>Upgrading to any later versions will be done (as I understand it) through package manager. This is good to hear. But it's something that should have already been done, as we are in the third major iteration of the OS. I don't want just my apps to be backed up, I want everything to be exactly as it was before, after the upgrade reboot. My applets' positions, my preferences for the third party apps etc.
>Anyone really like the x86 architecture? I do. I also like how Windows XP is well equipped to run older Windows apps and even DOS apps which are important for some old businesses. I dislike Linux's carelessness of breaking APIs and ABIs all too often and sometimes for no good reason, and I also dislike Mac OS X's ease too (OSX is not very compatible with itself either, at least 20%-30% of apps fail when upgrade to a new major version, especially drivers -- my husband is forced to stay on 10.3.9 because of his 3 large printers and 3 film scanners that don't work well or at all on newer versions of OSX). Vista on the other hand has problems with compatibility too, which is why I am still on XP and I am not going to move away from it (I use XP for my Creative Commons videography editing). I use Linux and OSX too for my other work.