On Mon 25 Jul 2016 10:47 -0400, Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk wrote:
I'm working to replace an old Dell Windows XP SP3 PC with a new PC, booting Debian Linux 8 as the primary OS, with Win 7 set up to run under QEMU / KVM vbirtualization under Debian. A multi-boot setup will allow booting Windows 7 (OEM) on bare metal, if required for occasional use. I definitely am NOT going to use MS Windows as the primary OS in my new desktop PC !!
I have almost no Linux / Unix experience.
After reading this thread for awhile I feel like I need to be some kind of voice of reason here. I think it would be unwise to replace your main PC by struggling with a new OS, struggling with hardware/build, etc. My advice: - Get yourself an inexpensive off the shelf Windows 10 computer. Windows 10 isn't really the nightmare that Win 8 was in terms of UI. You should do just fine with it. - Use free and open source software on Windows as much as you can. - Here you can figure out how to export your emails into a free/universal format - If you still feel like trying Linux, then make yourself some Live USB flash drives to play around with. - etc...