"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...

On 7/31/2015 11:32 AM, Davey wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:05:45 +0100
John Rumm wrote:

I can only refer you to the suggestion offered by The Natural
Philosopher:
"Insert DVD, follow instructions."

"Simples", as they say.

Sounds like a simply way to lose all your documents, photos, and
other information. Then find you are no longer connected to your
email, newsgroups and don't recognise half your software.

We are talking about installing a different operating system, so I fail
to understand what you mean by that.

It was suggested that "insert DVD, follow instructions" would solve the
problem (i.e. a slow Win 8 PC) at a stroke.

It neglected to mention the vital useful background explaining what doing
as described would actually do (i.e. the equal of changing an air filter by
ripping and replacing the entire engine with a different make and model).

It also neglected to mention what precautions one would need to take to
preserve their data first should thy consider doing as suggested.

Any sensible operator has any
important files backed up already,

And the other 97% of the population who would be looking for a reverse
switch if you suggested backup?

and why would installing Linux fail
to connect you to the internet?

That it would manage...

What about remembering to preserve all those email account settings that
you setup months ago and have now forgotten about?

What about the paid for license for MS Office you find you now can't use?

Of course half the software would not be recognised, but any new
software required is free, in both senses. Firefox and Thunderbird, the
Mozilla programmes, are the same on either platform

They are similar on both platforms - although not the same.

Also how would a windows user go about installing them?

Will they need to select the right install package to download?

Will it come as a compressed tar file? Will they know how to extract that?
(assuming they find their downloads folder)

Will it all install from a double click of the icon, or are you perhaps
assuming that someone new to the platform will understand how to use a
command line and sudo etc, or will suddenly be well versed in the variety
of linux package managers and how to use them?

and will transfer
directly, importing your old profiles,

If you can work out where the profiles are and how to move them between the
OSes. Most windows users would be challenged to find their windows
thunderbird profile folder[1], let alone the equivalent place in whatever
distro of linux they have.

[1] %appdata%\thunderbird in case you were wondering. That will expand to
a ^hidden^ folder tucked way down in the "roaming" part of the users home
folder.

and LibreOffice understands Word
and Excel and other Windows files. I see no problem.

Precisely... you see no problem.

Now go try getting someone to round trip a few more complicated office docs
back and fourth with co-workers a few times. Sometimes 90% compatibility
90% of the time is no use.

(Kingsoft office is a more "Office like" recommendation than Libre these
days FWIW)

+1 for Kingsoft - on my Android phone.