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Can Linux Pick Up Users Abandoning Win98?
Mark writes, "When Microsoft announced the end of support for Windows 98 and Millennium Edition on June 30th, there was a lot of talk of these users migrating over to Linux desktops. In the weeks since this announcement, there is a very noticeable increase of activity on community boards and blogs from newbies asking questions about switching over to Linux, and how would they support their new systems." According to OneStat.com, Windows 98 and Windows ME account for about 4% of the total PCs in the world.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/11/ 0218250 quasi-dupe.
I hope so, but I doubt it. I have always believed that the most likely inroads for for Linux is through people that have never owned a Windows box, or have never learned to use a computer. I expect that almost all Win98 users will go/have gone to buy a new computer with XP or Vista preloaded. Most linux converts are already geeks.
FairTax baby!
Sure if it's someone at home who's still using Windows 98 and doesn't really do anything other than use the internet and word processing, sure it could happen. But if they're in a corporate environment, then it's pretty much set by whatever IT policy is there. If they already have Windows, they'll probably stick with Windows after replacing those old computers.
Ok, so the Pentium 133 laptop with the broken screen and 1 GB disk isn't much, and it's mostly acting as a spare for web browsing, but one of the back-burner projects is to install a small-Linux distro or OpenBSD on it and use it as a DNS server or spam honeypot or something. The big limitation has been that it doesn't do USB, so I'll need to fire up a SAMBA server or something to give it some more storage.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
the number of Windows '9x users is substantially higher than 4%. Not everyone throws out their PC and buys a new one every three years. The realtor that handled the house I bought a couple years ago still uses Windows 98 on her home PC and in their office. That kinda shocked me at the time, but as it did what little she needed she had no reason to change.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You probably cannot run Vista on a box that currently happily runs 98, so anyone moving to Vista will likely have a spare PC. That's likely to free up a few healthy machines that people might redeploy as Linux PCs..... or there might just be a whole lot of PCs going to the landfill.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Perhaps I don't understand the support issue, but I doubt someone currently using windows 98 is all that concerned about support for the product.
You expect someone who ran Windows98 until recently to switch to Linux?
They wouldn't know how to download it.
No.
Why? Because most of the people who have the misfortune of still running Windows 98 do so because they are comfortable with it and have no intention of changing until their hard drive melts. They got their computer eons ago, it does everything they want it to do, they don't need to play World of Warcraft or run complicated programs, and the thought of upgrading to even Windows 2000 makes them break out in cold sweats. Up until 6 months ago, my stepmother was still running her Win98 machine, until it got so undeniably slow that she was forced by necessity to upgrade to WinXP.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
People aren't going to swtich to Linux from Win98/ME just because Microsoft decides to cut off support. It's complete nonsense. What percentage of Win98/ME users actually needed support and/or actively used it? The whole idea that Win98/ME users are going to flock over to Linux on the sole basis that support had ended is a red herring.
We still have a Windows 98 box. It still works and is adequate for what it is used for. Why would I switch? (All the other computers in the house are Linux.) There are lots of business computers still using Windows 3.1. It is easier to continue with it than to switch business critical systems.
Just because Microsoft isn't supporting it any more doesn't mean that people will be in a hurry to switch.
I'm a Windows 95 user, and have been seriously contemplating a transition to Linux in the future. IE "integration," frivolous eye candy, and activation schemes turned me off permanently to later versions of Windows, and a Mac proved to be too unconfigurable and unsuitable for my work.
While I don't care for Windows 98 or ME, it wouldn't surprise me if many users of these OSes were thinking the same things.
I am sure Linux will pick up some of the traffic and Microsoft will get the other half, and most will continue on with Windows 98 until the computer is dead.
I figure it would be a 10%/40%/50% Split.
50% Will just stay with Windows 98. First because they don't care MS has stopped support. Second it works for there needs. Third it is the path of least resistance.
40% Will probably get a new computer with XP/Vista. They figured that their 3rd party apps that only work in 98 are end of life and time to bite the bullet and upgrade to the new versions. They may or may not know about Linux but they are use to windows and they will get a new system and use it for the next 10 years.
10% will probably switch to Linux. (Which probably accounts to the traffic on the Linux Groups). The only reason they were on Windows 98 and didn't upgrade because they had some application that only worked on windows. Now with 98 being officially dead they have a chance to start anew. If you are going to start over again lets try Linux. The app that they have may have an open source alternative or linux still uses the old hardware so they can continue, with linux.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Netcraft confirms it: 2006 is the year of heavy Linux desktop penetration!
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Used win98 right up until july this year (it worked, so why change?). Now running ubuntu. Seriously wondering why I didn't make the switch earlier... it's worth it for the "add/remove applications" bit on its own, if you ask me (which winxp still doesn't have afaict).
Although I'm sure one could build a version of Linux that can run on a typical Win98 PC configuration, I doubt that contemporary mainstream distros would run very well on it (if it all).
Anyone who is still using Win98 isn't particularly concerned with system stability and probably wants compatiblity with their old applications: Linux doesn't sound like a good fit.
The Post is about Win98 support being discontinued, but then the poster says "...from newbies asking questions about switching over to Linux, and how would they support their new systems." (Emphasis mine)
New systems don't run Win98.
Frankly, it would be safe to say that people running Win98 in 2006 really aren't interested in computers. They'll use whatever is put in front of them. On new systems, that would be XP.
But I would expect that people in this situation will continue to use Win98 forever, or until their computer croaks...whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect any kind of mass migration.
Linux's marketshare is 90%
I would have said 'yes' until this past weekend. It was a few days back that I helped such a user upgrade. My aunt is in her 60s, and for the past six or seven years has been using a 300 MHz system with 64 MB of RAM, running Windows 98 SE. For her basic needs, it's a very suitable machine. But she had run into spyware problems, and we decided it would be easier to set her up with Ubuntu Linux 6.06.
I don't have any complaints with the Linux kernel, or most of the applications. All her hardware was supported immediately, and the installation actually went rather smoothly. But when GNOME started up, we ran into problems. 64 MB of RAM just wasn't enough. I had 512 MB of unused RAM lying around that was compatible with her system, so we installed that. It did help a fair bit.
But in the end, we found that GNOME and Firefox were just too slow. It's quite easy to install KDE when using the Ubuntu packages system, so we gave that a try. It was significantly more responsive than GNOME. Konqueror worked quite a bit better for her than Firefox, as well. We were able to find her a theme that she liked, and she's been pleased with the system so far.
Were it not for the 512 MB of RAM I had lying around, I don't think we would have been able to use Linux with either GNOME or KDE. Fluxbox, XFCE and the other light window managers or desktops just don't cut it for users who want a Windows-like experience. And they're just the sort of users who would be transitioning from Windows 98.
Unless the major desktops do something significant to reduce their memory consumption, Linux on the desktop will remain something that only those with rather high-end systems will be able to enjoy. Such software will run on older systems, but it won't be enjoyable, even with special effects and stuff like that disabled. It's the sort of thing that will give Linux a very bad name, and will make users switch back to older versions of Windows.
Microsoft soft-enforcing WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) on Windows XP.. There are a LOT of illegal copies of XP Pro VLK edition (the one that was so great because it had no activation required) floating around... I know I've seen it on many non-computer-savvy-people's PC's that I've worked on.
All of those copies of XP are now loudly announcing that they are "Not Genuine Copies of Microsoft Windows". When these people get hit with a nearly $300 pricetag (that's $300 + $100 for my time) for a non-OEM, non-upgrade copy of software they've been using for free for many years, they are often very interested in cheap or free alternatives. And since most people only really need Web + EMail + OpenOffice + mplayer + (not much else exotic), they are often open to Linux due to its free-as-in-beer-ness.
I'll tell you who's using the majority of the Win98 boxes: the parents and grandparents of the world. They use it now and then, flick it on when they need it, send an email or two and shut the thing down. They probably don't notice much slowdown or stability problems, since they probably don't have it on long enough. In short: it does what they need.
So why should they use Linux? Why should we even give a shit if they do?
What they need is a simple OS. They need a web browser. They need a couple of Office-like applications. They don't want a lot of problems. Why would Linux be the best solution? For them it is more trouble to set up than just buying a new box (despite what people on here might say, IMHO Linux is not easier to set up for a n00b). They need something like a Mac, which will do what they need for the forseeable future.
Alternatively, they should just stick with Win98. All jokes aside, their boxes are probably so full of spyware and shit after up to 8 YEARS of operation, that if they can go this far, they can probabably go a little further.
Look. I love Linux. I've used it as my primary OS for years, and used it during that time as a server admin too, but I just don't understand this "more users at any cost" approach. What is the good of getting these users? What will it achieve? At the least, you'll potentially end up with a hell of a lot of pissed off (and minimally equipped for repairs) users with broken computers badmouthing the operating system to anyone who will listen.
The few of us who still have one Win98 system around, do so for a reason, and haven't given a shit about Microsoft Support in the last 8 years anyway.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
still using win98 now is never going to upgrade, they've been dealing with the 9x/3.11 kernel for so long they don't know any different and probably never will!
it's a bit like strapping your nuts to a car battery over and over...
No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII E-mail you sent me.'
Hasn't Wine gotten adequate Win98 compatability YET?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Indeed, however your comment history seems to suggest that you do.
I would highly recommend that you switch to Linux. I would expect to to experience a significant increase in both functionality and performance, as well as available applications.
My first Linux (which I still use, though I've since tried out other distros) was Gentoo, which I think is great for those who are tech-oriented, but new to Linux. The online handbook is excellent. I imagine someone who still uses Win95 is used to knowing where all the settings are, and installing Gentoo was, in my experience, the perfect way to get acquainted with them.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
I recently pulled out my Windows 98 Celeron 300A with 128MB PC100 RAM, and 5400rpm 6GB drive, booted it up, and cracked open Netscape 4. You know what I found? Not much.
