Slashdot Mirror
Creaky Operating Systems Form IT Foundations
maotx writes "The Washington Post has an article on how aging operating systems are still widely used. The article states that "The research firm IDC estimates that of the roughly 514 million paid-for copies of Windows on desktops and laptops worldwide at the end of 2004, almost 21 percent were the aging Win 95, 98 and Millennium Edition releases." That equates to around 108 million copies being used."
Windows 3.11 for workgroups running TCP/IP and NCSA Mosaic. :-)
there are hospitals, companys, schools...etc that have ancient computer sitting around still doing random easy tasks. There is no need to update those computers...unless a larger load of work is needed to be done.
If it wasn't for C, we would be stuck using BASI, PASAL and OBOL.
A bank I did work at recently still ran Win95a
...doesn't that mean broken?
This sounds like a message for the users, but maybe it is a wakeup for the OS makers. If that many people still see their OS as viable and are willing to use it... then should the OS companies really be holding a gun to their head in what can only be an attempt to wring more money from them?
"This research into making sure companies have the latest version of Windows was sponsored by Microsoft."
Then, quite simply, for most people who just want email and browsing it's more than sufficient for them. Same goes for a lot of small businesses. They don't need multi-Gigahertz machines or recent OS licenses. They just need something that will run their word processors, spreadsheets, and print docs.
It's like the toaster to them. Who buys a new toaster or blender until the old one breaks? Same with computers for a surprising number of people. I've seen it with my relatives, I've seen it with friends. I've been appalled by what some of them use, but talk to them about upgrading and it's "No thanks, it works just fine."
Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but not everyone is on the bi-annual hardware upgrade cycle.
And if you think that the weakest links in the IT department are the computers being used, then you're part of the problem. Hint: the problem lies in the parts you can't upgrade.
You mean Windows isn't supposed to creak when it's new?
I used NT 4.0 forever because it just had such a workmanlike user interface.
Actually, ObOnTopic, the most interesting thing to me about this topic is how easily Microsoft killed NT 4.0 by simply witholding support for USB. NT4 actually was, ah, very workable, if not workmanlike, except for that crucial missing USB connectivity in the later years.
Remember these operating systems work as well as they did when they were released so why change?
Windows 95 or 3.11 doesn't suddenly lose features when they become 5 years old. the analogy to 'creaky' isn't flawed. operating systems don't wear out or 'break' over time they just get found exploits for or don't provide newer functionality that might be needed.
But you can patch them and do workarounds for their security problems that keep them every bit as secure as anything else new out there (maybe even more so!!!) and if you don't need newer functionality but just to keep doing a job then why spend money needlessly on something that doesnt need to upgrade and still works?
I bet there are many of completely secure Linux 2.0 and Windows 95 servers and desktops in use by business that will keep doing the job they are needed to for years to come, maybe longer.
Although using an old operating system is fine for just some box sitting there not connected to any sort of network, once you plug it into a network you have a disaster waiting to happen. Many of these old operating systems are sitting there unpatched just waiting to become a sysadmin's worst nightmare. Although, if it was possible to keep these old OS'es patched, I don't see anything wrong with using them.
I still use Wndows 98 because I don't want to pay for an OS I won't use for more then a few months. I'm switching to Ubuntu Linux soon and if my modem wasn't a winmodem I'd already be using it.
I like muppets.
are using.
I used to work for the company that wrote a software for IBM mainframes. We had to deal with the different agencies. each used something REALLY old, I had to maintain virtual machine environment, so we can bring up some of those older OS versions if necessary for debugging. I remember one funny case when someone called from the agency I won't give a name (but you can figure it out), the guy said he had the software crashed, but he DID NOT WANT to give any details of what was wrong, neither to tell which operating system he was using. We had to deal with his boss and his boss' boss to get the information we needed to debug the problem.
Well, there were two reasons why they've used OS'es that old. First, if it works, don't upgrade it. It ain't broken so don't fix it. Second, upgrade may require bigger hardware, and you have to justify the cost of upgrade, so why bother?
For those familiar with the history of IBM mainframe-based OS'es, we had to maintain OS/VS1 (or something like that). blah.
Abelit being slightly offtopic, half of those people running older OS's probably don't give two whits about newer software (my girlfriends grandparents pc is still running win95 OSR2!) and the most complicated thing they have done is write aodoccument or print out an invoice.
The other half just accept their pc is getting slower and slower with all the cruft (and spyware too?) and other crap that is slowly killing their systems.
Then again i doubt anyone here is running anything older than win2k/ Macos X unless they are a tightarse.
