programs on Windows 7 will be like in 10 years.

[Bud]

My migration to Linux ended when it took Several Hours to compile one goddamn library file for an openCV project on a i7 32Gb 3.6GHz computer running Ubuntu. I decided i was not imbecilic enough to work on such great OS.

[amspire]

My migration to Linux ended when it took Several Hours to compile one goddamn library file for an openCV project on a i7 32Gb 3.6GHz computer running Ubuntu. I decided i was not imbecilic enough to work on such great OS.

It does happen. I remember trying to compile Conky - tool in Linux that puts live system info onto the wallpaper. There was some annoying library that is not at all big, but it seemed to need many thousands of very tiny modules to be compiled. It took about a day on the old obsolete laptop I was using.

Luckily, it is not that common. You cannot blame a whole OS on the quirks of a few programmers.

[CatalinaWOW]

I have been toying with Linux since kernel version 0.98 (distributed on roughly 75 5.25 in floppies), and seriously trying to migrate since roughly 2004.  I am what is disparagingly called an end user.  Although I wrote my own device drivers for my homebrew CP/M machine, and have been reading and writing code since the late 1960s I really don't find that part of technology compelling and every minute spent making the software work a minute stolen from what I am really interested in doing.

I continue to be interested in the transition, mostly because I don't want to be forced into the software as a subscription model that the MS  world is embracing, but also because I don't like the redo of the user interface every three to five years that seems to come with that territory.

While I have found several variants over the years to be usable, starting with Ygdrassil and on through Mandrake and Ubuntu I have never succeeded in fully switching. 

My advice to someone trying this path (and hopefully with more success) is to stick with one of the "user friendly" versions.  Accept that the advice from guru's will be cryptic and that they will be blind to the many assumptions that they make about your knowledge and your system.  Make sure you have a broad pipe to the internet.  You will spend much time in the repositories and updating dependencies.  And recognize that for years you will be comparing a skill set honed by decades of use with a fresher, newer and much less developed skill set.  As far as I can tell the end result will be comparable, but it will be quite a while before they converge.  Also recognize that you will have favorite programs that are Windows only.  And that WINE probably won't work on those.

[Halcyon]

Thanks CatalinaWOW and everyone else for their responses. I have taken away bits and pieces which I'll try to keep in the back of my head at all times.

TwoOfFive has also kindly offered to assist over the phone, we had a brief chat earlier, however I'm tied up migrating my NAS over from an old Windows Server 2003 box to FreeNAS (it's taking a little longer than first expected).

As you mentioned CatalinaWOW, I too have been "toying" with Linux for probably 15 years now, on and off but never took the plunge. While Windows 7 still has a lot of life left in it, I don't want to leave "learning" an entirely new OS until the last minute, so I need to start somewhere. While Windows 7 will probably continue to work on old hardware for a long time, these days, a lot of drivers are no longer being written for Windows 7, eventually, I'll need to upgrade operating systems when it comes time to upgrade hardware, that's a given.

[retiredcaps]

I have used various Ubuntu versions for some time, and am currently on 12.04, which is a 2012 version (as seen by the version #).
One thing I do NOT like is their "Unity" desktop, so I figured out how to revert to the old Gnome desktop.

One issue with running 12.04 is that updates, security patches, etc ended April 28, 2017.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/12.04/

Ubuntu 18.04 due April 2018 will revert back to Gnome.

[Zero999]

You can run XP and Win 7 forever in a virtual environment.  Never "format/reinstall", just use the same virtual disk image.  In fact, at least XP runs SO MUCH BETTER as a virtual guest OS than on real hardware.

It may not be that easy. Most VMs are relying on the CPU's compatibility with the XP/Win7 CPU instruction set.

If Microsoft can move to an situation where the only Windows is the latest updated Windows, then it may become easier for Intel to move to newer non-compatible instruction sets. Perhaps retire 32 bit support totally.

At this point, you have to start fully emulating a whole XP/Win7 compatible CPU in code. It can still work, but it can be a dog to use.

You can probably bank on running your VMs for another 10 years. After that, who knows? At some point in the future, we will be using processors that do not look anything like current processors.

