End Of Support for Windows NT 4.0

IdleMindUI writes "This month is the last month that hotfixes for Windows NT 4.0 will be released. Security fixes will only be released to Microsoft customers with Custom Support Agreements. Custom Support Agreements are still available for customers that need them and can be obtained by contacting a Microsoft rep. More information is available on the NT 4.0 support lifecycle site."

Comments

Patch available

[eightball01]

Quick. Download the patch here

Re:Patch available

[Anonymous Coward]

funnay!

Re:Patch available

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this was funny! May you all burn in metamod hell!

- (not the poster)

Re:Patch available

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares!! The mini mac is out!!

I have one positive remark

[testing124]

At least we will not have to continue reading stories counting down to when Microsoft finally ends support for it.

Re:I have one positive remark

[wdd1040]

Oh, there will be at least 3 more stories about it.

One dupe of this.

Another story about the end of online support on Jan 1st, 2007.

and

Another dupe of that.

Re:I have one positive remark

[dsginter]

Yeah, but now I'm gonna have to change my splash screen.

Re:I have one positive remark

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the cretin who modded this "Flamebait" please stand up?

Will the cretin who modded this "Flamebait" please stand up?

Will the cretin who modded this "Flamebait" please stand up?

We're gonna have a problem here...

Re:I have one positive remark

[zurab]

Too bad - the only OS which Microsoft designed to be truly portable is being phased out. It has at least some historical meaning.

Re:I have one positive remark

[dextroz]

On a sidestep... the number one song in Germany right now:

Link to story:

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/entertainment/4069 061/detail.html

Link to song page:

http://213.158.118.36/schnappi/

(Original Version)

http://213.158.118.36/schnappi/schnappi.mp3

Re:I have one positive remark

[storm916]

Neanderathal Technology...that's good.

Re:I have one positive remark

[FrankNFurter]

This is one more reason for me being a German to be ashamed of this country. It's almost as bad as having David Hasselhoff top the charts back in 1990.

Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they ceased supporting NT4.0 awhile back?

Anyone know how long until they stop supporting 2000?

Re:Supporting?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?

Let's exclude IBM Mainframes here -- despite the hardware changes and market drift over the last few decades, it's still IEBGENR & CORGZ under the skin. And they haven't dusted the o/s since the 70's...

Re:Supporting?

[inu_maru]

According to this: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/support/lifec ycle/ Support Dates for Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server Type of Support Availability Mainstream * Paid-per-incident support * Free hotfix support June 30, 2005 Extended * Hourly support * Paid hotfix support June 30, 2010 Security hotfixes Free to all customers through March 31, 2007

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD does, I think.
Possibly Debian too.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

well IBM OS2 is *STILL* being suppored for FORD Motors... go figure.

Re:Supporting?

[Combuchan]

Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?

I know Linux does. The 2.0 development cycle has seen work from July 1996 to February 2004. Since the source is open and I'm sure there's some 2.0 folks still around, any security fixes, as rare as they come up in the kernel, could easily be backported.

Companies EOLing stuff after 9 - 10 years scares me. With the notion of pervasive computing and kernels showing up in a wide range of things, the concept of software lasting far longer than we thought is now nothing new. Consider Y2K-affected machines--engineers never thought their products would still be running 30 years later, but somehow, they were.

You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage.

Just think, do you really know when you're going to be replacing that server you've just setup?

Re:Supporting?

[alangmead]

Sun produces patches in support for Solaris two years after the last ship date, and ends support five years after the last ship date. That has them creating patches for Solaris 7 until next August and phase 2 support for Solaris 2.5.1 ending next September.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun has awell defined support cycle. Diagram.

Sales:

Sun delivers a new release of the Solaris Operating System approximately every 24-36 months. Roughly four times a year, updates that incorporate a set of tested, integrated patches along with new Solaris features and support for new hardware are released.

At a minimum, there are two major releases of the Solaris Operating System available for purchase. After a new release is delivered, Sun announces the end of sales life for the 2nd prior release of the product and customers are given 90 days to place final orders. Final shipments are made for 90 days beyond the final order date.

The support contract for products that have reached the end of their sales life can be extended by five further years through the Solaris Vintage Support Model.

Support:

The Solaris Vintage Support model allows customers to extend contractual support for the Solaris Operating System (SPARC and x86) for five years from the Last Ship date as follows: The level of support during the first two years from the Last Ship date will provide contract customers full remedial support excepting requests for enhancements and cosmetic bugs. Patches will be created as needed and distributed through the SunSolve program. This provides no material reduction in the level of support. However, patches will not be rolled up into quarterly updates. In years three through five from the Last Ship date, contract customers will continue to receive telephone support and to have access to existing patches on the SunSolve site. No patches will be issued for new bugs. Five years from the Last Ship date and beyond, customers may contact Sun Enterprise Services for a custom quote for support services.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Large companies, governments, and market inertia can cause exceptions, of course.
Solaris 2.6 was a very popular and long lived release.

Supporting older releases costs, which is why companies hate to do it. Stability and long lifetimes can be sold as features though.

Re:Supporting?

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

Oracle generally support the RDBMS for 4 years or so after release, but support doesn't cease all at once. Like MS, they phase it out. For example, 8.1.7 was officially desupported as of December 31, 2004 - it was first released in 2000, I think - so most customers don't get bugs fixed any more, unless they pay for a higher support level. Even then, bug fixes stop at the end of 2006.

(Oracle used to provide a last-ditch "support" service for *very* old RDBMS versions, where they gave you the source code and told you to fix it yourself, but they don't do that these days.)

Re:Supporting?

[penix1]

"You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage."

There comes a time when you really have to move on. You know, a rolling stone gathers no moss and all.

Having said that, this is one area where FOSS outshines CSS. While new stuff is being released all the time older stuff is being supported by someone or at least support can be found for it (either for hire or other means). In either event, I see this as a good point to push for FOSS.

B.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a huge difference between what a lot of other vendors do and what Microsoft does with Windows. Every version of Windows is an entirely new operating system with new incompatibilties and new ways of doing things. They'd might as well be different operating systems entirely: five separate operating systems, Microsoft has put out.

Solaris or AIX, on the other hand, are basically constant. Programs you wrote for AIX-1 (I haven't been around that long, so I don't know what it was called really) will run on today's AIX with very little modification. Fortran programs older than Microsoft can still be compiled and run, assuming the programmer adhered to a standard. Microsoft broke Windows XP in a totally random fashion with SP2. They can't get their shit together well enough to put out one good operating system, yet instead of building on what code they know works, they reinvent the OS every couple of years, breaking everyone's applications and introducing new bugs in the process, as well as sloughing off hundreds of unsupported installations. A smart sysadmin keeps test servers around for when Microsoft releases patches because they don't dare install them blindly on production machines, but sometimes patches will break one computer while working just fine on a machine that's been updated exactly like the broken one.

With Oracle or Sun or Ibm, you upgrade to get a new version of a product. With Microsoft, you get a new product in exchange for an old one, where history indicates that each newer product is more broken than the last.

[Offtopic rant] I mean shit. Part of the reason for Microsoft's success with Windows is that it's a complete Operating System and professional libraries for application designers. Whereas with QT, you have to obtain a license, you can just start writing applications for Windows. You can drop Activestate Perl onto a Win95a computer and start writing GUI applications native to that computer. Even given this, Microsoft often doesn't use their own libraries. Versions of Office use their own widget sets that aren't available outside of Microsoft at all. Microsoft created a homogeneous application platform, and then broke its regularity themselves. Their success really only indicates how large of a niche there was to be filled.

Re:Supporting?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Companies EOLing stuff after 9 - 10 years scares me

Companies refusing to EOL stuff after 10 years scares me too. I visited a firm I'd worked for long ago on a presales junket and saw they were still running a piece of code I'd written in a couple of days to shut some people up about 15 years ago. They asked me a question about its code dependencies. Brrr!

Re:Supporting?

[penix1]

"A smart sysadmin keeps test servers around for when Microsoft releases patches because they don't dare install them blindly on production machines, but sometimes patches will break one computer while working just fine on a machine that's been updated exactly like the broken one."

This is just prudent administration even in FOSS. You never change a stable production environment unless you are 100% sure the changes won't trash your stable environment. That is what the word "stable" means. I have seen FOSS patches that trashed the program it was supposed to patch. Of course, they issued another "oops" patch the next day but still.

B.

Re:Supporting?

[complete loony]

"Consider Y2K-affected machines--engineers never thought their products would still be running 30 years later, but somehow, they were."
We had a bunch of BIOS's here at work made in 94 that failed to reboot with the correct date after y2k. That's only 6 years of useful life from a PC. And yes, we had people using those pc's for a while longer running "net time" after every reboot.

Re:Supporting?

[Class Act Dynamo]

It's not that they necessarily have to perenially support old software. The problem is, they are essentially trying to force the user into buying new software. It is as if you have an old car, and, say, Ford says, "We will no longer carry parts for this car or fix it, even when there is an undiscovered flaw, and there is no where else you can go to get it fixed. If they intend to stop supporting something, there should be some way to go to a third party for patches and whatnot. A poster on a different thread suggested that once they end support, MS or whoever should have to open that code up so that a third party or the user him/herself can produce patches. That's my nickel for the day

Re:Supporting?

[duffbeer703]

Microsoft does support NT 4 -- if you have a custom support agreement. There just isn't any more free fixes.

There are military deployments where NT 4 will be running until 2015 at the earliest.

On the flip side, consider also that there is plenty of Sun kit running SunOS 4 laying about as well.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and that's great and all, but let's face it... Stuff in Solaris dosen't change often--or greatly, version to version. Most of the changes are cosmetic, and security related... AND you can pretty much count on the idea that something compiled 15 years ago on ancient hardware will run on a newer machine, with newer OS.

Windows, on the other hand, undergoes changes so vast and often that it's not unheard of application and things breaking.

Re:Supporting?

[SunFan]

Stuff in Solaris dosen't change often...

The _external_interfaces_ don't change often, but a lot can change under the hood in Solaris. Solaris 9 has /tmp in a RAM disk and journaled filesystems and improved threading and improved scheduling, etc., but it'll still run older binaries with no problem.

Re:Supporting?

[doorbot.com]

You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage.

Isn't one of MS's major arguments against Linux the fact that it could fork, it could die off, etc and you, as the customer, will be left holding the bag (and by their logic completely screwed) because there's no longer a big company behind Linux? So they do the same with NT and it's fine? Sure you can pay for extra support for NT, just like you can pay for a programmer to come an maintain your Linux code...

Am I crazy or does this sound like typical MS double-speak?

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, good luck getting bugfixes and such if you intend to use a Linux distribution from 1996, including all of its included software. It would require so much work that it would basically be pointless. I mean, most systems from that time even ran libc5.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Microsoft won't release their code until it is so antiquated that no secrets in their current systems are still based on the old code.

Plus, if we pass a law that says "Once you stop supporting it, you have to release it open-source", they'll just build a support system that increments the cost. After seven years, it's $250 per call. Eight years, it's $2500. Nine years it's $25,000... The support's still available, right?

Jim

Re:Supporting?

[s-meister]

(Channelling Microsoft)

Dear NT4 user,

You paid us for NT4 (you DID pay us for NT4, didn't you?) some time ago. We know it still works fine, we just want more money from you. So we'll stop supporting it and you'll get in trouble from your PHB unless you upgrade to the new, wonderful, Windows (insert current version here).

We don't think in terms of long term reliability, we just want you to keep our cashflow healthy by buying new versions every couple of years. If your applications break with the new version, we don't care! You'll buy our new development tools, we think. If you have to buy new hardware, well, too bad. We don't care if our new version is more bloated than the last version, just so long as it's new and improved! And you think you just have to keep buying your OS and applications from us!

Yours,

A Microsoft sales resource.

!@$%^"!$%mphh. What happened? Did I "go off" again? What did I write this time?

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is as if you have an old car, and, say, Ford says, "We will no longer carry parts for this car or fix it, even when there is an undiscovered flaw, and there is no where else you can go to get it fixed.

The problem is that the software industry moves forward a lot faster than the automotive industry. Some of these businesses that complain about lack of support for their dinosaur applications are the equivalent of taking a Model T to the Ford dealership and complaining when there's no adequate service options available.

Yes, there are real and tangible reasons to get rid of ancient history like NT4. At least you've had several years to plan the switch. It's not just Microsoft marketing lies. Don't fall into the Slashdot groupthink.

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?"

Yes. IBM routinely supports everything they made. Even OS/2 is still supported.

Dude, MS is probably the worst at supporting their old stuff. IBM is probably the best (of the major players, anyway).

Re:Supporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

no but you can take your model T to a classic car guy who will sort it out

simerilly if you have a crippling bug in an old linux kernel or distro and can't or won't migrate for whatever reason you can pay someone to fix it.

this is the problem with propeitry software. All third partys can do is at best make dirty hacks or protect a system externally (ie firewalling) because they can't get at the code they need to fix the problem properly.

Re:Supporting?

[justins]

Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?

Oracle certainly does. Keep in mind, however, that Oracle would not be moving customers to some "extended support" option that they have to pay extra for after 10 years or something. The whole support period is "extended support," and they pay for it throughout. :)

Re:Supporting?

[justins]

I know Linux does. The 2.0 development cycle has seen work from July 1996 to February 2004. Since the source is open and I'm sure there's some 2.0 folks still around, any security fixes, as rare as they come up in the kernel, could easily be backported.

On a system that old, I imagine keeping glibc and whatever userland you're using up to date is a lot harder than the kernel.

Re:Supporting?

[justins]

It is as if you have an old car, and, say, Ford says, "We will no longer carry parts for this car or fix it, even when there is an undiscovered flaw, and there is no where else you can go to get it fixed.

Uh... no. It is as if you were getting parts for the car for free, and suddenly you have to pay for them.

The horror!

If they intend to stop supporting something, there should be some way to go to a third party for patches and whatnot.

You don't even need to do that. You just need to pay them.

The horror!

A poster on a different thread suggested that once they end support, MS or whoever should have to open that code up so that a third party or the user him/herself can produce patches.

Or... you could just pay Microsoft for the patches.

The horror!

Re:Supporting?

[Rich0]

The other problem is the long list of other companies who are doing the same thing which tends to make everything snowball.

At work we often have big expensive machines which are controlled by computers (insert your own scenario here - manufacutring robot, high-tech scientific instrument, hospital device, extremely-complex-server, whatever). Said device controller software ran on NT4. Device vendor decides that they won't upgrade the software to run on XP (yes, it must be lousy software to not just run on the newer OS, but when you have two vendors for a given type of equipment and they both have these kinds of problems, you're up the creek). Of course, the vendor wants you to spend an extra $100k on another big machine.

So, now your OS upgrade problem just turned into a $100k machine upgrade problem. When the machine was bought, the justification was probably that it will save $x per year for the next 20 years and so we should buy it. Now you're tossing it after maybe 7 years (they wouldn't have made the software for NT4 if it had just come out). That changes the math considerably.

Of course, said machine vendor should be supporting their customers better - otherwise nobody will buy expensive machines unless they can afford to toss them every 5 years.

Note that this isn't purely MS's fault - just an illustration of the problems that dependance on vendor support lead to, and that when you depend on multiple vendors you are now subject to weakest-link issues. One vendor might tie you to a specific product, and if that product becomes unsupported you get two different vendors pointing fingers at each other...

Re:Supporting?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Embedded systems have their own rules. If you're running a 25-year old military aircraft and it's onboard systems fail, you might want a new model AN/YUK computer, but you wouldn't replace the software without a bloody good reason. The BGR would be a major change in system context, and the costs could well run to billions (as in "Update Orion" for you folks who remember FASOTRAGRABRUPAC). You wouldn't upgrade simply because the vendor released a new product.

In enterprise systems though, the context is rapidly shifting and the machines involved are way more general-purpose. In that context a cheap (read "free") software upgrade would make sense, as you're leveraging statistics for a set of fixes that are likely to help you in many scenarios. That's the sort of atmospheric-pressure marketing a company can use. Embedded systems aren't upgraded without the hardware context as a rule.

I don't know though -- there may be elevator engineers who download a software update everytime someone presses the ground floor button.

Re:Supporting?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Sorry for the misspelling ... Wiki has an article on the venerable AN/UYK-8 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/UYK-8

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

tp?

Thank God this is over !

[SlashingComments]

I think MSFT is moving towards bigger and better future by "incorporating" features and algorighms from other small vendors and inventors.

We just make sure the MSFT's R&D Division (commonly known as 'Apple') stays in the game ...

Re:Thank God this is over !

[mjduffy1]

Yeah, Professor Sir Albert William Liley (you know, the moron widely hailed as the father of Fetology and Prenatal Medicine, who performed the first ever fetal blood transfusion) needed his head examined. You may wish to examine http://www.archindy.org/prolife/lejeunetestimony.h tm You may legitimately disagree, but this easy, know-nothing ignorance of the issue's complexity is idiocy.

Re:Thank God this is over !

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, there is no room there... it's already filled with his new mac mini...

Re:Thank God this is over !

[nizo]

Good news for where I work. I can finally get everyone to upgrade, and since a fair chunk of new viruses don't run on NT now everyone won't feel left out anymore.

abandonware

[moose5435]

Does this mean NT4 is considered 'abandonware' now?

Re:abandonware

[Anonymous Coward]

If by 'abandonware' you mean it is now free, then no. However, if by 'abandonware' you mean, abandon hope, all ye who use NT4, then yes.

Re:abandonware

[Lifthrasir]

but who'd actually want to download NT?

Re:abandonware

[DaHat]

I can't speak for DLing, but my company still sells PC based devices that run NT4 and will continue doing so for at least another year, perhaps two. It all depends on how much continued demand there is for these products (low, but enough to keep selling them), as well as if we can continue to get licenses for NT4.

Windows 2000 Embedded style licensing (which we use on most PC based products now) is preferred, but there are issues in upgrading these devices. Of course, Windows XP Embedded just plain stinks for what we are doing, and XP Pro OEM licensing is a nightmare for a company like us (ie we would not qualify for corporate licensing and we cannot pre-activate the OS).

Re:abandonware

[eclectro]

Laugh as you may, Microsoft's number one competitor is itself with people hanging on to old software and systems.

Prime target for the penguin.

Re:abandonware

[__aafkqj3628]

Prime target for the penguin.

Or since most of the consultants brought in would probably be MCSE's (or equivalent), they now have more power to grab a bigger pay-cheque from those companies with huge upgrade and maintenance costs.

Re:abandonware

[mwvdlee]

Prime target for the penguin.

The main reason companies are sticking to old platforms like DOS, Win 3.x and some newer ones is because they are stable, fully configured and they simply don't need anything else; it is perfect in every way that it needs to.
Going Linux will have as little benefit in these situations as going to any other OS.

Linux's market would be companies switching to new OS's because there the cost benefit of Linux really comes into play, configuration of a stable system would be about equal costs but the bonus of not having to switch due to support end-of-life is great.

If only stockholders would allow companies to make such long-term decissions.

Re:abandonware

[Taladar]

So you should start looking into alternatives to Windows for your embedded products for the time when Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2k are both unavailable.

Re:abandonware

[DaHat]

Despite the problems involved, we will continue to use Windows for the majority of our PC based products. Yes, Linux is an alternative, and there are those here who think it is the second coming and try to use it where ever possible (thankfully not very many places). It has only been used in a couple of products here, and is not likely to be used often because of its being far harder to setup according to our needs as well as to code for. One shouldn't need a Linux guru to setup a well configured system... something that you can do in your sleep with Windows (especially XP and CE Embedded).

Besides, Linux is not that great of an embedded OS.

Re:abandonware

[The-Bus]

In that case, it has been "abandonware" since 1996.

Re:abandonware

[Anonymous Coward]

>> One shouldn't need a Linux guru to setup a well configured system... something that you can do in your sleep with Windows

Er, while Windows is indeed easy to set up, most systems set up by non-experts could hardly be called "well-configured" by any stretch of the imagination.

With regards to coding, there are any number of programming tools from the simple to the complex available for both platforms.

It seems from reading your post that your primary problem with a Linux solution is that it's too much trouble for you (or your company) to learn Linux well. I bet if you & your coworkers spent as much time using a Linux environment as you have in a Windows environment you might have a different view.

You're to be commended for giving it a shot, however. I won't beat you over the head with a useless "Switch everything to Linux NOW," but I would encourage you to a) not give up on these minority Linux-based ideas, and b) when you have any difficulty with FOSS, ask around on the net. Likely someone will want to help.

Unlike MS who won't support their old product and won't release the source so someone else can.

Re:abandonware

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, neither Windows (even CE) nor Linux is good for embedded OS's. I speak as someone who spent 12 years working on embedded systems ranging from the large (1/2 million dollar medical imaging systems) to the small (some of the first portable DVD players).

VXWorks, PSOS, eCos, LynxOS, and Green Hills INTEGRITY OS all have solid features required for embedded systems lacking in both Windows and excellent tools for debugging systems you encounter in embedded systems.

