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Microsoft Pulls Plug for Support on NT4
seymansey writes "According to Neowin.net and News.com, Microsoft has apparently announced that as of the end of June, support for the now aging NT4 OS will be pulled. NT4 Server users have until the end of 2004 for support. Windows 98 users will be the next on the list for axed support too. Of course, Microsoft will still provide its knowledge base, but we wont see any more patches, etc. developed for the OS. After 7 years, it's kind of sad to see NT4 go."
Yesterday and today, the Slashdot front page has been fairly apologetic and sympathetic to Microsoft's cause. What, are we now suddenly an outlet for Windows updates and lamentations over sunset Microsoft operating systems?
...where I work. Why upgrade a server if it still works? Put 2000 and XP on the workstations, sure, but why replace an already-functional server? As long as it keeps serving files, right?
:-/
Now there will be companies like ours scrambling to get 2000 Server or 2K3 server on their servers by the end of next year. And we won't have a choice. Upgrade or lose support. What do you do? You upgrade.
My journal has hot
Factually speaking, NT4 was the last stable, fast and useful (as in drivers, functionality etc.) OS from MS, that offered a semblance of security.
Maybe you meant to say it this way:
Factually speaking, NT4 was the first stable, fast and useful (as in drivers, functionality etc.) OS from MS, that offered a semblance of security.
I think it should have gone a LONG time ago, NT4 was tricky as a desktop OS because DirectX was pretty much nonexistant. I think once Win2K (and the first two or three SPs)came about, NT was a goner. The sad thing really is what came to replace NT and the like for the future-> XP, longthorn, etc.
NT (4.0) wasn't that revolutionary, anyhow. kernel is about on par with 3.5, and the OS itself didn't become really stable until SP5 or so (SP4 caused crap (read: exchange) to crap out, IIRC), and by that time 2K was just right around the corner.
I will be sad when 2K goes. in my opinion that's so far the best OS microsoft made. (XP drops low on the list b/c the nasty theme and horrible amounts of crap-service that comes pre-enabled, which (especially sys-restore) slowed your computer to a crawl and more).
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Well, they acutally do provide lifetime support for their products. The only problem is that they define when the lifetime of the product is over.
Bad economy and Microsoft selling their OS for as expensive as ever? When the support runs out, that's going to be the straw that breaks the camels back, and I'd bet your boss will ask "are there any alternatives" to which you can grow horns and reply "why yes, sir" and show him/her your linux desktop or introduce them to one, using x-windows and staroffice (essentially looking exactly like winxp, accept staroffice is different).
Budgets are tight, and MS is expensive, and I doubt they'll be offering their OS for free to small and medium sized buisnesses. And we all know and have always known that's where MS going byby will start. When the bosses of bigger buisnesses learn from their friends of a medium buisness that they can use linux, they'll bother their IT Staff for a feasability assessment, and try to earn some brownie points for implementing it...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
After the best part of a decade, Microsoft are rightly pulling the plug and ceasing to support NT4. Why is that? Well, for starters, how about the impracticality of supporting products that are no longer providing a stable source of revenue. NT4 in the marketplace 'died' when Windows 2000 was at RTM (Release to manufacture; i.e. Given out in preinstaller format to OEMs, start putting it in boxes for sale at stores etc). It's got a somewhat decrepit feature set, with most of it's key technologies (Including IIS, the security model, the domain management structure) being upsurped by greatly enhanced ones.
;)
Now, everyone who's slagging off the moving is citing NT4 as stable, or at least making implications. If NT4 is stable, then lets just let it be. If any new worms crop up, well, tough, buying one operating system in the seven years that the technology sector has seen it's biggest expansion is a pretty silly choice to make. I'm sure there's new worms out for Windows 3.1 out there somewhere, but I've honestly not seen a serious complaint about it for a while.
Perhaps it might not have occured to you that if Microsoft kept pouring it's talented folks down the well in that fashion then it would be detracting from the current crop of products, although given Windows 2K3's relative impunity (A handful of fairly immaterial bugs have arisen in the many months since it's release) it's probably not as big a point as it once was.
In short, if you want to drive a Model T Ford, don't complain when the manufacturer won't sell you parts, provide you with fuel or the blueprints to troubleshoot things yourself. The upshot is that you can buy a more modern care that's got a place in showrooms today, or you can consult independant specialists who will cater to the archane vehicles as long as you pay the dues.