The other thing that will happen is that new programs will just stop running on Xp and Win7. Just try and run any current program on Windows NT4 and you will get the idea of what trying to run programs on Windows 7 will be like in 10 years.

You're right. Things will be different in 10 years time. Another possibility is Windows will lose its dominant market share on the desktop and no new software will run on it.

[bd139]

Microsoft know this is going to happen. They know windows is just another OS now and market domination isn't going to last forever unless they start cooperating with everyone else. Overconfidence in Windows Phone showed them the way there. It wasn't that long ago they held a funeral for the iPhone. Oh the irony:



What this has resulted in, is some crazy hell frozen over shit. They're basically moving to paid up cross platform services (Azure, Office 365 are killers) and developer tools on every platform and doing their desperate bit to hang on to mindshare and use it to upsell services. And you know what, I'm happy with that because that's the bits they do a good job of.

Not a lot of people know it but you can actually run Powershell, SQL Server, Visual Studio and .Net all on Linux quite happily and natively. You can run Linux software on Windows and even ssh into windows server CTP now. Times are changing.

We recently looked at rebuilding a win32/C++ front office application which is around 20 years old at this point now. It has a 5 MLoC investment of time in it, i.e. it's huge. At no point was anyone looking towards keeping it on the windows platform. It's somewhere between Electron and Qt at the moment in the proof of concept phase while two teams work on a small functional investment to find all the edge cases and problems in the platforms.

This has to be the coolness and weirdest time to be in the IT trade.

[Karel]

Microsoft will switch to Linux and keep selling their software on top of Linux. And it will cost the Windows users as much as before.

At the same time will the Linux community get face-stomped by hordes of Windows users, all trying to learn everything there is to learn about Linux and in record-breaking time.

Some long-time Linux supporters will switch to Microsoft in a heart beat like cold-hearted back-stabbers, while others die the slow death of the White Knight in the
most epic drama the Linux community has ever seen, before the Linux community itself disappears and we will all have turned into "the new Windows user".

Once it's all done and over, and Microsoft has taken over Linux with its hordes of Windows users, will you either be the new slave of the Microsoft empire or you will have
found refuge under a tiny bridge, just next to the one where all the FreeBSD trolls live, and where you'll then be telling tales of Linux's past.

[bd139]

I think it's going to actually stop at where Microsoft don't charge for their dev tools and everyone uses them and then doesn't use Azure, because it's shit and spend the cash on AWS instead. After a few years, Jeff Bezos will have built a nuclear arsenal on top of the Blue Origin rocket platform, hold the planet to ransom and appoint himself Grand Hegemon. We will all be his subjects, be forced to use Amazon Linux and have an Alexa telescreen monitoring device installed our skulls. Then Musk's martian army will come and liberate us by orbital strikes against Amazon's data centres.

Jeff, if you read this and need a business development manager, PM me.

[amspire]

I think it's going to actually stop at where Microsoft don't charge for their dev tools and everyone uses them and then doesn't use Azure, because it's shit and spend the cash on AWS instead. After a few years, Jeff Bezos will have built a nuclear arsenal on top of the Blue Origin rocket platform, hold the planet to ransom and appoint himself Grand Hegemon. We will all be his subjects, be forced to use Amazon Linux and have an Alexa telescreen monitoring device installed our skulls. Then Musk's martian army will come and liberate us by orbital strikes against Amazon's data centres.

Jeff, if you read this and need a business development manager, PM me.

A well thought out and balanced argument. The only flaw I could see was the suggestion that everybody would run to AWS. AWS wants to charge for everything. The only reason Amazon don't charge you when you scratch your nose is they haven't worked out how to do it yet.

[bd139]

You forget that every CTO is being sold that the capital expenditure isn’t there any more even if the operational expenditure is orders more in magnitude and the food quality is the same as McDonald’s. CTO is happy if everyone is getting McDonald’s and he’s getting his cut from the capex and spending it on a Tesla and some crack to go in his pipe. The success of this business model relies on the selfish shortsightedness of the  CxO class which is a certainty.

