Tips on moving to Linux?

[Fats]

8. In future, will I always need a Windows XP partition to run my legacy Windows XP applications, or is Wine under Linux good enough now?

Running XP in a virtual machine (VirtualBox, KVM, ...) will be most compatible. Wine won't likely be compatible with all the software.
For virtual machine 3GB may be on the small side but that also depends on the Linux distro chosen. I upgraded my old computer to 4GB for that purpose but I only need to run the VM once in a while anymore.

[Fats]

This is totally my experience, when everything is sailing along fine and working it's great, as soon as something breaks though, there you are in the depths of Bash and text editors editing all these obscure files and typing unintuitive Unix commands.

For Windows the way to fix things is by reinstalling the OS. For Linux I never had to reinstall the OS just boot into rescue CD to fix a configuration I borked myself.
I have here a Windows XP partition I can't boot any more, even in fail safe. All I did was play with some BIOS settings and juggling some hardware. An OS should be able to withstand such things IMO. Didn't bother to reinstall the OS and just kept Linux.

I find it interesting to note that the zealots now seem to be in the Windows camp. The Linux users just talking about their own positive experience and willing to answer questions but not pushy to try to convince people to use Linux. I agree times have been different but Linux seem to becoming mainstream.

[Fats]

Is Linux any better in this regard?  Is migration to a new base set of hardware simple?  I assume it is better since the whole "Live CD" and "Live USB stick" installation seems to be very base hardware independent.

Most things will just work except for the X configuration if there is a config file that selects a certain card that is not in the system anymore. You will likely boot in command line mode then and have to reconfigure the X server manually.
The latest Linux distros don't use a xorg.conf file anymore and will adapt to even a changed graphics card. If you install the proprietary AMD or NVidia drivers this likely won't be the case anymore.

[Fats]

:eek: Really? Multiple displays are so cool that I use an old CRT SVGA monitor as my second display. Anything better than going back to a single monitor. You should try it sometime

+1
It's one of those things you wonder how you ever could live without them once you're used to them.

[Fats]

You don't need to install any of them. They all just scan for Windows malware, they're intended for people running stuff like mail servers.

One thing that could be done is install so called rootkit detection software e.g. software that tries to detect for the unlikely event a script kiddie could penetrate your computer. This is software like rkhunter and chkrootkit. These tools don't run in background though and have to be started manually or scheduled on a regular time.

[Fats]

Y'know people sometime in the 1970's realised this and thought...there has to be a better way..and lo and behold, there was.

They called it a Graphical User Interface.

For everybody it's own. I am one of those weird guys who did a lot of his Amiga stuff in AmigaShell using Vinced.

Just to say Amiga was not GUI only...

[Fats]

Never said it was.

But you had a choice.

You also have the choice on Linux. It's just that most Linux users also learn to use the CLI and thus propose solutions for problems using the CLI.
And once you are used to it HOWTO's for example for Windows with step-by-step click here, click there just seems quite involved.
But like said before if Linux is not for you, don't use it. Just don't assume everybody thinks or functions as you.

[Fats]

It's really no different to Android...

One of the reasons for me to choose Android phone is that I can ssh into it...

[Fats]

Linux is good when a company wants to make a profit out of someone elses hard work, to drive down prices on TV's, phone's, servers etc.

Yes you are right. The reason we use Linux to design chips is that we don't want to pay a few bucks for an OS to run our software with license fees of a few $1000.
NOT!