If I bought an application from a third party and was told it would be supported for 10 years, I would make damn sure the contract included things like what happens when MS stops supporting the OS. It's perfectly fine to use windows, unix or what ever you want, but the decisions need to made by people who think clearly. Not some dork who is the CTO because he went to school with the CEO, but is totally unqualified. Most IT managers suck. Change that, most managers suck period! Very few people are great at managing and many barely have the skills to get the job done. The same is true of programmers and every other profession out there.
As a desktop OS for l33t g4m3r kiddies maybe :) However, I think you'll find a lot of NT4 workstation installs in business and academia (my area). You don't need directx to run excel or draw graphs. Upgrading from NT4 to XP is a big unnecessary cost for organisations and a big compatability problem in the interim; incompatability of roving profiles etc.
I know a lot of people are nostalgic for the "old days" when NT4 was brand new, and was the best option in the market... as long as you wanted to pay premium dollar for Microsoft's products... but seriously, who cares about it anymore?
NT4 came out 7 years ago... and 6 service packs later, they almost have it working. There are still so many bugs with it, I can't keep track. It's a nightmare to maintain, and nothing is kept in a logical place. Even the log-in key-press sequence (ctrl-alt-del) is anti-intuitive. The graphics are horrible and bland. The hardware support is pathetic, even for its day. To my knowledge, you STILL can't access anything via USB on NT4. It's a system-resource hog (that's kind of given, since it IS Microsoft). Can ANYBODY tell me why they're still using it? The cost for maintaining it over 6 months is more than purchasing a new computer with Windows 2000/XP. What can NT4 possibly offer that Windows 2000/XP (or even Linux) can't? All the other options are easier to work with and/or cheaper.
I don't blame Microsoft at all for getting rid of it. I just wish they would have done it sooner... or even never come out with it in the first place. They could have just continued development on it until 1999 and come out with Windows 2000 and actually had a product that made it worthwhile to put on a server (in some people's opinions).
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
I'm not convinced this is a good thing. While I generally think MS got Win2K right (though not XP), several people in my office still explicitly request NT4 on new machines. One guy who works on my team is considering this now, after spending a week chasing a bug somewhere on his WinXP box that causes it to reset without warning when running some essential software. Sometimes, better the devil you know really is good advice.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'd like to know how the various OEMs, VARs, and ISPs handle this. I know of several companies that offer various types of maintenence contracts that also happen to cover NT4, since their product is based on that OS. Most companies that might be concerned about this probably bought a "Solution" from one of the big name companies, which included both hardware and software, so they may or many not be affected. The little guys, however, might have some trouble, especially if their servers are just white boxes that they built up themselves...
Michael C. Hollinger
I've found a lack of support for my OS as well. My rock-solid but aging Linux Kernel v1.2.8 keeps working, but it is getting harder and harder to find software, patches, and updates.
Torvalds? Cox? Tosatti? Someone please help.
It is no suprise to most here that poor behavior from any supplier, be it Microsoft, Sun, SCO, IBM, Redhat, etc., is not desirable. It has nothing to do with Microsofts "cause", but a few AC's, being part of that majority which automatically takes for granted what is handed to them by the mainstream, continue to try to make topics that present alternative analyses and experiences look like monochrome religious causes.
NT was one of the first efforts by Microsoft to create a real operating system acknowledging that not all PCs are simple consumer devices and there was merit to something stronger like OS/2, which they had abandoned. Open source and standards would have made it even more interesting, but the world being what it was, it was clearly of great interest and a great step forward, perhaps greater (performing, more stable, and/or secure) than any later advance from Microsoft in terms of OS kernels.
You think that for a Microsoft environment it would be a better idea to use a non-Microsoft server? Would you also want to run a Linux environment off of a Windows domain controller instead of an OpenLDAP server on Linux?
This is just silly, first off, Samba can't act as an Active Dreictory domain controller. Well the AD is probably one of the best and coolest advances offered by 2000 server. It is better than an NT 4 domain for so many reasons. However almost equally important is the fact that Windows Server is the Microsoft solution. To me, saying that you should run a fully Windows environment and then use a Linux domain controller is like saying that you should run a fuly Cisco netowrk at teh access layer but use Foundry at the core. Why? Cisco makes a solution that does the job just as well or even better, and of course works very well with all the other Cisco equipment. Finally there is always support to consider. Your largest number of support people are most likely going to be Windows people. Even if they know Linux if they primarly use and work on Windows, their Windows skills will be the sharpest. Forcing them to work on a non-farmilar platform is asking for trouble.