(this is where i mention my laptop is a P120 running Win98)
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
1) 98se, especially with 98lite installed and IE removed, *smokes* any other MS-windows based OS I've ever seen (and I've seen 'em all) in terms of performance. My machine crawls when I boot to the 2000 side, the 98 side is like *butter*, and I hardly ever have to reboot. Sure, the buttons aren't all round and bubbly, and there's no transparency support, but I have yet to find a single thing that I want to do that 98 won't support.
2) DOS-based (which is to say, 95, 98 and ME) OS's are not nearly as widely targeted by virus writers. The vast majority of new viruses target the 2k/XP/2k3 systems, for the simple reason that they're SOOOOO full of holes.
3) 95 and 98 (ME, eh, not so much) have been out long enough that 99% of the problems with them have been fixed. Of course, I wouldn't go to 98 until ME came out. My rule of thumb is go with whichever MS OS is the second most current one. That said, I still don't feel the burning need to upgrade to XP, and I doubt I ever will.
4) Like somebody already said, if it's not broke, and it's paid for, why change? Why waste money on the new version and then waste more money on the man-hours for MicroServices to install it, migrate everything, deal with all the users whining about where all their desktop wallpaper went, etc... just to wind up with a system that's ultimately slower and more vulnerable to attack?
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Look at that - a hundred million+ machines running Win9x. This should be exactly where Linux shines, revamping old machines with new desktop life. Except, of course, that combos of KDE/GNOME + OpenOffice.org + Mozilla are even weightier than their Windows equivalents, thus destroying an upgrade path.
It's very frustrating. Yeah, you can use Fluxbox and Dillo and stuff like that, but it's hardly an enterprise desktop, is it?
Much as I love Linux, it's painful to see massive Microsoftian bloat in the major desktops and apps, all the time removing an incentive to upgrade. Or, in cases like this, eliminating an upgrade path altogether!
If Linux was slim, fast and snappy, it'd be an absolutely perfect solution. But while it offers barely any perfomance advantages over XP/MSO, it's not so attractive.
These 100 million machines could and should be running Linux, if we'd paid attention to elegant code and performance. But instead we're seeing ever more newcomers turned off by the weight and sluggish performance. It's distressing.
About six months ago I had to access some information on an aging (as in 13 year old) PICK server. The multiport board was fried years ago and I couldn't raise a terminal on the serial port. After a few hours of trying to capture the data I had the person who needed access to it copy it to a pad of paper from the screen.
Not good, to say the least, but the server in question hadn't been fired up in years.
Since then I've been putting disk images of our currently running database software on a Qemu image along with a copy of the qemu source and binaries on a DVD (and in the future the media might change, but you get the idea).
For emergency situations I can put a dvd into any available machine and have a "live" version of our DB running in minutes. I'd have loved it if I could've booted that PICK server in an emulator.
-dameron
For those of us afraid of hardware-based trustworthy computing, this is why it will not happen for a long, long time. More and more home users are going to be satisfied with the machines they have now until they break, and companies wishing to sell online content to them are just going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to buy a new, trustworthy computer to access the content.
What this really demonstrates is how stifling Microsoft's OS monopoly has been. When the core functions of a product have changed so little, have offered so little innovation, that there's no compelling reason to upgrade after more than ten years, it's clear that it is a stagnant product.
When no other businesses can enter the market and compete against your stagnant product, but a significant competitor for your product can be put together by a bunch of enthusiasts, then you have a company that has been successful in suffocating an industry.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
oh....I'm current
A copy of a 10-year-old OS does everything it did when it was first compiled and installed (and maybe a bit more with the right add-ons). It is the software-industry (and virus writers) that reset peoples expectations and make the old OS seem decrepit.
Sometimes maintaining an old OS for an old system can be the best use of time and money. I have a 10-year-old machine that does a great job scanning old slides, negatives, and photos. And another 10-year-old laptop ($20 for the laptop, $2 for a WiFi card for it) that is perfect for light editing jobs and running a much-loved application that is no longer supported on newer machines (and that has no modern counterpart). So many common computing tasks don't need GHz speed or the latest OS.
Sometimes the best tool for the job is an old tool because old software never wears out (and old hardware is so delightfully cheap).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
One of the less obvious advantages of not using either Win2k or XP is that many of the more recent worms are designed specifically with them in mind. Even if one enters your system, it probably can't run, and the vulnerabilities it's looking for aren't there. Win98 is more mature than either, and has less openings remaining to exploit.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Among them being that some of us simply have to make do with what we've got.
I am the IT department for a non-profit in San Francisco. We're an Apple only shop, and our charter does not allow us to spend money on hardware. Everything is donated. The result? Besides 8 Rev C and D iMacs and 3 Rev 1 Yosemite G3s, the other 40 or so machines are a motley collection of older, even ancient Macs.