In my experience, if your "embedded system" is merely a PC with the monitor turned off (Linksys wireless box) or with the keyboard removed (ipaq), WinCE and Linux both do just fine. But if it's any sort of real embedded system beyond a stripped PC, Windows just won't work, and Linux will take incredible amounts of customization to work (prepare to hire a kernel hacker for Windows or Linux in that case - and if you're big enough, maybe MSFT would let you make the mods you need to)

Re:abandonware

[DaHat]

While I agree with you that Windows in general and Linux are not good for embedded OS's... I must disagree with your assertion that not even Windows CE is.

Windows CE (now Windows CE .Net) is a real-time embedded OS includes more than 2 million lines of code with which a developer can customize most aspects of the system should they desire. Similar to the XP Platform Builder, you run through, choosing what components you want to add and how things will be configured... and then you build it... from source. Despite the name "Windows" in the product name, and all of the connotations of PC instability, Windows CE is a very solid and powerful platform to build on.

I agree that Windows CE (like Linux) is often more than is needed for many smaller (scale and need, not physical size)

You can find a brief write-up on Windows CE as a RTOS here.

If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we could expect a Linux company to support their distribution as long as Microsoft supported NT 4.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

When Microsoft lets you upgrade to new versions without paying another license fee, let us know.

Re:If only...

[bconway]

So it's better to be forced to upgrade every 6 months or risk losing support than to have a single product supported for 8 years? Talk about vendor lock-in...

Re:If only...

[RollingThunder]

If only we could expect Microsoft to provide the source code so those who wanted to stay on the old version could do so, while fixing their own bugs.

Re:If only...

[QuantumG]

Redhat and other commercial Linux vendors should pass people who want to stick with legacy distributions onto to independant contractors. There's many thousands of people who would love to support your Linux needs and get paid for it.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that have to do with staying on the same verison and having long-lived security support?

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a computer with Windows NT, what are your choices? Upgrade to 2000/XP/2003 which costs money or live without support. If you were using a free OS already, you could upgrade to newer versions at any time you chose.

Re:If only...

[EnronHaliburton2004]

When commercial Linux vendors let you upgrade to new versions without paying another license fee, let us know.

Most software companies do that, it's not unusual at all.

Re:If only...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"When Microsoft lets you upgrade to new versions without paying another license fee, let us know."

When RedHat or Novell lets you do this, let me know.

Remember, in the enterprise, Linux doesn't mean "throwing up a copy of Fedora."

Linux in the enterprise means a stable, supported product like NDL, SLES, or RHEL. And those products aren't free.

Re:If only...

[strider44]

I'm not sure how that's vender lock in. Vender lock in is making sure they only use your product. It would be just as easy to use another distrobution of linux that doesn't upgrade as quickly and unstabley such as Debian.

Re:If only...

[Dr.StrrAngeLove]

one of the smartest thing ive read.
apple abandon os9 a while ago.
and linux throws shit in trash right after a new
release. but at least MS sets a record for helping
out there os's.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Linux vendors charge annual fees, so they could care less if you upgrade or not. In fact they probably would rather have you not upgrade because a static system is cheaper for them to support.

(Note also that this annual fee business is the exact same business model that allowed Microsoft to destroy most of the old midrange market.)

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's only had two successors to NT4 though. 2000 and 2003. How many have the Linux distros had?

Re:If only...

[Bingo Foo]

"throwing up a copy of Fedora."

Sounds interesting. Let me try:
<insert finger in throat>
HUGRHGAAGH
</insert finger in throat>

Dang. Another Ubuntu.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do Republican States receive so many government subsidies?

You misspelled "tax and spend liberal".

Re:If only...

[ckaminski]

There is absolutely NOTHING stopping you from selling support contracts to people still running Redhat 6 or SuSE 7.2 if you want. Just a matter of advertising dollars.

One of the benefits of Open Source actually. You just can't fix any of RedHat's closed source stuff.

Re:If only...

[Phosphan]

So you don't think SuSE is commercial?
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/d ownloads/suse_linux/index.html
With a bit delay after starting to sell DVDs, but they release it for free.

Re:If only...

[Tim C]

This is about NT Server. The supported, "server" versions of Linux (eg RedHat Advanced Server) are most certainly not free (as in beer). If you want support, you pay for it, and as people are pointing out, it lasts a lot less time than support for NT Server did.

Re:If only...

[rseuhs]

... without paying another license fee, let us know.

Actually I upgrade/support about a dozen computers with just one SuSE-box (and it's legal, too!). Try this with Windows...

Re:If only...

[risinganger]

Only thing is a large portion of that code is still in use. The only place you are likely to see the source is in either your dreams or at a guess a warez site?

We are talking about the company that tried to halt access to it's api's code? (should look it up, don't have time) in court citing security reasons...

Nope, no way, not today.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

>"throwing up a copy of Fedora."

Sounds interesting. Let me try:
<insert finger in throat>
HUGRHGAAGH
</insert finger in throat>

Dang. Another Ubuntu.

You have to use the orfice on the other end for Fedora.

Re:If only...

[QuantumG]

Yeah, but if Redhat actually offered the contracts to their customers from a registry of suppliers you wouldn't need advertising dollars, and why the hell is redhat making closed source stuff anyways.

Re:If only...

[aixou]

When mods stop giving gratuitous mod points for redundant statements, let us know.

Re:If only...

[fungai]

Microsoft's enterprise support agreements *always* entitles you to the latest release of the software you're subscribed to.

Next...

Re:If only...

[kosmosik]

When you will be able to fix NT sourcecode yourself and compile your own hotfixes, let us know.

Re:If only...

[RAMMS EIN]

And even if they did let you upgrade for free, it wouldn't be as good as a typical Linux distro. Newer Linux distros are usually similar but improved wrt. to the older version. Newer Windows versions, OTOH, usually have many changes you don't want to have (more bloat, rearranged menus and control panel, more "security", ...)

Re:If only...

[MikeDX]

I'm sure some enterprising young person or persons could download said source from an appropriate location and provide support to X or Y company or companies should they feel the need. Whether this is legal or not is an entirely different matter (and I don't condone it)

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian does support old releases, and its free as in free beer. I just don't see your problem.

Re:If only...

[derphilipp]

RedHat lets his users of RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.something download RedHat Enterprire Linux 3.0

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

When commercial Linux vendors let you upgrade to new versions without paying another license fee, let us know.

Huh? They do. Perhaps you are confusing service fees with license fees?

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vendor lock-in? Do you even know the meaning of the phrase? If your systems are based on Windows, good luck to migrating to anything else. If your systems are based on Redhat, it's pretty damn easy to move to SuSE or whatever.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were using a free OS already, you could upgrade to newer versions at any time you chose.

And that was my point. There isn't any free-software OS that has as long-lived security support as WinNT server had. Not everyone wants, needs, or can upgrade every year or two, nor should they. Right now RedHat is the only vendor that one can pay for long-term support (8 years with RHEL, I believe).

Re:If only...

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Read the articles that I link to, idiot, then come up with a good counterargument.

Re:If only...

[operagost]

I can't fix Linux source code, either. Because I don't know HOW. Is that a requirement for using Linux?

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I wish you could mod something up above a 5. I almost broke into tears I was laughing so hard!

Re:If only...

[kosmosik]

This is plain stupid. You just didn't get me right. Look the topic is about *organizations* (like companies) having *loads* of servers running NT - only problem with NT is that they cannot fix it. They could if they have source code - f.e. they could hire a programmer that can do it - probably it will be cheaper than moving all of the boxes to 2003 Server. Or maybe if somebody was able to fix those NT bugs - like a company hiring loads of programmers - they could make fixes and sell them to others. But nobody despite MS can do it since nobody has the code.

So please stop bitching about that you can't fix Linux as it is totally different topic. Don't look at it from perspective of your one and only desktop PC system running Linux which you obviously don't quite understand...

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[CPrimerPlus]

"luse"? who says that. What a moron!!!

Heh

[dolo666]

Custom Support Agreements are still available for customers that need them and can be obtained by contacting a Microsoft rep.

That's like buying a betamax, no? If you're running NT 4, you could be running something else.

Re:Heh

[Billly Gates]

Have any idea how many older systems that run Windows3.1, SunOS, SCO/MS Xenix, or other obsolete platforms?

A decade ago my old man had a friend who still used a TRS-80 that I would make fun of. Why?

Because all his data on tapes could not be transferred to a modern system.

In the business world if its not broke why fix it?

Also the layoffs and understaffing due to the .com crash has many IT shops understaffed. They do not have the time or budget to upgrade such systems. Most CEO's and CFO's after the .com phase seriously wonder if there is any return at all with upgrading software? So it stays the way it is until it hurts the bottom line.

Re:Heh

[Nefarious Wheel]

Why do people buy software upgrades?

Very often, it's for the same reason people bought '57 Chevy's. Larger tail fins.

Re:Heh

[dmaxwell]

The file formats are a monster problem but how was transferring the data a problem? I'm pretty sure even a TRS-80 can be null-modemed to serial ports on a newer machine. These days things would be even better for your friend. You could use the data in an emulator after pulling over from the other media.

I once transferred a buddy's C-64 disks to disk images for emulator use. I also did the same for an 80MB Amiga Hard Disk he had. Now that was a fun one. This was a few years back and I had to roll a kernel with Amiga partition support.

Re:Heh

[rogueuk]

Unless you are the military.

Do you have any idea how long it takes for software to get approved by them? Hell..the Navy isn't even upgrading to Windows 2000 until either 2006 or 2007. Most of their old subs run Windows NT and I'm sure that the other departments of the military still have legacy systems running Windows NT. I've even heard microsoft reps say that they are ending support for everyone except for the military.

Re:Heh

[dolo666]

In the business world if its not broke why fix it?

It's broke if it can't auto-evolve, IMHO.

Re:Heh

[Nyder]

Well, even though this is off-topic, i'm going to give a link for any TRS-80 fans out there.

Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site

Re:Heh

[wplittle]

If you're running NT 4, you could be running something else.

In a lot of cases, this is true. A specific example of where your statement is false is in the realm of specialized lab/manufacturing equipment with integrated PC. I've seen some of these beasts running NT4 with a lot of custom drivers that were never rewritten for 2000. Plus, the software designed specifically for operating these tools was written with very close ties to how NT4 operates. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Heh

[vandan]

Ahhhh.

That would explain that nuclear sub that crashed while on it's way to Australia the other day.

Good riddance, I say :) We don't need nuclear timebombs docking in our ports ... especially ones that can't even avoid stationary objects.

Re:Heh

[Lumpy]

If you're running NT 4, you could be running something else.

really? cool please tell me what OS can run my servers that each use SCSI mpeg decoder boards (24 decoder boards per server) run the commercial spot insertion software I use, and is no more difficult or even less difficult to maintain?

Oh wait, you can't. The vendor has no plans to move from NT 4.0 because W2K is considered unstable to them still for anything but workstations.

MOST of your TV commercials on cable TV are broadcast to you using NT 4.0 and NT3.51 (or in some cases DOS)

and there certianly are noi plans in the near future (5years) to replace them.

I have several Pentium I 133 mhz servers that can play 24 seperate and different DVD quality mpeg2 videos all at once. each server makes the company around $11,000 an hour in ad revinue.

NT4 and even NT3.51 are still very useable operating systems, and are still in use be large amounts of companies making large amounts of money off it.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

A decade ago my old man had a friend who still used a TRS-80 that I would make fun of. Why?
Because all his data on tapes could not be transferred to a modern system.
In the business world if its not broke why fix it?

Because one day the hardware will physically fail and he's up shit creek. Why risk his business?

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight about the submarines part.

As a midshipman, I got the chance to visit two in the last year. They were all running NT...except the computer personnel on board said "XP" but I doubt they knew the difference.

It was so sad...they had nice shiny new flat screens but were still on NT 4.0 with Media Player 6.4 and Office 97. *sigh*

Now, the weapons room...that was a FAR different story...

Re:Heh

[TractorBarry]

Similarly I know a garage where I live that are still using 486 machines in their workshops which connect to a web server in the main office.

The simple reason for this is that modern PC components don't seem to have the resilience of the older stuff and don't handle the temperature fluctuations/dust/vibration levels as well etc. etc.

Plus when one dies they just replace it with another unit (they buy up replacements from car boot sales for an average £ 20) As long as there's a browser on the box they don't care what O/S it's running.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Sequent... nobody could possibly still be using them....

oh, crap, we are *sigh*

SCO Unix is still very much supported; SCO does still have a support department (I assume). Also, SunOS is also supported... for versions 5.7 (ish) and later. SunOS 4.x hasn't been supported for years however. (side note: Solaris 8 is SunOS 5.8 + CDE + some other bits).

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

No. In many cases, the hardware of the machine is restrictive in what it can run. There are many older BIOSes that simply do not support Windows versions beyond NT (at least, without a BIOS flash).

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares, i use Warp...

It will be interesting

[BJZQ8]

It will be interesting to see how many people take the Linux plunge and break from the swirling vortex of regular, forced product updates. I am betting very few, unfortunately. It's just too much of a leap for most people...when Windows XP/20XX offers such a warm fuzzy UI feeling.

Re:It will be interesting

[dabigpaybackski]

It's just too much of a leap for most people...when Windows XP/20XX offers such a warm fuzzy UI feeling.

I can corroborate your observation. I use Windows XP, and the UI does indeed give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The stock desktop picture with the verdant meadow under a cobalt sky was carefully calibrated to induce an alpha state upon the user. There...I am looking at it now. Ahh... *bliss*

Re:It will be interesting

[Phexro]

It seems to me that anyone still running Windows NT 4.0 in 2005 is pretty successfully avoiding the particular "swirling vortex" you mention.

Re:It will be interesting

[gregmac]

It will be interesting to see how many people take the Linux plunge and break from the swirling vortex of regular, forced product updates. I am betting very few, unfortunately. It's just too much of a leap for most people...when Windows XP/20XX offers such a warm fuzzy UI feeling.

I switched from NT to Samba running on Debian over a year ago. I'm not stuck relying on some company to deliver on-time updates. I've never had a virus infection. Oh, and the only time I need to reboot is to update the kernel (which isn't very often). Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling.

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

Actually, this is an opportunity for everyone who isn't Microsoft, not just Linux.

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I'm going from Windows 98 to Mandrake Linux, any tips for people doing so? You're saying people should get out of the MS bubble so lets see what advice you got for us :)

Re:It will be interesting

[drewzhrodague]

Uh, that's siphon vortex.

Re:It will be interesting

[drsmithy]

It will be interesting to see how many people take the Linux plunge and break from the swirling vortex of regular, forced product updates.

Which "forced updates" are those ? You do realise you're talking about people still using an OS released nearly 9 years ago, right ? How many people do you think there are still out there running Redhat 3 ?

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

Betcha you can still find a lot of Netware 3.11 and Netware 4 installs out there too... Just because it's old doesn't mean you should stop using it.

Why invest 20k for NT or Linux if you don't have to?

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

If your computer was running Windows 98 because it was old and antiquated, you're probably better off staying with 98. KDE and Gnome run like shit on any proc 100Mhz. If you instead use Icewm or Xfce or something you'll have a much nicer transition.

Re:It will be interesting

[the angry liberal]

It will be interesting to see how many people take the Linux plunge and break from the swirling vortex of regular, forced product updates.

Swirling vortex? This is how you define an end to a product cycle which has been around over a decade? If you are running NT4 and have not upgraded since the start, then why start now? How is this nonsense insightful? Oh yes, it is a M$ bash. Duh.

I am betting very few, unfortunately. It's just too much of a leap for most people...when Windows XP/20XX offers such a warm fuzzy UI feeling.

Most admins remote desktop into a minimal interface and don't care about anything fuzzy. Personally, I use the old interface, no animation, 256 color icons, and no backgrounds regardless of whether it is NT4 or XP.

Face it, the reason why these boxes are running NT4 isn't because the admins wanted to run it that way. It was also not held back due to a licensing cost issue. They are likely running some 3rd party applications designed and supported only with NT4 in mind.

Don't forget the fact that just because M$ quit supporting it, they HAVE to upgrade. If the system is performing well, then why rush out to change anything? Do you really think a system you installed 11 years ago is going to run into any new problems requiring a call to M$ technical support? I highly doubt it.

Re:It will be interesting

[Aeiri]

Yeah, don't use Mandrake... ;)

People push Mandrake saying it's the "easiest" step from Windows to Linux ever, but when I tried RedHat and Mandrake from never using Linux before, both made such a bad impression for Linux on me that I switched back to Windows the very next week.

Three or so months later, I tried Slackware, and I haven't been happier since (I'm still using it, 2+ years later). I would suggest Slackware or Debian, more than likely Debian. Debian does most of the packaging for you, with apt-get, and Slackware leaves that up to you (rsync, manual downloading of the packages, or creating your own leet script to do it for you), and the customization available to me has left me dependant on Linux now. :)

Re:It will be interesting

[minus_273]

are you saying that linux does nto have regualr forced updates? did you forget the whole libpng3 vs 2, glibc vs libc , xvid vs divx fiascos? I wont even get into the change in binary formats. Every having used linux since the mid 90's i've seen my share of painful forced upgrades. Forced in the sense that people just stopped writing apps for the old system. I think that is the way it should be. Without the forced upgrade to XP, something like ME would be the standard.

Re:It will be interesting

[dmaxwell]

My worry in taking an NT4 box to 2000 was the worm of the week. I was in no way eager to screw around with something that is working. I count on patches, backups, antivirus, and other measures to protect me from having a bad day. There won't be anymore patches for NT4. It's wormfood.

Re:It will be interesting

[bladesjester]

Amusingly enough, that was one of the first things that I changed after I installed it (dual boot on the laptop). Out goes the green fields, and on comes a wallpaper from American McGhee's Alice.

Re:It will be interesting

[deburg]

Here here! 6 NT 4.0 servers here running, the best an IBM dual Xeon 500Mhz with 1 GByte of RAM, the least a Compaq Pentium 90Mhz with 96 MB of RAM. Requires a reboot once a week to avoid that "swirling vortex" and other stuff.

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

my machine is 2 months old. I'm running windows 98 because I refused to buy another version of windows when I planned to move to Linux and HL2 ran on 98. :)

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Could you go into more detail on this please? I'm on 56k and already started to DL the ISOs for mandrake.

Yes 56k, I know.. I want off Windows that bad :P

Re:It will be interesting

[oconnorcjo]

Actually, this is an opportunity for everyone who isn't Microsoft, not just Linux.

What other vendor keeps supporting an OS 8 years after release and 5 years as a legacy OS?

Certainly not any linux distribution. I run Linux on my machine and it is still on fedora core 1. I refuse to update the machine to another core (due to RedHats cavalier approach to Fedora) and need to upgrade soon to another distro because I really like getting regular security updates from a reliable source.

When NT 4 was first out I was running RedHat 5 which I then had to upgrade to Redhat 7/8 and then I jumped to fedora core 1. Does RedHat even support 7 anymore?

My wife is using a win 2000 machine and it has been getting regular updates since the year 2001 and I expect her to get regular updates probably till the year 2008. I only WISH a Unix/Linux vendor had the support MS does for thier legacy products!

I would not consider this bad press for MS.

Re:It will be interesting

[texroot]

Mandrake will be fine. With all respect to the parent poster, there is a big difference between either Mandrake or RH (free version is now Fedora) from 2-3 years ago and what they are now.

Really it's a big diff from then to now for any Linux distro due to newer kernel, libraries, better Gnome or KDE desktop, etc. Fedora is ok too, just a bit more trouble to get multimedia working (takes a few extra steps) and requires downloading a new rpm every time you upgrade the kernel if you have an ntfs formatted drive that you need to access.

The easy to use Debian variants, like Kanotix, Ubuntu, and Mepis are good also, so if you don't like Mandrake one of those would probably be your best bet. I've not done Slackware, but my impression is that it's probably better for a more experience Linux user unless you really want to get into the nitty gritty of Linux config right off.

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

Google's your friend :) Read up on xfce or icewm...

It's the only way to run it. Gnome and KDE don't work well on older hardware.

Personally I'd go out and buy the CD... 2 gig over 56k blows..

Not saying you can't do it, but you'll probably switch back to win98 on that machine.

Download something like Knoppix first to see how it performs on your PeeCee

Re:It will be interesting

[ticktockticktock]

Why not order your distros on CDs from various companies that download it for you then burn it to CDRs?

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

I only WISH a Unix/Linux vendor had the support MS does for thier legacy products!

Here is Sun's Solaris lifecycle. In fact, it looks like the latest patch cluster for Solaris 2.5.1 came out in September. Solaris 2.5.1 first shipped in 1996.

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

my box is 2800+ AMD, Radeon 9700 pro, half a gig of ram and 100 gig HD... I think it can handle a linux distro ;)

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I don't have a credit card or I would of done that :)

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

I'm on 56k...

Holy cow, just buy the CDs. The post office will probably deliver your CDs before your download finishes, and you will feel decent about supporting the distro.

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

Then, have someone else buy them for you, and you take them out for lunch, it works out. Your ISP will probably kick your modem off after 8 hours and your ISOs will likely be broken.

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

Swirling vortex?