[Karel]

We’re excited to announce that you can now download & install Kali Linux via the Windows Store!

Our community expressed great interest in bringing Kali Linux to WSL in response to a blog post on Kali Linux on WSL. We are happy to officially introduce Kali Linux on WSL

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/03/05/kali-linux-for-wsl/

[jmelson]

You can run XP and Win 7 forever in a virtual environment.  Never "format/reinstall", just use the same virtual disk image.  In fact, at least XP runs SO MUCH BETTER as a virtual guest OS than on real hardware.

It may not be that easy. Most VMs are relying on the CPU's compatibility with the XP/Win7 CPU instruction set.

If Microsoft can move to an situation where the only Windows is the latest updated Windows, then it may become easier for Intel to move to newer non-compatible instruction sets. Perhaps retire 32 bit support totally.

At this point, you have to start fully emulating a whole XP/Win7 compatible CPU in code. It can still work, but it can be a dog to use.

You can probably bank on running your VMs for another 10 years. After that, who knows? At some point in the future, we will be using processors that do not look anything like current processors.

People have run X-86 OS's on ARM CPUs such as the Beagle Bone and Rasberry Pi, and, while not speed demons, they ran faster than a not-too-old X86 CPU ran it originally.  So, I have no doubt that there will be emulators that work so that some old OS's and apps can still be run.  Now, it would make GREAT sense to migrate off of these older systems, but every once in a while you need to go back and get something off and old system.

And, I HOPE that some day, the horrible encrustation of the X86 architecture will be replaced by something much better!  It CAN'T get any worse.

Jon

[jmelson]

My migration to Linux ended when it took Several Hours to compile one goddamn library file for an openCV project on a i7 32Gb 3.6GHz computer running Ubuntu. I decided i was not imbecilic enough to work on such great OS.

Strange!  Long ago, (thankfully) I recompiled the whole Linux kernel with all libraries and drivers, and it took a few hours on what was relatively modest (for the time) hardware.

Jon

[Monkeh]

My migration to Linux ended when it took Several Hours to compile one goddamn library file for an openCV project on a i7 32Gb 3.6GHz computer running Ubuntu. I decided i was not imbecilic enough to work on such great OS.

There's always one (or more) who'll blame their own failures on the tools..

[jmelson]

I continue to be interested in the transition, mostly because I don't want to be forced into the software as a subscription model that the MS  world is embracing, but also because I don't like the redo of the user interface every three to five years that seems to come with that territory.

While I have found several variants over the years to be usable, starting with Ygdrassil and on through Mandrake and Ubuntu I have never succeeded in fully switching. 

Well, I switched pretty fast in about 1999, after getting Linux running to use a CNC system.  I found out that I could do much of what I had been doing on Windows with Linux.  I did have some CAD systems, FPGA systems and a few of my own apps that needed to be migrated.  So, I used VMWare to run the Windows 2K Pro system for those apps, and otherwise did all email, web surfing, and other general purpose computing on Linux.  With the help of some manufacturers like Xilinx, I have managed to migrate much of that over to native Linux over time.  I still have 2 CAD apps that are Windows only, currently run those on XP using VirtualBox.  Also, for taxes, I run a program under Win 7 using VirtualBox.  That is fine.  But, I rarely find any problem doing general computing stuff on Linux.  Yes, gimp has an awful user interface, that's one Linux program that really could be improved.  But, Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, knode as newsreader, gnumeric for spreadsheets, and TeX for documents does just about everything for me.  (My wife and kids use the awful open office for text, I totally detest it, but TeX is a bit complicated.)

As for Ubuntu, the KDE and Gnome desktops were fine.  I do NOT like Unity, but there is a way to revert to "Gnome Classic".  I have to hack one file to make the window borders larger so they are easy to grab and stretch.  I hear that Unity will be discontinued soon.  Fine by me.

I have several systems running that CNC app that got me into this, plus a web store, an Asterisk phone system, a photoplotter that was migrated over from Windows 95 to a Beagle Bone running Linux, and more.  So, other than some Windows in a virtual environment, it is all Linux of one flavor or another.

Jon