Experiences with Windows XP SP3 anyone?

[terminator]

Let XP SP3 wait till hell freezes over. Don't touch it with a 10 foot pole. You dont have access to enough headache medication and nerve pills to deal with Service Pack 3. When anyone tells you differently, as they surely will, remember it was me who told you to steer clear of the shit.

Someone exorbiting such ignorance should not come anywhere near a computer or even be a tester.

[M ANSARI]

No problems here with SP 3.

[bob]

You should definitely update to SP3, and then any additional critical updates after SP3 as well. Many important and critical updates require SP3. You are leaving your PC vulnerable to hackers and attacks without these updates.

Shoot, you are leaving your PV vulnerable so long as you continue to run _any_ flavor of windows...

Hey Bob,is it true that you didn't reboot your Linux based machine for 4 years now?

We have one machine that has been up that long. My office box gets rebooted more frequently as I play with different kernels and kernel options. We have had exactly one software-related issue with Linux (crashes) in the last 5 years, that being the IBRIX filesystem we used on our cluster. That was utterly unreliable and the IBRIX software was completely removed and replaced with traditional NFS.

The 4+ year record here is on a quad xeon that I am about the only user of. It has been useful (to me) for parallel search debugging/testing although it is not as fast as newer hardware by a large margin. But it has been (like all our linux boxes) utterly reliable unless there is a hardware failure or a needed upgrade...

This is the most-used system in our department, does email, mailing list, schedules, appointments, meetings, room reservations, etc:

09:35:02 up 321 days, 9:09, 1 user, load average: 0.36, 0.29, 0.27

The hardware was upgraded about a year ago, been up ever since...

My old quad 700 xeon (which will probably be turned off before long to make room for other stuff):

09:36:11 up 1527 days, 2:14, 1 user, load average: 4.14, 4.09, 4.00

We do have a windows box that has not crashed in 3 years. But it has not had power in about that long so it is not running.

[M ANSARI]

Almost makes me want to give Linux another try. I had a pretty tough time the first time I tried Linux around 7 or 8 years ago ... I then tried it around 2 years ago and was very impressed at how easy it was to get it up and running, and how much usable software was available. It will still take some time though for someone to be able to totally give up Windows, mainly because many applications will not run without major acrobatics if they can run at all.

I have an extra computer I will try again ... what is the best Linux at the moment?

[bob]

Almost makes me want to give Linux another try. I had a pretty tough time the first time I tried Linux around 7 or 8 years ago ... I then tried it around 2 years ago and was very impressed at how easy it was to get it up and running, and how much usable software was available. It will still take some time though for someone to be able to totally give up Windows, mainly because many applications will not run without major acrobatics if they can run at all.

I have an extra computer I will try again ... what is the best Linux at the moment?

As far as I am concerned, the _only_ reason to use windows is the software issue you mentioned. Most will run under wine just fine. Those that won't will probably run under vmware which is a commercial wine-like package that is more robust. For me, however, I don't need windows software tools since I have been a unix user for 30+ years now...

[cyberfish]

Best is subjective, but if you are new, I suggest Ubuntu, since it has a huge user base, so you can more easily find support when you need it.

Once you are familiar with Linux, though, distro doesn't matter much. They all have almost the same packages and the same CLI. They are all Linux after all.

[Anil]

Almost makes me want to give Linux another try. I had a pretty tough time the first time I tried Linux around 7 or 8 years ago ... I then tried it around 2 years ago and was very impressed at how easy it was to get it up and running, and how much usable software was available. It will still take some time though for someone to be able to totally give up Windows, mainly because many applications will not run without major acrobatics if they can run at all.

I have an extra computer I will try again ... what is the best Linux at the moment?

You can try Knoppix. You don't even have to install it and still try out almost all its features. Knoppix can be used from CD/DVD or even a bootable USB stick. Some 5-6 years back, this distro had impressed me quite a lot. Once you are comfortable with it, you can either switch to it permanently, if you want, or continue using it as another OS along with Windows (dual-boot).
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix

[Graham Banks]

Let XP SP3 wait till hell freezes over. Don't touch it with a 10 foot pole. You dont have access to enough headache medication and nerve pills to deal with Service Pack 3. When anyone tells you differently, as they surely will, remember it was me who told you to steer clear of the shit.

Someone exorbiting such ignorance should not come anywhere near a computer or even be a tester.

And somebody exhibiting such rudeness and disrespect shouldn't be coming anywhere near a respectable computer chess forum or even be a poster.

[daws]

Those that won't will probably run under vmware which is a commercial wine-like package that is more robust.

Or the free but excellent option:

http://www.virtualbox.org/

[mclane]

never change a running system.