Just wait until the goatse.cx man unveils his hidden singularity! Then, we'll see who has the last laugh!

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I use a download manager so thats not likely. Plus I DL 24 hours a day, I dont think they care what I DL

Re:It will be interesting

[bob beta]

Go to cheapbytes.com and order one of their 'cheapbytes' CD distros. It will cost you under ten bucks to get the equivalent of a downloadable ISO, pressed on a commercial CD. They 'clone' the downloadable releases of many Linux and BSD distros. Their 'Pink Tie' linux is fun, it does an end-run around Red Hat's 'brand name' arrogance.

Re:It will be interesting

[SunFan]

Okay, you win. Your patience is admirable.

Re:It will be interesting

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well except in part for the vid card. I've got an ati aiw9600, and with mandrake 10.0 It runs, but no 3d acceleration. And of course no vid in or out or anything. Just the basics.
The Mandrake 'move' cd just dies when it tries to load x.
While I do like the aiw functions, my next linux setup will involve an nvidia card(old gforce 2mx card I have spare) and 1.6ghz duron on a spare nforce2 mboard.
My next vid card on main system may be an nvidia as well. I'd really like to try a 64bit distro.

Mycroft

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

No, the reason they are running NT4 is that the PHB's haven't taken the time to justify the transition from an NT4 domain to ADS, despite the obcious benefits.

I worked at a place that tried to migrate to NDS instead. It was such a terribly managed project that they continued to use NT4 domains long after.

Really embarassing - this company provided onsite tech services. Anyone who contracted them was pretty foolish IMO.

Re:It will be interesting

[gl4ss]

when redhat gets big enough to have big enough customers that can keep paying them yearly for backporting critical bug fixes, i'll bet that they'll do it(it made financial sense for ms to keep those customers paying them..).

then again, if you run something like debian... you don't get updates to the old version as you get automagically converted to the new version if you wish so.

what i'd be scary about is that there's critical military and financial institutions running on nt4 around the world. and now nobody can patch them even if they knew where the bug was.

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

Hahaha... Well I assumed if you were running 98 you were either one of those tools that felt that 98SE2 is the most stable Microsoft platform ever, or a user who had a POS PC, or someone that actually stuck with the Microsoft Licensing and didn't upgrade to XP... Guess I picked the middle option :)

Re:It will be interesting

[the angry liberal]

My worry in taking an NT4 box to 2000 was the worm of the week. I was in no way eager to screw around with something that is working. I count on patches, backups, antivirus, and other measures to protect me from having a bad day. There won't be anymore patches for NT4. It's wormfood.


Well, a box that will be exposed to risks associated with worms should probably get an upgrade to something more actively patched. This goes beyond just the OS and into the realm of slim support for 3rd party security tools.

When I think of an NT server, I think of a backup server running an old, but stable build of NetBackup connected to a database server over a private network and not an Internet banking server.

In regards to worms: If you use Windows in a server enviroment, it is critical to firewall it off with a "what if" senario in mind. I like to keep them on their own vlan and away from any critical boxes. The firewall rules should contain rules blocking all access inbound and outbound, except for the specific addresses and ports required by software you are running. Outlook, IE, newsgroups, IRC, AIM, etc should never, never, ever be used like one may consider doing on a workstation.

I'm still waiting on some nice open source developers to attempt to clone some of the functionality of Cisco Security Agent (formerly Okena). There would be very little cause for worry if any Windows admin could sit down and define which binaries have permissions to what folders, libraries, and other resources. As a motivating factor, I can safely say M$ would hate you for making such a tool.

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

hehe, indeedy.. it's hell but still..

Re:It will be interesting

[the angry liberal]

Really embarassing - this company provided onsite tech services. Anyone who contracted them was pretty foolish IMO.

Heh heh. The second IT job I had was with a shop like that. We gave this image of being some big shots, which was easy with nice clothes and a snazzy store front. Anyway, we were selling major contracts to schools and businesses, but couldn't even keep our internal database up for more than a few hours.

Karma eventually killed them. In the dawn of the Internet era, they tried to fix their credit problems by going public. Well, some family owning a korean computer shop down the street bought 51% of the shares and immediately used their control to fire everyone. It was awesome.

Re:It will be interesting

[ticktockticktock]

You don't need a credit card to buy from the places I mentioned. They both accept mailed checks for payment.

Re:It will be interesting

[_Hellfire_]

Hopefully a helpful suggestion: try Debian Sarge.

If it's really mission critical, I'd say go with Woody, but we run Sarge (which is nearing graduation to stable status) on our web and email servers at work and we have found it to be just as reliable and stable as Woody is.

Just for reference, I work for a web hosting company, and when servers go down, we start losing real dollars. For anything but nuclear control/space launch, I'd recommend Debian Sarge. Give it a go on an old box and have a play. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

I switched about 8 months ago and haven't looked back (I used to be a Red Hat then Mandrake person).

The best bit for you though - regular security updates from a trusted source. The Debian Project are nutcases when it comes to security, and they follow up every issue. Wanna update your box? apt-get update, apt-get upgrade. You're Done. It's safe and easy and trouble free.

Not to start a holy war, but we have 2 RHEL boxes also (some of our vendor specific software requires RH) that give us no end of grief. I'd like to drop those boxes if I could but I can't.

Anyway just a suggestion - Debian for servers rocketh muchly.

Re:It will be interesting

[_Hellfire_]

Neh I don't care about an Offtopic mod. I've got karma to burn. But I would like to help you out some.

I read that you have a decent machine, so any distro will run fine on it. Can I ask why Mandrake? The reason I ask is because I used to be a Mandrake person. For details, check my blog entry

I know, it's very verbose. In a nutshell I declare Ubuntu the coolest distro ever. Don't let the name throw you off. It's a serious distro with some serious cash and brainy people behind it.

Furthermore - you can order the CD's at no cost to yourself. Yep - they ship them to you for free. So can that 56K download and order the CD's instead.

Mine rocked up about 3 months after I ordered them, but I hear that that was because of the demand for the CD's. It might be quicker now. OTOH If you want to pay for the shipping I'll be happy to throw one of my CD's in the post for ya. Drop me a line on my webpage if you're interested.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Ubuntu is the best desktop OS for PC's I've seen. Period. Put it this way, I just installed it on my girlfriend's grandmother's laptop, and she likes it. That should tell you something.

Re:It will be interesting

[baker_tony]

You know, when you get married you won't be able to play poker with the boys, drink beer down at the pub or browse slashdot any more!!!!

:-)

Re:It will be interesting

[rainman_bc]

lol or buy any swanky new grafx card any more either :(

I know I know...

Re:It will be interesting

[BJZQ8]

There have been numerous sub-comments to mind about Microsoft not forcing updates because NT 4 still exists, etc...I am talking about the "new" Microsoft scheme of things. They will do anything in their power to get you away from "buying" their software to "leasing" it on a yearly basis. Software Assurance is the name of the game. I am talking swirling vortices like proprietary Office formats, and the general move to lock-out any product that might want to work with Windows...except those that are digitally signed, digitally sealed, and digitally delivered by MS. The vortex is the fact that working with MS is like a deal with the mob...it makes it very, very hard to get away.

Re:It will be interesting

[BJZQ8]

My experience is in School Districts. I see them buying into Software Assurance, and going from NT 4, to 2000 Server, to 2003 Server in the span of 4 years, and being charged at every step of the way. I look upon any Linux upgrades as wonderful and necessary, because they are FREE (as in beer) and not shoved in your face. I see the change from 2000 to 2003 un-necessary, because we gained little or no features and sank $$$ into SA.

Re:It will be interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Current death toll from Amnesty International's actions [tinyurl.com] in Nepal:10,000

You're an idiot.

Re:It will be interesting

[4of12]

What other vendor keeps supporting an OS 8 years after release and 5 years as a legacy OS?

IBM?

I'm sure their mainframe customers would be real unhappy if they didn't support their old stuff.

Re:It will be interesting

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Thanks! I just ordered a handful of CDs (2 of each and I'll hand them out as needed, other wise wee frisbes! but I suspect they will be handed out). The only thing I didn't like is no live cd option so I'll DL the live version any way.

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep an eye on your blog.

Re:It will be interesting

[_Hellfire_]

Cool. Each CD includes both a Live CD and an Install CD in a funky cardboard case.

Now is the time to gain ground!

[MarcQuadra]

right now is THE time to move in on all those businesses still running NT 4 and sell Linux/SAMBA boxes.

Use the line:

It'll be an even better domain controller, and if a user comes in with an exploited laptop you can be safe knowing that your PDC isn't hosed by it.

I've been using SAMBA as a windows PDC for several years now, I had one setup that was so sucessful that I started charging them for all the months I didn't come and fix it (it was so reliable I had to switch from a charge-to-fix to a service contract).

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ does the same thing. It is so unstable that they change from charge-to-fix to service contract....

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[dameron]

Use the line:

It'll be an even better domain controller, and if a user comes in with an exploited laptop you can be safe knowing that your PDC isn't hosed by it.

I used the line:

You can avoid Active Directory.

That worked.

-dameron

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[drsmithy]

Right. So you want to *avoid* a system that makes centrally managing users and machines much easier ?

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[Billly Gates]

NDS is many leaps and bounds better than active directory.

I am still puzzled why America chose a bloated and buggy Microsoft implementation that if I recall created 20x as much data and caused synchronization nightmares without serious lan upgrades. Of course my knowledge is from 99/2000 in a novell shop so it may be outdated.

I do not like supporting Samba because it gives Microsoft the advantage.

Why do you think corporations love IE despite security concerns? Its because you can do things like integrate security settings with an NT domain controller for intranet sites.

If the Samba project instead focuses on Novel we would have alot less Windows based servers as a result. CIO's love integration and single platforms.

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[MarcQuadra]

Well AD has it's ups and downs. Where I work we're finding that a lot of the appliances and databases we want to use would work much better if we used OpenDirectory from the start, Active Directory is great because it's a 'turnkey' solution, but when you need flexibility, seek something else.

Also, I think Windows is a total PITA to run in the server room, it really isn't a good server platform from my experience. My experience with Linux and BSD involves a lot of -waiting- while Windows seems to involve a lot of -patching-.

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[Anonymous Coward]

SMB ran over TCP/IP since the OS/2 days and therefore was a better fit for Unix systems that Novell's protocols (which only supported TCP/IP long after Novell ceased to be relevant).

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[ckaminski]

Samba + LDAP good. AD + NDS bad.
Open. Closed.

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[DrXym]

That's a great idea, but the dists need to support the model. It's no good saying to some small business that they should backup all their data, write out all their passwords, their network settings, write down details of all their shares, install Red Hat and then spend an ungodly amount of time reproducing the exact same environment.

It strikes me as an obvious business opportunity that all of this could be automated - i.e. you feed a CD into an old NT box, it makes a careful audit of all your settings, backs up the data somewhere, and then proceeds to replicate the environment using Linux as best as humanly possible. This is after all what the Microsoft does from one version of Windows to the next, so why not do the same on Linux?

For example you can log the fact they have an HP laserjet called "foo" and replicate the same with CUPs and SAMBA. You can see they have a domain controller and replicate the same. You can see they have a web server and try and mimic the settings. Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, but even something that removes 95% of the drudgery would be a boon.

Re:Now is the time to gain ground!

[MarcQuadra]

Agreed. That's why Apple's *NIX implementation is gaining ground, it does that sort of thing better than any Linux distro I know of.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[inu_maru]

I actually wonder if there are any respected company using it... Actually, since my professional life begun (circa 2000), I haven't seen a single server running it. Being lucky, I guess...

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

"luse"? who says that. What a moron!!!
Those with speech impediments, you insensitive clod!

MOD PARENT DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no room for criticism of RH around here.

WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Dancin_Santa]

Though many years late, Windows XP is what WinNT4.0 should have been, much less NT3.51.

Fully featured, responsive, and with the new security built into SP2, practically invulnerable to virii or hacker intrusion. (God help you if you want to run with the firewall down, but that goes for anything, don't it?)

The upshot of this is that anyone still down in the dark ages with NT4 ought to seriously think about upgrading to XP. With an upgrade package, it will cost a whole lot less to deploy as all the devices in NT4 are already supported under XP, so there's no need to worry about hardware support like on other operating systems.

Also good news for Microsoft, they can finally pull some of those developers off that project and put them to work getting XP and Longhorn more bulletproof.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[MarcQuadra]

Fully featured, responsive, and with the new security built into SP2, practically invulnerable to virii or hacker intrusion. (God help you if you want to run with the firewall down, but that goes for anything, don't it?)

I'm still cleaning out tons of mal|spy|ad-ware laden SP2 machines every day. They still seem to get viruses too.

As for running with no firewall, proper behavior for ANY IP stack is to reject ALL connections unless there's a service up-and-running waiting for a connection. The problem is that on Windows, default users have the ability to open privileged ports. Firewalls add a layer of complexity and frustration to everyone, admins, users, and hackers alike. Properly implementing an OS that defaults to security settings that reflect the mean intelligence of your user base are what Windows needs, not more bubble-gum and shoelace to hold a bad thing together.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Nefarious Wheel]

Also good news for Microsoft, they can finally pull some of those developers off that project and put them to work getting XP and Longhorn more bulletproof.

A very good point. And anyone who adds a security hole to Longhorn should be punished by forcing them to work on the patch team for IE.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

>Fully featured, responsive, and with the new
>security built into SP2, practically invulnerable
>to virii or hacker intrusion.

That's just plain wrong. Sorry.

>The upshot of this is that anyone still down in
>the dark ages with NT4 ought to seriously think
>about upgrading to XP.

I would wager most of the machines running NT4 out there are well beyond their prime. Seven or 8 year old machines don't run XP particularly well. Besides, many of the remaining NT4 environments I've seen already have the clients migrated to Win2K, and haven't a compelling reason to move any further yet.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows does precisely that; it ignores packets unless there is a service listening on the port. The ability to open "privileged ports" has nothing to do with its security. "Privileged ports" are nothing more than a UNIX convention and have no meaningful functionality. If a user process is taking a port for a service on an actual server, you already have problems quite unrelated to that. Windows' major malfunction is that it has numerous system services that have had flaws in them that have been exploited by worm authors. Also of noticeable concern is that the quantity of software written for the platform that requires administrator privileges in order to run properly, making user attacks in programs like mail clients, web clients, and even flaws in image codecs all the more severe. But in a server context that is practically irrelevant.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[drsmithy]

I'm still cleaning out tons of mal|spy|ad-ware laden SP2 machines every day. They still seem to get viruses too.

Do you try to explain to people how they get in and how to avoid them ? Or are you just riding the gravy train ? It's pretty trivial to avoid spyware and viruses on Windows.

As for running with no firewall, proper behavior for ANY IP stack is to reject ALL connections unless there's a service up-and-running waiting for a connection.

That's what Windows does. Trouble is there's a few services listening that really don't need to be.

The problem is that on Windows, default users have the ability to open privileged ports.

This isn't Unix. The concept of a "privileged port" doesn't exist on Windows.

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Black Parrot]

> Though many years late, Windows XP is what WinNT4.0 should have been ... Fully featured, responsive, and with the new security built into SP2, practically invulnerable to virii or hacker intrusion.

Yeah, and in two years you'll be calling it crap, just like the people who used to rave about NT poop on it now.

Why don't you beat the rush and admit that XP is crap now.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[hikerhat]

I think the firewall is there to prevent all that mal|spy|ad-ware stuff from listening on a port without the user knowing about it. That way when your machine gets owned the new owner can't connect to it and tell it to DOS amazon. At least until the new version of the mal|spy|ad-ware comes out that quietly drops the firewall. Preventing the user from opening privileged ports isn't really a solution to anything. You can write malware that listens to port 6666 just as easily as you can write software that listens to port 666. Restricting certain ports to the root user is really just there so that, on a multi-user system, the admin controls which is the "official" web server and ftp server and such.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[niXcamiC]

as all the devices in NT4 are already supported under XP

not true, my at&t wavelan isa does not work on xp :)

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, with NT vs. XP, there is actually something to compare. NT, at the time, was pretty good compared to the alternatives. Today, XP is really good compared to NT.

I guess we could compare using XP to Linux. No, better to compare Linux to NT4. From an administration and usage perspective, those are almost equivalent.

There is no equivalent x86 operating system that even approaches XP in usability and ease of administration. 2000 may be in the running, but XP adds quite a bit of hardware support as well as administration niceties that put it way ahead.

In two years, hopefully XP will be a long forgotten memory, but today there is no doubt which operating system is the best.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[gl4ss]

not really, if you look at what ms announced for nt back then...

then longhorn is what's it's supposed to be. but that's dropping those features fast now though too...

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[p0d]

Until 2003, Fujifilm was shipping their line of Frontier digital laser imagers with NT 4.0 SP5 as the underlying OS. So wherever you see a Fuji printer (in most Walgreens actually), there's an NT 4.0 install with no compelling reason to migrate. The system is turnkey, with no easy (for your average photo lab tech) way into the underlying OS...it boots up and comes online. Simple as that. If it doesn't, there's a ghost CD that the tech can use. Now they ship their new Frontiers with either Windows 2000 or XP Pro.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[davegust]

Though many years late, Windows XP is what WinNT4.0 should have been, much less NT3.51.

I'm not sure how to read this one. You're kidding right? Mod Funny?

XP is just a collection of band-aids for all those saps who, while surfing as Administrator, insist on pressing "yes, I want to install" when their favorite porn sites download ActiveX malware.

The NT kernel always had a very good security model, it's just that neary every install subverted it by running end-users with admin privs. Microsoft should have been firmer with application developers to encourage non-admin installs of apps.

Every Win32 API call has native security oriented handles. Want to draw on the screen - you have to have priv to do that. Want to write to the file system - again privs. NTFS is a fine file system.

The fact that corporations have been reluctant to upgrade their NT4 servers and desktops says alot about the stability and reliability of this 10 year old OS.

2000 is a fine OS to stay with, as it has some nice improvements over NT4 (USB, power management, etc). I think ending 2000 support will prove tougher than NT4 has been.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[zurab]

Comments like these modded up leave me wondering what the average age on /. is. I think it's gradually decreasing and I am willing to guess currently it's at 14.

Are you talking about Windows NT 4.0 server here? Or workstation? Because you cannot be seriously comparing the NT 4 server to an XP workstation, especially recommending the upgrade path like that. Windows XP is limited to not provide many server-like functionalities so you have to purchase a more expensive Windows 2003 .Net small business/data center/whatever edition.

In either case whatever you are comparing, have you tried running Windows XP on a 266 Mhz, 2GB HD, 32 MB RAM box? Good luck with that. Moreover, unlike Windows XP, Windows NT was never meant to be a home consumer OS - MS had Windows 95 and 98 for that purpose.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[dmaxwell]

Do you try to explain to people how they get in and how to avoid them ? Or are you just riding the gravy train ? It's pretty trivial to avoid spyware and viruses on Windows.

All the time. In words of three syllables or less. It overwhelms them. In my neck of the woods, there are quite a few clubies hopping on RoadRunner and Wide Open West. So lets run through what is no doubt trivial for you and me:

1. Hardware router, check for his patches too!
2. Up to date antivirus
3. Adaware,Spybot,and friends
4. Windowsupdate
5. Don't run as Administrator all the time. (oh shit...long story here).

6. Don't click on attachments in email. There is a setting you have to change if you aren't taking my advice not to use OE.

7. Here is a long list of settings to change in IE if you aren't taking my advice to use Firefox instead of IE.

Well, whaddya know! To Joe Blow all of this isn't going to sound trivial at all and there is only so much that can be done to make it simple and painless for a non-gearhead. Except for 6 and 7 even MS gives the same advice. It's still a big list for someone who would rather treat the PC as the Magic Toaster.

This isn't Unix. The concept of a "privileged port" doesn't exist on Windows.

Here is yet another example of MS being a bull in a china shop. Those ports are considered privileged for reason and those reasons apply to EVERYBODY. Do any of these sound familiar by any chance? Notice a pattern here?

ftp-data 20 tcp
ftp 21 tcp
ssh 22 tcp
ssh 22 udp
telnet 23 tcp
smtp 25 tcp
nameserver 42 tcp
pop2 109 tcp
pop2 109 udp
pop3 110 tcp
pop3 110 udp

Could it be that public internet services tend to run on ports under 1000? Client machines have little good reason to leave those open incoming. You weren't making an argument for Window superiority there....

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Mr.Ned]

"Fully featured, responsive, and with the new security built into SP2, practically invulnerable to virii or hacker intrusion. (God help you if you want to run with the firewall down, but that goes for anything, don't it?)"

You have got to be kidding me. Three vulnerabilities were announced _today_. You are a troll and should be moderated as such.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[rifftide]

Windows 2000 is what NT 4 should have been. Win 2K was Microsoft's best desktop OS until XP SP2 shipped this past summer. Its biggest new feature was Active Directory, but even while adding that it seemed noticeably more stable than NT 4.

