Billbob

If you do not get the outdoor variant, the UV *will* destroy the plastic in a not very long time frame.

A 32nm dual core laptop with 4gb of ram doesn't count as anything near bad linux wise, you should be able to run pretty much any distro you want with no problem. A good place to browse distros is here: http://distrowatch.com/.
 
Edit: I use xubuntu and find it reasonably sensible, if you are finding mint/ubuntu not very snappy, have a play with this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What_is_swappiness_and_how_do_I_change_it.3F.

The mouse, and the entire GUI aspect, was hatted. It was said to be less productive as you can type faster than moving a cursor across the screen.. basically letting go of the keyboard, using a device that doesn't work properly (early mouse). Over time, people learned it, liked it, mouses got better, GUI got better, and things started to evolve continuously, and today, no one wants to look back (except hardcore Linux OS fans/developers... who also hate Ubuntu, because they highly modify the Linux kernel to drastically cut down on the usage of the terminal to do pretty much anything. Maybe that's why Linux based OSs aren't getting much traction).

I agree, changes need to be made for progress to happen, but when changes are made and the general opinion is that these changes are not an improvement then this is not an innovation. Clearly metro is better on a tablet, however on a desktop many many reasons are given why this is not an improvement for many people.
 
What is frustrating is we have one of these treads per week with extremely similar content, not specific questions, maybe a pinned independent comparison would be useful.

I really like how you state that this thread is to be informative and "backed up with something other than your personal ideas" and you go on to state, without evidence of any kind, a whole bunch of bunk.
Alright, can you first back up that Win8 performs better than Win7 as all the evidence seems to show that they're pretty much the same as evidenced here: http://usabilitygeek.com/windows-8-vs-windows-7-speed-and-performance-testing/
Security out of the box on Win8 is better because it comes with MS Security Essentials, however Win7 can use the same software as a free download.
Win8 supports newer hardware than Win7? Can you show me a piece of hardware that requires only Windows 8?
Software integration is very debatable. By definition installing software is integrating it with your system.
 

This is precisely it. It is a change. However not just a small, incremental UI change. It is a large, sweeping, radically different change that *requires* user retraining.
Ever since Windows 95 (You know, 1995, 18 YEARS AGO?) Microsoft has been pushing the desktop metaphor with the start button element. It is ingrained in every Windows user. If you want to open an application, go to the control panel, or even shut down your computer, you first must click Start. For people who just need to use the computer to get things done, who don't care about the ins and outs, this is how they have worked for nearly two decades. Not only that, it's actually intuitive, at least back when it still said "Start" on it. If you sat someone down at a computer who never used Windows, they would instinctively click the Start button, and there they would find all their stuff. Even with just being the Windows logo, it's there on the screen, people will eventually find it and click on it.
Then suddenly, it's gone.
Replaced by what? Replaced by a fisher-price looking mosaic of tiles, some which seem to just be showing information, some which are application launchers, and not *all* of your applications are actually here either, for that you have to right click a blank spot and click "All Apps" in the bottom right? What's intuitive about that? What happens when a user does eventually launch an application? It loads in the desktop, with no visual cues on how to get back to the start screen, or launch anything else. There is nothing intuitive about this and actually requires training a user in how to use the UI, which is just poor design.
But never mind that, Windows 8 is just fine, right Jeffery?
 

How often are you going to be at the Start screen already when you want to launch an application? Precisely once per boot. All other times you're going to be somewhere else, usually in another app. So, instead of trying to make Win8 look better, lets compare apples to apples huh? Start the process from the desktop.
Windows 7: Click Start -> Click App Icon
Windows 8: Move mouse to lower left corner of screen -> Wait for Start to pop up -> Click Start -> Click App Icon
Even Microsoft realizes now how ridiculous the Windows 8 model is and is putting a Start button back in to 8.1.
 

