What do I do about my OS?

[Ricochet]

Basically, to cut a long story short, my windows xp has recently gone a bit up the creek and I'm not sure what to do.

I cant afford a mac, and I dont have the time/patience/driver capability for linux at the moment.

So basically theres 3 options.

1 - I buy a copy of Vista now (is it still buggy?)

2 - I buy another cheap copy of XP to tidy me over

3 - (last resort) I put up with my current copy of XP for as long as I can until Vista is all debugged and stuff

Comments/suggestions?

Thanks

[Jonathan]

4 - Reinstall existing copy?

If you have a working installation CD and the current install has worked fine in the past, and the problems were caused by it reaching a certain age, that should do it. Until next time at least.

I think you'll get some responses telling you Linux isn't that problematic.

[Lucifer]

I think you'll get some responses telling you Linux isn't that problematic.

Linux isn't that problematic anymore. You have to either have really freaking new hardware made by people who hate open source freaks, or really obscure hardware.

[Hoax]

ricos too lazy for linux

& except for the eye candy vista isn't justified atm

4 - Reinstall existing copy?

[Ricochet]

My existing copy is illegal so I get random popups all the time saying that its illegal and that I cant install certain programs... forgot to add that

[Z-Man]

Get a better cracked illegal version then. <- Joke

Don't get Vista, at least not if the performance of you PC is something you care about. That is, unless you're absolutely dying to play Halo 2 on your PC or one of the other artificial Vista exclusive games (is there another one except for Alan Wake which is still in the pipeline?).

And if you're not into big budget games at all, get Linux, specifically (K)Ubuntu. It is, in fact, much easier and faster to install than Windows XP, especially if you factor in the installation of the additional applications (decent web browser, office suite, etc). If you first install a good copy of XP, then Linux, you can get a dual boot system.

[Ricochet]

I dont really have that much time, especially as I dont know if my hardware discs have linux drivers on them.

And theres the fact that my WLAN card is really obscure and I've been unable to find anything for it (when I briefly tried out ubuntu).

On another note, when would Vista be recommended? OF course, many people would say never, but when is it thought to be less buggy and resource-hogging?

[Lucifer]

Actually, I doubt your wlan card is as obscure as you think it is. There are only a few chipsets made, and 99% of the cards out there are just one of those chipsets stuck on a card and branded.

I think you're overestimating the time it actually takes. Z-man explicitly said Kubuntu installs faster than windows xp (in terms of your time spent), and when you factor in installing all the extra programs you need for your computer to be useful, most of those get installed in the first pass in Kubuntu. In Windows you have to go through them one at a time and install them. There's 5 hours of work in windows you don't have to spend in Linux.

If you haven't tried ubuntu since the beginning of last month, you haven't tried it. Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) are on 6 month release schedules, and each new release has substantial new features. One thing the last release got was a manager for hardware that has traditionally been problematic. The manager isn't perfect yet, but it's worth a shot. It fired up my wlan card literally in seconds, whereas I spent about 2 hours getting it working in the previous release. It fell down on nvidia drivers, but that's fine. I have a weird monitor that I've always had to hack the x.org config file to make work (and I haven't made it work yet, grumblegrumble) and an old nvidia chipset. My other machine and that motherboard you sent me both were up and running in their complete form in about 45 minutes. I've never had a system up and running in its complete form with Windows in anything less than about 12 hours.

Linux doesn't work on the same flawed idea that Windows works, where hardware manufacturers provide drivers with the hardware. Sure, some actually do that, but inevitably you'll find the drivers ship with the kernel. So it doesn't really matter if the hardware discs you have laying around have linux drivers on them or not, what matters is whether or not the kernel ships with the drivers, because if they exist, they ship with the kernel. If they don't ship with the kernel, they don't exist (except for the ones that aren't GPL compatible).

[Ricochet]

Try searching for Inventel Wireless Cards. I doubt youll find many linux drivers :\

To be honest, I dont have the patience at this time to learn a lot of the stuff needed for linux, I'll wait a few years for that . For the moment, if I can grab a cheap copy of XP again I will, and try that out. If all else fails I'll have to wait for vista being de-shittified

[Sabarai]

If you don't have time for Linux, nor the money for Vista, download a better cracked version of XP with SP1 and 2...

[Z-Man]

Try searching for Inventel Wireless Cards. I doubt youll find many linux drivers :\

Which card exactly? For some Inventel devices, there are drivers available, and even if not, ndiswrapper can usually make use of the Windows driver.

On another note, when would Vista be recommended?

Same as for every other Windows version: when you need/absolutely want to run an application that requires it, and at that point, you also upgrade your hardware so the resource hogginess (which will never go away) does not bother you. /me got Windows 95 only to play Beavis and Butthead in Virtual Stupidity And just now I only moved from 2k to XP because many games that came out this year started to require it, and many of them silently (installer works on 2k, but they refuse to run with a linker error or simply crash), and well, because a clean 2k install on my current hardware turned out to be simply impossible.

[DrJoeTr0n]

I'd definitely stay away from Vista for the time being, considering Microsoft is giving out copies of Windows XP to anyone who does not like their copy of Windows Vista Home Premium and up. They did the same thing with Windows ME, to everyone who disliked ME were offered a free copy of Windows 98. Which is not a very good sign when anything is compared to ME.