This machine has been sitting in a box for about 5 years, and as far as the time signatures are concerned, that rebuild was only about 7 months in. Office 2000 ran fine. Everything worked great -- I couldn't notice any difference with performance from my current Athlon machine when it comes to simple word processing and Web browsing. If I was ignorant to hotfixes and security, I'd be using this machine without any problems for many more years to come.
A simple reinstall of the OS -- as long as the disk is still healthy -- can stretch out the lifespan of any old machine, as long as you stick with the software of time, which isn't that much different than what Aunt June uses today.
body massage!
Win98 users would be more likely to upgrade to a C64.
God Be Gone
If someone is using Win98 now, they likely have a 6-8 year old computer. They are more than likely will purchase new hardware and with said hardware either get a copy of XP or move to Mac.
i.e. why the hell is someone still using W98? Sorry -- I'm 100% in favor of penguin domination -- but the reason people are still using 98 is -- almost always -- because they're deathly afraid to touch their computers. Linux's (not-very-accurate) reputation as an OS that you have to touch all the time is not gonna cut it here.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
No, it won't happen. Why? Because these people are even slower to convert to a new type of OS than those that had headed into Win2000 and XP before them. Switching to Linux would be an ever larger step.
My parents just upgraded from MS Millenium (worst OS release ever). That really wasn't any better than 98. In my experience, the average user has a better chance of converting to Apple's offering than switching to Linux.
Thats not knocking Linux, but just pointing out the reality of people that would be willing to keep 98 until now.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
I love Linux. I'm also a systems admin so its easy for me to love. It does what I need it to quickly, quietly and without much trouble.
/rant
On the flip side I've used it on my home computer for about 8 years. We've certainly had our ups and downs. I dual-boot now. I spend most of my time using XP Pro. Why would I do this after 8 years of pure Linux bliss? Because it does what I need it to. Its that simple.
Anybody want to watch for an exciting influx of newbies, the best kind; newbies who are switching simply because they are too cheap to update. Not boatloads of tinkerers, programmers, OSS zealots. Nah. Just some people that have been using an out-dated, unstable OS for no good reason.
Granted, people who can't *afford* it should ignore my platitudes, unless you live in North America or some other well off nation and have confused not being able to feed your family with compulsive mall shopping and junk food binges (you don't have my sympathy).
Anyway, Linux sucks for the average users for the same reasons its sucked. They've made a great server. Slapped on a (few) DE(s) and called it a Windows killer. I don't see it.
Maybe baby steps. KDE 4 should be fun. Maybe one of the user distros will get the *wild* idea to tie it to the system. Drop legecy support. Call me crazy, but I just don't see Windows 98 users getting cosy with VI, modprobe, hell, package management. Its like we all talk Klingon and don't understand when everyone else isn't doing it.
There are certain things end-users need and expect. Linux distros don't offer them. Hence, no Linux eat Windows.
Seriously. Right tool. Right job. Never make it more complicated then that. Biases are *SO* 99. BSD, Solaris, AIX, Mac, FreeDOS, Minix, PlayStation I don't care. Whatever you need. Where BeOS when you need it. Lets all switch to Amiga and tell everyone who doesn't their lusers.
There's a point in there. Maybe.
Quack, quack.
The end of Microsoft's and Mozilla's support for Win9x has made a group of users look at Linux at an alternative, I've seen on MozillaZine. So there's definitely some truth to the article.
Most of the users will stay with Windows 98, though. Most of them find it works fine for their needs, and don't see why they should buy a new PC or OS if their current one works fine, and there's no problem with that.
I know it's common opinion to look at Win9x users in this day and age as people who are clueless about PCs, but a small subset of them do have a clue, and stay with Win9x by choice for a variety of reasons:
-It does everything they want it to do.
-They have learned how to practice security so running Win9x is safer than WinXP.
-They don't like Windows XP as an OS, much less see it as an upgrade path.
Myself, I still use Windows 95 OSR 2.5, IE-free, with the only browser here being SeaMonkey, behind a hardware firewall. It works, and I don't need more.
If it was a P2, K6 or K6-2, the L2 cache is not fast enough nor sufficient enough to address that much RAM. That would mean the system would be negatively impacted by adding more than, say, ~200MB or so.
But you're right, Gnome is too much for 64mb RAM. Hell it's too much for 256mb RAM! I recommend KDE to users with fairly decent hardware specs, Xfce or FVWM-Crystal to those with middle-of-the-road PC's or those who don't like "wasting" resource on the window manager, and either Fluxbox or WindowMaker for really low-end rigs. I've got a 200MHz laptop with 64mb RAM which runs WM amazingly fast. I can still use it to loan engineers I work with to quick network mappings, sniff traffic, etc.
2000? 2000 was a revival year for turntables and record players. People began to "abandon" their record players in '87, rittle grasshopper.
I think that most Win95/98/ME users would be surprised to learn that MicroSoft ever supported their operating system. It certainly wasn't case when I used those versions.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Several years ago I gave Debian a attempt and for weeks got it installed and working to get drivers running and such. After dealing with having to covert packages for debian I ended up saying heck with it and went back to my win98. Reason why I like win98 is I have a Hd with the win98 install files on it. If something kills my pc I pop in the Hd boot off of it and reformat and reinstall takes aprox 30min or so for basic stuff. For my laptop I use winxp with all the security I can stick on the thing but for my gaming computer it is win98.
Since I lack the technical knowledge to really setup linux and get it running and due to the fact I do not do anything with my gaming computer aside from playing wow(I dont even websurf on it) and listening to my mp3's ripped from CD's or copied from my laptop.
I am very much interested in giving linux a try in the future but unless World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 and be able to see my media HD(120g HD formated to Fat32 full of mp3's and anime and whatnot) it would also have to support some of my hardware some of which is POS #32 from the local electronics.
Someday I will drop win98 for something else possibly XP because I want to play video games on my gaming computer. I dont want to spend 1-2hrs trying to figure out how to open a port I accidently blocked or setting up the nic because the driver for it was written poorly.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
(I know of several just in the town where I live.)
is it food?
If he/she tries with some thing like icewm then probably yes, if he/she tries with something else then no, because is `too much complicated', I already test it :)
ghostbar page.
A home user running Windows 98 on 1998/99 hardware won't be happy upgrading to a modern Linux distro designed for 2006 hardware and configured to run on 1998 hardware. They could max out their ram, upgrade their hard drives, and maybe even replace their noisy chainsaw/jet-engine cpu and case fans, but that'd all cost money, which any user still running win98 is dead set against.
If you don't mind spending money, you can get a relatively modern refurbished PC for under $200, that would be more than enough to run any OS you throw at it. Almost a year ago, I got an IBM NetVista with a 1.8ghz Celeron, 512mb ram, a 40gb HD, and a CDRW/DVD combo for about $200 from TigerDirect. Right now it's running Windows Server 2003 R2 enterprise edition. Heresy, I know, but I didn't give Microsoft a dime, and haven't since 2003, nor is it pirated, and my primary desktop runs Ubuntu. Right now I'm installing NetBSD on Virtual PC.
There's potential for turning those systems into thin clients, and you just replace them with real thin clients when they finally give up the ghost.
Anyway, MS doesn't provide customer support for individuals (or if it does, it's more expensive than buying a new computer). With 4% market share there can not be much new malware targeting Win9x and their antivirus programs with expired subscriptions can catch the old ones without any problem. I would say, use 9x until you must have an app which doesn't run on your machine and doesn't have old versions on abandonware sites. But then how much more likely is it that Linux will have it?
Dell 8100 with 128M RD Ram...yup I said RD Ram. I did get a second hard drive and have it set up as triple boot (SuSE 9.1 and Ubuntu Warty). These days, Windows ME just handles the kids games (Blue's Clues, Freddy the Fish, Dora the Explorer, etc.) but I DON'T connect to the internet, that is only through SuSE or Ubuntu.
Getting ready to do some major file organization on the old machine. At that time I will probably go exclusively to Ubuntu Breezy. SuSE is quite nice, and while a strong argument can be made for it, the small footprint of Ubuntu ultimately tips the scales. Both are nice though, it was a tough call between two very strong Linux distributions.
Although maybe I should start hunting eBay for RD RAM? Then again, we now also have an HP laptop with and AMD64 processor and WinXP on board.
My next computer will be a home-built with MythTV and Cedega on board. I don't think I'll be moving on to Vista.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It's a matter of grey. I'm all for the Linux movement and I try and advocate it as much as possible, especially to the casual user where Linux is perfect for them. The quick answer is no. While Linux has gained a lot of mainstream attention, it's not quite there yet and the majority of people that adopt Linux are those that are very concerned about security and those that are more savvy than the average user. For the average user to even KNOW what Linux is, is a huge gamble.
However, the long answer would be yes. A lot of people have that "guy" who knows "things" about "computers". With support ending for the 98, and with an outdated machine that can barely run 2K let alone XP, they will look for alternatives, and they will look towards their resident "nerd". Depending on the nerd (We all can't be Linux advocates) they will suggest Linux and have to give a list as long as my arm to them on the benefits. If they don't convince them to switch, then they will just buy a $400 Dell with XP and go from there.
Why would anyone still using windows 9x care that microsoft has dropped support for it?
I used to have 98 on my laptop - "upgraded" to XP when it was released - it was too slow (Thinkpad A22e) - moved to redhat, tried xubuntu, and finally vector as of two weeks ago. Vector is by far the fastest and was the easiest to install, and I'm a big fan - sound took some work to get to work and I had the usual headache with the wireless card and ndiswrapper but took no more than 2-3 hrs and some forum searching in total. Xubuntu had no configuration problems (other than the expected wireless) but even that was a tad slow for my taste. If the hardware can support it Xubuntu is probably the way to go for non *nix familiar users. They will never have to look at a terminal and never have to learn one thing about how the OS works. But if they are slightly familar with a major distro, Vector (or DSL I hear but I have not tried) is the way to go.
