Merging feature/commonsallayout branch

[Wols Lists]

On 20/10/16 05:14, Yousuf Philips wrote:
> On 10/20/2016 02:34 AM, Khaled Hosny wrote:
>> So that is not as bad as I thought it would be. We can have a runtime
>> check for 5.3 that forces disable CommonSalLayout for Windows XP. We can
>> then communicate in advance that we are dropping Windows XP support in
>> 5.4 (since we will remove the old code by then).
>>
>> WDYT?
> 
> As XP still has between 6 and 9% of desktop market share, which is
> around the same amount of Windows 8/8.1 and Mac OS X, it is in the top 5
> desktop OSes and i wouldnt recommend alienating them any time soon.
> 
> https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
> 
> 
> http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-201607-201607-bar
> 
> It would be useful to use the update ping stats to know what percentage
> of our user base are still on XP and if it isnt as high as the above
> stats perceive it to be, then it is worth dropping it sooner.
> 
Well, I'll bite. I still rely on XP. And upgrading is not really on the
cards - I've tried and everything keeps falling apart around me.

Two problems - I no longer have access to Windows keys, so I can't
upgrade my VMs, and anyway as of Windows 7, you can't point your home
directories at a linux share :-(

My XP setup has "My Documents" and "My Pictures" pointing at ~/Documents
and ~/Pictures. With the introduction of libraries in 7, that cannot be
done any more. (The recommended solution - "cache the remote server
locally", isn't really a solution, especially when the remote server is
storing a couple of terabytes ...)

And unfortunately, my wife now has memory issues, so trying to get her
to learn something new and move off of XP is NOT an easy job :-(

Yes I do understand that we can't keep supporting ancient technology,
and MS do like to keep changing things :-( but that's exactly what makes
life very difficult for my wife - and, indeed, many older people...

Cheers,
Wol