This "Linux for everything" bigotry is just silly. Linux has many good uses and I certianly think it has a place in mixed environments, as well as being a strong contenter to be an exclusive environment by itself. However, if you have a Windows environment it is just silly to try and force Linux server in it (by this I mean as DCs/ file servers, as a seperate webserver it is a good choice).
You should always try to use the best tool for the job and the best tool for a Windows Domain Controller is, well, one of the Windows Server line. To shackle yourself to the old NT4 domain method and create additonal support hassles simply because "Linux roxorz!!!" is not a good idea.
Oh and please, let's not be silly about security. A competent Windows admin can keep Windows boxes secure (our DCs have never been hacked since I've worked at my current job) and a stupid admin can get a Linux box hacked.
First of all, what company in their right mind goes from NT 4 to XP?
Second, an upgrade is always a bad idea. Clean installs are the best way to go. Stuff like email, contacts, etc should all be stored on network drives and not local hard drives so that they can be easily reconnected after installing.
Third, if there is not somebody in your company who can handle an installation as mindless as XP or 2000 then maybe your company should think about hiring one of the millions of out of work MCSE's out there.
Finally, $399 to $199 is a 50% discount for upgrade pricing. You consider this tiny? And that is the full retail price. Corporate pricing is much more favorable.
Any more bullshit you would like to spew?
And (drum roll...) the next two Dell file servers we are getting in for pure storage will be "tested" with FreeBSD running Samba. Took me three years - but they are going to let me try it and see if it "works out" for us. The thing that finnaly pushed this over was when me and the big boss was going over the pricing for the servers - I said "remember we have still $1600 worth of M$ that we need to buy" and he said "Oh shit thats right" - and BOOM I went into action and low and behold we are going to try it out and see what happens...
I even went out and bought Using Samba - just in case ;)
Regards,
Duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
Contrast that with Red Hat for example, who are yanking support for their 'personal' operating systems 12 months from the time of their release. It's kind of sobering to think that Red Hat 8.0, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1 are end of lifed in six months from now and 9.0 a mere four months after that.
While this might save Red Hat money in the short term I have to wonder what impact it will have on customer confidence. Even assuming you bought it on the very day of release at best you get twelve months maximum of bug fixes, which isn't very much especially if you were planning on deploying it. If some horrible exploit is discovered ten months from now you're screwed. You might appeal to the community to produce an updated patch, but you still forfeit any QA testing or automated RHN update that you would have gotten before.
But let's face it, only a small fraction of people would be aware of or bother to manually plug new exploits anyway. With time a burgeoning number of exploitable RH boxes will become a prime target for crackers. Too bad for them you say, but often those cracked boxes are used to launch attacks and are therefore a danger to everyone. Look at Microsoft's reputation concerning security of their operating systems and wonder if Red Hat's end of life policy will mean the same for them.
Oh back in the day when your computer locked up once a week because the USB errors had maxxed outthe limit for error log size. All because MS wouldn't release a USB driver for NT even though motherboard manufacturers had been including them for years.
For awhile it looked like MS would do the samething with USB2 to force people to upgrade from Win2K to XP. But yesterday they released Win2K SP4 to include a USB2.0 driver.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Windows 98 OEM isn't supported by Microsoft either. For some reason, 98 SE is. Go figure. I don't care if Microsoft officially offers patches or support for it but what REALLY pisses me off is when developers prevent applications from installing on Windows 98 OEM machines (we have a bunch of win98 oem machines at work which do the job fine) There is no good reason why they shouldn't actually WORK on Windows 98 OEM they just prevent the application from being installed.
The ones i've found:
Windows Media Player 9
Novell ZENworks for Desktops Management Agent (this REALLY sucks since we're deploying ZFD at our company)
Acrobat Reader 6
Solidworks 2003 Viewer
I'm sure there are many others. A disturbing trend, to be sure. There is actually a workaround to get the ZFDMA working on 98 OEM machines without using the installer, but it's an ugly hack and can't really be automated.
