With XP's End of Life, Munich Will Distribute Ubuntu CDs 426
SmartAboutThings writes "Windows XP is going to officially die and stop receiving support from Microsoft in April, 2014. After that very moment, it is said to become a gold mine for hackers all over the world who will exploit 'zero-day' vulnerabilities. The municipality of the German city of Munich wants to stop that from happening [and] has decided to distribute free CDs with Ubuntu 12.04 to users of the almost extinct XP. Munich, through its Gasteig Library, will prepare around 2000 CDs with Ubuntu 12.04 to offer to city residents affected by Windows XP's end of support. Previously, it was believed that Munich city's authorities were going to offer Lubuntu 12.04, which would have required lower system requirements with the same support period."
Ubuntu 12 on old XP machines - 32bit problem. (Score:5, Informative)
This is a nice sentiment by Munich, but the many of the folks who are running XP and try and install Ubuntu 12 will be in for a nasty surprise -
32 bit machines without PAE will not load with most newer Linuxes. Most, including Ubuntu, no longer include 32 bit non-PAE kernels in their installers.
I found this out when I tried putting a modern albeit tiny Linux onto my FitPC 1 and an older EPIA motherboard - XP runs fine on these, but finding a linux is probably beyond the skill of most XP users. Jury rigging a different kernel in is definitely out.
A lot of older XP installs are also running on older hardware. Just giving away an OS will not magically fix this. And if these folks upgrade the hardware, it probably comes with a newer windows anyway.
Re:XP rules! (Score:2, Informative)
XP supports up to 4GB of memory
Yes, but your video card is mapped into that space. If you have a 1GB video card, you're right back to 3GB max. Or you could use the abortion which is XP64, which has shit driver support and compatibility issues.
I like Win7's interface much better, hit windows and type, that sort of thing. But I'm with you on the lack of polish as compared to XP. XP may look like fisher price, but it runs like a Deere. or something.