“I believe computers, first and foremost, are a tool — there’s no ‘one size fits all’ . Everything has its place.”

ANOTHER VOTE FOR LINUX MINT

Congratulations. Your article on Linux Mint in the December 2016 issue of APC was excellent, Nick Peers has done an admirable job.

I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS since ‘Warty Warthog’ was a boy, and have switched to Mint in the last few years. I’ve helped out quite a few friends and customers with their PC issues and some have even switched to the “dark side”; however, I’m still amazed at the perceptions of a lot of people. Most range from “It’s free, so it’s rubbish”, to “It’s too nerdy and I don’t understand it”. However, once shown some basics, most are impressed — especially on older hardware.

I believe computers, first and foremost, are a tool — there’s no ‘one size fits all’. Everything has its place. Some need Windows, some will benefit immensely from switching to Linux, and those Apple people... I guess they’re important, too. Even one of the major banks near where I live is using OS/2 (or they were up until a year or so ago when I last looked)!

Virtualisation is the key if you have enough underlying hardware and it’s the way I’ve been running for years. There are a few Windows applications that I find useful, so it makes perfect sense (primarily my share trading software, iTunes and TyreToTravel, as well as little things like firmware updaters for my Garmin GPS and Sena equipment).

The few systems that I’ve been able to set up this way for friends blows them away that they can have a “foot in both camps” simultaneously without dual booting. I have VMs containing multiple operating systems... great for tutoring others — and if I break one, then it takes 2 minutes to copy the broken VM from backup and it’s ready to spin up again.

The various Linux distributions really have matured a lot, and when one stops to consider all the hardware in our lives that runs on some version of Linux, it truly is a useful operating system. Craig Bailey

MAKING WINDOWS 10 USABLE

I just wanted to say thank you to the team for at least answering the reader with the Windows 95 security problem. I can imagine the reader to be an older man like me who works on the principle of ‘If it ain’t broke why fix it?’

Last year, at age 79, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and away from Windows XP with a new laptop running Windows 10. With the help of articles in APC, I now feel that I have tamed it and made it behave as close to XP as possible. So thank you again.

P.S. To Darren Yates — we miss your informative video tutorials that came with the PC User mag disc, particularly your opening, “Ah, G’day, this is Darren Yates...” Graham Dean