Surviving the XPocalypse: The Sequel

Since my last post, I've hardly blogged, tweeted, or otherwise been very publicly active on the Net at all. Mostly I've been editing my book and trying to wrestle it into readable form even as it mutated into two different shapes. But I've still been busy, for the last few months in fact, replacing the late lamented Windows XP with Ubuntu Studio Linux on my old P4 box and gradually setting up Windows 7 and Linux Mint on the cute little Core Duo unit in the living room. This is the sequel and update.

Part of the struggle involved a much delayed game of musical hard drives. The new computer came with only an 80GB hard drive, which didn't give me much room considering how much stuff I had on two hard drives on the old box, so I had it upgraded to the current industry standard of 1TB and transferred all my music, videos, and games to it. Then I cloned my 40GB C drive on the P4 box to the 250GB drive, expanded the partition on that to the full drive (except for %GB of Linux swap), transferred much of my old data back to it, replaced the 40GB drive with the 80GB one from the new computer, and installed Ubuntu Studio on that. To do this, I realized I had to buy a USB hard drive enclosure to do the clones and transfers I couldn't do over the network. After that, there was the task of reinstalling programs that is still ongoing.

The important thing is that I no longer have to deal with the dying XP's increasing lack of security. Win7 is much more secure (and still regularly updated), and Linux is more secure still (though I there still is the learning curve). Now if only the rumors of a Windows 10 upgrade being free to Win7 users were true — though I'm not holding my breath...

The bad part: it made me miss 50/90...

I Have Survived the XPocalypse!

If you haven't forgotten me already (that happens), you may have noticed I haven't been online much since the middle of last month. You see, my old computer runs Windows XP. I got a new one running Windows 7 for the living-room home theatre system. It's a cute little thing with a dual-core 64-bit processor that runs XBMC Media Center like a dream, making it my set-top box of choice (I'll still play Blu-Ray discs on the Blu-Ray player, of course). It took me a few weeks to acquire the computer, install all the software I require, and get all the settings just right. That, of course, cut my NaPoWriMo short.

There was a big, big reason for all this: the XPocalypse!

You see, Microsoft ended all support for XP last month. Today was the first Patch Tuesday on which XP didn't get patched. Already the black-hat hackers are starting to exploit the vulnerabilities that will never again get patched. Today is XP's true death day. By getting my new Win7 machine, I have avoided getting caught up in the XPocalypse. Besides, I wanted Win7 anyway; it's just that a Pentium 4 cam't run it right.

And so I've disconnected my old P4 box from the Internet entirely while it still has XP installed. My next priority: to get a network drive I can move my music and videos to. Next step after that: install Ubuntu Studio to what is currently the D drive; I have to move my music, videos, and games because I'll need to reformat that drive to install Linux, which uses a completely different filesystem (EXT4 instead of Windows' NTFS). Since there's Windows programs I want to run under Linux, I'll want to install the Wine compatibility layer, then install whatever compatible Windows updates no longer available for XP. And then I'll be free of Windows XP's corpse forever!

Meanwhile, the former office terminal in my entertainment center is now my Win7 + XBMC "set-top box". In fact, I'm writing this entry on that machine as I speak...