OP says no Linux.

Linux users immediately flood thread.

- OP says he dones't want to give money to M$
- GoG.com full of DRM-free enthusiasts
-> Linux ;)

Oh and you people might want to take a look at Windows RG.

its like a lure to them

and i stil have xp on a machine but that machine isnt coming anywhere near the internet

i also have a laptop with windows ME

...what ?
i like windows ME

The last time I used Windows XP was probably in 2009 or 2010. If I tried to go back to it now I'd probably just go outside instead, and that's a terrifying thought.

Same. I'm kicking XP for some testing for my office network.



There's a fine line between being enthusiasts and being retarded for not reading.
I did use ME, it was hated universally but I found no problem with it.

I have dual boot with XP and 7 at my dev..... (who am I kidding... I mean my GAMING) pc.
XP on an old laptop and windows 10 on a media center pc.
I totally regret upgrading to 10 though and I will reinstall 7 soon.

At least I found Windows 10 better to Windows 8.1. So from my point of view, if I had had only Windows 8.x on my PC, then I would have upgraded to Windows 10. That's actually what I did to someone else's PC where the preloaded one was Windows 8.

So my order of preference for these three Windows versions are at the moment:

1. Windows 7
2. Windows 10
.
.
.
99. Windows 8.x

To me, Windows 8.x has all the bad things from Windows 10, and none of its goodies. At least Windows 10 feels like it is designed for desktop use, while Windows 8.1 still feels like a hack job meant for touchy-feely Windows tablets.

Plus, in general it seems to me that if some old games have problems running in Windows 10 (as compared to Windows 7 or XP), it usually has those same problems already on Windows 8.x. So gaming backwards-compatibility doesn't seem to be a valid reason to stay on Windows 8.x either. (Someone may correct me if I am wrong, but that's the feeling I've gotten, in most cases when I had trouble running games on Windows 10, people reported similar issues already on Windows 8.x).

Windows XP still powers my primary gaming PC, which is still not connected to the internet.

It's running perfectly fine so I haven't needed to restore a fresh install image for a long time, but that's probably because I've kept it off the internet so it hasn't ended up with a ton of rubbish on it. And I thus also don't have to run antivirus software, which I suspect would cause a lot of performance issues for XP machines which are probably using older hardware.

He seemed to have a misconception that he'd have to replace XP with Linux. That is not the case, they work beautifully side by side. The only reason why I wouldn't suggest that is if he has so little hard drive space that he can't run both comfortably side by side, but then the extra OS on the side doesn't take that much more room.

XP and Linux side by side to me means:

XP for playing (older) single-player Windows games. Disconnected from internet.
Linux for doing any productive work and going online.

I haven't really dwelled into running Windows games with Wine or Linux gaming in general, I haven't had the need yet, but it would be fun to experiment.

offline computer is xp
online computer is 7
10 never ever
linux for the desktop is incompetent, but i hope by 2020 a group of windows users create a proper distro for us

I'm using Windows XP since 12 years. I'll probably switch to Windows 7 this year though so i can finally play some of my newer games. :D

Remember that you can try some of the most famous linux distros without installing them.
It will take half an hour to download the iso, burn it to usb and boot into the OS
If don't like to write and learn commands them you can still use the point and click "way"
Anyway some commands will definitely improve your experience and make things faster and easier :)

This would be the best way, also because XP is from 2001.
With linux someone will be able to upgrade at every new release and enjoy some of the latest technology, which won't be avaiable for XP i suppose :)

Have you ever tried (and succeed) some linux distro before jumping to this conclusion?

If you want to be spied on 24/7, then go right ahead.

I still have a laptop with Windows XP but it's very underpowered so I nearly don't use it anymore. Actually, I only use it because my 15+ years old scanner only works with it so I boot it up once in a while to scan some documents and then save the images on a usb stick. I could use it for old DOS games but it makes the fan roars :(

The problem isn't having the drivers, but rather having the drivers installed and being pointed to. Windows (XP in particular) will shit the bed during boot up if anything in the configuration has changed because it loads the drivers it has installed, and not any basic drivers (unless you're lucky enough to boot into safe mode). I had similar issues with a HDD, as I couldn't get windows to even boot to install the proper driver for it, and the HDD in question was supposed to be virtually identical and run off the same drivers. It wasn't until I installed Windows fresh that it would work. CPU may be a different story, but somehow I doubt it. I've never tried on 7 or above.