On 28/10/13 15:44, Mark Rogers wrote:
Reason for ditching XP: Support is ending. (There are loads of reasons I'd ditch it personally but that's the reason in this case.)
+1
Therefore solution must have on-going support (by which I mean OS updates).
Why?
The current *buntu releases "expire" only shortly after XP, and the LTS versions are quite old meaning that some of the newer goodies (eg Cinnamon) may be too early in their lives to thrust onto unsuspecting XP users.
If users are only going to run old programs compatible or similar to XP ones, there's little, if any, point.
So I'm looking for a distro that makes a point of (a) supporting old hardware (so that current versions will run on PCs at least 5 years old), and (b) has a long period before it will "break" (so either has easy/rolling updates that will still support the old hardware, or is supported in its current version for years not months).
OK, Debian Lenny. I have it installed on a memory stick if you want to try it.
Most users will not actually install much - Firefox/Chrome and LibreOffice will do what they need most of the time - so it's the longevity that matters not the package manager etc.
Lenny still copes with everything on my old 2001 PIII, and with anything I've used up to the end of last year.