On the iMacs and Yosemites, Jaguar is about as high as you should go if you actually need to get your work done in a timely manner (especially when you only have 192-320M in them). The other Macs run mostly 8.6-9.1, with a couple still running 7.x (if it ain't broke...).
While I (and the admin peeps) would love to have everyone on an OSX box running OpenOffice.org, it's simply not possible at this time. So, we have Office 98, 2001, and 2004 running... depending on the OS installed. I have AppleWorks installed most everywhere, but no one really uses it. Fortunately, Mozilla 1.2 is serviceable on the 8.x-9.x machines.
Like Sting said, "when the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around." Creaky or not.
"We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
Apple's difficulty to getting people to upgrade (since the days of System 6!) have given them a perspective that they market each major upgrade (a.k.a. burdensome incompatibility) with flashy new features, programmer optimizations, and cosmetic improvements that all could have been added to older releases but are saved and introduced as the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Their marketing actually makes many people eager to pay for a set of major changes and incompatabilities each year. (All the Mac rumor sites are awash in speculation over the release date, pricing, and last minute features for Tiger.)
Microsoft's attempts to do this with Windows don't work nearly as well. Programmers willingly forgo new api's on their projects to reach a bigger market. Any cosmetic changes are made available by third-parties for older machines and many people demand a way to regress changes to the older, less-flashy version. Free code doesn't isn't always persuasive either. The major incompatabilities of services packs make some people choose not to stay current if it means that they don't have to hassle with making changes where they have no interest in making changes. If the changes benefit MS, they should be paying me to sabotage (err upgrade) my own system is how one of my previous bosses looked at it.
One of the disadvantages to free software is that there is no automatic way to transition the data, email, porn, and games over to a free software OS in a way that sates the desire people have to not have to screw with their computer. There do appear to be some software projects that are working on these issues, but I bet a partial hardware upgrade (e.g. new hard drive with Linux, transition tools, and way to make a complete archival backup of the old system) would be more along the lines of what Joe Artist or Grandpa Smith would want.
The shop uses a single user, single task, DOS-based app. On some machines in a fullscreen DOS-box under Win95, on some machines even pure DOS. PentiumPro/Celeron era hardware.
Ancient? Sure. Stupid? Nope. If I would run this shop, I'd use network-booted thin clients, power-saving LCD screens, and some small opensource system like NetBSD, with maybe some custom code on top of it.
But this DOS-based setup isn't all bad: Windows may provide multi-tasking and GUI, but what's the use? If you run a single-user, single-task app all the time, DOS is good enough, and relatively stable. License-wise, DOS is virtually free, Win95 licenses should come almost free these days. With very limited selections to make, DOS-based menu's navigate as quickly or faster than any GUI. The system requirements to run this, make the hardware almost free as well. Sure it's old, but it works, and replacement hardware costs nothing.
Win95 not updated anymore? So what? The hardware doesn't change all by itself, right? Insecure? Maybe, but that only applies if you connect it to networks outside your own control. I doubt these machines have internet connection (not sure though). Maybe you could wreck operations here with a floppy disk smuggled in, but likely you'd get spotted, fired, and made to pay damages. If you work here, why would you risk that?
Drop something newer like Win2k or XP in there: massive upgrade of hardware required, license and maintenance costs skyrocketing with these bloated systems, and maybe a full rewrite of the known, working, and trusted app needed. Please point it out if you see any advantage in there.
Yes, newer systems may provide nice functionality, but if you don't need it, upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, is stupid. Upgrade if it lets you do something you couldn't do before, or if it fixes a (potential?) problem you have. If not, leave it.
Of course, there would be no internet, no USB, no MP3, no nothing except what's really needed to work in most situations.
While windows evolution broadened the scope of use of computers, I compare the different versions to dinosaurs : ever more bigger, still severly lacking in the brain departement, and nearly collapsing under their own weight now.
I bet that history will repeat : time has come for smarter, smaller, devices, and the desktop computer as we know it will soon be a fading memory.
"aging operating systems are still widely used"
I'm pretty sure that the numbers will even further increase when Longhorn comes out with a working Digital Restrictions Management.
There are already a lot of IT people that use win2k instead of XP because of several advantages they see in win2k.
Those are not the people who don't care or don't know what they are doing and still they refuse to use the newest and shiniest MS OS.
Besides that there is a undeniable trend towards F/OSS software even among Joe Sixpack users.
So it seems more and more people will use old windows versions or a *nix OS instead of a new windows version in the future.
Personally I think that is a good thing.
