Zorin OS 8 a replacement for Windows XP?

OK........ I decided to start a Zorin thread instead of continuing to post in the Windows XP thread, since basically I'm going to be posting about Zorin and my observations and opinions. I WAS a faithful fan of Win XP and will miss it's stability and ease of use (at least for me). Hopefully this will turn out to be a viable substition for XP and allow older laptops and desktops to still be useful and stay away from the side of the road on garbage day. After all most of the PC now in use are light-years better than the ones used by NASA for man to go to the moon, it seems a shame to toss them out!



I have installed Zorin on my old Dell D630 laptop, specifications are as follows:



Dell Latitude D630

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20 GHz

4 GB of RAM

80 GB HardDrive

Intel 965GM Graphics Card



I have upgraded this laptop to these specs and had installed Vista Ultimate 32-bit on another hard drive, as a replacement for Windows XP. I was pretty satisfied with XP but.......... well y'all know the rest.



I figure this machine would run Win 7 ok, but really did not want to spend the money for a COA and instead I have invested that money shopping on eBay for purchasing new parts to build a new (to me) laptop to run Win 7.



Anyway back to Zorin.............



I chose Zorin OS 8.1 as my trial.......... I have tried several different linux OS in the past and have not been very satisfied with the learning curve and quasi DOS interface and command input. I've been a Windows user since Windows 2 so I left DOS and line command input a very long time ago.



The installation was pretty straight forward, I did do a little online reading and took the suggestion of selecting "login autonmatically" so as to not have to deal with a "Guest Session" starting up. The machine will only be used by me so there is no reason to have it any other way.



With Zorin it has a very Windows-like interface, and it still allows terminal input so those who like to type can still do that. It also comes pre-installed with several linux software but the best one for me was WINE. This allows you to install SOME Windows software. Google Wine and the Software you might want to see if it will work. NOT ALL WINDOWS SOFTWARE WILL WORK.



In my trial the first Win Software I tried didn't work and after googling it, it will not work........... Adobe Illustrator.........but I have successfully installed Adobe Photoshop CS2, Microsoft Office 2000, and Atomic Clock (system time sync software)



OK........... this is where I am at this time, I will continue to play around with it and will post my success and failures, observations and opinions in this thread.



I hope this interest folks and also I request anyone of the Linux guys that see this Please post tips to help a guy out.......... old dogs do learn new tricks......it just takes a long time and lots of brain cells!!!



john