I just bought a 7 port USB hub that plugs into a USB port and gives you 7 USB ports, and I can use it perfectly on Fedora Core 13 and Gentoo, but it will not work at all on Windows XP service pack 3.? I am thinking that if I re-plug it in Windows, it might detect it, but that is very annoying to say the least, it would work perfectly with a free operating system, but using it with Windows is a no-go. And on the box it says it works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. But I cannot get it to work, and I do not want to have to update to Windows 7 just to play games.
I have removed Linux Mint from my desktop computer and installed Fedora Core with full disk encryption. Does not have much of a impact on performance, but allows more security. As I bought the August 2010 edition of Linux Magazine and it had the full DVD release of Fedora 13, so I upgraded to that distribution. I agree with the ‘Saving XP’ editorial inside the mag, speaking about getting rid of XP and using Linux instead, as a 10 year old OS is getting too old and is insecure to boot. A good easy to use Linux distribution that takes care of driver installation easily would be a good replacement for Windows XP and most people just want to use it for browsing the interwebs, playing music and creating word documents, all of which can be done by Ubuntu or Fedora. Windows 7 does not allow you to upgrade from Windows XP and you then have to do a fresh installation after backing up your files from your user directory. And on Windows you have to buy things like Nortons Antivirus and other Malware tools that take up memory and may not even do the job properly. A Linux distribution like the old Lindows was a step in this direction, but the Debian based distributions like Ubuntu allow you to install software with one simple command, making it easy to use and install. Actually Lindows/Linspire was Debian based, but had a system of adding software that required payment, whereas Ubuntu uses free software.
I prefer Gentoo myself on my desktop machine, but installing that is not for the impatient, I do not think that everyone wants to wait 15 hours for OpenOffice.org to compile and install. I just did that installation to setup the main OS on the machine just the way I wanted it, not to be some Gentoo ricer Doodz. But I have the Enlightenment E16 desktop as my main desktop now and I could not be happier. And that is what counts. Windows XP is not the best OS on the block, but it does give a good platform for running the occasional game, just do not expect it to be the most secure OS nowadays, with all of the various malware and spyware out there attacking your PC. Some people release software that will ‘analyse’ the problem on your machine then demand payment before you can get your machine fixed. I hate that. I tried a partition recovery tool once that did that, then I downloaded Testdisk and it fixed the problem free of charge. That program is available for Linux as well as Windows and can fix corrupted boot sectors on your Windows drives. Well worth the download. I got the USB hub to work in Windows, I have no idea, it just took Windows a while to detect it, even though Gentoo worked with it instantly. Oh, well Windows 0, Linux 2.