XP added the Aqua lookalike shell and lots of bloatware like WMP and Messenger that provided many more entry points into the OS for adware and virus writers. Not to mention compatibility modes for Win 3.x and Win 95 apps, which NT 4 didn't have to deal with. Win NT and 2K were both highly complex, but XP just has too many damn features to be managed or secured properly. If you listen closely, you can hear Fred Brooks laughing every time XP gives you a blue screen.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[naelurec]

It will cost a whole lot less to deploy as all the devices in NT4 are already supported under XP

What does this mean? I'm assuming your talking about hardware devices? I know of quite a bit of OEM hardware that works with NT but not XP not to mention custom interfacing hardware (computer controlled manufacturing equipment) that only have drivers for NT -- do these work under XP as well w/o update?

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

You're high.

Wizards and cute icons to not define "usability", nor "ease of administration".

And, XP does not add *any* hardware support. Hardware vendors do that, shithead.

"XP is really good compared to NT."
AT WHAT? Screensaving? How about File serving? Web serving? Mail serving? Serving as a PDC for 500+ users? Application serving? RAS? Routing? Proxy? Anything? Anything at all?

XP is a worthless end-user piece of garbage, 90% of the footprint is related to eye-candy trash. NT is for the enterprise, not end-users, and the two do NOT compare. XP has Great Screensavers that really seem to impress idiots, though, and you're obviously living proof. Screensavers, icons and wallpapers, obviously, seriously determine bus speeds, uptime, REAL SECURITY, and ability. You have no idea of what you're talking about, XP and NT is apples and oranges.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Relying on privileged ports to protect a system is like relying on a spermicide coated condom that has a pin hole in it. Yes, it helps but it's not be all, end all solution. A buffer overrun is a buffer overrun and many other service vulnerabilities will still apply. If users can't run FTP or damned file sharing app on port 20/21, they shift it to 2020/2021 or some other high port and still achieve what you were trying to stop.

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

You're really angry that they stuck you in the backroom on the old boxes, eh?

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, touche'.

Tell ya what - as soon as they release a copy of MapGuide Server that'll work on XP, we'll hook up my 1.3TB dataset, fire upa copy of IIS, and we'll see if XP can beat my old P450 running NTS.

Oh, I forgot - XP can't do 400+ simultaneous authenticated sessions, can it. You lose, end of story.

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Black Parrot]

> In two years, hopefully XP will be a long forgotten memory, but today there is no doubt which operating system is the best.

Wow - Bill Gates posting to Slashdot! Whoda thought it?

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Tim C]

You're missing the point about privilleged ports, I think. There is no technical difference between ports below 1024 and those above, other than that those below 1024 are considered to be reserved for particular services. All that does is place the burden of honouring the convention (80 = http, 443 = https, etc) on a limited subset of people (the machine admins), rather than relying on any old user.

To the host computer, there is no difference - apps listening on "privlleged" ports don't get elevated permissions. Allowing non-admin users to open those ports does nothing to compromise the security of the host.

These days, by the way, the distinction between "client" and "server" is rather blurred; if I run say a webserver on my home PC (a desktop) and surf the web, etc from it, is that a client or a server? I'd agree that machines shouldn't open ports that they don't need to open, but it's growing increasingly inaccurate to classify a given machine as a client or a server; many are both at once.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[ckaminski]

Unix has several ways to battle this. First, chroot jails, privileged ports for public services. There are glaring holes, mind you, lack of sophisticated access controls and auditing, something Windows has on Linux at the moment, but UNIX, done with a modicum of skill can be nigh impenetrable. Windows doesn't give you these abilities.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[ckaminski]

That's funny, because in over 2 years of using XP on half a dozen computers, homebuilt and from Dell, I've NEVER seen a BSOD.

Except that one time I overheated my laptop to 150F.

oops.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[ckaminski]

You cannot even install BattleField 1942 as a non-admin user. I've been loathe to even bother running it as a non-admin user.

Re: WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[dunkelfalke]

hmm, works here with w3k server.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

nt4 is fast and supports ISA.

I myself only upgraded because I didn't want mr. Clippy any longer.

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

nt4 is fast and supports ISA.

I myself only upgraded because I didn't want mr. Clippy any longer.

Ah, so you settled for Rover from Microsoft BOB instead....

Re:WinXP is what NT4.0 should have been

[RogerWilco]

In either case whatever you are comparing, have you tried running Windows XP on a 266 Mhz, 2GB HD, 32 MB RAM box?

As a matter of fact I did (well 64Mb RAM) and it didn't run as expected. Windows 2000, 95, 95OSR2, 98, 98SE, ME, NTSP5, NTSP6a work fine. IT used to be my previous employers install-test box (sometimes Norton Ghosted 6+ times an hour). Funny you'd mention it, as it was a 266Mhx, 2Gb HD, 64Mb RAM HP Brio IIRC.

Delay

[tuxter]

In news today, Microsoft delay the release of Longporn..... Are they going to delay the end of support for NT4? I doubt it, very much.

Re:Delay

[kaedemichi255]

"Longporn"...heh heh heh...he said "long"

Re:Delay

[TrancePhreak]

Well, I'm certain now that we all know what you were thinking of using WinFS for.

Clarification for the vagueness

[Rick Zeman]

That's NT 4 Server. NT 4 Workstation was EOL'd over a year ago.

Re:Clarification for the vagueness

[Anonymous Coward]

Will existing patches for NT continue to be available?

Re:Clarification for the vagueness

[Rick Zeman]

Will existing patches for NT continue to be available?

I'd imagine so--one can still download patches for Windows 95.

Re:Clarification for the vagueness

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I thought I'd seen some knowledge base articles about NT disappearing.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

You win a Custom Support Contract for Windows NT 4.0!!! :-)

Makes Sense to Me.

[MBCook]

Windows 2000 was released on Feb 17th, 2000.
Windows 2003 was released on Apr 24th, 2003.

A replacment to NT 4 was released, followed by a replacment to THAT, and NT 4 has still been getting support for a year+ after that. I'm a bit suprised that NT was still supported without needing those special contracts up untill now.

For reference, 2K will get "mainstream" support (cost-per-incidient, free hotfixes) untill Jun 30 of this year, and "extended" stupport (hourly cost, pay for hotfixes) untill Jun 30, 2010. Hotfixes are free for everyone untill '07. I can't find End-of-Life dates for Windows 2003.

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Windows ME was released on April 1st?

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[SumDog]

Do you realize how long some IBM systems have been supported. They still support systems from the late 80's. On top of that there were several WinNT systems for Alpha, and there are NO replacements for those.

The fact is, it's way too soon. NT4 is solid and in critical applications you need solid systems. VMS hasn't had an update in over 10 years except for security patches. That's the type of system you want to read of sensor data in a nuclear reactor.

Win 2000 won't be ready for that state for at least another three to five years with new IE flaws being found every month!

You obviously aren't an engeneer if you think NT4 is actually ready for retirement.

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[SmurfButcher Bob]

THANK YOU.

I find it amazing how many people simply cannot comprehend this simple concept. I'm not sure if they're clueless, or arrogant, or both.

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[Bert64]

NT4 suffers from all the same IE flaws that 2000 does.

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[Anonymous Coward]

how does it work when you pay for a hotfix?
do you pay a fixed price no matter how many computers you use it on?
do you pay a price on some kind of scale base don your planned use of it?
do you pay based on the total number of machines you have running that os?
do you have to buy it for each system seperately?
or what?

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[Anonymous Coward]

just a minor nit:

Windows 2000 was offered for sale on Feb 17th, 2000.
Windows 2003 was offered for sale on Apr 24th, 2003.

Read a bit different, no?

Re:Makes Sense to Me.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Not really. You can run NT4 without IE at all (just delete the IE2 directory from the machine). That is unless you are running Microsoft servers (IIS, Exchange) that require IE4+.

about damn time

[pinball667]

That someone condemned it. Now if we can just get them to pull the plug on 2k and XP....

Freeing resources for Longhorn

[onlyjoking]

Of course they must be freeing-up resources for the GREAT LONGHORN RELEASE. Yes, that long-awaited piece of vapourware whose feature list is still a mystery. I rub my hands each time I hear "news" about Longhorn as I'm convinced it'll be the nail in Microsoft's coffin. Let's see, it'll probably be another 2 years before it's out the door and considering each OS release takes an exponentially longer time to attract upgraders I'd say it could be 2010 at the earliest before we see significant numbers. BUT, that's only if they keep their grubby DRM fingers from Fritzing it with Intel's co-operation and don't you know they just can't resist that one. However, once they tie the OS to DRM it'll be curtains for M$. So, go on Billy, make my day.

Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box?

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

It will be interesting to see how many people take the Linux plunge and break from the swirling vortex of regular, forced product updates. I am betting very few, unfortunately. It's just too much of a leap for most people...when Windows XP/20XX offers such a warm fuzzy UI feeling.

The look & feel of mmc.exe is so much different than the old NT 4.0 admin utilities that it might take me a while to find my way around an NT 4.0 box - wonder how quickly it would come back to me?

Oh, and wasn't it cool how you could start windows from the command line in NT 3.51: win.exe!!! Bringing the window system inside the kernel was such a bummer.

New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

We are still building new servers at work (a bank) to use NT4. By the time we are finished certifying Win2000 for internal use it will be 2007 at least. We still have a few dinosaurs running Solaris 2.1 (!!!) and no one wants to upgrade them because they run mission critical applications which don't allow for any downtime.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[Billly Gates]

Let me get this straight?

You are waiting for Windows2k to be certified for security and reliablity but somehow NT fit the bill??

Its Windows. Why bother?

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[dedazo]

You are so cool.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

The NT 4.0 kernel is solid as a rock and has had no security exploits ever. Sure, lots of other stuff has been exploited ranging from RPC services to IIS, but never the kernel.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin /MS03-007.mspx

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Yep. There's also the WM_TIMER exploit. Not a bug, but an exploit of a gross design flaw (that's also present in 2k & xp as well)

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[njyoder]

If you want to get technical, neither of those are kernel exploits. NT is a microkernel, despite what people may think and it's doubtful you could find any such exploit anyway.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Point taken regarding ntdll, however... WM_Timer was a stupid design - Ring3 registers a callback, and the callback is later invoked under Ring0 context. Considering the chunk of code that invoked the callback... if that doesn't constitute a kernel flaw, I'm not sure what does.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

No way does Windows invoke a callback from the kernel. All it does is allow a process to invoke a callback in another process with higher privileges. It isn't a design flaw, it's just a bug because it allows you to call a routine that wasn't passed in to WM_SETTIMER.

Once they fix that (I think they did), it will only be possible to invoke a valid timer callback with invalid data. Assuming the process properly validates the input to its timer callbacks, there is no exploit possible.

aQazaQa

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[karakal]

Because in the financial business there are harder tests to the software, they are using. The tests are expensiv. Why do you think many of the ATMs are running still on OS/2 (in Europe of course). I was going through security reviews with the software of a former employer twice and I can tell you, this was neither easy nor funny. And thats the same way with Operating-Systems. I don't see the relevance of your statement...

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[cybrthng]

NT is secure if you have a trained IT staff.

Infact NT/2k can be locked down soo much it isn't even funny. Sure you have to have fixes pushed to desktops, but that is why you pay for a good lan group who knows how to setup privs and design a network that can handle the load, manage the workstations and provide a solid service.

I work for a bank as well, and we just rolled out 2k to many of our end users. Everything is tightly controlled, locked down, automatically updated and maintained and reported on nightly.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[ducomputergeek]

That's not uncommon in certain industries. I know several smaller businesses and others around still using NT 4.0. Reason being is that was the best to use in 1998 when they purchased the systems and until the hardware is shot, they see no reason to upgrade.

I know a number of firms that are running NT 4 on Alpha. They can't upgrade. Eventually they are going to have to port, but that's another story.

I see people here always ripping on, "ooh this is a prime market for Linux". No its not. Which is easier and cheaper: to retrain your entire in an entirely different type of operating system or upgrading to a newer version of what you had? Sure there are differences between NT4, 2k, 2k3, but chances are the learning curve isn't going to be as much.

Analogy like this: Take a football(american) player going from High School->College->NFL. There are differences at all three levels with slightly different rules, hash marks, etc. however, the game is basically the same. Now take the High School or college player and teach the to play Rugby. There are some basics that are the same: ball, running, scoring of points by running across goal line, but its a totally different ball game.

Re:New machines still being built to use NT4

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be working for a bank that's paying for Microsoft's extended support.

I work for a Canadian FI, and they've been doing the upgrade dance for a while now. While I'm not in IT, I'm fairly certain that most servers have been upgraded and the few straggling NT workstations are well on their way to being upgraded.

Just about everybody will be running Windows 2000 by the end of the month. I've even seen a couple IT guys running what looks like an official Windows XP desktop -- I guess they're the guinea pigs.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, it took 14 minutes for this to be market OT.

Oh great.. what the hell do I do now?

[zoid.com]

I guess I look in the closet/garage/trunk/any other weird place/ and see if I have a registered copy of NT that I really care about. You know.... I I cared about any of that crap I would know where it was.

Mod parent funny.. come on now.

[the angry liberal]

At least we will not have to continue reading stories counting down to when Microsoft finally ends support for it.

This is good comedy guys. Don't be dicks, plz. :)

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, four?

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not old enough to own Windows NT; for me it is Windows OT.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

The modder gets more mod points when the metamodders check that he did the right thing. No?

Does that mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

malware authors will move on to the newer o/s's?

Not only that

[adeydas]

Recently I was updating my Windows XP installation via windowsupdate.microsoft.com and found a rather surprising message that one should update his computer as soon as possible as support for Windows XP is coming to an end. What's next?!

Re:Not only that

[CodeBuster]

they are going to begin denying updates to those people not running at least Windows XP SP1 because of all the pirated installations of pre-sp1 Windows XP Pro out there (corporate keys fiasco).

Re:Not only that

[Ravenscall]

Funny, my pirated version of XP is running SP2.

To little too late MS.

Re:Not only that

[SumDog]

All my computers run Gentoo Linux except for one Pentium III which I installed with a pirated version of WinXP that came with SP2. Go microsoft. Dumbasses

Re:Not only that

[dalmiroy2k]

That's not a bad idea, an unpatched Windows XP it's a time bomb ready to explode. People that format their pc usually just grab their 2001 Windows XP CD, put it in and proceed with the instalation. Once finished, they connect to the internet without patching and 1 minute later their PC it's a spam sending zombie.

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[Further82]

Is almost 10 years of support after two differnt major updates have been released really a forced upgrade? Besides, if you still really want it, you can pay for support. Try getting profesional support for Linux kernel 2.0 (okay I might eat it for saying that when someone tells me its easy, oh well, I dont think MS is doing anything evil this time)

Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

proper behavior for ANY IP stack is to reject ALL connections unless there's a service up-and-running waiting for a connection.

So you're saying that the firewall should be implemented in the IP stack.

Whether the firewall is a separate service or whether it is built into the networking stack or whether it is a separate machine sitting at the root of the network, a firewall is needed.

If you are cleaning out "mal|spy|ad-ware SP2 machines every day", you work with idiots. Or perhaps you are the idiot to continue working with them. Either way, I'm glad I don't work where you work.

Re:Uhh...

[Soko]

So you're saying that the firewall should be implemented in the IP stack.

No, he's saying that a proper IP stack will not respond to a request for service from a TCP/UDP port that has no service listening to it on that machine. I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of the statement, but I'm pretty sure XP does this as prescribed.

Whether the firewall is a separate service or whether it is built into the networking stack or whether it is a separate machine sitting at the root of the network, a firewall is needed.

Yes, for any external communications, a firewall (and encrypted links if you want to be picky) is a neccesity, and has been for quite some time. SP2 finally provided a firewall on by default, and gives the average user a fighting chance.

If you are cleaning out "mal|spy|ad-ware SP2 machines every day", you work with idiots. Or perhaps you are the idiot to continue working with them. Either way, I'm glad I don't work where you work.

I'm a BOFH. I work with lusers. Lusers are SpongeBob Squarepants without the personality. They are un-intelligent generally, but more so when it comes to computers. They don't know about computer security, nor do they care, since it's not thier job to administrate thier machine. The luser should be able to log on, go about it's business and not concern itself with what is in my prevue - making sure our comapnies data is safe.

Now, the problem XP, Win2K and NT present is that I, as an intelligent, responsible admin, do all that I can to prevent security issues and they still occur regularily, despite my best efforts. In order to be truly protected, I'd need to remove some of the machines functionality, which kinda removes the point of having the bloody PC there in the first place.

When I need to teach a luser how spyware gets on to thier XP SP2 machine - firewall and all - in order to try and prevent that event from happening is when I begin to question how much value XP really provides.

Soko

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

By "prevue" I think you mean "purview".

Re:Uhh...

[westlake]

I work with lusers. Lusers are SpongeBob Squarepants without the personality. They are un-intelligent generally, but more so when it comes to computers.

There is nothing in the world so self-defeating as to bring an attitude like this into the workplace. Everyone picks up on it and you will be at war from the day you arrive.

Re:Uhh...

[bob beta]

I'm a BOFH. I work with lusers....

Uh, you're an IT janitor. Making all the usual assumptions about the other people in the building who don't repect your high-tech broom cart.

Re:Uhh...

[runderwo]

No, he's saying that a proper IP stack will not respond to a request for service from a TCP/UDP port that has no service listening to it on that machine.

He's wrong; this would be in violation of the RFC. A "proper" stack would respond by refusing the connection, not by blackholing the request.

Re:Uhh...

[m50d]

I connect my linux box to the DMZ port on my router. Haven't had any trouble. Why should I? The only port with anything listening on it is 80 with apache, which I'd have to put a hole in my firewall for anyway. If I don't have any other open ports than the ones I'm actually using, I don't need to firewall them off. Why doesn't windows work the same way?

Re:Uhh...

[j0217995]

This attitude is a huge pain trying to be an IT person. I have often heard from new employees how thankful they are that I am not a BOFH or someone who considers them nothing more then SpongeBob idiots. The whole "Nick Burns" from Saturday Night LIve mentality works against so many people.

As to spending hours cleaning Spyware/AdAware/Crap off people's systems, seems like you have some people doing things they shouldn't be. I recently ran SpyWare/AdAware against my home Win2k box and I didn't have a single piece of SpyWare/AdAware on it. After a complete update of the detection files and rules, after all the last time I checked was August of '04, nothing was found. Makes you wonder what people are doing and where they are going on the web. Oh and my wife uses the computer 90% of the time browsing her chat boards.

Re:Uhh...

[Luscious868]

... is when I begin to question how much value XP really provides

Here's a quick test. Grab 5 or 10 of them and sit them down in front of a Linux box. If they can't be bothered to learn some basic common sense security practices when using Windows, an operating system they are already familiar with, then I'd love to see how quickly they can and/or are willing to learn Linux and the brand spanking new set of applications that they will have to use on the platform.

After your done hearing them bitch and moan about how things are different and don't work the way they are "supposed to", then you'll understand the innate value in sitting the user down in front of an OS and a series of applications that they are familiar with. Say what you will about Windows and some other Microsoft products, but there is some value in having an OS and series of applications that don't require serious retraining of your users. Especially if you have a lot of users, and the majority are apathetic and unwilling to learn.

As horrible as Windows can be sometimes from an admin's perspective, there can be real value in sticking with the platform on the client end (and in some rare occasions, the server end) depending on your user base and company requirements.

If you've got a smart user base who's generally willing to learn new things, then by all means get them to Linux if it's possible. If, however, you have a bunch of apathetic idiots, moving them all to a new platform can end up being more trouble than it's worth.

Re:Uhh...

[Rich0]

In an ideal world you should be OK, but you're open to a few avenues of attack:

1. By having all your ports accessible to the outside world at the very least your IP shows up on a portscan directed at any port. Now, if you have port 80 open that is pretty-much inevitable, but if you only open port 8574 for some odd service, then you get some security-by-obscurity simply by forcing port-scanners to pick that port to check. If a hacker knows your IP exists, they might give it more attention.

2. By not firewalling unneeded ports at an outside point, you run the risk of inadvertently starting up some server which listens on an outside interface. By having a firewall you don't need to worry about stuff like that, since you have to explictly enable outside connections.

3. By opening up all ports you are potentially vulterable to obscure kernel bugs in your TCP stack. These come up only on very rare occassions, but you could be away at work and the annoucement might come out that any linux box with port 17 exposed to the outside world can be remotely exploited due to some flaw in the TCP stack. If you had everything but port 80 blocked you wouldn't have to call home to the wife and tell her to power the thing off until you get home and patch it. This is an unlikely scenario, but why leave unneeded ports open?

One advantage of a firewall is that it is an independant network guardian. If somebody finds a way to hack a linksys router I'm fine since they'd only get as far as my linux box on the other end, which I keep up to date with patches. If somebody finds a flaw in linux I'm safe since they'd have to get past the router first. I've forced an attacker to exploit two zero-day flaws at once, which is much less likely. If you run only a software firewall, or if you run the same OS on your firewall and production box, you lose this protection.

Can you get by without a firewall - sure. If you've already paid for one should you use it - probably.

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what a poor attitude.....

You are customer service and you work with people that need your help, actually....