No distro I've tried so far is simple as 98 but the learning curve isn't steep if you use icewm. Distros like Vector and xubuntu are great on older hardware, and can easily be faster than 98. I really don't think the hardware support is so much of an issue anymore. IMHO the biggest headache is the software since anyone still using 98 is completely used to a particular way of doing things and any difference won't be easily tolerated. I converted my mum to OpenOffice (on windows but still gotta start somewhere) at her company since its free but damn that took some work. The temporary frustration in learning to get used to the differences though is far outweighed by the costs. They saved a small fortune on Office licences, and basically all they needed was Word and Powerpoint. Now think savings on office + antivirus, a faster OS and active support and convincing them to change from 98 might be a bit easier.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Yup, that's correct - No USB ports, and no, it can't do Cardbus either. I assume the Ethernet card I have is 10 Mbps - it hasn't mattered in the past.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They'll just screw up their Gentoo installations and then write all these articles about it.
That's about 10 times more users than Linux has according to the same OneStat.com stats, so if Linux could pick those up, it would represent a huge increase.
Sadly, it ain't gonna happen.
First, Win9x users couldn't care less whether MS "supports" the OS or not, so MS dropping support doesn't equate to an incentive to move to Linux. If they're still running Win9x, they're going to keep running it until they get a new computer.
Second, even if they wanted to move to Linux, those still running Win9x are on hardware that is simply too weak to run today's Linux distros. Long gone are the days when Linux could boast the ability to run on 286es. Linux is just as resource hungry as XP, if not more so.
Third, given the above, the only situation where a Win9x user would move to Linux is when they buy a new computer. But if they're getting a new computer, why wouldn't they just get the latest Windows version with it?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
It depends on what you mean by "support" as far as who is providing it.
While Microsoft may have abandoned Windows 98 there are still many other companies who customers also depend that still support it. Most ISPs would not have an issue helping a customer get their Windows 98 computer online even though Microsoft thinks the machine should be put out to pasture, but call many of these same ISPs with a new machine running a current Linux distro and they will find themselves getting less support than the "obsolete" Win98 users.
That there is such a level of vitriol against people who still run Win98. I run it on my home PC. When I'm at home, this is the one I use (my notebook runs XP.) From a crowd that continually decries the need to upgrade to the newest version of Office, I simply don't see why so many find it worthy of mockery that someone would still be running 98. I don't play games, except Age of Empires II, on occasion. Office 2000 has every feature I need. I run the latest versions of Firefox and OO.
Explain to me why I should have felt the remotest need to upgrade to 2k, ME, or XP? This machine does exactly what I need it to do: surf the web, run Dreamweaver 4 for some light HTML editing, run Photoshop 6 for some light image editing, and play on Poker Stars. I'm not a clueless idiot, nor are many of the people who are still running 98. Many of you cry out "Why upgrade?" and then do it, anyway. We put our money where our mouth is.
Seriously, how can people even ask this? The majority of windows 98 use is by people handling older applications. SOME of those applications might function in newer windows with some wrangling. The nightmare these folk would be up for getting them working on *nix is unfathomable. You might be able to pick up 5 percent of the windows 98 users. But even thats unlikely. Face it, *nix needs a marketing plan. Not the wishful crap of "Oh oh! maybe THOSE people will come here!" Its not a lemonade stand, you've got to go and GET the clients.
If they are still running on Windows 98/ME with original hardware, it's rather likely that these are unsavvy users who still insist that they should feed their mouse on a regular basis and use their CD-ROM drive as a cup-holder. As such, I doubt that they care that Microsoft no longer supports their operating system of choice (if they have even heard about it in the first place). If they have heard about it and care, my best guess is that this demographic would go out and buy a new computer or decide that they can live with their current one. That being said, even the last of my less-than-savvy relatives converted away from Win 9x over a year ago (purchased a new computer). I doubt there are any serious computer users left running such an archaic operating system.
C'mon - scraping the bottom of the barrel for users in the hopes of increasing the Linux userbase - is that ambitious or what?
Why does such a non-story make slashdot? Instead, it might be better to look at users and organizations who were persuaded to switch.
"Can Linux Pick Up Users Abandoning Win98?"
A cotton rag sprayed with the scent of penguin and applied gently will pick them right up.
Don't forget to apply a perservative to keep them from turning Vista on you.
Probably no.
Maybe they would migrate to Linux but why would you want then, They are computer-backward folks who have not updated their equipment. They will be a support nightmare.
Additionally why do you want to encourage them to use legacy hardware? It uses up more electricity to get the job done than modern hardware. Makes the user less productive. Why encourage that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...they are just going to stay there. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of ANYONE calling Microsoft for support on their OS? I've done it only once in 15 years of herding windows boxen professionally. Supporting win98 is pretty simple...you just accept that you have to format and reinstall every few months. You get good at it, you stay on top of your backups, and for a while after you reload it all, you have a fairly well behaved, capable box. When it ganks up enough to annoy you, reload again. If it asplodes, you have your well oiled backups and install disk or image on hand. Its a pretty good self-support model for people without much technical knowledge. I bet there will still be thousands of 98 boxen out there in 10 years.
a tagging system won't do any good with the stupid, juvenile, and meaningless descriptions like the ones we currently see. A useful tag for this article might be "windows+98 linux migration" or similar
My feeling is probably not.
I'm guessing there would be a number of people on 98 that wouldn't know an update if it bit them. These people probably don't even know Microsoft supports them now.
I looked at a friends xp laptop yesterday. It was running SP1, which it came with, and they had never willingly installed an update on it. Despite a popup at the bottom of the screen warning support for SP1 was ending soon.
My friend didn't care, he just ignored the warnings and kept doing his work. I ran some checks and could find no evidence of spyware or viruses.
Of course I am just speaking on feelings here. No evidence, and I don't even know anyone who uses win98, or linux for that matter.
I see more MSFT users across the board taking an old box and installing Linux to surf and email or dual booting. Windows is only really dangerous when you surf with it regularly. For online gaming, updates and other tasks where you're not going to be visiting a lot of strange web sites or getting email it's really not bad.
Keep it off of a connected environment and it's great. Hook it to the internet and it's a never ending security freak show.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
and it works just fi..##KR2F@F@$F$ {NO CARRIER}
How is a Mac less configurable than Linux for example? What exactly is it that you wish to configure and what is the special application you use on Win95 for which there isn't an equivalent on the Mac? I would be interested in knowing how many others who use Win95 are also regular /. readers. I can believe that many users of win95/98/me are thinking the same things but I don't believe those things are anything to do with which operating system they are using.
In my case, it already did. Seven years ago.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
I provide independently-contracted end-user support for a variety of users, from home users to commercial installations. When the use cases suggest an easy transition (usage as a web and word processing terminal, no need for Windows-only software), I have been migrating users to a customized Ubuntu Linux derivative distribution. In some cases, rather than repairing Windows 98 or (especially) ME systems, it is useful to suggest such a migration, as the benefits (a like-new system performance, virus and spyware-proofing, nearly user-proof :D) outweigh the advantages of repairing the old system (familiarity - which is mostly lost when a system is seriously in need of repair anyway). I think there is definitely a market for non-zealot-based installations of Linux where dissatisfied or mis-served users of Win 98 or ME fit specific use cases, and I've found success with this strategy.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
no
Linux will not be a realistic desktop alternative for the great majority of users until problems like this are brought down to a minimum, and if they happen, a user has a reliable way to solve them.
[alk]
Spoken as a true amateur. In a corporation, what matters is the total cost of ownership, it doesn't matter if the cost comes from the applications or from the OS.
When you add up the costs, you'll see that the biggest economy comes from improving the OS support, because that's the activity that can be scaled up. Different users will have different apps, but they all use an OS.
No matter how badly your support people get paid, in the end it's more economical for them to write a simple script that automates a task rather than clicking on a different window for each user in the company, not to mention the better reliability and security. System management by GUI only makes sense for very small organizations.
I switched to Linux because of the loss of Microsoft support. You might argue I am not a typical user, but I converted my home network from 2 windows and 2 linux boxes to 1 (XP) and 3 Linux boxes. These days a loss of security hole patches & updates in a MS OS is fatal. Found Mepis, and now have it in various flavors. I like it so much, I got a 6 month subscription to support them. Only a few tasks to replace and I can either rid my self of the support nightmare of XP. Not just 98/Me defectors, but people like me, who look at the warts of Vista, no way! Look at that price ! The DRM, the inflated hardware recommendations.... Mepis , DSL, 'buntus all look attractive. -Jay
Have you seen some of those users? You'd need a forklift not just a fat little penguin.
BTW that was a joke. It may not be the best one but still a joke nonetheless.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
For my mother, at least...I was looking for an excuse to ditch 98 on her old Dell Latitude with a p2-400, 256mb ram, integrated (Neomagic) video - she wasn't really unhappy with Windows 98, but boy is she happier with Dapper. She tells all her coworkers that her son's got her using Linux and she loves it. All she does is use aMSN to talk to me, and browse the web, pay bills, e-mail, etc. Basic stuff, no doubt. Do I think that Linux seriously has a chance of picking up users in search of a replacement for 98/ME? No, and obviously my example is a special case. Honestly, Apple would have a great time picking up ex-9X users, if prices on Macs weren't so exclusive compared to PCs. I think linux's best chance in the market for "users" is to get a big vendor like Dell or HP to start including a mainstream distro like Ubuntu or SuSE on their low-to-midrange desktops, make it, say $50 less than the same Windows PC, guarantee it to work with their hardware, and support it in the rare occasion that a user breaks the install. If users looking for a ~$500 PC to replace their old 98 box see an alternative like that, maybe they would take a chance. Sorry, I was dreaming of a perfect world.