-- Jim
Dropping support for OSes that are clearly out of their useful lifespan is good and all, but we're going to eventually hit a wall here. Hardware is becoming fast enough that most users could really give a bean's ass whether they have the latest and greatest, their machine(s) are running fine where they are. I work in an industry (long-term health care) where the processing requirements for workstations just aren't that impressive. Win95 and 98 are just fine and will be for probably a few years, if not more.
This dropping of OSes is just going to cause a pain for support techs and admins dealing with these systems. You can't run anything newer on them without a hardware upgrade, but you can't get anything updated for the old OS, either. Software vendors drop their support as soon as M$ does, not because they are sheeple, but because they know it'll just cause problems. Want to install IE 5.5 on Win95? Good luck finding it. (you can, but not at M$) Want to install the latest Adobe, or MSN, or etc? Nope. And it'll just get worse.
I realize the push to deprecate OSes is for good reasons. They want to get rid of OSes that are buggy and insecure (ok, good call) and they want to push for new hardware in the market and keep sales running. Good ideas in the long run, but there has to be someplace where people just stop buying because it doesn't make sense to keep upgrading. (which I think we're starting to see now)
Blog,Twitter
uninformed comments about NT, or the microsoft line of business OSes. kids making claims one way or the other as if they have spent the admin time to know that 2000 or XP are some kind of saviors over NT. I'm talking about *years* here, not your new job at the phone company you got last year when you graduated HS where you only hear about NT stories, and read about them during your pokemon hacking sessions at night stuffing yourself with twinkies and pepsi cola, dreaming about hacking, vampires, the matrix, and your next mobile phone. first and foremost, microsoft is no longer a viable business server solution in the face of today's linux. second, back in 1996, when I spent hours trying to get either slackware or freebsd to take drivers for my future domain scsi adapter so I could continue to install the OS from my 4x nec scsi cd-rom, we received, booted, and installed NT4 in less than one hour on these same annoying machines. during it's time and heyday, NT quietly served it's purpose, as clunky, ugly, and awkward as it was/is. It did take untill 1998 with IIS4 and SP4 to reach anything you could even begin to call "stable" (less than one reboot a week:), however since that time it has continued to do it's duty. one thing that can be said about it that gives it an advantage over 2k is *time*. after spending years fighting with NT to get ports closed, and unecessary MS services and kruft removed, NT has been extremely stable for us and fairly secure, albeit do to a severe lack of modern OS features and a lot of work cleaning and stabilizing NT. This is not possible with 2k or XP. 2k is a decent workstation. XP is intollerable as a workstation. 2k is just too young to be used as a serious business server yet. Open source operating systems get tested and patched at light speed compared to microsoft solutions. But when you speak of microsoft server OSs, know that the only thing they have going is time, and the only thing that has had time to be reliable is NT. 2k and XP are no saviors at all. open source software covers all the server bases 2k can, and there is no reason for anything else. I remember a day when intelligent people who were passionate about technology surfed /., not a bunch of trite teenagers posing as people with brains.
So, while switching from NT4 to Linux w/Samba you now think they should switch from Exchange & Outlook to either some other commercial package or a mythical OSS package. Either solution will require both a new server and new clients, since Outlook won't do collaboration without Exchange. The cost of a new mail system, migrating all of the existing data from the current mail system, and retraining all of the employees on the new mail clients is an unnecessary, and potentially large, cost the company would have to swallow. That free Linux server and SAMBA is sure starting to cost a lot.
I have an old scanner, (like a lot of people probably) which still works fine with Win98 but as soon as you install it on anything Win2k or XP it's obsolete. But it works with Win98, how can it be obsolete?
Which means that I have to get rid of my scanner because the OS decides not to support my scanner or the scanner company (Plustek) doesn't know how to create a driver that will work on the newer platforms. I can almost see the bubbles over the marketing VP's heads now:
Ahh we sell em' so cheap that they'll buy another one, after all they had enough money for the OS...
Which obviously egged me on to another question: Who are they to dictate that we're rich enough to throw away good working equipment, in order to bend to the will of the OS?
I know that most techs I know are in the middle class or lower upper class section of the Revenue system, but heck...I know I'm materialistic, I don't need some 2-bit company telling I should throw away stuff that still works.