I sometimes get calls from angry user's (not only am I a contractor I would be the senior person skill and experience wise) and not know the fix at the moment but you know what? the simple truth of the matter is I treat them like intelligent people, not belittle their job and we both come away feeling better and not only did I help them they feel like I helped them and are happy to wait a bit till I work out their problem....Simply amazing!

You know you will never go anywhere(I beat out a candidate for my current job who had superior tech skills because I had superior people and communication skills..) until you learn to respect other people (and your self for that matter).....That smug superior "133t" attitude lots of IT people have only makes matters worse

Just because someone may have job that does not involve computers (and a life for that matter) does not mean they are stupid/ignorant

Like it or not people skills are REQUIRED in IT now.....
Like it or not you must learn to deal with people in a positive way at any level of IT from the cable person up to the CIO

Re:Uhh...

[m50d]

1. True, but I'm basically doing it by being impolite to the rest of the network. Which is not very socially responsible really, although many people do it.

2. Partly, but servers on privilidged ports have to be started by root and I'm only root when installing software. As long as I keep my kernel (well, and anything setuid, but that's very few programs) up to date, the worst that can happen is letting someone access a user account by exploiting a vulnerability in one of the small number of servers which run on high ports. Wheras with a firewall, it's a kerfuffle when I deliberately start a new service, and doubly so if it's something that uses a number of ports e.g. bittorrent. I feel that I'm more likely to start services intentionally than accidentally.

3. Yes, this is the one real risk. But most tcp stack bugs would work on any port, so as long as I have at least one port open I don't gain very much by firewalling. And people with no open ports should be denied IP addresses.

Re:Uhh...

[ErichTheRed]

Wish I had mod points, because your post was very good.

The bottom line is this: the only IT jobs that are going to be left in this country in a few years are going to be the ones where you deal directly with people. Most of the "geek locked behind the server room door" jobs are going overseas (programming) or are being relegated to lower-paid maintenance jobs (local sysadmin for an outsourcer.)

Unless you're the _one guy_ who keeps your entire company's core business up and running, no one is exempt from the people skills requirement in IT anymore. That used to be the case, but no longer. The insurance company I used to work for had some pretty anti-social mainframe programmer types...I don't think they'll survive the next wave of outsourcing.

Re:Uhh...

[j0217995]

Thanks for the kind comments.

I agree totatly that you have to have people skills in order to be an IT guy. The last IT related job we had open for our company was a glorified helpdesk person. We had all kinds of people applying just because it was an IT job. Some guy w/ only experience on Macs was applying for a Microsoft shop. Go figure. We had an applicant come in who was the picture perfect computer person. Wearing the only suit he owned and looked like he crawled out of his mother's basement. Everyone here could tell he was there for the "IT job". He didn't have the people skills needed for the job.

THe best advice I ever received was "When you are talking on the phone, try to listen to yourself. If you can't understand what you are saying, chances are they can't." This advice has served me well, I have had an IT job since graduating from college and have increased my skills and responsibility.

IF you don't want to loose your job to some dude in India, then work on your people skills and find some place they can't offshore, or don't want to.

end of online support 2007?

[Doppler00]

"January 1, 2007 Online support is no longer available."

What do they mean by this exactly? Does this mean they pull the website for Windows NT 4.0 and deny that it ever existed? I know a many companies still run Windows NT boxes stand alone (in a lot of industrial control systems), denying access to existing patches or online help for this OS doesn't make too much sense. I could see many Windows NT boxes still running for the next 10 years or so.

Re:end of online support 2007?

[rebelcool]

Likely this means the end of knowledge base updates to it. The info will still be there, but it will be static (unless of course, some third party takes up the job of maintaining the knowledge base)

Re:end of online support 2007?

['Talia Mastino]

Or, Windows NT 4.0 *networked* (in an industrial control system), as is the case with a couple of machines I have to support at work--need to be able to efficiently move AutoCAD drawings to the things.
Upgrading these isn't really an option--upgraded OS will usually require very expensive upgraded controller software. Doesn't make much business sense when what you've got runs the machine just ducky.
I keep trying to tell myself that OS variety is a good thing (and in general, it is, my home machines run Linux and OSX), it's just harder convincing myself that multiple flavors of Windows really counts as "variety" in a positive sense of the word.

Re:end of online support 2007?

[Grommet - Space Cade]

irrelevant really MS is the source of the patches etc but i can list over 30 mirrors that host stuff that the original company folded many years ago...the same will happen for anything popular...mirroring less than 2 gig of files and less than 1000 webpages is not going to kill any mirror company therefore they will host if for as long as possible...probably beyond it usefullness

Re:end of online support 2007?

[bob beta]

Shit, the place I am working still has IBM
XT systems out in 'production' controlling test equipment.

Which is cool, really, because it's the kind of thing that repels marketing fucks and twinkies, keeping them out of the test lab.

There are also some test fixtures with Commodore SX64 machines still connected to them, but for the most part that stuff isn't being used anymore.

Re:end of online support 2007?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they are talking about the RTM version of XP. That would be XP w/o SP1 or SP2

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[Anonymous Coward]

"professional" support for Linux 2.0 is only available from lUsenet. Hell, if you want "clean suit, necktie, know what's the problem, can fix it within an hour, will replace your box if faulty" service, then there isn't a single Linux support company out there that will do that. IBM could be argued to do so, but they aren't doing that for their Linux boxes.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, when metamoderating, make sure anyone who labels a post redundant, it is actually redundant. The parent was not.

All in all ..

[bizitch]

I know the obligitory jokes and MS bashing will now commence - but IMHO this platform represented a major breakthrough for MS. It was the first truely "ready for prime time" platform from Redmond.

NT4 Workstation was state of the art at the time - NT Server 4.0 was pretty damn stable and was the first really big Novell killer.

Sure it wasn't perfect - Sure it wasn't secure - but give it its props - this was a decent platform

Re:All in all ..

[Anonymous Coward]

NT4 Workstation was state of the art at the time - NT Server 4.0 was pretty damn stable and was the first really big Novell killer.

NT4 Workstation was more stable than other versions of Windows, that means instead of rebooting several times a day, on the average you only needed to reboot once or twice.

In retrospect, the 5-year delay in shipping NT2000 (NT5.0) was a blessing in disguise. That gave time for users to adopt NT, and for Microsoft to produce a staggering number of Service Packs to make it finally work. If Microsoft had released Windows 5.0 on time, I'd say most companies would still be running other operating systems.

Re:All in all ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It bears mentioning that the only "really big __ killer" that MS ever had was their legal department. It is Legal that keeps Winders going on all those shiny new Dell boxes, not R&D.

Sales figures as a measure of a company's products' quality is meaningless as long as a downstream vendor is legally prevented from selling anything else.

That's the problem in Capitalism. Money is the only acceptable criteria. Money is the only possible criteria.

It's Utilitarianism for Bloated Plutocrats.

Re:All in all ..

[Anonymous Coward]

> NT4 Workstation was more stable than other versions of Windows

Unfortunately, NT4 Workstation was much less stable than NT 3.51 Workstation (and remained so for many years) ... although it certainly was snappier.

Re:All in all ..

[SunFan]

NT4 Workstation was state of the art at the time...

What? NT4 was a step back from NT3, and UNIX had already gone SMP and 64-bit when NT4 came out. After having seen the glory of Oracle on NT4, I'd even go so far as to say that NT4 was a steaming pile of shit. I was always in the process manager fighting with "you don't have permission to do that, loser" error messages, and I was "administrator"! It was awful!

Re:All in all ..

[Wudbaer]

Well, Unix had gotten 64-bit with OSF/1 around that time, that later became Digital Unix and then died a horrible death at the hands of Carly the Ripper Fiorina, IRIX most likely also, I'm not sure about Solaris and AIX. Prices for both the machines and the systems where through the roof and could not be compared at all with PC-based systems. The only serious players in that field were Novell, NT and Unixware. Linux was still in the later stages of its infancy yet.

So you compare systems in the low-end market and bring in high-end stuff like commercial Unices. Get real. NT didn't kill Novell for nothing. Novell was great as a file and print server and had funky admin stuff, but it sucked for running applications. NT didn't. Would Linux or the BSDs already have been where they are today, who knows, things might have been different, but they were far far away from that.

Re:All in all ..

[Bert64]

No, NT4 was a steaming pile of shit.. Sure it represented a major breakthrough for MS, but it was still complete and utter crap compared to other platforms available at the time.

Re:All in all ..

[swillden]

NT4 Workstation was state of the art at the time

Yeah? In 1996, when NT4 was released, I had two workstations on my desk. One was a PC running NT4 and the other was a Silicon Graphics Indy, running IRIX (don't remember the version number). There was no comparison between the two.

Performance, stability, security, graphics, UI, remote administration, development tools... I can't think of a single area in which NT could have been considered on par with IRIX, much less better. Oh, I guess NT4 did have ACLs, so in theory it had the potential of being more secure, but it wasn't.

And, frankly, IRIX in 1996 looked pretty weak compared to the NeXTstep system I had at home in 1992.

NT4 was not state-of-the-art in 1996, it was still trying to catch up to the Unix workstation platforms.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

What a tiny world you must live in, I know several medical organizations (with 10K+ employees) still running NT on their workstations.

Uhm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat Linux 8.0 is no longer supported by Red Hat. So are Red Hat Linux 8.0 users forced to upgrade to the newest version?

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[drsmithy]

Bringing the window system inside the kernel was such a bummer.

The "window system" is not inside the kernel. The *display system* (somewhat similar to X) runs in kernel *space* - a different thing.

Wake up Moron

[Your Average Joe]

Windows NT 4.0 ran on 16 megs of RAM. I have seen installs that were only using 12 megs of ram while running.

Re:Wake up Moron

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Ah! But if you run NTS on a box with more than 64megs, it kicks into "big server" mode :)

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[TheSunborn]

The problem is not getting support for the 2.0 kernel, you might be able to do that. But try to get support for the linux distributions that were released with a 2.x kernel and you will be lost.

Any word...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on when they'll start pressuring software makers to write programs that purposely won't run on NT 4.0?

Wait, Microsoft... support?

[Penguinoflight]

Microsoft commonly waits months before they fix a found announced vulnerability. In the past Microsoft has attempted to ignore vulnerabilities, forcing security heads to make public announcements.

Dont be fooled by the statistics, NT4 hasn't been supported for a while. When was the last service pack for NT4?

The difference between support on linux and support on windows is mostly statistical. Look at debian, gentoo, even freebsd. You can upgrade to stable packages (maybe not gentoo) dynamically without running a time wasting installer.

I personally dont like these automated tools, but I'd probably use them before windows update on a critical security network.

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[penix1]

"I personally don't like these automated tools, but I'd probably use them before windows update on a critical security network."

Now that's an oxymoron..."Windows critical security network"....

I didn't think there was such a thing...

I would sure hate being the admin of that network...;-)

B.

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[Bert64]

Yes, gentoo will update too.. It does take longer since it's compiling from source, but it works much the same as debian.
You can upgrade anything except the kernel without downtime atall, aside from the minimal time of restarting the service daemon.

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[vandan]

The difference between support on linux and support on windows is mostly statistical. Look at debian, gentoo, even freebsd. You can upgrade to stable packages (maybe not gentoo) dynamically without running a time wasting installer.

For the record, there's a lot you can do to decrease upgrade times for Gentoo systems.

The first method is by building packages on other machines. This has the added bonus of letting you test the package before rolling it out on your live system. Instead of just using:

emerge $PACKAGENAME

you use:

emerge -kb $PACKAGENAME

which will build a package, and then install from it. When you're satisfied it works, you put the package somewhere where your server can see it ( or share /usr/portage via NFS ), and:

emerge -k /path/to/$PACKAGENAME

The time it takes to install a package is the time it takes to unzip the package and dump the files onto the filesystem ... ie as fast as installing an rpm.

The other trick we use is distcc, which spreads compilation jobs across multiple computers. It's an absolute pushover to set up ( 2 minute job ) and it makes things a *lot* faster.

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[dbacher]

The difference between support on linux and support on windows is mostly statistical. Look at debian, gentoo, even freebsd. You can upgrade to stable packages (maybe not gentoo) dynamically without running a time wasting installer.

Remind me again, what is apt-get? Oh right, a time wasting installer. Thanks.

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[radish]

Hint: Windows update is for end users. It is NOT for enterprise machines. Those have patches pushed out by admins using AD and such. At least try to understand what you criticise, lest you look like a fool

Re:Wait, Microsoft... support?

[Penguinoflight]

Of course MS update is for end users, unfortunatly they always get screwed. The problem is, end user isn't a skill level, it's a position. When I go to my community college, the IT service people use MS Windows update, and they don't even keep up with that. The result: All college students get less use of the campus machines (including online coursework, etc). So, yes windows update was intended for "end users", but that doesn't mean they wont get burned from 'admins' (in position, but not skill) using the wrong tools. By the way, I wasn't trying to put down gentoo, but I wasn't about to claim that it's stable (especially the updates part)

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting profesional support for Linux kernel 2.0
If you put a request up on a for hire board, you'd probably get a response from someone that could fix what you desire.
Not an option for closed source.

Reading Is Fundamental

[jmorris42]

Quoth the submitter:

> This month is the last month that hotfixes for Windows NT 4.0 will be
> released.

Microsoft Sez:

> January 1, 2005 Beginning on this date, Pay-per-incident and
> Premier support are no longer available. This includes security
> hotfixes.

That means it is already toast. Next security bug is end of the road for NT unless you sign onto their 'special migration program' with undisclosed terms and conditions and that go through '06... almost certainly Jan 1, 06.

Still not exactly horrible for a lifespan though. Although as the sole source of errata it makes it suck more than when RedHat drops support for an old version since something like Fedora Legacy for NT would be illegal. Still, people who buy closed software know and accept the fact it is a dead end.

Re:Reading Is Fundamental

[wwahammy]

I believe I heard that Microsoft extended that deadline to the end of this month. Apparently they haven't updated the site.

Re:Reading Is Fundamental

[alienmole]

Next security bug is end of the road for NT

Obviously, the end of the road is somewhere in sight at this point, but security is not really the problem, at least for experienced admins (admittedly, those are rare in the Windows world). NT is actually plenty secure as a server platform, if you know how to set it up. Most security bugs up until now services that should be disabled anyway, like DCOM, or that shouldn't be open to the Internet, like NETBIOS. I have clients who've run NT4 for years, outside firewalls, with no problems, while their Win2K boxes have been repeatedly infested by worms. The end of the road for NT is more likely to be driver support than anything else - it doesn't install well on newer machines.

Oh, Great....

[geekfat]

First the pdp8e and now this! Who can we trust for longterm support anymore???

Suse dropped support

[Anonymous Coward]

Suse annonced they are dropping support of SUSE linux 8.1. So nothing to see here folks. Just Business as usaul.

Re:Suse dropped support

[IoN_PuLse]

Suse dropping support for a previous version (if that is even true) isn't the same thing as Microsoft dropping support for a previous product of theirs. There is a huge difference (two words actually) Open Source. You can upgrade and/or patch your kernel, you can upgrade and/or patch your applications. You can't do it yourself with Microsoft's products; you have to wait on their staff to create "fixes" or spend more money on third party "solutions".

And we are crying because...?

[drspin2003]

I'm not sure about you, but I see this as an opportunity to move on. No one says anything about eol novell (btw, i've got clients still running novell 3.11 and the biggest problem is finding those 2GB HDD replacements at reasonable costs!) NT4 has been patched so many times, I'm surprised no one calls it a patchy server (oops, pun may be intended) - I would think that since than, *most* applications would have been stabilised, for new stuff - well... 'nuf said.

Re:And we are crying because...?

[lachlan76]

The important thing that many people seem not to know is this,

It works. *DO NOT* fuck with it.

Sure, on your desktop system there is no problem with upgrading, you can slowly make the change throughout the userbase. But the servers cannot afford to have anything bad happen. If it already works, there isn't any reason to change it. That is why many people use NT4.

Re:And we are crying because...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this a problem? Set the geometry to 540MB (1023, 63, 16) I think. Granted, you only get ~540MB out of it, but I've never had a drive that won't work w/ that. If you need more load their shim that sits between dos and the drive and lies about the geometry.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[BobPaul]

Who cares, I use XP Pro.

Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Saint Stephen]

Just for giggles is anybody reading this currently using NT4?

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[hughk]

Was using it at my last project (until end of last year). It was hard because we were getting all kinds of minor incompatibilities. The thing is that this was for FX spot/derivatives at a fairly big bank.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[maccw]

up until a few months ago.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Martix]

I am on 2 duel pentium 200 mx computers with 256meg of ram and and a bunch of old scsi HD's and CD-roms.... works great as a file / printer server...also for some of my SCADA and PLC work no bloat :)

the one im using to post on has XP pro pent 3... and i also use win2k pro as well on another.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

I use it exclusively on the back-end I built back in '99. Paying out 1.1 mil for what is in truth just new icon rendering lib and a folder view .dll is downright stupid, especially when there will be *no* change in actual performance or function. Yep, walk the dependancies on why stuff won't run on NTS4 and "requires" 2K+ - 99 times out of 100, it's shell UI crap. 1.1 mil for... exactly what I have, but now with new color schemes and stupid, obfuscating, irrelevent wizards... on rackmounted iron who's KVMs aren't touched but twice a year to see if they work. Thank God 2k3 comes preloaded with AOL, MSN, WMP and Solitare. All of that trash is extremely appropriate in a real production, really.

So yeah, I still use NT4. I don't upgrade my toaster because a new one comes out, I don't upgrade my car stereo when a new one comes out, I don't upgrade my lawnmower when a new one comes out, I don't upgrade my lightbulbs when a new one comes out, and I don't upgrade a server just because a "new" one comes out.

Call me crazy, but I only trash these things when doing so will accomplish a measureable objective. I'm also one of the few retards who dares to run NTS4 without a firewall - I've got one that's a quad-homed box, hosting two T1s and a DS3. No firewalls, just straight from the NICs into Adtrans etc. I put it on the line back in mid '99, and to date it has yet to be compromised or faulted, despite hosting both IIS4 and Exch55, and running some rather unique and complex software in each. Why the f*** would I want to swap that out... well, a Linux solution aside, why *else* would I want to swap that out... no "current" MS product is going to do any better than what I've got now, and in fact will probably do worse. Much worse.

I don't repaint my car every year, I don't replace the doors on my house every year, I don't buy a new bed every f*ing year, and I don't toss a solution that will continue working perfectly unless there's a damned good reason. "New screensavers" and "wizards" doesn't cut it.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[cybertears]

I'm at work right now reading this from a NT4 workstation. I work at a hotel and our entire system is all NT4. It doesn't need to be NT4, it could be 95 and everything would still work. I wish I could go through everything and get it setup in a sensible manner. The people who set this shit up like 6 years ago did way more work than they needed two just to network 4 computers.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I don't upgrade my lawnmower when a new one comes out

aye but grass is predictable, internet + exploits are not

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

You are exactly correct. And that is a major compelling reason to stick with a configuration's 6+ year track record, as opposed to buying "the trash du jour" which *needs* to be firewalled. Right off the bat, even the vendor has disavowed it's ability to be properly configured. No, I'll stay away from that, thanks.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Saint Stephen]

There are *huge* and I mean *huge* differences in the kernel between NT4, 2000, and Server 2003. I mean like -- NT4 chokes and dies if you load more than 100 processes (try to fork a lot of telnet clients) due to fixed limit for user32 handles and has tons of race conditions and all kinds of perf problems. Server 2003 still has huge problems but not nearly as bad.

Of course if perf isn't a problem then you don't need it. But the kernel is *vastly* different in each of the several versions.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Saint Stephen]

That's actually what I meant to ask: who is using NT4 *right now* to read this very webpage? Kudos to you!

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[xgamer04]

I used to work in a gas station (this was up to about a year ago), and on slow nights, I would turn on the old NT4 box in the office for some /. and hope nobody came in. Of course, I probably broke the DMCA or something when I typed "login:administrator / password: " and hit enter to get access, but hey, what can I say? Cracking passwords is my specialty :P

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[tmika]

Paying out 1.1 mil for what is in truth just new icon rendering lib and a folder view .dll is downright stupid, especially when there will be *no* change in actual performance or function.

You must be running a lot of copies of NT to make the upgrade cost 1.1 million. If that's the case, obviously the cost is an issue; so, you have a point, but that does not mean that the statement that 2003 Server is just some frills and UI improvements is anywhere within a couple million universes of reality.

IIS under 2003 Server (especially 2003 Web, which cleans out a lot of the crap that comes with 2003 that you don't need for a web server) generally doubles performance over 2000, and 2000 and/or .Net migration generally improves performance between 25% and 400% over IIS4 on NT4.0. (Granted the improvement over 150% or so isn't likely to occur with w2k migration unless you are migrated asp to asp+).

Furthermore, getting away from the wealth of problems with Exhange 5.5 in performance, maintenance issues, reliability, database size is hardly no change. I still think Exchange is a crappy product (with some cool features). Its basically something you get stuck running in a Microsoft environment because it integrates better with everything else you are running, but at least Exhange 2k is the first version I don't think should have been labeled "beta" or "RC" or perhaps "partial congealed vaporware".