Upgrading the jag machines won't slow them down-- Panther will actually dramtically speed them up. I did similiar upgrades in an education setting and the difference was quite palpable. Apple releases (for the most part) only speed up (esp. since X was first announced). As far as the ancient macs, let 'em be. You're right in that case if it's broke don't fix it, but if you're looking to upgrade functionality while mantianing speed-- Linux may be an option.
transmission_err
Yes, and lots of older worms won't work on WinXP or 2k. To think you are safer on something 10 years old with no updating is crazy.
Win2k and XP got rid of a lot of problems for people by leaving the 9x series kernel in hell. I have no problems with windows, but 9x series stuff, and pre-XP stuff I want nothing to do with. If only longhorn would do a Macos9->OS X jump and axe nearly all backwards compatibility and be a real start over i might move back to windows. Maybe by the time MS does that OS X will have gotten to be a pile of cruft and I will be tired of it.
When I got out of the military in 1998 I bought my Mom a replacement computer for her 286.
I booted it up to get the files off of it, and was very surprised at how reponsive it was. 16 Mhz and I was flying though menus, and bringing up Wordperfect in seconds.
Now it's the same thing. She's still using the same computer from 1998, and I figure it's time for a replacement. I decided against it when I went home for Christmas and cleaned it out and patched it up. Windows 98 was flying. The thing could use some more memory, but other than that it worked great.
So I set up a script to backup all her files to a zip disk and told her to call me when the PC dies.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
UNOFFICIAL Windows98 SE SP1 1.6.2
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4131.html
Rhapsody
(work in progress)
http://www.openstep.se/
~hylas
" Yes, and lots of older worms won't work on WinXP or 2k."
But the number of those older worms is VASTLY exceeded by the number of new, 2k/xp specific ones. VASTLY.
"Win2k and XP got rid of a lot of problems for people by leaving the 9x series kernel in hell."
They got rid of a few problems but managed to introduce hundreds more.
Have you ever used a patched, upgraded 98se/lite box? I got six months of uptime before the power went out.
I'll make you a deal. You take two boxes, put 98se/lite UNPATCHED on one, and XP UNPATCHED on the other, put 'em both on a broadband internet connection and you tell me which one gets infected inside 15 minutes. Hint: it won't be 98se/lite.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
"If only longhorn would do a Macos9->OS X jump and axe nearly all backwards compatibility and be a real start over i might move back to windows."
Yea, that worked really well for Itanium.
If all of my legacy applications are going to break in Microsofts next OS rev, I may as well switch to Linux and get off the MS OS treadmill.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
The system uses an ISA hardware encryption board and runs on DOS.
In the late 90's, the Fed was working on developing a Fedline system for Windows (NT at the time), but was unable to deliver it.
They are now working on a web based solution (not sure about how much more secure that will be than an NT based solution...) which, if adequately secure, will be much nicer to work with than the old Fedline solution.
The one nice thing about Fedline is that it gives you a place to put old, out of service machines. My most current Fedline machine is a Pentium-90 with a bunch of RAM - horribly over performing for the task, but it met the specs required to run Fedline (ISA slot, DOS compatible) when the last one died.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I answered a bunch of questions--er, complaints--from readers in my newsletter after that column ran (which was, um, almost a month ago). In case anybody's curious, here's that link.
Remember that these machines do no less than they could when they were first introduced, and people payed big money for that functionality back then.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I salvaged Windows 3.11 disks from a pile of floppies getting trashed and tried it on my P4. The speed was enjoyable... but... I kinda expected WINDOWS. Rightclick does practically nothing. I had good memories from those days, but win3.11 gave me practically nothing, except a nice way to launch DOS apps.
I imagine in a few years, Windows 2011 will boot on my Intel Hexium 2mm laptop, in about 1.5 hours.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Of course, those 108 million users of ancient
Windows versions DO NOT represent new WinXP
customers for MSFT -- their hardware will not
support the new OS (and vice versa).
MSFT will not, under any circumstances, release
the complete source code to their ancient OSes --
they would rather let the email worms, viruses,
and spyware so impede these stubborn users that
they spring for new hardware, including the
built-in MSFT tax.
These 108 million users represent the most likely
candidates for a switch to linux -- Linspire or
some other linux/wine implimentation. IMHO, a
grassroots movement of this sort to linux would
drop MSFT stock by 5%. All these users need is
the encouragement (and assistance) from the linux
community. Some well-placed ads (a la NYT/FF)
that also listed LUG websites and phone numbers
could provide the tipping point. A well-designed
and implimented (bootable) single CD solution
that was available (and free as in beer) could
help the process along. Imaqine a free linux CD
released on the scale of (any) AOL "coasterware".
