OS upgrade question

[linthat22]

Since Vista is really expensive and I don't want to shell out the money. It seems Novell is doing a pretty good job at a comparison between Vista and their Suse Linux OS (corporate edition that is).

What are some good alternative that ya'll could suggest? I don't know how long MS will support XP and it seems that as far as gaming goes, we'll be seeing DirectX 10 only games in the future. I do enjoy playing PC games, but I'm tired of supporting MS.

So what ya'll say?

 

[BRiT]

Why not continue using what you have right now? If it's not broken, don't fix it. XP will continue to be supported by MS for years to come.

 

[Skrying]

XP is a viable system for a very long time. In fact, my experience with Vista has lead me personally to think XP is a better OS in certain aspects. Games will not turn Direct X 10 only for at least another year and a half, probably a bit longer.

If you are interested in using Linux though I would suggest you do not buy or pay for a corporate version. Often times you're paying for technical support, which really is not a whole lot better than what you'll find online. If you are interested though I suggest looking into Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and checking out DistroWatch and looking at their various pages for tons and tons of the distros out there. DistroWatch is a great place to find links to reviews, screenshots, downloads, and other useful information.

 

[AlexV]

XP will still be supported for a while, and if you enjoy gaming I wouldn`t reccomend going to Linux, be it any kind of Linux.

 

[Skrying]

XP will still be supported for a while, and if you enjoy gaming I wouldn`t reccomend going to Linux, be it any kind of Linux.

This is very true to a point. There are a number of games that run well in Wine (Counter Strike: Source, the game I play on a regular basis). Other times though, and especially new games it just simply does not work. It is also why I keep XP installed and just simply use Linux for everything else.

 

[linthat22]

I'm sorry about my first post. I didn't mean that I was going to get rid of XP. I just know now that it's days are numbered. That's why I was asking about viable alternatives. I was thinking Mac, but they're too expensive.

 

[davepermen]

XP's days aren't numbered. They just tried to stop support NT (right?), and dropped win98 last year or so.. XP has a huge user base, so expect to get updates and support for at least 5 years, but I'd guess more 10 years, or so...

And till then, Vista got cheap, too.. (and evolved)

 

[BRiT]

And we were posting to say XP's days are NOT numbered ... not in the practical sense. It will remain supported for at least 4 years, more likely somewhere around 7-10 years. Corporations are NOT switching over to Vista; if they're running WinXP, they will remain on WinXP for at least 3 years. The major financial institution I work for still has heaps of Win2K deployed.