If performance and reliability aren't issues for you, then I'd say roll the Option Pack 4, dude, but its still completely untrue that 2k and 2k3 don't offer dramatically better performance and also reliability.

There's a lot of other things that, if you're running MS systems, really make a difference. NT4, if IIS hangs, you're rebooting (and that might take 30 minutes unless you hit the power switch because the processor locks). IIS5/w2k, you can usually restart IIS with a couple clicks and the processor seldom locks from IIS. w2k auto recovers some web services. You can actually install components into the web server in 2k without having to shut the site down every time you test a version. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[xlsior]

[quote]There's a lot of other things that, if you're running MS systems, really make a difference. NT4, if IIS hangs, you're rebooting (and that might take 30 minutes unless you hit the power switch because the processor locks).[/quote] Nice thought, but not true. If IIS4 on NT4 takes a dive and becomes completely unresponsive to attempts to restart the service, 9 out of 10 times you can still fix it in ~20 seconds or so without a reboot simply by killing both the web publishing service and the inetinfo.exe process using the 'kill.exe' command line tool that is found in NT4's option pack. (It also works great on win2000/XP)) Indispensible utility, most of the processes that are 'unkillable' from the task manager can succesfully be stopped with it.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

(lot of copies)
No, there's only 16. But there's a pile of other junk on top that'd need to go as well - like a lot of hardware, and the usual vertical software. All of that junk goes - migrating means we set up a parallel system, which means we don't "upgrade" anything. We must buy additional copies, and CALs. We must buy from scratch. Everything we've got, we buy again, so we can run them both until the new one hits production.

I'm laughing hysterically as I read your comments on Exch55 - I think you're my new hero. You SO hit the nail on the head, lol... it was good to read that. "Stuck running"... oh, with two words you've said an entire thesis :) On the good side, I've not run into any issues with it, aside from the usual OWA crap (which I tossed and replaced with my own crap. Not as pretty, but more functional, the code is a lot cleaner and doesn't crash. Granted, used toilet paper is cleaner than OWA... but mine renders calendars in public folders, too 8^) )

(if IIS hangs etc)
That's actually not quite correct. If either an MTX or an in-proc pukes IIS, regardless of the reason, you can kill & restart it without a reboot. The only service that needs a reboot when it goes AWOL seems to be RPCSS. For everything else, there's PSKill(tm). And for bonus points, you can script the automatic detection, killing & restart when things stall or die.

As far as the auto-recovery, I'm not a big fan of that - I view it as a straw-man defense. A worm just rooted it, so... start up another! Oh yeah? Well, have another! And another! Since everything we do demands server-side state, that technique has no value. If we did static content, perhaps - but we don't, it's all GIS and SQL junk fed into a java mapping applet in the user's browser. Due to the large volume of data that's involved, state needs to be kept server-side. And if it goes down (losing what the users have done), it needs to stay that way (not bounce from repeated attacks, with the users starting from scratch each time). So again, I've already got 'auto-recovery'; using it is not appropriate, though, so it has no value.

Final comment on reliability - sorry, but 2K3 isn't going to compete with the four 9s I've already got. Six years, one real dump four years ago, and two over the past year which were in a vendor's COM object (and being outta-proc, were contained to the specific user who caused it. Other users were unaffected.) Reliability isn't defined as the ability to come back after an error; it's defined as the not encountering them, in the first place.

Again, though, I'm in a unique situation. For the general case, everything you've said stands as correct.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[tmika]

IIS4 on NT4 takes a dive and becomes completely unresponsive to attempts to restart the service, 9 out of 10 times you can still fix it in ~20 seconds or so without a reboot simply by killing both the web publishing service and the inetinfo.exe process using the 'kill.exe' command line tool

An excellent point, when the service is just crapped out and non-responsive. Kill can be a life-saver.

But I was really talking about when the process hangs in an error state or locks on a bad web page and pegs out the processor. When that happens, under NT4, you'll be lucky if you can get TaskMgr up to restart. You're not likely going to get a command window up to run kill. Sometimes, you're just stuck power cycling. THAT happened regularly managing IIS4 web sites. It almost never happens on IIS5 or greater.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Never needs to happen on IIS4, either - you need to hoof your butt over to sysinternals.com, my friend :) Welcome to ToyLand !

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[BoldAndBusted]

Call me crazy,

Done. You're crazy. ;)

but I only trash these things when doing so will accomplish a measureable objective. I'm also one of the few retards who dares to run NTS4 without a firewall - I've got one that's a quad-homed box, hosting two T1s and a DS3. No firewalls, just straight from the NICs into Adtrans etc. I put it on the line back in mid '99, and to date it has yet to be compromised or faulted, despite hosting both IIS4 and Exch55, and running some rather unique and complex software in each.

That you know of, you mean.

Why the f*** would I want to swap that out... well, a Linux solution aside, why *else* would I want to swap that out... no "current" MS product is going to do any better than what I've got now, and in fact will probably do worse. Much worse. I don't repaint my car every year, I don't replace the doors on my house every year, I don't buy a new bed every f*ing year, and I don't toss a solution that will continue working perfectly unless there's a damned good reason. "New screensavers" and "wizards" doesn't cut it.

But what about new security fixes? I know that M$ actually screwed up some of the security patches for NT 4.0 where they were made to be "universal" but only really worked on Win2K and above.

I admire your conservative approach to administration, but not to security updates. NT 4.0 is too old and poorly maintained to be safe. Most of the engineers that worked on NT 4.0 have looong moved on to greener pastures, so I haven't trusted Microsoft to give good patches to NT 4.0 for many many years. There are even security holes in some subcomponents of the OS that they refuse to fix in NT 4.0 - saying the fix is to upgrade to Win2K. Good luck with that box.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[tmika]

Well, you've got my respect. Keeping an NT4 setup running that well (and supporting a remote Java app from an MS platform as well), that's an accomplishment.

I also love that you replaced OWA. The lastest version is still giving me nightmares (and its way better than 5.5 was).

I agree on needing to avoid errors, not just recover from them -- especially in you're scenario -- but in general as well. w2k/w2k3 have been legitimately more stable in my experience, but given your situation, uprgading would be crazy. What happens for you now with NT4 support getting dropped?

By the way, thanks for the sysinternals.com reference. Great site! It has things I've looked for and failed to find before. Very, very cool...

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[advocate_one]

Yes... at work most of us have dual display 450 MHz machines running NT4... why??? coz it does the job we need it to do... running Visual Sourcesafe and Office 97 Pro is all we system analysts need... the code crunchers get the fancy machines... Mind you, I'm using Firefox to read and post this with...

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[RAMMS EIN]

``NT 4.0 is too old and poorly maintained to be safe.''

There's another side to this argument. NT4 is (getting) too old to be attacked. I see many more exploits for current software (2k, XP, Linux) than for NT4. Do you see any exploits coming out for DOS or Mac OS (pre-X)? Being a small target does help.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Bert64]

Actually there WILL be a difference in performance... The newer version will consume more ram and run considerably slower than the older one.. Afterall, it does need to store those fancy pixmaps somewhere.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Bert64]

And what would be the IP range of these unfirewalled NT4 machines?

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[illtud]

Just for giggles is anybody reading this currently using NT4?

Yup. On a PII 350 with 192MB of RAM. Mind you, I'm VNC'ing to a dual Opteron linux box for serious work, but for Domain admin purposes, the NT box is still necessary til we shift to something from this century.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[PPGMD]

Thank God 2k3 comes preloaded with AOL, MSN, WMP and Solitare.

Only if you buy the copy from the trench coated man on the street corner.

On your list, WMP 9 is the only thing that 2k3 preinstalls with. Which is sort of helpful (if you are doing video streaming, you don't have to goto another machine to see if the video actually works, among other things). But 2003 includes alot of improvements over 2000 and NT4, some you may use, other that would be of no use to you.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny... I regularly surfed the net on a Pentium Pro with 32 MB of RAM with well over 100 Netscape windows open. Yeah, that's 6 pages worth of windows on the taskbar. No problems on NT 4.0.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Rich0]

Do you see any exploits coming out for DOS

Well, in all fairness that is an OS which lacks any networking features (without 3rd party drivers), so a remote exploit isn't going to happen. It is also an OS which is single user and no access controls, so a local exploit isn't possible since you have all the access you can get simply by booting it.

Any remote flaws in DOS would be flaws in 3rd-party software, and consequently they wouldn't really be flaws in DOS.

Does that make DOS seure? No! The reason you can't break into DOS is because the door has always been wide open...

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

What happens with support being dropped?

Heh, like they *did* support it in the past... there's still plenty of legacy exploits from NTS that are present in 2K3. You avoid them by eliminating the vectors, and hoping for a patch some day. Now, there just won't be one. 2k3 owners are in the same boat, however, until that patch is released.

So, nothing much will change. 0-day POCs are announced, and you mitigate, doesn't matter what version you've got. We'll be knocking on the MTBF for some of the more critical hardware in a year or two, though, so we'll probably start budgeting next year. MTBF is a real thing, as opposed to some artificial deadline.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

I doubt you'd get anywhere. And if you did, a firewall would not have been relevent.

The only things you'd find are ports for www, smtp, pop3, and ssh. Not much point in firewalling something that isn't listening in the first place... and you can't firewall services you intend to offer, as it kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose, you idiot.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape only runs one process for all its windows, no?

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[biostatman]

What's really funny is today we are finally retiring an NT4 SQL Server (we have been planning to do it for a while now, but finally have some time to do it). As I'm in the middle of backing up the data, I scan /. and see that NT4 is getting retired. I feel like a frickin' genius.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, from my 450MHz workstation. NT works fine for me, has been almost as stable as a *nix system for lo these 9 years that I've been using it.

All I need is a browser, and a putty client to my server systems (Linux of course).

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[Tim C]

So you've switched off all the other network-aware services *and* are confident that there are no exploits at all in your www, smtp, pop3 and ssh servers?

Good for you! Meanwhile, cut out the unnecessary fucking abuse, you moron.

Re:Is anybody reading this using NT4?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

No, I have little confidence that're no exploits in any offered services. What I said is that a firewall has no relevence to that issue.

Learn to read english, you putz.

don't think that word means what Microsoft thinks

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they ceased supporting NT4.0 awhile back?

Did they *ever* actually provide you support?

• They never customized any of their modules for me since it was released - OTOH, the Debian crowd did.
• They never ported it to any of my more obscure hardware - OTOH, the Debian crowd did with their OS.

"support" - I don't think that word means what Microsoft thinks it means.

Support only if upgrading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you can get support if you are agreeing to upgrade to 2000/20003.

From the site:
"This additional year of no-fee support ends December 31, 2004. Customers migrating to Windows Server 2003 may request and obtain a custom support agreement to provide additional limited security update support through 2006. Please contact your Microsoft account team, Microsoft Services Premier Support, or Microsoft's Customer Service Solutions Group for details. These custom support agreements are available in six-month increments and provide limited security update support only."

a stapler?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone else curious how the icon for IT is a red stapler??

Re:a stapler?

[jonwil]

Go watch the movie Office Space if you dont get the joke :)

Who ya gonna call?

[telstar]

Looks like it's time for anyone still running NT4 to give these guys a call if they need a HotFix.

what about 3.51? Pls read.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a ... ATM or poker machine, etc. and it's basically a 386 w/16M but actually way more processor/memory than you need for what it does well. Then somebody finds a way in - see in 20 years it will still function perfectly as a video poker console, etc.? Unless it is compromised? Then it's a useless pile of junk that might cost tens of thousands to replace...

Re:what about 3.51? Pls read.

[SumDog]

Read the article. Microsoft will continue support on all embeded versions of NT

MOD UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Anonymous Coward is right on the money!

You Have Source...

[EXTomar]

...you can always hire someone to maintain it. Once you are sure a version is stable and conforms there is rarely anything you need to do beyond hardware failures. With Windows, you need much more because everything is out of your hands because they have all of the source.

I think NT4 was a fine Desktop system. NT4 Server turned out to be NT4 Desktop with a few DLLs changed around and turned out to be a fairly robust system as well. All systems have to pass into legacy.

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting profesional support for Linux kernel 2.0

Linux kernels from the 2.0 series are still big in embedded environments; patches still roll in from time to time. At any rate, there are still experts of the 2.0 series in the world, and if you were absolutely stuck with 2.0, you could always hire a handful of old OS experts and pay them to become experts. Perhaps it's not cheap or ideal, but the option exists.

The option also exists with Microsoft with respect to NT 4.0, for now. You can always pay them to patch for you, but you're entirely helpless if they decide not to. If you pay them for 15 patches, then they stop taking your money, you're just out of luck.

Lastly, the Linux kernel is still the same monster, no matter what version you're talking about. Some of the stuff being worked on today with the 2.6 series could be backported to the 2.0 series. There'll be more similarites than differences. With Windows, you don't stand a chance of doing anything similar. Each new version is a different monster, and when you figure out how to kill one, the others may or may not be affected by the same process.

Somehow a PC I'm looking at knew this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the Quantum Bigfoot hard drive has started to die out of sympathy. The strange thing is that all the NT4 server install seems to do is provide some logon scripts ???!!!

That UI feeling is called competance.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the religious zeal behind bashing
the deployment of a simple, effortless GUI which has
been featured since at least 1995. Looking at the product instead of the manifestoes, Linux does not
appeal. If NT were the open-source project instead,
exactly who would be singing the virtues of Unix, VI, fstab editing, octal permissions, dismal archive
utilities such as tar and gzip?

Re:That UI feeling is called competance.

[MightyMartian]

Um, and what archiving utilities did NT 4 come with? And as to configuration editing, I much prefer the plain-text files of *nix and the .ini files of older versions of Windows to the Win32 registry, and yes, there are a number of configuration changes that require editing of the registry, even as late as Win2k. If you don't believe me, boot up a Win2k machine and try to find the GUI utility to change W32Time to getting the time from an NTP server.

Re:That UI feeling is called competance.

[bob beta]

The GNU toolchain, including TAR and all the 'usual suspects' had been available on NT almost since the beginning. A lot of console-oriented UNIX heads grabbed hold of NT right away. It was so much better than anything else, at the time, that would run on crummy PeeCee hardware.

Re:That UI feeling is called competance.

[Anonymous Coward]

net time /setsntp:pool.ntp.org

Re:That UI feeling is called competance.

[MightyMartian]

> net time /setsntp:pool.ntp.org

That doesn't look like a GUI either.

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[Hawke666]

Since the current kernel is 2.x, I think it'd be easy to get support for a distro released with it.

server Vs Workstation why differ timelines?

[Grommet - Space Cade]

Server 1 year later......i find it intresting that they kill workstation before server on the same core a year earlier...I would have thought that server patches and workstation patches to be interchangeable anyways....

you can run a script and turn server back to workstation on windows nt/2K and even 2003. its just a matter of having extra services disabled and a heap of server only reg keys renamed...

im currently running 2003 server as my workstation in workstation mode with more success than i had with XP pre sp2....post sp2 i haven't tries xp but then why downgrade when everything works....i havent found a program to cause a problem yet in 2k3

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think MS have just realized how many huge security holes there actually are in nt4, done some simple maths and decided that it'd be waaaaaay cheaper to just throw it away.

So now what happens to...

[KennyP]

... my poor customers who can't enter into any kind of support agreement other than me keeping their systems running?

There is software that won't run on 2k or XP. Some small companies can't afford to upgrade their software, with the economy the way it is.

At least we have Ghost to take working snapshots...

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s

Re:So now what happens to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, put that sig in the fucking sig field where it belongs, fuckwad. I turn them off for a reason.

It says Kenny P. up at the top of your fucking post, you don't have to fucking sign it. Jesus Christ.

Re:So now what happens to...

[Anonymous Coward]

... my poor customers who can't enter into any kind of support agreement other than me keeping their systems running?

Nothing? You talk as if their systems will magically go screaming into the ground. Did you seriously ever have to call Microsoft about a problem with NT in the past 5 years?

Re:So now what happens to...

[mcbundus]

Perhaps MS should consider releasing the NT 4.0 Server code under the GPL so the OSS community can analyze and support it from this point forward?

Now that I think about it, they can't do that since all that code still exists in Win2K and Win2K3 ... right?

Re:So now what happens to...

[KennyP]

Eat shit and live - forever tasting SHIT!!!

Fucktard. Do you really think I give a flying fuck what your dumbass opinion is?

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s
pissing you off since 2005

Re:So now what happens to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Touche.

Actually I just wrote you off as a moron who's too dim to realize what the "sig" field is for. It's not really "pissed off" so much, nice try though.

Re:What's the difference between a pig and a Jew?

[weenis]

you guys are sick fucks

NT Support License vs. Mac Mini

[Nova Express]

Let's see, I can pay Microsoft several hundred dollars a seat for supoort and/or upgrades...

...or I can pick up a new Mac Mini for $499, and be completely secure from all Windows virsues, plus 99.99% of trojans, spyware, etc. And given how long ago NT 4.0 came preloaded on anything, I'll probably get a faster machine in the bargain.

Which would you choose?

Re:NT Support License vs. Mac Mini

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Well, if you are still running NT4 it is because you have software on that system that you have not needed (or wanted (or been able to)) upgrade.
My guess is that if you can get it to run on a Mac you should have switched years ago.

Re:NT Support License vs. Mac Mini

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and with the money I save on the $499, I'll have plenty of cash left over for the 16 bay Raid-5 array that it'll be hosting, the dual or triple redundant power supplies, the 4 bonded NICs, and all of the server-side software packages it'll host. I bet it'd make one hell of a domain controller, to boot.

Yep, you know exactly what environment you're dealing with, you naieve amateur. Close your mouth before you hurt yourself.

Re:NT Support License vs. Mac Mini

[xlsior]

...or I can pick up a new Mac Mini for $499, [apple.com] and be completely secure from all Windows virsues, plus 99.99% of trojans, spyware, etc. And given how long ago NT 4.0 came preloaded on anything, I'll probably get a faster machine in the bargain. Which would you choose? That one that allowed me to keep running the same legacy software -- i.e. not the mac.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Lifthrasir]

i work for a large-ish hospital in australia (roughly 2500 PC's and 120 servers). We have 2 VMS systems running on Alpha's (ones for failover), a few boxes supplied by vendors running god-knows-what, maybe 20 running 2000 Server and the rest running NT server.

I however managed to get 1 linux box into production running some web services such as a frontend to our call logging database and an inventory management program, both of which i wrote myself.

All of the windows servers have a scheduled job to restart them weekly in the early hours of the morning so they work properly, and my box has an uptime of around 120 days ATM. It would be more too, except the power to the room is a bit average, even though it has 2 huge UPSs and 2 seperate power feeds.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[lachlan76]

At my primary school, the servers were all NT4, although that wouldn't really be considered a "respected company". At my high school everything runs on Win2k, except for a content filter, which runs some sort of UNIX, Linux I assume.

That's because the only calls they're getting are:

[Sialagogue]

"Hello, Microsoft NT Technical Support, how may I help you?"

"Yes hello, what used version of NT do I need to buy off E-bay to qualify for the upgrade price on XP Professional?"

"That would be NT Workstation, sir."

"Great! Last thing. . .We're a big company, maybe 500 workstations in all, so do I get the 'no activation' crack from you, or do you need to transfer me to XP support?"

Well, the Debian folk

[Anonymous Coward]

still seem to actively support their 'current' release.

nyuk nyuk nyuk

Proposed new software law.

[wasted]

I propose that after a company/vendor ceases ALL support for a specific piece of software, they are legally considered to have deemed the software obsolete. Thus, they are no longer legally liable for the software, and more importantly, cede all rights in relation to the software. Additionally, I propose that the company retains rights to the software as long as they are providing updates and support to keep the software useful , current, and relevant.

I figure that this makes sense, but others may have other insights.

NT4 machines cleanest

[ayeco]

My NT4 machines are the cleanest running machines - no spyware malware etc. No more support means no more hackers trying to get in.

Re:NT4 machines cleanest

[Dwedit]

Windows NT4 is still quite susceptible to spyware infections. It still prompts to run activeX controls on Internet Explorer.

Time to get my dad a new computer.

[jkujawa]

My father is currently using a cast-off K6-200 I build in 1999-ish. NT4 has been rock solid for him, for what he does. I patched it up to all of the latest security patches over Christmas, but it's time to get him a new computer, I think.

I think this is it.

Re:Time to get my dad a new computer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to get a MacMini!

RE: not the same thing

[King_TJ]

Novell was pretty darn stable, and as it was a dedicated back-end server product, wasn't really seen by its normal users.

The workstations can be upgraded all the time, and still share files/printers with an old Netware 3 or 4 server - and to the users, everything's brand new after each update.

NT 4, on the other hand, was known for crashing on its own, over time, due to memory leaks by a plethora of 3rd. party apps you were likely to run on it. (Yeah, it could be pretty stable if you only used what came with the OS itself, but how many people really did that? You couldn't even so much as manage disk quotas on user accounts without 3rd. party add-ons.)

