I've bought three machines with XP. All of them the OS has held up. Between three machines only one reformat and then because granddaughter locked me out of the machine. XP was a workhorse, very easy to learn and adapt to, easy to resolve issues, easy to understand.
In March because of the cut off I bought a new machine with WINDERS 8 it's 8 I hate. If I had wanted an X-Box I would have bought one. The learning curve was weeks not hours. Commands hidden in obscure locations you had to go through a lot more steps to find anything. The worst part of it was I'm on dial up. Some Twits at MS thought a nearly 900MB upgrade as they called it was great.
My complaints? IE crashes constantly. IE doesn't like it when you use windows instead of TABs. The infernal CLOUD I like to have never figured out how to stop so I could use the machine too. Hard to read Fonts sizes in the places like My PC. The Peek a Boo annoying settings in the right side that show up when you don't want them and won't show up when you do. The stupid Start Page and the Hidden X to click out. Why? Some Nerd at MS pulls these stunts just to call it an upgrade? I miss XP.
WINDERS 8 will be the last dollar from me unless they get their act together and put out a quality product once again. W/8 was put out aimed at one specific consumer base the Tablet users. The NERDS also though Touch Screen on a Desktop was a good idea. The default Mail client was pathetic. Another annoying thing is on dial up with XP I could download and still access sites. But if the machine takes a notion it has to send something it becomes unusable. Uploads should have the option of "only when machine is idle". The good old MSCONFIG works but seriously who can figure it out once you get to System Configuration? You have no way of knowing what is doing what so you can do a Selective Start Up and Services TAB is a lot worse.
W/8 isn't user friendly. Computer Geeks who like to fool around for hours on end configuring their computer may love it but for many users W/8 is a nightmare.
I understand some things change in time. I also understand an OS can only be patched so many times. BTW W/8 patches in MB's exceeds what XP had in a lifetime by at least over half already. It's junk. It's a sorry OS that look like some high schoolers were the quality assurance testers and likely even the program writers.
I've avoided LINUX because people have said you'll spend a lot of time learning it, configuring it etc. Well at least it's FREE. MS corporate arrogance abandoned the consumer base who got it to number one to start with.
There are plenty of choices.
List of Linux distributions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions
List of BSD operating systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BSD_operating_systems
Debian Linux itself is fairly easy to install from the instructions at the site without being too heavy. Many other distributions are based on it. If your machine is not very new or powerful, the Xfce install is alright (XFCE: type of window manager, GUI, whatever—very light and fast).
It’s best to look around the site of any particular Linux distribution for familiarity (find the package archive for your version, various kinds of instructions, etc.). It’s all much easier than during the mid-’90s—easy as installing Windows, IMO, and much faster to install. The jargon is different from that of Windows and requires some familiarization along the way.
If you have plenty of computer power, prefer the utmost in ease of use and like to interface with many gadgets, maybe a distribution like Ubuntu would be the way to go. And there are many other choices.
Anyway, most who make the transition are glad that they did. Once familiar with a Linux system, the nuisances are far fewer.
The best way to find out if linux is for you is to download the image from Ubuntu, burn a bootable CD, the select the “run from CD option.” You can run full linux sessions without having to commit.
I’m running 8.1 now but was not impressed with the interface or the way they hid the settings I regularly change. So far, though, it’s as stable as my XP machine but I have a decent broadband connection and vet all my apps carefully.
I also went from XP to W/8, as explained here , and with Classic Shell it is like XP but overall better. But read thru the above for some other tips.
IE crashes constantly. I
But why even use IE except for updates. Firefox, actually Pale Moon , which is far far superior to IE, and Chrome if you are a "power user." There is even an extension than can enable posting in HTML here easier for those who do not know it (or have stiff fingers like me).
've avoided LINUX because people have said you'll spend a lot of time learning it, configuring it etc.
This is quite true despite hype, some more so than others, often even if you want to do most of what you can rather easily do with Windows, unless its just Internet and Word processing. In addition is the illegality of certain proprietary multimedia codecs. I found Xubuntu to be best for older hardware.
I went from XP to a new Windows 7 machine in April. I absolutely didn’t want Windows 8.
Win7 doesn’t seem to be all that much different from XP. Maybe you could install Win 7.
Pretty happy with Korora ( Fedora -- Red Hat based ) out of Australia..
Has been relative painless,..run Firefox 99% of the time.
When an update comes out ,,,a few times per week.....I get a notification and when convenient I let it do a restart ...then the update is applied and a reboot by the system is automatic and I am able to get back with some clicks to what I was doing.
So,e peripherals can be a big problem ...but I don't worry about malware....at ALL!
But Hardware wise I am frequebtky changing things....
I have an IOGEAR KVN switch 4x1 shared keyboard and mouse and audio system across 4 possible systems.
I have impaired vision,,keyboard is a problem and small TeX a HUGE problem...and long threads.
But Kprora has an accessibility option with magnification.,...ZOOM>>>>I have not found the upper limit om it yet/.
And the ENTIRE Screen is enlarged.
The icon is difficult to find.but I gind it easily mow.
o I download the distro...b