I just upgraded my Suse 10.1 to the latest xgl/compiz, and personally I believe that it is so far advanced from Windows 98/ME/XP/2003/whatever, that it is destined to become the defacto desktop. Given the exponential changes I've seen on xgl/compiz in the last 3 months, I'd say 1 year for the most outstanding, productive desktop mankind has ever seen. My 2 cents.
While my main box (self built) will still be running xp for a while (it's one lean motha), I will be porting some older boxes to a linux distro. I have a 466mhz gateway, a 733mhz dell, and a 766mhz compaq that currently run '98, 'ME, and '2k respectively. I plan on using the compaq with multiple nics for some type of custom router, and run the other two as backup machines or some type of server. They are so old they don't really produce much heat, and will run happily beneith my desk. I'll be accessing them via a vnc of some type, or plain old PuTTy.
I'm doing a disk scan on the gateway at the moment, my second monitor acting as a temporary display while i get it up and running.
"Infecting minds with my own memetic virus, one post at a time." Ultimape
If they are corporate running Win 98 or Win ME, then their IT department is in a really sore state.
Why, because they have not spent enough money?
At the worst, they should have NT and probably 2000. Home OS in a corporate environment is a huge mistake
Oh, now I see, you think NT or w2k are more stable and secure. Ha!
A small business that keeps the books and does basic correspondence may not have gained much from their Windoze computer but they will get nothing at all from a move to w2k or NT but broken applications and slower performance. If they have not been forced to upgrade, they are better off staying where they are or moving to free software.
The upgrade train is always like that and the only reason it happens for most people is the "network effect". Someone sends them some file they can't open. The new application won't work on the old OS, so they get a new OS, generally with a new computer. In the process they end up replacing ALL of their applications and a number of their gadgets, like a printer or bar code scanner because they are no longer "supported".
A person who has not been forced to upgrade is a great candidate for free software. They won't need new hardware and most of their devices will be supported by now. There's a good chance the application they were were running will work under Wine, so you won't have to worry about losing data history. That's rich because those applications might not work under XP or Vista. If the "network effect" has not gotten them by now, it probably won't so that FUD goes in the trash. Upgrading their RAM to 256M or better will make it so they can run Open Office, just in case.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've installed the official ICA client from Citrix on Red Hat, Fedora and Ubuntu. It's worked great on all three. Is there some problem with this client that I don't know about? Also, KRemoteDesktop handles Terminal Services connections quite nicely, giving you another option for connecting to your Citrix server (if you're willing to give users a desktop environment and not just publish apps).
:q!
For those looking for real examples, count me in. I had built a box and put 98 on it years ago becasue I had a legal copy. Recently it went from the fastest hardware in the house to the slowest several times. (my kids use that machine). Fixing it required a format and reinstall + configuration + drivers + applications = hours and hours of my time.
When the frequency of the rebuild moved up to just a couple months, I dropped Ubuntu Breezy Badger on it and later upgraded to Daper Drake. It is still the fastest machine in the house. The kids only complaint is myspace upgraded to flash 9 and the newest falsh for Linux is Flash 7.
I liked the lack of any need to install any drivers whatsoever. Everything worked with the exception with it not playing MP3 files due to the propritary format. Installed the Lame encoder and all is fine.
A google search was required to learn how the edit the hosts file to do the ad blocking. But all in all it was a lot less online searching than I needed to do to edit the Windows registry to remove malware.
Even installing my networked printers did not require installing any drivers.
The truth shall set you free!
Speaking as someone who has a father who likes to perpetually call me and say "My friend, Joe, is having a problem with this PC. Can you look at it?" I say take these people from me, please!
Let's face facts, the vast majority of people who still run Win9x do it because they're either too cheap to buy another PC or they don't want to step up to something new.
Linux Geeks who are already complaining about supporting their mothers XP box have no idea what they're in for when they get one of these guys who simply will not invest money or time into a new system. They're going to be pestered day and night about "I use to be able to do something with an icon that made this box on my screen and i'd enter a password...". When some hardware dies? Do you really want to be the one try to convince these guys to upgrade because replacement hardware costs more (in shipping alone!) than what their PC is worth?
You guys who look at this as an opportunity are in for a world of hurt. You're begging the bottom of the barrel users to come to your "side"... And you'll get exactly what you want as long as you offer support for it. Mwahahahahaha.
Aside from these deadbeat users the only people still using 9x are doing it because they have software they simply can't replace that won't run on a new PC for whatever reason. These are an extreme niche market that is locked into whatever situation they're in. They're not going to listen to this "upgrade" nonsense either.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
90% of the reason I keep win98 on a reserved box is that
I have a parallel port scanner attached.
Linux doesn't support most parallel port
scanners. It happens to be a Colorado
Primax... now HP. HP hasn't seen fit to
include it in their HP-printer package yet.
I've been using linux since about 1994.
I think there will be more switching to Linux and MacOSX when vista comes out. $200-$500 for Vista is just too hefty for me. Also Install Windows XP, Lasted 2 weeks and crashed from viruses (Mcafee Installed 10!). I am sick of Microsoft, Last Month, I switched my P4 1.8 Ghz to Centos Linux, Runs Great, also upgraded OpenOffice to 2.0 and with OpenOffice Base (Like MS-Access) There is hardely a learning Curve. Centos easy to install and its easy to operate and runs fast and stable! (Centos is Redhar Enterprise Linux 4 but FREE) I am not new to linux, tho, but it came a long way and I think Next year (2007-ON) Will be great Linux and MacOSX years. I have a Redhat 7 server that runs constantly and NO VIRUSES or SPYWARE AT ALL IN 6 YEARS AND GOING!
We still use Windows 98 very regularly. My parents bought our family a computer in '99, and said if we wanted a better one, but it ourselves. Me and 3 of my siblings have bought ourselves newer computers, but my mother and brother still use the '98 machine every day with no problems whatsoever.
Computers may be cheap, but free is a hard price to beat.
All though I'm sure a small minority exists, I doubt very seriously that most people still using Win98 or WinME either don't know that there's anything else out there, or don't know what it means that 'support has ended.' I'd go so far as to hypothesize that many of those still running Win98/ME are running old, unpatched versions of the OSes too. There are two kinds of people running Win98. Some use it because their expensive enterprise software only runs on 98 (enter VM) and others do it because they don't need anymore functionality, or don't know that something better is out there. Admittedly, most of the machines that run 98 won't run XP well, but those running 98 can almost definitely run Win2k acceptably; if not as well as 98. Long story short, there is basically NO incentive for anyone currently running 98/ME to run out and say "OMG, I h4v3 t0 h4v3 teh Linux" or let alone know what linux is, know how to install it, or even where to get it. For the enterprise software folks, Linux doesn't solve anything and Granma is too busy writing letters about holes in the sidewalk to care about OSS.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
I still use Windows98SE. It's on my 6-year old Gateway 600mhz Athlon tower. I used it today to do some work in Blender. Feel free to check it out at http://netlate.com/ and see what I've done. Why do I use 98 still? Because my nice, expensive XP-running 64-bit Athlon laptop is inoperative at the moment. There's nothing wrong with an older operating system if it fills the needs. I used to keep that same tower on the network at my parent's house as a print server and web-browsing machine. It doesn't need anything stronger than 98. I *have* comtemplated installing Linux on it to see what all the fuss is about, but honestly, I could care less. Maybe that affects my geek-cred or something. Maybe I'm not all big and bad and a 1337 h4x0r like the rest of you. Maybe I'm just some nerd wannabe that can't code (true) and wonders what the heck everyone means when they argue about "vi" and "emacs" (again, true). Then again, maybe I'm a normal person who just isn't interested in applying the perceived effort required to install, learn, and operate a new OS that provides no benefits to me over my existing options. It's called convenience. The majority of people go for the easy route. Me too.
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
...anybody still using 98 at this point won't care one iota about MS ending support for it (and even if they did, they wouldn't switch to Linux - where the user is basically expected to provide *all* of the support and technical knowledge themselves). They'll stick with 98 until their PC dies or gets so messed up with spyware and viruses that they have a catastrophic failure, and then they'll switch to a new machine from Dell, Gateway or whomever with a copy of Windows XP preinstalled.
To believe Linux will profit from this non-story, you have to have your head well and truly wedged in a cloud. Apparently a few people do.
I had a win98 system running on one of my PCs, but the system itself was as old as win98, (ie: 8 years) and died last week of a CPU failure. (The motherboard's BIOS hardware monitor said the CPU was drawing about 10x the voltage it was supposed to - no wonder the thing wouldn't boot any OS at all...) I unplugged it and declared it dead. I'll salvage the hard drive and data when I get a system to replace it, probably the cheapest used system I can find, and yes, it will be Linux running on it, since everything that win98 was used for on that system now runs better through linux anyways. No matter what though, as I'm not buying the latest new $3000 system, it will definitely not even be able to run vista (or even XP most likely.)
Why are you using Citrix when you are already paying for TS licenses, and Server 2003 has a perfectly decent Application Mode built right in?
We use rdesktop (unix) and mstsc aka remote desktop client everywhere for remote access to specialized applications now instead of standing them up on workstations in a lab somewhere.
Even more insane is GSX server running umpteens XP machines creating a virtual "lab in a box". We have a blanket license for XP so we can create an arbitrary number of them to support whatever configuration we need.
Or do you have a large group of "dumb" users who need limited access to computers... like data entry?
I would still emphasize something LTSP-like over Citrix -- its a lot to pay for a problem that's been done to death.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Its just not that predictable. There are things left to be done in the samba networking, fvwm95, file explorers, default app locations and the default set of drivers and packages in distros (think java, flash, firefox, vlanplayer etc).