Furthermore, lots of the NT 4 installs were on *workstations*, not just servers... So lack of features quickly becomes obvious to people in that environment. (Try installing something like a new network card in NT 4. Forget plug and play... Better pick the right driver on the first try too, or you're likely to get an instant blue screen of death you can only recover from with a full NT reinstall!)

Huh?

[toby]

Support possibilities are so much more tenuous when the system is closed. With an open system, in many senses support is perpetually available.

"security"?

[CAIMLAS]

Is it a "security problem" in your software if it's a bug which could lead to fisionable material detonating a trillion-dollar warship and incite a world war?

Just askin'

Re:"security"?

[Zoolander]

'A malicious attacker could entice the viewer into viewing a specially crafted jpeg image, leading to a system compromise and the end of the world as we know it.'
Now, that's a security bulletin for you.

Wonder what the implications are...

[danuary]

...For the various embedded devices out there running NT 4.0... First thing that comes to mind is every single MetroCard vending machine in the NYC subway (keep an eye out for the guys servicing them -- when they're opened up theres a keyboard clipped inside and you occasionally see them reboot with the standard NT 4.0 startup screen). We know those are networked; hope they've keep up with the security patches up 'til now. I just don't see it being cheap or easy to rebuild a semi-embedded environment such as that to run in Win2k or something else.

I can also think of at least one service industry corporation that built their CRM and ERP frontend from the ground up on NT 4.0. Literally tens of thousands of terminals would have to be migrated to something else.

Re:Wonder what the implications are...

[Rakishi]

I've seen Metrocard vending machines with BSOD.

Re:Wonder what the implications are...

[dukeisgod]

I was in a Walmart with automated checkouts recently, and one of the terminals was tits up with an NT error.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

Little known fact...
OS/2 Warp version 3.0 IS Windows NT.
Microsoft bought the rights to the never released OS2 version 3 from IBM and rebadged it as Windows NT.
Link to OS/2 history
http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2History.html

Uh Oh!

[SpookyJim]

There goes the US Military! :-\

Re:Uh Oh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, they were still running NT Workstation and Windows Media Player 6.4 on submarines as of this last spring...with no plans to upgrade in the immediate future.

Oh, and all the mission critical equipment runs NT Server 4.0...except it doesn't crash for some reason.

How do I know this? I visited a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine in spring '04 and stayed on an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine this past summer.

The technology is aging, but hey, it works.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[crummynz]

Well... since we're blackcatting here...

The electronics retailer I used to work at used Win3.11. And a year ago the local library upgraded - from an MS-DOS based system.

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[SunFan]

I think you are talking about NT 3.x, not 4.x

Re: not the same thing

[bob beta]

In my experience, NT 4.0 will 'find' and install a new network card pretty easily. It won't` mind you, pop up a 'plug and play' dialogue during a boot, potentially throwing the whole system into a loop, like some other OS versions.

You appear to be dabbling in warmed-up old FUD anecdotes. Perhaps you should be careful. There are a lot of people here who know better. Your credibility may suffer.

Re:don't think that word means what Microsoft thin

[Theatetus]

They never ported it to any of my more obscure hardware - OTOH, the Debian crowd did with their OS.

Well, they did port NT4 to Alpha, MIPS, and PPC, didn't they?

The AC is right, but it isn't the same issue

[WebCowboy]

It is a bit unfortunate that MS offered more support for NT than RH would for RH 5.0 and try getting suppor for Mandrake distros before 9.x--prety thin on thr ground I'd guess. To be fair MS is huge and sitting on a few billion so I thing they can foot the bill for the support. I do tend to cut Mandrake some slack being they had to pull themselves out of bancruptcy protection and all.

Ultimately, we don't need to expect a Linux vendor to have as long a support cycle. One thing that is different is that the Linux distro companies is that they do not control the source code, and that code is publicly available to anyone forever (the Linux kernel right back to the first 0.whatever release is available). Not only that, the Linux kernel support team DOES support old kernels--a lot of relevant patches are still backported to the 2.0.x kernels (which are as old as NT4). That is one of closed sources disadvantages-the vendor has to either open the source or offer indefinite support or the project is 100% guaranteed to become extinct.

Honestly, if your system is SO critical that you cannot change the core of your OS once every eight years then you either have the skills to deal with the lack of vendor-specific support for the old distro, or you more likely you made the wrong platform choice. If you needed a system that could be locked away and continuously run ontouched--with no mainteneance and upgrading--for THAT LONG, then you wouldn't use a PC-based server, you'd have gotten an IBM 390/Z-series/AS400 or a DEC/Compaq/HP VMS system and paid the boatloads of money to the vendor for support (REAL support, which MS has never been known to provide).

Interestingly enough, even today MS Windows platform is not an option on REAL "big iron" (well, anyways your choices are severely limited), while today linux is a valid choice. And downtime due to upgrades is not a concern on these big Linux systems, because you can stage the upgrade on another partition on the same hardware and just switch over when everything is set up. totoal downtime would be measured in milliseconds.

Re:The AC is right, but it isn't the same issue

[bain_online]

Insightfull except for one thing

and just switch over when everything is set up. totoal downtime would be measured in milliseconds.

Msec?? Really??. When is the last time your linux system booted within 10 seconds? The most wanted feature on my linux wish list is shorter, actually a lot shorter boot times.

Re:The AC is right, but it isn't the same issue

[jaseuk]

If you are really interested in that level of uptime then you can usually justify the spend on an additional server, particularly if your old one has been running for 5 years and isn't on a proper maintenance contract.

Jason

Re:The AC is right, but it isn't the same issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people who have specialized hardware that prevents them from upgrading their machine. Since the driver only works on NT 4, they are not able to upgrade without replacing the whole system.

Instead they would have to get the newest version of the hardware, which requires a newer version of the software, which is incompatible with the old version's data files and tons of custom software (which was written 8 years ago by some grad student in whatever his favorite language was at the time, and lord knows what ever happened to the source code).

I know a guy whose business runs on an old 486 because the custom software he had written by a college kid for $500 still works better than anything else out there. Unfortunately, it only runs on Win3.1. The source code? Who knows where it is because it's 12 years old, and even if he had it, good luck finding a version of Borland C++ that will compile the old OWL project. Upgrading Windows would require rebuilding the whole system from scratch.

I know a guy who runs a class at a college using custom boards that can only be programmed via serial ports. They still have 10-year-old Macs because the newer ones only have USB and the drivers for the USB-serial adapters are incompatible with the software that connects to the boards. Upgrading the Macs would require new software, which would mean designing new custom boards, which would require rewriting the curriculum for the class!

I did programming back in high school for a university lab on a System 7 Mac. Since the data acquisition cards use the NuBus slots, upgrading the machine means getting new cards, which means rewriting all that software.

aQazaQa

What Vortex?

[wasted]

I am running a dual-boot laptop with Debian (2.4 kernel, KDE,) and NT4SP6. The NT partition is only for running Office and VB for work-related items (offline,) and as a backup in case I screw up the Debian partition. I've been too cheap and lazy to upgrade to anything else, since I haven't really been able to find a reason to upgrade given my needs.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[professorfalcon]

Now everyone can, thanks to Microsoft.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2 Warp != OS/2 NT 3

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[forkazoo]

Don't laugh... I still have to deal with NT4, Novell, and Os/2 Warp systems at work. Our Windows servers run every Windows from NT4 to Server 2k3, except ME. We just expanded into a new office, and now our users in the new office can't access stuff off the OS/2 server. Unfortunately, nobody currently with the company has ever done anything with OS/2, so we aren't 100% sure how to fix it...

Please, don't give me pity. give me a swift boot to the head.

Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[SuperKendall]

...VirtualPC on a Mini Mac may perform just about as well with the same program!

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Right. But you would be in the same boat. No support if something nasty happens and the OS needs an update.

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[xgamer04]

Yeah, those Mac mini things are really great for file/print sharing with all of their available hard drive space and legacy connections, as well as the spacious room to upgrade. I've also heard that the dual Ethernet ports work well when it is used as a router/NAT box. Oh wait...

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[Barlo_Mung_42]

You're right though. That would be the best of all possible worlds. (apologies to Voltaire) :)

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[am 2k]

I've also heard that the dual Ethernet ports work well when it is used as a router/NAT box.

The Mac Mini offers three network connectors: Ethernet, 802.11g and FireWire. You might not even need a network connection for Internet if you're on dialup.

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus USB if you use a USB-Ethernet adapter.

Re:Actually if the PC is old enough to be NT...

[xgamer04]

Maybe you didn't notice it, but my entire post was SARCASM. This is because I was referring to the OP who suggested that a Mac Mini would be a great replacement for an NT4 box. The problem is, most NT4 boxes that are still around are used for things like file/print sharing and routing. I don't know what kind of networks you've ever seen, but most of them don't mix ethernet and firewire. Yeah, I know it's possible to do some sort of usb-to-ethernet kluge, but it's not something that I would feel comfortable with.

Re: not the same thing

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Too late. I've never bsod'd a box installing NICs on NT4, ever, and I have done many. His credibility is going, going... ... gone.

NT4? Oh please.

[Time Doctor]

At Time Doctor Dot Org, we've already upgraded to the latest service pack of windows xp home, and services for unix for our web server and mail server. The Aliens Versus Predator server is next from Windows NT.

Pay for flaw

[bgackle]

Isn't this a bit like a car company coming out with a release that their car has some serious defect, but since they took so long to find it, they now get to make a profit on the recall?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Ford be in just a bit of trouble if they came out every five years and said "Our 1998 model vehicles have serious flaws, but have been EOLed, so please purchase a recall contract, or buy a new high quality Ford vehicle".

I can understand charging people for a new version of software, but with hotfixes, we are talking about making the software DO WHAT THEY SAID IT WOULD DO when you bought it in the first place. And since they are resorting to this strategy, obviously a large number of people felt that a new version of the software with its attendant features had nothing to offer... if that wasn't the case they wouldn't use EOL as a tool to force upgrades.

Someone needs to call MS on this -- software, after all, does not wear out... if it did it's job five years ago, it should continue to do so. In this case, the only reason that it has stopped working is that it was defective in the first place (and yes, a major security exploit is a defect in the product.)

Re:Pay for flaw

[SmurfButcher Bob]

I agree, but... the problem is the EULA. The EULA states that "the product will work substantially in accordance with what's described in the accompanying documentation."

The accompanying documentation uniformly describes the product elements as "Contact your network administrator for more information."

We're screwed :(

Re:Pay for flaw

[bgackle]

Does that mean that in the EULA, Microsoft is promising that the software will do whatever my admin claims it will?

Cool!

Re:Pay for flaw

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Actually, no... all documentation provided to admins consists of "Consult the MSKB for details." Consulting the MSKB yields about 14 page redirects, finally ending at "Contact your network administrator for more information."

The result is that when asked what the software is supposed to do, the Admin will generally state that it's intended to piss him off, which it does... meaning Microsoft has delivered on their agreement.

On the good side, MS has since optimized this process with 2K and moreso with XP. They've removed the bulk of the "Contact your NA" jargon, and replaced it with friendlier "File not found or I lost it or something" messages, rendered in wonderful 32 bit anti-aliased glory with full alpha blending. The result, as is promised in the accompanying documentation, is a much richer user-experience.

Re:Pay for flaw

[wwahammy]

Yes but we have these wonderful EULAs that limit Microsoft's liability even if the damn system kills you (although the courts might be willing to revisit that one). I would say a huge portion of Slashdot thinks Microsoft rights in the EULAs should be restricted but until we can get a court or Congress/legislature to agree with us, we're SOL.

Re:Pay for flaw

[RexRhino]

Damn straight!! Why just the other day I called Ford, and informed them that my Model-T did not meet the latest 2005 fuel and safety standards! So what that the car is 80 years old, the product was clearly flawed in many ways, and they needed to fix things.

And while I am at it, someone tell that watchmaker who made this antique watch, that just because he is dead, doesn't mean that he can't add quartz crystal timing! That Bastard!

What are you talking about?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

They released an update to NT years ago. Right around 2000. They called it windows something. Based on the same portable code of NT. IT lives on, saying its the only one that was designed to be portible is just ignorant. Strictly speaking nt4.0 wasn't designed to be portable, NT was the first version of which was 3.5. So 4.0 is an upgrade to the only os desinged to be portable, just like 2k, xp, and longhorn. Maybe you're confused because it was the only one that was marketed for other non x86 processors. But the new server 2003 version is availiable for Itanium, they are releasing a new version for the AMD_64 instruction set, and a modified version of windows will power the power pc based Xbox 2. So basically , in no sense what-so-ever are you correct.

Sorry to be so nitpickingly correct, but I've got to get my slashdot fix while I can at this point. And basically that means reminding myself how unaware of being ignorant intelligent people can be. It makes you stop and think about other subjects that we don't even claim to be experts in. Many of which are far more important and consequential to the world than anything you will ever read here.

Re:What are you talking about?

[mixmasta]

If you're gonna be condescending, triple check yer facts. The first version of NT was 3.1 I know cuz I used it. :)

Re:What are you talking about?

[zurab]

They released an update to NT years ago. Right around 2000. They called it windows something. Based on the same portable code of NT.

So? I do not get your point. Upgrade of an OS != new OS.

Strictly speaking nt4.0 wasn't designed to be portable, NT was the first version of which was 3.5.

No, you are wrong as you will see below.

Maybe you're confused because it was the only one that was marketed for other non x86 processors.

Nah, I just blocked out whole NT 3.xx series out of my mind for some reason - maybe because I just saw them as development versions of what was to come.

But the new server 2003 version is availiable for Itanium, they are releasing a new version for the AMD_64 instruction set, and a modified version of windows will power the power pc based Xbox 2. So basically , in no sense what-so-ever are you correct.

Sorry to be so nitpickingly correct, but I've got to get my slashdot fix while I can at this point.

If you want to be "nitpickingly correct" then the first version of Windows NT was Windows NT 3.1, not 3.5. Still, 3.1, 3.5, and 3.51 were not, in my mind, viable finished OS products on the market. Of course, you may argue otherwise - I do not have to agree.

Re:What are you talking about?

[AKnightCowboy]

They released an update to NT years ago. Right around 2000.

Does this mean I should start planning my migration to Active Directory? I guess they're pretty serious that this is the direction they're going. I figured they would see the light and go back to NT-style domains after a few years.

Re:What are you talking about?

[bernywork]

But the new server 2003 version is availiable for Itanium
It's a hack, it is in no way shape or form as optimised as what the x86 versions are. It's also about to get dropped.

they are releasing a new version for the AMD_64 instruction set
This isn't that much of a task as there isn't THAT much of a difference in the architectures between the x86 and AMD64 / EM64T platforms. It was ready ages ago. The problem was leaning on the hardware companies to get drivers together to ship with it to make it usable

and a modified version of windows will power the power pc based Xbox 2
Yup, it's the powerPC release of NT4 with a back port of DirectX 9.0c. That's the dev environment

Essentially there is a major trade off between performance and portability, something that every OS including Linux has to address. Microsoft uses the HAL to keep the hardware seperate from the software (kernel). The only problem was that everyone wanted to use the kernel to talk to the hardware to get better performance, which meant allowing more and more drivers into the kernel space. Given this, 2k and XP got faster and faster, but they became less and less portable because of how much they have riding on the kernel and how tied it is now to the x86 platform.

Re:What are you talking about?

[bernywork]

They probably will.

We are in the process of collapsing our AD tree at the moment because queries against the directory are taking too long and it's becoming too unmanagable.

The suggestion that we had from our consultant was to break the directory into "users and groups" and "computers" It's just getting funnier and funnier about how this is all going to happen. I joked the other day to one of the other admins that we might as well go back to system policies, user manager and server manager. It's not that the JET database doesn't support it or anything, it's just that it's faster if it's flatter.

Re:What are you talking about?

[bernywork]

One more thing is this. Microsoft came out with the signed driver model in Win2k for the main reason that stuff is going to be loading into kernel memory; a shared memory space. They already had MAJOR problems in NT4 with drivers not doing memory handling correctly; hence the signed driver model to try to steer users away from non-signed drivers and to try to give the hardware manufacturers some guidelines on drivers and some incentive for going through the process (One that I am led to believe costs a fair bit of money).

Re:What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

NT 3.1 was definitely a "test lab" only proposition, but I ran plenty of production servers on 3.5.1. (Including a Usenet server with several days retention on a 2GB drive! ;-)

Re:What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is curious; exactly how big is your AD? Where I work, at last count we had about 850 Domain Controllers (not servers just DC's) and about 9070 Workstations and I do not know how many file/print servers (hundreds and also about 120-130 sites).......

We also use a web based tracking program to query/authenticate to AD and it is very fast (seconds).........replication is not that slow either (considering the size of the network).

The operations masters for the domain/forest (yes we have multiple forests too) are not located at my site but when ever I make changes to GPO's they roll down within minutes.....

AD (2.0) is quite stable/reliable and fast in very large environments, of course you have to know what you are doing and how to set it up correctly.......

Re:What are you talking about?

[mmaddox]

First version of NT was 3.1, so-named to match the current version of Windows at the time, Windows 3.1. If I recall correctly, NT was developed with multi-platform capabilities from the get-go. Did NT 3.1 actually support Alpha and MIPS initially, or did it only work in the 3.5 release? I know 3.5 and 3.51 worked on Alpha and MIPS, but I don't recall ever trying to run 3.1 on those boxes.

Read the NT story in the book, SHOWSTOPPER--a book worth your time, if just to read the Dave Cutler stories. The book's been in remainders for some time, so it's nice and cheap.

Re:What are you talking about?

[Cat_Byte]

Actually I had a beta copy of 3.01 ;)

Re:What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The first version of NT was 3.1 I know cuz I used it. :)

The first version was "Windows Advanced Server", and had version number 2.0.

Re:What are you talking about?

[KlomDark]

EIGHT HUNDRED FIFTY Domain Controllers for 9070 workstations? What in the hell for? A domain controller for every 11 workstations?

Somebody's got a crackhead for an architect.

Mission critical boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, what happens if those Solaris machines break down? What then? What bank is this, I'd like to avoid it.

Re:Mission critical boxes

[Bert64]

You would assume they have a SUN support contract if theyre critical systems... SUN will still support SunOS 4.x (Solaris 1.x) if you pay them to. As for breaking down, sun hardware and solaris is a very reliable combination, far moreso than any x86 hardware running any version of windows.
And finally, solaris has a very good compatibility between releases, the software running on solaris 2.1 will almost certainly run without problems on solaris 10 or anything in between, just that upgrading would almost certainly involve replacing the hardware too, and some downtime which they don't want. If the hardware failed i'm sure they could get it back up and running on solaris 10 on modern hardware just as quickly as if they replaced the existing hardware and restarted solaris 2.1

Re:Mission critical boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens is that the applications will get moved to a spare machine running Solaris 8.1. Backups happen nightly and while it is mission critical the apps are not financial related. Maybe 6 hours tops to move everything to a new machine. Or depending on what broke on the machine we have SUN support on-site 24/7.

Two words for you...

[WebCowboy]

...my good man: EMULATION SCENE

There have been options for classic system owners for awhile now. Our family owned a Coleco ADAM that we used for more than just games (no really!). Still have it in fact (just don't use it). In the late 80s ADAM enthusiasts were starting to connect their ADAMS to IBMs with something called "ADAMServer"---basically a null-modem connection that let the PCs fixed and floppy disk drives appear as local devices do you could make disk and tape images of your software. Furthermore, although the directory structure was different, the Coleco floppy was a fairly common format used on many CP/M systems and the original IBM PC (160K single sided) so for awhile you could use one of those machines to read the disks at a block level on one of those systems. Most data files were ASCII-readable, and by the mid 90s there was Windows/Linux/Mac emulator so you could run aplications and still use your SmartFiler database or ADAMCalc spreadsheets if they were that important to you.

That is for a short-lived, relatively uncommon system. Apple IIs, Commodores, TRS80s and Atari 8-bits were much longer lived and more numerous, so when the writing was on the wall there were likely far more options. Heck, if you have old Apple II, Comodore and TRS80 cassette tapes you can back them up by putting them in any old cassette recorder, connecting it to the line-in on your computer and recording the sqeals. the programs out there to convert these audio streams to binary images are probably more reliable than the circuitry in the original systems anyways.

Yes, the business world is all about "if it aint broke why fix it", but running PCs for over 10 years with no upgrades at all seems to take that to the extreme. I'd think that when the local computer shop said it was going to stop stocking 8-inch floppies soon that it would be a clue-in that you'd better start migrating. Besides that, there is something called *innovation*. Yes, for too long MS has upgraded windows and office in a pretty blatant move to prop up its revenue stream, but some innovations are pretty fundamental...like colour graphics, sound, high-density disks, laser printers.