We still have an old Digital AlphaServer 1000A 4/233 that we still use as a File/Print Server, so not only a creaky OS but on a dead chip ;). I still use it to surf the web with sites I don't trust and check out what I think are dodgy emails on it as it dosn't run Intel Code and ActiveX so I feel safer than doing it on one of the Wintel Boxes.
Jonathan
Right, I run tech support for (currently) six suburban schools in my area, being the sole person responsible for upgrading, maintaining etc. I am in high demand.
Yes, we have just got one school left which is running 98 in any significant amount. For large installations and computers which "need" to be up 24/7, you do need a nice shiny new OS. Most of the schools have a mixture of XP and 98, one has 95/98, one has 2000 throughout.
I can see the argument for those having to be upgraded, but there is a significant cost involved in doing so that means a complete upheaval of the entire computer base.
However, at home my most powerful machines run 98SE. It's cheap, easily available, VERY easily repairable. If maintained properly, there are no security problems, you just have to not rely on the OS seperating out user privileges like in XP.
I've actually seen people deliberately run commands (e.g. testing their unverified downloads out) on their computer just because they believe the OS will seperate the danger out enough because it's under a non-privileged user.
Most home users don't want the hassle and thus most home machines are probably running under a single, full-access account anyway. Also, an experienced user, with some simple freeware and an adequate firewall, is just as well protected as a modern OS user.
The older OS are not as stable, no, unless they are well-maintained (not installing crap just to see what it looks like). If the older OS's do go belly-up, though, they are VERY easy to recover (even down to the filesystem level, FAT is much simpler to recover from than NTFS).
I bought this machine 2-3 years ago, installed 98SE that I had bought an auction and it replaced my 6 year old machine that has been running 98 all that time.
Point 1) I've never had to reformat. This "do it every six months" is NOT a solution, not practical, nonsensical, inconvenient and totally unnecessary. I've worked on home machines that have been collecting spyware, viruses etc. for years and brought them back from the dead without having to reformat.
Point 2) My computer HAS NOT slowed down just because it's had more software installed. I carefully control exactly what software I use and how it's set up. On machines that have been allowed to do that, I've seen ten-fold increases in speed just by running AdAware, Spybot and getting rid of 90% of the crap using Startup Control Panel.
OS's do not get slower the more you install, they get slower the LESS you manage WHAT you install. They can ALWAYS be brought back to speed.
Point 3) Stability is not that great a problem compared to modern OS's. Yes, XP is less likely to crash Word on me and need a reboot but similarly if 98 goes COMPLETELY belly up, I can bring it back by copying an day-old registry file over the current ones.
I don't get stuck in constant blue-screen reboot loops (seen at least 6 of these in schools recently that, because the computers can be booted over the network and restore to their original configuration, I end up just reinstalling). If 98 ever did do that to me, it's much easier to fix. Additionally, 98's are used as home machines where 24/7 stability is not essential and most people use them for an hour or so at a time.
Point 4) I refuse to fund an organisation that is demanding money from me if I wish to upgrade to a "stable" system. Stability problems didn't suddenly get discovered in the year 2000, they were ALWAYS in there. The fact that every few years MS redesigns it's systems, charges EXTORTIONATE amounts for the next version, drops support for older versions and then discovers that they are just as buggy as the older versions makes my blood boil.
In my early years, Microsoft made more than enough money from myself. DOS was worth it. Windows 3.0/3.1 were worth it. Office up to and including 2000 was ALMOST worth it. After that, it just got silly. Now I buy my OS and Office packages from eBay. Money is VERY important to home use
I thought you were joking, but then I hit google for a bit, and discovered there actually still is a community of people running windows 3.11 on top of dos 7.1 with osr2fix applied, and using large chunks of their memory as ramdrives to edge out that last bit of performance.
I don't know whether to be awed or struck by horror.
From memory from the training book we used....
... at the time even the trainer was born after Kennedy was President. Most of the effort from that course was unlearning the junk taught and relearning how you were suppose to do it now.
"IBM Job Control Language was written when Kennedy was President, and before some of you were born, concepts in computing have changed somewhat since then".
Unix is a newbie in the software survival stakes, when you've maintained Fortran code obviously written for a pre-Fortran 66 compiler the 1970's begins to feel quite sophisticated.
But the thing that is most impressive about the Unix API is how well it still works. The old IBM mainframe stuff was full of stupid limits, but part of the philosophy that grew at that time was not to have these arbitary limits. But IBM was obsessed with backward compatibility, so many of them still applied last time I touched a mainframe.
No one mention time as a signed 32 bit integer, or 15 character filenames.