It generally takes some work to get a current distro to look enough like the Win95 shell, and it still falls short.
But doing that is exactly what the world's grandmothers need to switch to Linux and push its market rediculously high.
Here's the deal. Make a distro that looks a heck lot like win98 (without the names for copyright reasons). Setup a GUI Windows Update system which 'updates' windows to Linux by keeping the user accounts (translating to pam of course) files, locations on the desktop and My Documents and keeping a list of equivalent apps (winamp=xmms, media player=vlanplayer office=openoffice etc) and even giving them similar icon colors. windows resize, right-click menus etc should look the same and even the IE cookies and favorites should be translated after being passed through an antispyware app of course.
I suspect this will take a huge chunk out of microsoft's current marketshare in one go, and THEN you can allow the users to do an update or switch to regular non-MS-copycat distros with prettier KDE graphics and the likes.
The only other alternative is to wait for reactos to mature up enough and frankly, that'll take too long.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
For a lot of people, AOL is the de facto OS, and that really isn't the same under Linux. Linux is way out of their comfort zone. I think this applies especially to people still on Windows 98. They are going to buy new computers anyway, with XP/Vista installed, and AOL preinstalled. No Linux for these folks.
That's where I get most of my file servers. Thanks to all the doofuses who throw out such great stuff for me to use. And please, Microsoft, hurry up with Vista, will you?
Boy I'm gonna get flamed for this one...
/bin/sh and I didn't even know there was a difference in shells. During my pre-Mandrake days though, I mainly used windows. After this I went back to just using windows for a while, then switched to using Gnome on Redhat. All this time in Gnome and KDE, the most infuriating thing was that options were not intuitively placed. Screensaver and Desktop were not placed together. Window decorations were not where I thought they'd be. There was no unified UI framework... It was OK that my network interfaces might shift if I tweaked sysconfig files or modules from the CLI, but the GUI needed to be sharp, and it wasn't. That pissed me off, and I often found myself simply opening a shell after login, rebooting into windows for non-server stuff, or using Windows for everything except SSH.
I installed Vista RC1 on my main Windows workstation at work and one of the first things I noticed was how crappy the Control Panel layout was. It was even crappier than KDE or Gnome's control panels. Having an easy to use UI is a key part of being productive and enjoying your computer using experience, and in turn your OS.
A little background... I used to use KDE as my primary UI back in the Mandrake 7 or 8 days. Before that I didn't even know there was a difference in window management, and before that all I had was
(So, as if I'm not asking for a flaming enough as it is, now I'm going to bring OS X into it) About the time I was on Mandrake, some Mac fanatic I knew was talking on and on about "Rhapsody", the new Mac OS. I didn't care one bit to hear about all that crap. Any OS that doesn't have a CLI is worthless to me, I'm a CLI freak. Pointy Clicky can go out the window and I'd be happy as a clam for half of what I do. The second he mentioned that it was built on unix technology my interest perked up. I knew Mac OS was simple, even if I hated using it. I dreamed that they might get it all right... the handling of the preferences and home folders how *nix does it rather than that retched registry. *Real* administration privileges (eg: deleting files that are currently being used). The security system that I'd grown to know... symbolic links, grep, perl, more extensive glob matching, correct URI slashing, regex, the init system I'd grown to love... yeah, I dreamed. Amazingly, they've done pretty much everything I had dreamed they'd do with a unix system, and more (except the linux init system, but hey, now I'm more familiar with BSD), however, that's not the point.
(Now if I may try to reclaim some faith so the readers will put down their torches) The whole point here is that an OS is supposed to make you more productive. One way to do that is by making things easier. Unfortunately, with Vista, we've taken a step back to where most Linux distro's put you, with this non-unified control panel. Fortunately, some Linux distros seem to be putting things together in a more reasonable standpoint. I mean, honestly, I think Ubuntu has stuff laid out more sensibly by default than Vista does. (Plus compiz rules, their exposé knock-off smokes the Vista 3d-flip thingy... Katapult has the right idea too, we need more of the Launchbar knock-offs. Who cares if it's copying, it's good shizz.)
I seriously do think that Linux has better and better chances at getting in the Desktop market as each day goes by. I'm not yet recommending it to everyday people who stop by the IT department to ask what they should do about their next computer, but hopefully in the next year or so...
Win98 was the last version of Windows that could boot into a pure MS-DOS environment. From what I've seen in the field, there are still a few businesses that depend on creaky, old, but totally bulletproof DOS applications to run things like process control or point-of-sale systems. A lot of these systems are seven- to ten-year-old PCs from major vendors like IBM and HP, built before PC hardware became a commodity, low margin business. These are over-engineered systems that need only an occasional cleaning with compressed air. They'll last at least a decade, maybe two (think about all the mid-'90s HP LaserJet printers still churning out pages and you'll know what I mean).
Case in point: a sign company that has a DOS application that runs a plastic cutter. The app dates from 1995, the PC from 1998. Another datapoint: a chain of crafts stores that runs a POS system on a 1996-vintage HP Vectra running Win95 in DOS mode (the autoexec.bat bypasses Windows and starts the POS software). And another: a mortgage company whose principle runs a Win98 box out of sheer inertia, but whose major application (Genesis2000) won't run under emulation.
There are a lot of DOS applications that could run under 2K, XP, or under emulation but can't because they need direct access to hardware (a dongle or parallel printer port) that the NT Hardware Abstraction Layer won't allow. There are a few workarounds, but not for every application or peripheral.
Me, I hung on to a Win98 box until it died last year just to run Autodesk 3DStudio R4 for DOS. I'd been using 3DS since 1993, and I could create models and animate scenes quickly and efficiently, since I had internalized all of the keyboard shortcuts. Renders that needed features that weren't supported by 3DS for DOS would be imported into 3DSMax (which I never really liked). What I really liked is that with DOS and 3DS loaded, the memory footprint was about 3.5MB, leaving nearly 500MB free for meshes, textures, and procedurals/shaders. WinNT/2K/XP and Max alone would take up about 256MB of RAM right at startup. Yeah, memory is cheap now, but it wasn't a few years ago.
Bottom line: Linux is not a solution for any of the above problems. Yes, these businesses should get with the times and install state-of-the-art systems, but vendor inertia, corporate inertia, user resistance, cost control, and certification issues (does your plant produce a regulated item like food, drugs, cosmetics, or weapons?) stand in the way of an upgrade to 2K/XP, much less Linux.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Wow. Netscape 7.02. That was based on an abortion of a Mozilla release.
I highly recommend you install Seamonkey 1.0x and never look back.
As to Windows Me on a laptop, you must have a very high threshold for pain. I could never run anything less than XP or 2003 on a laptop because no other Microsoft OS could suspend or hibernate worth a damn.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Sure, I use linux on my own laptop and on most of my infrastructure servers (well, OK, I do use OpenBSD for pure BIND systems, but only because dnstop runs so clean on it) but for a reliable end-user system Win98 is still state of the art.
I am comfortable with every version of Apple, DEC, and Microsoft's operating systems (yes, I'm including the DEC-10, PDP-11 and Apple II) and I can make OS/390, VM, OS/400, HP-UX, SunOS, Solaris, Plan9, linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD do what I want without a great deal of fuss. I'm a 40 year veteran of the computer industry (and I can solder pretty damn well, too, thank you) and a happy Win98 user, and so is my 10-year-old son who built his own athlon box, and so are at least a dozen of my friends who are quite comfortable "touching their computers" as you put it.
WinXP and most Xfree86 systems are a bloatfest of overdesigned underperforming eyecandy. Win98 isn't even close to perfect, but for an efficient, reliable GUI system it's quite comparable to the vastly more expensive and power-hungry XNU systems from Apple.
I've got a record player on my computer desk and a milk crate of records right next to me.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
...A lot of people like myself have enough spare system parts lying around to quickly assemble a replacement system that can run XP for a song and a dance. I'd put them up on eBay except no one trusts a forum like that for fiddly assembled complicated things.
So I'm stuck trying to unload 800MHz Celerons and micro-atx boards and SDRAM piecemeal, and you're lucky if you get a bite for stuff like that.
But it could go a long way for replacing someone's old creaky Packard Bell so they can look at their grandkids Youtube video.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...it's worth it for the "add/remove applications" bit on its own, if you ask me (which winxp still doesn't have afaict)
Every MS OS since Windows 98 (where it was introduced) has that.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
This probably won't get modded up (or down). But yes..I still use Win 98 and yes I hate Win XP. There was only one alternative, that was Linux and it is with that machine that this comment is being written. After looking at several distros I settled on Kanotix. With Kanotix installed to disk I can do a complete and recoverable backup. Mostly this machine is run as root (always behind a firewall!) because that is the only way to learn what to do and what not to do at a system level. All the other machines run Win 98 and they will either be tossed or converted to Linux when the real "deadend" hits. I don't play video games so compatible OS' for that purpose gets to be an immediate moot point. From what I read (and have seen with others) Win XP cannot be fully backed up such that you can recover from whatever error/virus/malware that is injected in your system (thanks IE et all). With Win 98 I have multiple versions of the windows/program files directories that allow me to recover to whatever state I want because Win 98 starts from DOS. Try doing that Win XP! If you have not been on the Microsoft teat all your life moving on to something else is easy.
When I built my new computer, I installed Fedora Core 5 on it.
I have tried various Linux distributions, i.e. Caldera OpenLinux,
Slackware, TurboLinux, Knoppix, and Ubuntu. I have settled for
the current one, Fedora Core 5, just fine. The switch was not
very hard!
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
I just decided to go the MythTV Route, and, taking an old PC running XP(barely) I installed Freespire. Yeah, yeah, why not Gentoo/Ubuntu/whatever.. Well, I'm a FreeBSD person myself, and yes, I know MythTV runs on it. But I didn't want to worry about the OS, I really don't have that kind of time. I was able to get Freespire up in about 10 mins from CD to boot into the Desktop. No hardware problems at all. Then, using CNR I clicked not once, but twice, on each of the dependencies for MythTV that weren't installed, and compiled from source(hey, I'm not an idiot, I want 0.20 not .18, I just don't wanna worry about kernel compiling/etc..)
So, not being a MythTV person at all, nor a linux person, I had a FW connection to my cable box in less than 30 mins. Sa-weet. If I have time, it'll be a FBSD box, as well as the backends. I'm short on time these days though, but I still wanna do projects like MythTV etc..
And as far as KnoppMyth, well, I tried, and I'm just not too familiar with lilo to go in and fix it, and ditto about the time constraints. Freespire just worked, and sweet. I wish KnoppMyth did too, would save me even more time.
Why is it that Comcast and other cable based ISP's block Linux?
If they didn't yes, Linux could easily pick up the Win98
crowd most of whom have somwhat outdated boxes (my neighbors,
for instance). They would be far better off with a Linux
solution than the remnants of a failed M$ system decaying
into oblivion.
Typical situation: non-technical person who bought a PC umpteen years ago. Occasionally, bits of the PC fail and they get a local geek to install new hardware, but the HDD typically stays the same (this is the situation my own mother was in).
When the HDD started making funny noises, coinciding with a cheap ADSL deal, we upgraded the HDD and installed Windows XP on it. I did think about putting Fedora Core on there due to the upgrade cost to XP, but in the end decided that I couldn't handle the support calls from 300km away. XP was confusing enough for her. Gnome is nice and I run it myself at home, but I wouldn't wish it on a newbie.
I know it was slack, but it's reality. As a concession, I did ditch IE and Outlook and installed Firefox and Thunderbird on there which has been great in lowering the overall number of confused calls I get about viruses etc.
So you are not using windows 98 then right, and you don't have ardware that dates from that period. THus you don't have legacy hardware. So why are you bitching?
Hey c'mon dude. All old fart '98ers like us are really geeks. This is a non
infected/infested windistro that runs all the old games that I like. I use linux
9.0 SuSE variety 'cuz it yet has the 'shred' function implemented in Konqueror.
Damn faggots in the new distros took shred out and handed their customers a pile
of bull crap about some 'magnetic media' article that evidently baffled them with
bullshit and titilated their ding-a-lings. Shred does work, and if the new linux
distros come complete with macromedia, flash 10, and loads of DRM along with a continued refusal to re-implement 'shred' in Konqueror, WE just WONT 'upgrade'. That would have
been like 'upgrading' a win98 that did work and played games we liked that would
let you play team matches on a single disk like the old Blizzard's WarCraft II and
never thought of using 'DRM'. Why should we EVER even dream of usin that plague on
the world of 'XP', not to mention that horror 'Vista' (longhorn). Everytbing on
an XP system spys on users or hands their valuable data to unknown outsiders. Word
has it that XP has back doors in it that micro$$ sells to various corporate clients
so that they can mine microF$$ customers and harvest credit card numbers, corporate
sales data, etc....or store embarrassing files on unsuspecting innocent householder's
'pooters. Hey they can drill into users pooters to store and run their damn SP(y)2
so called DRM upgrade. Win2K's 'upgrade' SP4 was likewise a DRM install and back
door install for 'automatic upgrading' Yeah right. Don't trust windows pooters
anyway, so all our home network pooters dual boot with linux's being the master
controlling system and the only ones with internet access. The winders sections
are only used for our good games. Since the game companies bought out all the good
small players like Blizzard and Westwood and Pumpkin and debased them into first
person shooters and 'hero quest' type games, all DRM infested and internet seekers,
we do not buy any more games. We don't copy the new ones either. We do not like
them as they are all shit with no redeeming worth much less play value. The very
idea of having to buy three copies of any of these moronic piles of nonsense at fifty
bucks a clip just to play with my two grandsons in on our own home network is in
itself the height of chutzpah. That is not even considering that these so called
games, the new ones, come with hidden logic bomb programs and trojans that call the
internet at the first opportunity, like 'StarForce'. We don't want them. The market can take all the
bleedin twenty or ten a month leeching MMORGS and put them where the sun never shines
as far as my family and I are concerned. My grandeons like linux too now and like
their fathers and grandad only use windows...ANY windows...for the old games that
we like and use linux for anything else. We never wanted microsoft for any support as the cost of inviting that monster into our home in any way was too much of an insult
for us to bear. Even in the old days their support was worthless anyway. Been there
done that. Call them....wait on hold for ages...repeat problem over and over...get
handed a 'problem number' and told to wait, hold breath, turn blue, etc...for them
to never call back or call back a week after you solved the problem by yourself and
ask you to explain the whole problem over again as they has no record or your first
call....rinse...lather...repeat. Now I imagine the calls would have to be handled
by a 800 number that turns into a 900 number in that place in the carribean where
long distance calls get charged a senator's salary per minute; or would begin with
a 'survey' asking ones SSAA, DL number, job, salary, wife's tit size, your credit
card numbers including the ones on the back of the cards so that now they have a
blank check bearer instrument with with to vacuum your money and credit at the touch
of a key....their key...and the int
If they can't afford new harware then they can't afford the differential power bill and waste of their time the old hardware is causing. If we figure their "free" time is worth minium wage. Then if they wast just 10 hours per year, then over a ten year period (remember this is windows 98), they have wasted over 500 dollars.
If they bought a new computer every 5 years they'd still come out ahead. And that ignores the differential power bill which is even larger.
Are you one of the idiots running windows 98 on a space heater computer?
Besides which I never said they had to stop using windows 98. I just said why encourage them to lose money and have a crappy computer and waste energy? I certainly don't want to support that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
right?
Just because Microsoft say they are stopping support for 16 bit windows, is that enough to drive any remaining 95/98/ME users to change?
I mean I can't imagine how that now actually prevents their continued use of it.
Furthermore, although on paper Microsoft had been supporting it, have they actually released any important new fixes or functionality for it in the last few years? Just because they now say they're not supporting it any more, has anything really been lost here for existing users?
Why, because they have not spent enough money?
No, because Win9x was never intended to be used in a corporate setting.
Oh, now I see, you think NT or w2k are more stable and secure. Ha!
Hilarious as always. Are you actually saying this is not the case?
A small business that keeps the books and does basic correspondence may not have gained much from their Windoze
A small business can run Linux, OS X or 'Windoze' (LOLOLOL!) just as well.
The upgrade train
Wait twitter - when Microsoft goes five years without releasing an OS you do your nyuck, nyuck M$ Winblows is finished routine, but then you turn around and actually complain about the upgrade train? That's rich.
A person who has not been forced to upgrade is a great candidate for free software
Read a +5 post in this very same story to see if your grandiose theories hold up:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=197008&c id=16142623
Since I've never been able to get anything other than XFCE to run in 128MB, I'm sure as hell neither KDE or GNOME are going to like 128, never mind 64, unlike Windows 98/SE/ME which functioned just fine for the most part. Go ahead and prove me wrong. And running a custom haxx0rz version of FVWM doesn't count.
this posting title sounds to me like linux is a sleezy sexual predator of sorts.
"Can area man living in parents basement pick-up junior high chicks thanks to new football stadium?"
that's how I read it.
ôó
I just switched to Ubuntu from Windows 98. Not because of support dropping (I never used it), but because my wireless card just outright refused to work on 98. All the software nuked the PC on the spot... In the end I used a live CD to config my router and then went "screw this, I'm off" and installed Ubuntu.
While I still feel rather lost in places I feel almost at home with it and can use it nicely. At the same time I'm teaching my parents to use their new PC running windows XP. After 3 days of trouble shooting I got their wireless card working and now I'm having the fun of "this program requires you to run as Admin KEKEKE" type warnings, 5 extra programs needed (virus/spyware scanners etc.) and still it feels the XP box is unsafe..
Now I'm not saying Linux is for everyone (it has it's ups and downs, but it's not laid out as well as Windows is IMO), but right now I'm glad I switched and I'm enjoying learning the quirks of my new OS. It's something I think everyone who's into IT should try if only to get them out of their little windows-box "expert" attitude. It's really funny to forget where something simple is and spend an hour looking for it, but then it also reminds you that others have to do the same on Windows, so it makes you a better teacher in the long run too.
So in short : Linux is cool, but if you're happy with your box you won't change it untill you're unhappy. Microsoft can piss rainbows and give out candy, but if it works it works.
I like muppets.
almost always -- because they're deathly afraid to touch their computers.
Not so in my case. It's the apps stupid. I have a Windows 95 laptop. It has a tiny hard drive and only 72 meg of EDO memory. It's hit it's limit. It does not have a USB port. It does have a real joysitck port with the MIDI MPU port. It runs the piano tutor software. It is not web connected. It is fast enough and new hardware would be an expense as the new hardware on the market does not have MIDI/Joystick ports built in. It does the job just fine thank you. With a 16 bit cardbus NIC it uses my LAN resources just fine including my fileserver and printers. Needless to say this puppy is blocked at the router to the internet. With a built in modem, I hang it on the phone line when I need to recieve a fax. I have a legal copy of WinFax for it.
An upgrade of the OS would downgrade the space in memory for applications.
The truth shall set you free!
I've got no dog in the fight (linux vs. windows), and I'm looking for Linux recommendations...
:)
My Mac-unfriendly employer won't accept my Sawtooth G4/500/AGP or iMac 600's on the company's network (I must use a company-supplied Dell with XP for email & etc) but our isolated LIMS in the laboratories is open territory - our instruments have PCs that IT won't touch since they already have a hard-enough time maintaining network stability and don't have time to 'vet' the instruments' computers & custom apps. We're using company wires with our own hub and all of our 'misfits' get-along very well together with a couple of common printers and one machine to burn backups (none of the instruments have burners - SOME still have 5-1/4's in them).
I've fiddled a very little bit with Knoppix 501 (CD-based) but hear it's not recommended for hard drive installs. I know almost nothing about Linux, bare little more about microsoft, and spend most of my time with the Macs: video recording & analysis (high-speed videography), image processing (ImageJ), Labview, report generation, only enough in Terminal to do very minor things. All my home machines have been Apples - I run a Mystic G4/500x2 and have an older greymarket windows laptop I power-up occasionally (loaded w/PC-Labview). And I _still_ have my functional MOS KIM-1.
QUESTION: what kinds of packages are out there for an unused W'98-era PC I have hanging around so I can 'get my feet wet' with a 'non-windows/non-OSX' box on my network? K'501 doesn't exactly "stream-along" on the box.
I'd like ideas/suggestions for a package that I can play with in my spare minutes and learn a new thing or two.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Admittedly, I'm kind of a geeky one. When I heard about Microsoft's plans to have Windows phoning home about the validity of the software I was using, I decided Win98 would be my last MS OS. That was around 2000, when they came up with the bright idea of allowing people to use the Office suite only so many times before registering. They dropped that after a while, but as far as I was concerned, it was too late to apologize.
Linux, back then, wasn't written for people like me. I'm not terrified of the command line, but I do spend most of my time doing something besides futzing with computer innards (such as biology, writing, graphics). It is impossible, for me anyway, to remember the exact syntax of a command after a couple of months. So I was always having to look stuff up, go over old ground, get it wrong, fight with it some more, and get frustrated. It didn't help that on forums, the commonest answers to questions were variants of RTFM (which I'd done, dammit) or something like "dmesg has all that information," without any hint as to what dmesg was, how to get at it, or what to look for.
Redhat 6 was the first workable Linux distro for me. Ubuntu is a whole order of magnitude better yet. And the other really big deal about Ubuntu that's going to make a difference is the polite, helpful and welcoming tone of their forums. Believe me, legions of n00bs freak out at linux forums. Mark Shuttleworth is onto something there.
At this point, I think if Windows users, not just Win98, could see just how low the learning curve us for Ubuntu, the somewhat-geeks would switch in droves. (For the total nongeek, linux isn't there yet, mainly because of driver issues, which I know are not linux's fault.) Maybe what we need is a "spread open source" movement modelled on "spread firefox."
I think everything has a purpose, really. Windows 98 and Windows ME are still useful for certain things. (suprisingly so is DOS) I have an older Gateway Solo 2500 366MHz Celeron laptop with Windows ME installed on it that my kids use constantly. My 3 year old plays simple games like Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Doring Kindersly Learning Ladder with that laptop a few times a week. In addition, Firefox 1.5 works fine on it as does Flash 8 Player and he can use any miriad of Flash-based websites like thomasthetankengine.com and sproutletsgrow.com.
It also runs Open Office 2 without issue, its not super fast, but its fine for my fifth grader to do simple reports and papers with, and she has no complaints about speed. She's also able to access her favorite websites like penguinchat.com and nicktoons.com without issue using Firefox and Flash.
What else works on Windows ME? My Belking Wireless 802.11G card, Java, the Nokia updater for infrared for my wife's 6100 series phone, USB Mass Storage device drivers for my generic 64mb USB key, Acrobat Reader, GAIM, WinAMP, VLC and Media Player Classic for playing VCD movies (it doesn't do xvid or divx too well, but VCD looks fine at 800x600 to my kids and they LOVE having a small collection of movies they can watch without asking or taking up the big TV).
This laptop's been a workhorse from day one when I got it in August of 1999 and it just keeps ticking along. I've installed various flavors of Red Hat, Solaris 8 x86, Sun's SUSE based Java Desktop System, Windows 2000, and even WindowsXP on it's 4gb hard drive and 128mb of ram over the years. All of these OS's worked to great lengths--Fedora Core 1 would be my personal preference for it if I still used the laptop regularly. I've (recently) used it and Open Office along with Photoshop Elements and my afformentioned USB key to create final projects for my college courses including a PowerPoint type presentation on South Korea's GDP--all with NO issues.
Surely I could do with a faster PC, but damn--this one is paid for, easy to work on, and can take a beating. If it can stand up to my 3 year old's use and still be used to churn out a research paper or two, why upgrade? I can say one think keeping it running is the lack (or apparent lack) of Internet Explorer. I've hidden it as well as I can and replaced it with Firefox. The system has as many patches as are available from the older version of Windowsupdate and I keep it behind a hardware firewall and MAC authenticated WPA wireless router. Only complaint--7 year old batteries don't hold much of a charge, I get about 11 minutes of off AC time--I tend to think of it as a basic built in UPS...hahaha!
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
To put it quite simply, people are leaving 98 and ME not because they aren't getting the latest security updates (as if they really cared about that, they'd be gone long ago), they're going because now NOBODY cares about their computer. The Sims 2 expansion isn't going to run anymore (as if they cared that it ran like a slideshow previously), the ISP tech support guy over the phone isn't going to walk them through the correction of the TCP/IP settings that their child messed with, and Dell isn't going to walk them through the repair CD anymore. That's what "not supported" means to the masses. Switching to Linux fixes NONE of these problems... so the masses aren't going to Linux anytime soon.
for Linux.
I am certainly not going to buy a new MS OS just to run TT.
And they always think they know better. Its funny, but its also mostly a fact. Layers are fine, once you've got the top layer sorted out. They should be transparent to the end user. I applaud Apple for leaving them in while creating a seamless UE. If a single Linux distro I wouldn't quibble. But vi is not just a layer, excluding nico its an important component of any Linux system. Because that UI will fail. And when it does you get to learn things like dmesg. Vi/nano/pico. Things you shouldn't have to learn. So layers are bad. Their like a lame excuse. Something to fall back on when you're caught with your pants down.
So sure. Posix is cool. All those little tools are useful, but to who? The average user? Do you think they might confuse some people?
Right here is where you're supposed to stop me. Tell me something like "if they don't want to see them then they should get a Mac". Fine. But while you're platitudes about layers sound nice if their not more or less seamless you have something entirely different. Cruft is one of them. Complex abstraction.
You see, Linux has a lot of good things to offer. But one size does not fit all.
Quack, quack.
You've A) got some computer back ground B) have a serious love for computers. Thats fine. Great in fact. But 8 years is long enough not only to have seen your type, but to have been one. Linux has many strong points, but the UI is still not one of them.
... say Mandriva, Lycoris (*cough*), Suse, Linspire. And I won't expect it to until I hear die-hard Linux users crying out. To really pull Linux out of the rut its in you need to step on toes. And we generally don't like to rock the boat. Go figure. Linus is probably the most outspoken. He created a kernel and chose to release it under the GPL. But he's not out to change the world. Rock the capitalist pigs. He's just a guy with some passion and interest.
Last time I check Ubuntu didn't seem that different from
Anyway, stages of Linux fandom can be summed up simply: 1) WOW 2) OH! AHH! 3) Opps! 4) Damn it 5) Well? 6) F@ck 7) Ahhh.
I'm at Ahhh, I don't know what 8 is but Ahhh is simply seeing it as it is. Linux != Jesus/Mohammed/Budda/etc. Its code. Its fun and its not perfect. I think the best thing 'the community' can do is take it off the pedestal we've seemed to put it on and take a long hard look. You know, like we do in other aspects of our day to day lives. Then we can talk without getting so defensive. I'm not trying to hurt anyone or anything. Just passed that initial blush a while ago. I'd like to talk more about what makes Linux good and what doesn't then pretend its ready for the masses. How they hell else are we supposed to get it there?
Quack, quack.
Just had to tip hat. Thanks for not flaming me for speaking my piece (granted) and of course I obviously agree. I'm an early adopter. My 'crush' is over and now I like to evaluate things (Linux) with both eyes wide open. I think its the right way to do things. Obviously some people disagree. I probably would have 4 or 5 years ago.
Quack, quack.
I expect that almost all Win98 users will go/have gone to buy a new computer with XP or Vista preloaded. Most linux converts are already geeks.
I had Win98, and the PC I'm using now has WinME and is on it's last legs. I've been planning on getting a Macbook Pro but I'm waiting for Apple to release them with the Merom, Core 2 Duo, cpus. I was hoping they'd of been announce by now however it looks like it won't be until Thanksgiving or Christmas so I broke down an bought a new PC with Linspire installed. Other than booting it up after I plugged it in I haven't really used it, it only came with 128 MB of ram and a 40 GB HD. I also got another GB ram and 300GB hd. I installed the ram but not the new hd yet so I haven't really used the new PC yet. I also need to finish setting up the network so I can transfer all of my docs on this PC to the new one. I've also have to find a compatible dvd because this one didn't come with one.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Only when you pry win98 from my cold dead fingers.
When do Linux enthusiasts realize that a Liunx desktop system isn't an option for ordinary users. It doesn't matter if the Linux kernel is 10 times better than any other OS and it doesn't matter if the Linux desktops (Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc) are more or less usable, if the free applications an ordinary user wants to work with aren't available! Can't people understand that OSDL in its survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) found out that application support is the first "Top inhibitors of Linux desktop adoption". And that still 60% of all Linux users (which currently are mostly power users) still use any kind of running Windows applications (http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey .cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613). Sorry but as long as this is the case Linux isn't ready for prime time.
Most sadly there seems nobody interested in this matter, neither ODSL, DesktopLinux nor any other Organization cares about fixing this situation. Neither do RedHat, Novell, Sun nor IBM which pour much useless money into the wrong channels. So one doesn't need to be good prophet to predict that Linux won't be ready when Windows XP gets retired and quite possible also with Vista. It's incredible sad that the free software community doesn't seems to be able to acknowledge this situation and fix it. Not within this or the next year and quite possible not in the next 10 years as well.
O. Wyss
PS. I know I shouldn't write such a message since I most probably get stabbed like the early messengers bringing bad news to the king.
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I stayed with 98 for years because of my scanner and a few other 9x only features, and because I was never 100% comfortable with the thought of rebuilding a Linux box after a hardware failure. Most of those reasons went away over time, except for one: I can rebuild a 9x machine on FAT32 partitions really fast (and in my sleep) without the loss of anything. I no longer work in IT, so I don't have time to keep up with learning how to boot from alternate media for every new OS/file system that comes along. Oh, sure, 98 would occasionally die and need rebuilding, but that was fast and easy (given reasonable partitioning) and it ran fine between rebuilds. Not reliable for uptime, but it was a home server, and I never lost a file.
I've spent the last couple of years administering two Mandriva boxes, but the package manager is not that great. I started feeling more confident in my ability to rebuild a Linux machine after catastrophic error when I found out that Ubuntu (1) runs on my existing hardware and (2) has easy package management.
I valued the security updates from MS; the end of those updates was the final straw. I switched to Ubuntu recently, and I'm not looking back...except when I want to scan something at home. I may yet reinstall 98 and dual-boot, just to scan things -- I don't need security updates for that as long as I don't install NIC drivers for 98.
Please save your "Oh, this guy isn't a true geek because he finds (computer activity X) to be unnecessarily challenging." Computers are tools for me, not a hobby. I have other (yet still geeky) things I would rather do with my time.
I can recommend crossover office. I've tried it, and was very pleased with the results.
I may get CrossOver for the new Linux box I got but I'm not really sure. I've got Office but I want to give Open Office a shot first. The only Windows app I can think of I'd like to run is XMLSpy. Now I'm planning on getting the new Macbook when Apple releases it with the Core 2 Duo cpu and I will get CrossOver Mac then unless I can find an app like XMLSpy for the Mac.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've got something that's way, way better than Linux for those who are dumping Windows Ninety-Eight. (Spelling out the Ninety-Eight makes this version of Windows look a bit more distinguished, since of all the garbage, crappy OSes that radiated from Redmond in the last 20 years, this one is the best, IMO.) And, no, I'm not about to push FreeBSD or Mac OS X on you. It's something much better than that, even. It's called Taglit-birthright israel with Sachlav Educational Experience. Well, it's a program, but it ain't exactly an operating system. In fact, it won't even run on a computer, AFAIK. But it's infinitely better than DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, the Mac, even CP/M. This is a free trip to Israel. No, it's not a trick to make you buy something, and it's not a contest you have to win. And there's no essay to write, let alone a bunch of funky command line syntax that nobody understands, like 'dir' or 'ls'... (What do those do, anyway?) It is a free trip to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. If you're eligible, you could be there this winter with a group of peers, connecting with IDF soldiers your age who will join your group, hiking Masada, taking an unsinkable swim at the Dead Sea, seeing the holy sites, and a whole lot more. If you ask me, I'd rather do that any day than sit in front of the green screen, practicing the three R's of Microsoft technical support (Retry, Reboot, Reinstall). Bring a camera and lots of good ol' film to take pictures of your new friends from the United States and Israel. This trip is an action-packed 10 days, and the entire experience is amazing and uplifting. Trips take place around late December through early January. Travel on Taglit-birthright israel. EXPERIENCE Israel FREE with Sachlav. Sure beats reconfiguring your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, or your /etc/rc.conf or whatever.
Who the hell is still using Windows ME? And is there going to be any difference between MS not supporting ME, and MS 'supporting' ME?
Linux now admits it can only compete with 1998 stuff.
This is sad.
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
I went to a family member's house tonight to install their new DSL modem and get them up/running, only to find them running an old beige box with Win98 (complete with black & white tiled bubble desktop background and a desktop folder named "Duke 3D") and a 56k modem with no NIC. The good: I had a few spare 10/100 cards The bad: I don't have a Win98 disk (for dlls) ANYWHERE Prime candidate, but I just know I'd end up over there and on the phone for assistance later. Unfortunately, there is no linux distro that can seamlessly serve the kind of people that are still running Win98, although that would depend a hell of a lot on their expectations.
When the answer to a user's question "I installed Linux and I can't get the network card working" changes from "You twit, you have done something wrong" to "Yes, there seems to be a problem, how can I help" - that's the day Linux can take over from Windows 98, or any Windows OS.
Since that day is decades away, Linux will remain in the realm of the guru and server OS it currently is in.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Most of the people who browse slashdot are pretty well off in the scheme of things. Appreciate that, because not everyone is so lucky.
You said it. Being on disability, I have been for almost 10 years, I know I haven't been able to afford new computers every few years never mind every two or three. The PC I'm using now is more than 6 years old. I got a new PC with Linspire installed a few day ago but it's not ready for me to transferr all the docs I have on this one yet. I'm hoping to change my situation soon, I knew some photographers that wanted to start their own websites and I was thinking about giving a try at creating websites for them, but first I want to create one for myself as an exercise and to show. After I get the Linspire setup I'll give it a shot.
FalconShould there be a Law?
lets look at this from an end-user's perspective:
/etc
why would someone want to migrate from a primarily gui and user friendly environment to one that requires an unlimited amount of time (at least from their perspective)? yes, i know we have kde and gnobe they would use first, BUT the existing gui is not enough (at least in my opinion from selling linux desktop machines) without knoledge of command line. ms's oses can be used without knoledge of
this is not in perticular to the prev. w98 users, but a large amount of users seeking alternatives.
USERS WANT EASY - granted linux is going in that direction (especially the suse distro) but we still haven't reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; people might preffer usability, compatibility and to be able to get by with existing knowhow.
Its a simple solution.
I think its as simple (and complicated) as that. We are still trying to straddle both sides of the fence. It doesn't work, not really anyway. People love to point out Mach and Fink but they miss the forest for the trees.
Apple built a consumer OS first. The underlying layer is gravy. Thats reasonable.
Linux users (I'm of course generlizing, we are a pretty diverse group) approach the whole thing backwards. Its like Microsoft slapping Windows 3.1 onto DOS. Only they made that mistake years ago (and paid for it).
Quack, quack.
many people who are not that computer literate start throwing out their machines in favour of new ones.....um thats pretty much how i bagged myself two desktops that had been sitting in my landladies house doing nothing for a couple of years....now she says she wants a new pc...
:)
they were pentium 2's or whatever...anyway downloaded the dapper drake iso, and bobs your own personal work development server, no more apache or xmpp servers running on my laptop thank you
>An upgrade of the OS would downgrade the space in memory for applications.
I have an even crappier laptop than the one you describe. 16MB RAM. First-generation P-I, 75MHZ. 2Gig hard drive. I use it for exactly two things: sending faxes, and interfacing to a custom device which requires an old-school LPT port.
I tweaked a really small linux install for it. It was barely usable with Win31, less so with Win95, but with Linux it's actually nice to use, especially in console mode. Here's an area that users who don't have a background in console-based systems can't get their brain around: a good shell is many times more powerful than a weak GUI.
But we aren't talking about users who actually *want* power in the application domain where such systems excel. They want other things for reasons they may or may not be able to articulate.
I myself have a WinXP machine that I use for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I routinely reach the limits of current-generation processor, and I have actual needs for really expensive low-latency RAM. I also have a Powerbook that I use for photography and because I program in Objective-C/Cocoa and I use XCode for that.
But my main machine, where I do all my work, all my browsing, all my audio/video consumption that's not done in the music studio, what little gaming I do, and pretty much everything else I'm forgetting, is a Linux box. I don't *mean* to be fanatical about it, but every time I try to use any other system (not just Windows, I've had Solaris and HP workstations too, and I've tried to use the Powerbook for general purposes), I am driven under a *lash*, *beaten* back to using Linux. It's so bad, I cannot even understand most of the arguments that are supposedly raised against Linux in favor Windows.
Anyway, didn't mean to rant. I really just meant to say "me too" on the crappy, ancient laptop. Without it, I'm not sure I would even be able to acquire a machine with proper parallel and serial ports, or even a usable modem.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You know, it is probably quite the opposite of your claim. There are people who take pride in being able to work with older stuff. My 6 years old Win98 box in practice runs faster then most of the WinXP boxes of people around me. And I am proud of it.
Oh, now I see, you think NT or w2k are more stable and secure. Ha!
Having used each of the above I have had the least trouble with NT. My 95 and 98 boxes and this box running ME have given me more trouble (there is one exception) than my NT box. And though I've never had a 2000 or XP box, I have used both in college and they both have given me more trouble than my NT box. The very first tyme I used XP it froze and showed me the BSOD when I first booted it. I have never gotten a BSOD on my NT box, then again (my one exception) it's an Alpha, DEC Alpha, and I was hardly able to get any apps installed on it.
A person who has not been forced to upgrade is a great candidate for free software. They won't need new hardware and most of their devices will be supported by now.
Unfortunately not all "old" devices are supported. A few days ago I got a new PC with Linspire installed. I searched the Linspire website as well as googled for a driver for my Canon printer, which I've had for more than a year and a half yet I couldn't find any drivers, for parallel never mind usb. I even checked Canon's site hoping to find a driver there. So for now if I want to print anything I'll have to use this PC.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Since it has a built-in Bizarro brand Winmodem, it would not be able to dial anything if I loaded Linux, and who cares what OS you use to run hyperterrm and Solitare.
Do you really think I will give Dell £600 for a new laptop just because MS say they are no longer supporting Win98? