A good response then, thank you all very much...
even though I could hear the disguised sneer in the Mac user's comment! ;) It seems that Win7, 8.1 and Debian are all contenders for a Therion user. This may be getting off topic... My needs are; -low risk, I cannot afford an interruption that requires me to focus my whole attention before 'life as usual' can resume, -resistance to change, I have many spreadsheets with embedded VBA that run only on Excel 2000-2003 for Windows (and some other apps) (thanks to my misplaced trust in Microsoft's forward compatibility). I need to dump my existing XP environment 'exactly as is' into a virtual machine, -low intensity, a migration that enables me to trickle my many applications to the new os at my leisure over time (unless it can do it automatically in one go), -for the developing artist in the family; to run the latest wacom drawing tablets (which XP does not) While the Windows options might seem to be the natural choice for a Windows user of 20 years, my testing of the waters to date suggests that Debian may not be much more of a shock than the new Windows. Apart from my legacy of Windows knowledge, and data that depends on Windows apps I would go there in a moment. I just lack the time to do a lot of relearning and a local Debian mentor I think. I am a bit worried though, about the amount of time it took Therion 5.3.11 to turn up in Debian! I'd like to 'upgrade in place' on the same machine, but I think that violates my first point above, so I guess I'm up for a new computer, at least for the duration of the migration. Wookey, can Wine or Virtualbox receive an intact XP system? It seems to me it requires a fresh reinstall of Windows and all the apps? Currently I'm hunting around for solutions like zinstall, but any suggestions welcomed. Bruce PS - I see two Notepad++ users - is that coincidence because it is good software? Or because of the entry in the Therion wiki? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.speleo.sk/pipermail/therion/attachments/20131205/2dc326d1/attachment.html>