Surely your dad's friend had to see that it was hurting his bottom line long before the mid 90s. What kind of impression does it make on your clients when you send correspondence printed on dot matrix and daisywheel printers or you spend all night futzing over a Visicalc spreadsheet or an ancient Peachtree system to balance the books? Most businesses upgrade or replace SOME equipment (even non-IT related equipment) more often than that. I find it baffling that a business could be successful otherwise, but I guess it happens--I remember a Dell contest about old PCs still being used where a lawyer who was an early PC enthusiast bought an Altair in th 70s with an eye on using it to run his firm--and did so continuously until he won the Dell contest 23 years later. Astonishing, but even that guy had continually upgraded the Altair and has ways to get his data out of that system.

Re:server Vs Workstation why differ timelines?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Killing NTW was a kick in the stomach, to make the forced upgrade "hit home". They wouldn't be able to do it with NTS, however - consider that I had a quirked out UPS in one rack, and it took almost a week to create an opportunity to swap it out (you can't just dump a full 8-foot rack for an hour).

So, that's why. The NTS patches can easily be made to patch NTW as you suggest. Microsoft's artificially dumping NTW would act as a scare-tactic leverage, giving adequate time to start the ball rolling with the various budget processes. And remember, the bulk of NTS upgrades will carry 6 and 7 digit pricetags.

think outside the box - literally.

[SuperKendall]

All of the things you mentioned could be solved by external devices (especially storage) connected via firewire.

However, of course you'd probably only be replacing light duty servers that were probably running some old crufty crucial app with these boxes. If you just need a PDC or some raw storage, a newer Linux box would work much better - or any one of a thousand other soultions. I am just thinking of the case where you have a key app that needs NT to keep breathing, kind of like old legacy mainframe apps.

Wow you just don't get it

[WebCowboy]

...do you? Get out of your little bubble man! As if Linux systems are all PCs!

Msec?? Really??. When is the last time your linux system booted within 10 seconds?

My email, web and firewall servers? Never. The handheld, wireless Linux terminals that had Linux in flash rom? They always booted up way faster than 10 seconds.

These are not your basic beige Intel boxesI was talking about, these are $250K z-series workhorses. And a "partition" isn't just a little piece of an ATA hard drive--it is a completely self-contained virtual system within the hardware. You can reboot any partitions you want to your hearts content so long as you leave the production systems up. When you are done staging an upgrade (install, configure, regression testing etc etc) you just boot it up (however long that takes) then "throw the switch" when it is up and ready to go. Until that time, the prodution system hums away undisturbed on another partition.

Result? Service disruption that is LITERALLY milliseconds. That's my point--if a solution is SO critical that it MUST stay on 24/7 for THAT long, you don't just throw any old commodity hardware at it running Windows. If you didn't have to pay six-figures for the hardware and software that is acutally scalable then upgrading once or twice a decade to maintain reliable support isn't a problem for you--it is something you are just whining about. Windows serves the small and midrange market fine but it is not and never will be a contender in the very-large-enterprise market where such extended support is required--period.

Re:Wow you just don't get it

[fimbulvetr]

I just started working with some z-series this week....very very impressive. Get some p series (power5) demos coming in very soon.

The great thing is having an easy disc image use..

[SuperKendall]

The nice thing is the custom app could live on a fixed (and non-modfyable, or at least easily refreshable) disc image while data was written to a Mac area to keep clean.

Thank you for the clever Voltaire reference. :-)

too bad...

[Vo0k]

NT4 was one of the least screwed up systems from Microsoft.
Actually typing this away from a NT4 system running some custom software driving some custom hardware. (of course Mozilla+Gimp+Cygwin as my life support too :)

Eh, if Microsoft released NT4 as open source, now that would be something!

Re:too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't do that, XP is an update of 2k, which is an update of NT4. Hence open sourcing NT4 would practically mean open sourcing XP.

What I really want is an improved calculator. Still nothing matches my pocket Sharp EL-531GH, you'd think an £800 PC including a £100 OS would be able to do a better calculator app than a £10 (when bought) pocket calculator that I havn't even had to change the batteries on after 12 years.

YOU WIN

[Anonymous Coward]

World's stupidest fucking post ever...

Wow! Congratulations!!

Keep up the good work

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Totally and utterly wrong. Why do so many peopke think that moderators are mythical beings? Look, it's simple: if you have good Karma, you might get mod points. You log in one day as a normal user, the next day you have mod points. You get five mod points, no more, no less. If you don't use those mod points within three or four days you lose them and go back to being a normal user until maybe you get more moderator points.

M2 on your moderations affect your karma. To many bad mods = lower karma = less chance of getting mod points.

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[ckaminski]

The graphics subsystem was moved into kernel space in 3.51, IIRC.

Thank god for that

[skinfitz]

FINALLY I have an excuse to get rid of the aging NT4 desktops that we have.

Now... Windows 2000 (I think XP is a bit optimistic for the spec involved) or a Linux trial...

Re:Thank god for that

[swmccracken]

NT 4 Workstation has been completely unsupported since 30 June 2004. (It's only Server that's had the extensions until now.)

Well, when RH can charge....

[rsilvergun]

$250 dollars a support call, and move a good chunk of that to low paid overseas outsourcers, I bet you'll see them supporting their products for a long time. Until then, I guess you'll just have to upgrade to Fedora if you're on the cheap. Or White Hat Linux if you want stability.

Oh, and for the record, NT4 -> WinXP is not a supported upgrade path.

Re:Well, when RH can charge....

[operagost]

Wrong.

I'll take 2K over XP anyday...

[MsGeek]

2000 is a fine OS to stay with, as it has some nice improvements over NT4 (USB, power management, etc). I think ending 2000 support will prove tougher than NT4 has been.

You think? Please, I hope so.

The University I'm transferring to (Woodbury University, Burbank, CA US) requires its students to have three pieces of software on an x86 computer (they'd like you to have a laptop but a desktop is fine if that's all you've got) which are:

Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP
MS Office 2000 or XP (they don't seem to like the new versions and will tolerate 97)
SPSS

OK, so I have a ThinkPad 600e 400MHz (PII). I have a 40GB hard drive with a 7GB Windows 2000 partition and the rest with Debian Sarge/Sid. The W2K partition has Office 2K already. SPSS will have to wait until I'm actually there.

To be blunt, I would rather have everything running on Linux and be done with it. OpenOffice.Org can do anything that Office 2K can in a collegiate environment unless you are running complex financial crap that requires pivot tables and macros and stuff like that which a college student will never see unless they are an accounting major.

The big tough nut to crack has been SPSS. Neither Wine nor Cedega nor Codeweavers has been able to get that puppy to run. So yeah, it looks like the "dark side" partition is here to stay for a while.

I refuse to run XP. It is bloated for no reason other than to trowel on the eye candy. Windows 2000 does everything that XP can, without the increase in overhead.

According to reports, there will be no Windows 2000 SP5. Apparently MS will be doing a monolithic "Post SP4 Security Rollup" but then that will be it for major security upgrades. The takehome message seems to be "XP: like it or lump it."

The only OS upgrade I'm gonna do after W2K is Linux on everything, fuck Microsoft. However, the small detail that puts a fly into the ointment is that SPSS isn't available there. If there will be no more security patches, then I'm going to have to completely run it in a bubble. No more connecting to the Internet with it. No more connecting to an untrusted network, period. And I will not consider Woodbury a trusted network. Too many random factors involved.

What I would really like to do is run the W2K shit in a virtual machine under Linux. However VMWare is just too damn rich for my blood.

If the talk of "no more security updates for Windows 2000" is just that, talk, and the real story is that there will be updates up until 2007, (when if I'm lucky I've graduated already and maybe I'm moving on to a more Linux-friendly school for the school counseling credentialling process) then I can exhale.

If not, I have to start looking at alternative ways of dealing with my SPSS problem. Yes, I know there's the R Project and other SPSS-like packages for Linux. But I have no idea whether R Project or any of the others will do what my profs are expecting me to do with SPSS. And I'm certainly not expert enough in stats (I'm barely swimming in Algebra right now) to know on my own.

ME not released

[2A]

Windows ME was never "released" in that sense, it broke out in a Chynobyl type accident. Apparently it's still causing pain and suffering to this very day (oh, the humanity)

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Carrot007]

Well, here I am at work, using an NT 4 box and writing this.

The company I work for is a LARGE multi-national utility company (electric / gas / water), So it seems they do.

Sure hate flash ads and over page ads as they flicker really bad under these nt4 machines.

NT 3.51

[chrisbeatty]

The company I work for just finished migrating a large UK government dept from NT 3.51 to W2k.

We had to upgrade them we were having problems getting printer drivers!!

Although with mainstream support for W2k going out the window this year they'll be looking at doing it all over again soon. What a great way to waste taxpayers money.

Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean NT 4 was actually SUPPORTED?

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[dn15]

I've been doing tech support for non-profits for just a couple months and already ran into a lot of NT systems. When budget is a big consideration (as with these organizations) the last thing they want to do is spend money on new software if the existing stuff still works. Computers are not their primary focus, so as long as the job gets done upgrades remain a low priority.

Then, of course, there are the servers -- often old installations are left in place because the benefits of an upgrade are outweighed by the risk of downtime and other hassles resulting from unforeseen incompatibilities, driver issues, and other problems.

DIE!!!!

[shoma-san]

Why won't you die NT4? You should have left so long ago but you keep showing up in this world. I refuse support and yet you keep popping up in my datacenters. You know the law! A program can either choose to hide in the Matrix, or return to The Source. Return to the Source! Return and play havoc on the Architech.

Your Power Stations run Windows

[The MESMERIC]

Did you know people sell Windows software to run Power Stations?
So that the admins can from their INSECURE INTERNET CONNECTION at home - manage and regulate electricity flow?

Am I spreading FUD?

Do your own fukkin research!

I aint kidding - I refused to represent an American company that sold such kits.

It won't be long till we are struck with a real catastrophe through terrorist hacking.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[Anonymous Coward]

The company I work for only started upgrading its industrial PCs from 95 to NT4 in 2001 and there are still some win95 pcs because there is an application we need that only runs on win95. They're not servers, but workstation support was axed last year.

Could not be transferred?

[emil]

Back in the day, I was charged with getting data off a CP/M system running dBase with 8" floppies. I ended up connecting a null modem cable to the serial port and printing the database into a PC running PROCOM.

There has got to be a way to get data off a TRS-80. Heck, you don't even need to worry about EBCDIC conversion.

Grammer police here

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's not thier job to administrate thier machine"

Please don't say this in public. You just say "Its not their job to administer their machines".

You're welcome!

Re:Grammer police here

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is "it's". The apostrophe for this word doesn't indicate possessive, it is a contraction.

When it doubt, always say it out loud. If you mean "it is", use "it's". Otherwise, use "its".

Firewalls are NOT a necessity for internet access.

[emil]

OpenBSD's default install is with the firewall disabled, and you can feel comfortable deploying it in a hostile environment.

Microsoft should open-source everything that opens server ports in Windows (especially ports 137-139). XP wouldn't need a firewall if they did this.

Of course, running on an architecture that helps out with security (NX) will also reduce intrusions.

Still widely used after 8 years says something

[walterbyrd]

Especially NT4 server.

And you get a full GUI environment, on anything from 486 on up. Linux advocates carry on about Linux leveraging older hardware, but I can think of any linux distro that gives me a fast and complete GUI on 486.

VMS has been updated.

[pwhysall]

To say it's only received security patches for the past ten years is nonsense. It's gone from version 6 to version 8 in that timeframe, and VMS version revs are none-trivial. Just go to the website and read the "new features" document.

Why, now it supports IDE out of the box!

(There's also a pile of other stuff to do with filesystems, system partitioning and other boring stuff, too)

Linux is a kernel, NT is an OS

[LatePaul]

Ultimately, we don't need to expect a Linux vendor to have as long a support cycle. One thing that is different is that the Linux distro companies is that they do not control the source code, and that code is publicly available to anyone forever (the Linux kernel right back to the first 0.whatever release is available). Not only that, the Linux kernel support team DOES support old kernels--a lot of relevant patches are still backported to the 2.0.x kernels (which are as old as NT4). That is one of closed sources disadvantages-the vendor has to either open the source or offer indefinite support or the project is 100% guaranteed to become extinct.

You're right of course but you're not comparing like with like. Linux is just the kernel, NT is the OS. Can you still find all the programs and utilities that make your system useable back to an equivalent level of the 2.0.x kernel? What about the ones the distro customized and/or provided their own updates for - are those old packages still available with source?

Re:Linux is a kernel, NT is an OS

[WebCowboy]

Can you still find all the programs and utilities that make your system useable back to an equivalent level of the 2.0.x kernel?

As a matter of fact you can. Since the GNU part of the GNU/Linux operating system is also open source it can generally be compiled against any 2.x.x kernel. Same goes for Apache, Sendmail, PostgreSQL, etc etc. You cannot exactly do that with the NT kernel or the other parts of the OS. If MS patches MS SQL Server 2K and it breaks on NT, from now on you are SOL--you either upgrade, live with the unpatched version or pay very dearly for custom support.

Re:Linux is a kernel, NT is an OS

[LatePaul]

Are you suggesting that someone running RH 5.2 or whatever, who finds a security flaw in their ancient version of fileutils just upgrades to the latest and greatest since it can "be compiled against any 2.x.x" kernel?

Or are you suggesting they can go find the source for that old version in the GNU archives and patch that?

How many different packages would this person have to track and patch manually? (remember we're talking about a distro no longer supported by the vendor) How many conflicts and inconsistencies would need resolving?

What is it that you think distro vendors do anyway?

I wasn't arguing the comparison with NT per se, just the notion that it doesn't matter when distro vendors drop support since we have the source for Linux going back to 2.0.x. In theory perhaps (though I'm still sceptical that everyone involved has kept all their old source), in practice it'd be a nightmare.

Re:Sits back, grabs a drink and....

[lachlan76]

My local library has VT100s. And no, that was NOT a joke.

I don't know what they're connected to. I really don't want to know...

Kill It!

[Zerbey]

Good... it's finally gone (or going at least). Software that was released in 1996 can be considered extinct in IT terms. Microsoft released an upgrade to NT in 1999, called Windows 2000. In 2003 they updated that with Windows 2003. There's absolutely no reason to still use NT!

Hats off to Microsoft though, yes it had its problems but NT 4.0 was a vast improvement over NT 3.51 and the only other desktop OS offering at the time was Windows 95. Ewww.

Re:Kill It!

[Anonymous Coward]

There was OS/2, and I was using it. There was also Linux on Intel.

Soooo end of life.. sort of..

[nurb432]

So its not really end of life, if you want to pony up the cash to be on the special program.

Sort of sux for those that have to keep NT a while.. but its their product.. they can isolate whom ever they like.

Lease Plans

[nurb432]

That is their way out, get to the point that everything is leased, and you are forced to upgrading and continually paying..

Much as most of the Microsoft MOLP agreements are like. You get a grace period, but must upgrade to current versions eventually.

And if you decline to renew, then your current licenses go poof..

General lifecycle information for Microsoft

[kiwimate]

For Windows OS and for general products.

In fact, because I'm such a nice guy:

Business Solutions
Consumer/Hardware/Multimedia
Developer Tools
Macintosh Products
Office
Servers
Windows
Windows Embedded

ibm on nonmainframe hardware

[gimpboy]

I had a friend who worked for tivoli for a while (back in 2000). He mentioned that IBM was still supporting OS2 and that they would until support contracts that were signed a long time ago ran out.

I'll second that!

[Just Some Guy]

What a coincidence! I've been hosting a file server on a quad-homed NT box with DS3 connectivity for over five years now, and as long as we limit the number of incoming connections so that NT doesn't fall over, it merrily churns out gigs of porn, warez, and spam 24/7/365.

Thanks unfirewalled-NT 4.0!

NT churn

[Anonymous Coward]

A tuned NT machine behind a hardware firewall still beats (performance vs cost) our other server machines, including unix/linux, for RDBMS performance.

I always appreciated that you could get NT down to 4 or 5 running processes.

Re:NT churn

[andalay]

Thats because your NT people don't know unix/linux, the hardware is different, etc, etc. So blah to your anecdotal benchmark.

7th time Slashdot has said this

[Blitzenn]

This is actually the seventh time Slashdot has cried WOLF on this. I don't believe them anymore. I wll be glad to see NT go, but slashdot hasn't any credibility in this area for me any more. I can point to 7 different articles in the last 3 years where slashdot articles were posted saying MS was dropping support for NT. They were all obviously wrong as it has not yet happened to date.

Re:7th time Slashdot has said this

[SmokeHalo]

/. may have jumped the gun a few times, but I remember hearing it from other sources as well. IIRC, this is the third time MS has announced the end of NT support -- they kept reversing themselves, probably after too many customers howled.

Re:7th time Slashdot has said this

[Blitzenn]

MS has always stated that they were going to drop support. They have pushed their date back a few times, but the story hasn't ever changed. Slashdot proclaims it as a new knife in the back of MS users everytime they post it. It gets really old and tiresome and has removed a huge amount of credibility from Slashdot because of the way Slashdot insists on portraying MS. I don't complain to uphold MS in ANY way. I simple really really hate to see Slashdot slide into the gutter in this way. It looks and sounds childish and quite frankly is. The sky is falling attitude is not going to win anyone over, especially when they find out that the sky isn't really falling.

Na, it's more like NT4 is what XP should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to disagree completely. Ever since I created a simple batch script to disable all shares on NT (including the hidden IPC share), I have never been hit with any network worms. No version of Windows ever handled RAM as well as NT. I used to regularly surf the net with over 100 Netscape windows on a Pentium Pro with just 32 MB of RAM. Let's see if XP can do that. Oh wait, it won't even install....

And I won't even get into the bloated Fisher Price GUI of XP....

New patches as of 1/11/05

[Lunchy]

We have several NT 4 servers in use. Looking for patches for the one I'm in charge of, I found this... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=4604400A-287E-48CC-91B1-BEE44EEA588C&displa ylang=en I'm confused. Does that not qualify as a "hot fix"? O_o

Re:New patches as of 1/11/05

[Lunchy]

Ok, so I'm new to posting stuff on slashdot. :)

This one's formatted better...

We have several NT 4 servers in use. Looking for patches for the one I'm in charge of, I found this...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=4604400A-287E-48CC-91B1-BEE44EEA588C&displa ylang=en

I'm confused. Does that not qualify as a "hot fix"?

O_o

In Microsoft's defense (can't believe I said that)

[Just Some Guy]

Someone needs to call MS on this -- software, after all, does not wear out.

BS.

Software wears out when the inputs presented to it no longer conform to the assumptions made when it was being written. For example, a JPEG codec written in 1993 might not have been designed with the expectation that people would be using it to compress 10"x14"x1200dpi scanned images, but may work perfectly well with the kinds of files floating around in the mid '90s. That's not necessarily a flaw, particularly if replacing the smaller, bounded algorithms with infinitely-scalable routines would have cost a lot of money with little return, and made the end product run like crap on the processors available at the time.

Furthermore, you can't always blame ancient security vulnerabilities on bad code by the standards present when it was written. New exploits and vectors pop up all the time, and it's hard to fault someone for opening a hole in their code written ten years ago that wasn't even dreamed up until last week. I absolutely guarantee you that ten years from now, we'll be looking at the stuff we consider to be relatively secure today with disgust that we could have been so naive.

I am hardly a Microsoft apologist, but it's not necessarily reasonable to evaluate their ancient code against current best practices. Do you really want to hold RedHat 4 accountable to those standards?

Target Corporation + Win NT4

[dhawton]

Well, most of Target's workstations (and some kiosks) run NT4, looks like they'll need to upgrade.

Re:Firewalls are NOT a necessity for internet acce

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, disabling netbios over TCP/IP closes those ports. RPC (tcp/135) and CIFS (udp/445 & tcp/445) will still be open.

Real patch is here

[einhverfr]

Nah... Linux won't in itself replace NT. YOu have NT4 domain controllers, F&P servers, etc.

The real patch is here.

Does this mean that NT4 is older than RedHat?

[endeavour31]

It must be pretty close.

Re: not the same thing

[King_TJ]

Umm.... I've done *many* myself over the years, and I assure you, I've seen quite a few cards BSOD an NT 4 box if you don't get the settings exactly right.

Example 1: Dell Latitude laptops such as the CPi. These came pre-loaded with NT 4 and were "certified for NT 4" use by Dell. Install a Xircom PCMCIA ethernet card in one. You'll immediately get asked which I/O address and IRQ it's on. Pick incorrectly and blam - BSOD.

Example 2: NT 4 on older hardware with ISA slots and NE-2000 cards.

Think of the little software companies.

[RexRhino]

OK, everyone loves to bash Microsoft because they are the huge multibillion dollar corporation... but expecting Microsoft to support all it's software indefinitly and forever is bad for the little guys.

Once there is some sort of precident that says that software companies have to support their software forever, that is going to make a lot of small companies not viable.

Microsoft will just keep tacking more money on the "Microsoft Tax" to hire more people to take care of it, or lawyers to protect them from the liability. Tiny companies who do not dominate the market will go out of buisness, because they will not have the money to support every product that ever existed (and the people who demand that products are supported for life will still not get any support).

Re:Do you even remember how to admin an NT 4.0 box

[drsmithy]

It was done in NT 4.0. That was one of its major features (the improved graphics performance).