Yes, the Charms. The magical menu that only pops up when you have your mouse in a right hand corner. So if the "search charm" is so unified, why did Microsoft have to put it there at all? The search feature can be accessed by going to the start screen and just typing. Why have a superfluous "charm"?
I also like the way you explain how you're switching between multiple apps (by clicking on mail, then on IE) yet derride Windows 7 by saying to do the same thing you'd have to switch between apps. Ugh.
And yes, if you use all the built in default stuff that comes with Windows 8, it's going to work well together, but here's an experiment! What if you don't use Windows Mail for your email? Then how would you use Windows search to search your email?
 

Odd, all I get is "Nothing can be sent from the desktop", I'm sure it's nice and easy and intuitive though by the way you beam about it, probably just needs more user retraining.
 

Hrmm, that's odd, I open Internet Explorer and go to the settings charm and I don't see any internet explorer settings, nor when I do it for firefox, or chrome, or LibreOffice, or VMware vSphere Client, or Cisco AnyConnect, or Outlook, or Steam, or... anything really. What the hell are you talking about? Oh, you mean it only works for "Apps". Well, how quaint. That sure is intuitive and so much easier, especially when you were talking about Internet Explorer, the browser MS has such a hard on for they had to include three versions of it in their OS!
 

Again, the thing about gestures is they require unnecessary user retraining. If you have an installed userbase who has been doing a task the same way for two decades you don't just go and break their workflow just for the hell of it. There has to be some compelling user value-add or else you're going to piss off a bunch of people. Gestures aren't intuitive where buttons are, gestures require passive wait times before an active click can be made where buttons don't, and gestures can more easily be triggered accidentally. Where's the user value-add?
 

Microsoft impliments drastic UI changes based on a minority of their userbase and wonders why people are bitching at them? Really?
 
 
So why did an entirely new Apps platform have to be built just to get search right? Why couldn't Microsoft just add these features into the already existing Windows API like Apple did with spotlight 8(!) years ago? The separation between "Apps" and applications just confuses users and is completely unnecessary.
 
 
You are half right, people don't like Windows 8 because it is a change, and the changes make it a worse OS.

I've used the single iso version of this and its works fine, never tried the multiboot one though,
windows: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
linux: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/multiboot-create-a-multiboot-usb-from-linux/

No, you missed my logic. Android is compleletly different. You cannot compare an open source OS designed to be user customisable with a closed source OS claiming to be an easy to use out of the box, which for most people quite clearly is not.
 
Say microsoft makes rulers for a specfic use, previously all their rulers were marked in centimeters but all of a sudden they decided that inches was to be the future, even though their users said they didn't want inches. But they made rulers with inches anyway, now calling windows 8 flexible is like calling the new rulers flexible because it is still possible for the users to carve centimeter markings onto the other side of the ruler.

No, you missed my logic. Android is compleletly different. You cannot compare an open source OS designed to be user customisable with a closed source OS claiming to be an easy to use out of the box, which for most people quite clearly is not.
 
Say microsoft makes rulers for a specfic use, previously all their rulers were marked in centimeters but all of a sudden they decided that inches was to be the future, even though their users said they didn't want inches. But they made rulers with inches anyway, now calling windows 8 flexible is like calling the new rulers flexible because it is still possible for the users to carve centimeter markings onto the other side of the ruler.

Kitty with winscp I find a nice alternative to putty as shift+f3 opens winscp to the current server.

Kitty with winscp I find a nice alternative to putty as shift+f3 opens winscp to the current server.

Sorry for the argument, large case of this: https://xkcd.com/386/, Out of interest were your problems "back in the day" related to Intel's implementation of AMD64? I can't find anything using google fu about any issues with it.

Sigh.. First off, you cannot install a 64Bit OS on a PC that has a 32Bit architecture currently running
 
Second if its staying as a linux machine you'll be installing programs from packages and will install the relevant architecture version from the repos if they are available
 
As for drivers make sure you install the correct drivers then have him not touch them