That burns the sh** outta me.
Isn't it a bit the same with NT4? I mean the software is stable as all hell, except when you're dumb enought to install a Win9X driver on it, in order to blue screen it (I mean it's not complicated to crash it is it?) And the lack of support for USB ports, which I thought MS missed the boat on that one. Anyone who has any idea what I'm talking about have moved on to Linux by now.
Yes somehow we believe we should throw away good working equipment (or some of us believe in dual/triple booting their pc's) but with the coming of XP, who would want to go back to 98?
Way to go progress! Here's a thumb up your ass for your efforts!
QD
hell, if you really needed Group Calendaring, use Groupwise, or Domino. im even sure there is an open source equivalent...
Jumping into clutches of Novell or IBM hardly seems like a smart thing to do after escaping those of Microsoft.
As for open source alternatives to Exchange there were numerous articles in the past:
Can we finally ditch Exchange?
SuSe OpenExchange
Look, I have to ride herd on a pile of MS servers, just now more 2k than NT. We've built a damn good business using the these machines. We've stretched the things to their limits of the with some of the processes that we have implemented. We've discovered deep bugs and pushed MS to fix 'em. We have a functioning, stable business that relies on this OS.
.NET and now not .NET.
This is where MS *always* makes it greatest mistake. They desire to become respected in the Enterprise market, yet these idiots cannot put a leash on their marketing department.
Hint to Microsoft: If you want to be taken seriously, stop changing your OS's willy-nilly. IBM supports OS's and hardware for years after they've gone past their prime. Why? Because their customers still use them. Businesses are built using your software as a tool to get work done. Now just because you decide that hammers are out of vogue, you cannot force everybody to switch over to pneumatic nail-guns. This "ok, ok, ok, we're serious now. We've come up with a great new way to do X" shit has got to stop. DDE, OLE, OCX, ActiveX, COM, DCOM, COM+.
You know, it is possible to run a network with their tools (quiet down, I work for people who have made this decision and pay me to implement it), but for cryin' out loud, business processes change slowly if at all and once that you realize that marketing won't sway established systems to change at the drop of a hat, the sooner that you will find customers that will stick with you for the long haul.
That is until you get greedy and start gouging on licenses...
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
It is kind of sad to see Linux kernel series 1.99 go.
If:
1) The more recent Linux kernels weren't better in almost all respects,
2) Linux wasn't open source, and
3) Linux kernels came packaged with various servers and network clients many of which are regularly found to contain hideous security holes
I would agree with you. All 3 of these conditions hold for NT4.
Dirty little secret: some of those major, KNOWN security holes also exist in 2K, XP and Server 2K3. They are kernel-level and fundamental to the NT5 security model and would require moving Windows off of the NT kernel and onto something else.
Good that you are migrating away from Windows. People are going to have to face up to the fundamental flaws within sooner or later. And the way Microsoft is moving to "fix" it (Palladium, etc.) is only going to make matters worse.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I was an MCSE for NT 3.51 at Charles Schwab in the mid-nineties. NT 4 was noticeably buggier and crashprone than NT 3.5*. So anyone involved with the NT servers was constantly fighting fires. I remember being struck by how calm the Unix admins were, and how they got to do more interesting work...platform uptime was a non-issue for them. So, with a little help from a sympathetic Unix sysadmin (thanks Art!) I was able to talk the boss into letting me switch to the Unix admin group. NT4......may it soon pass to the ash heap of history.
"Linux has a stable tree and an unstable tree. Developers work on the stable tree to fix bugs and on the unstable tree to put in new features. I think this is a great system. I wish Microsoft learns from it."
Um... NT and 9x?
If you've been waiting this long for a stable NT4 system you should have upgraded to Win2K a long time ago. Our DCs and Exchange servers run continuously unless we take them down for a patch or hardware upgrade.
The problem with Microsoft stuff has always been that it is easy to use, meaning your average Joe Know-nothing things he's done a bang-up job setting things up when in reality the entire network infrastructure is one big house of cards ready to collapse at the slightest security breech.
That's where I think Microsoft has done a better job with Windows 2003. Time will tell of course, but so far it seems to do a much better job of automatically putting everything into the most secure state possible. No extra services are installed by default, and when you do install some (like IIS), they are locked down. You must go in and specifically enable the features you want.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)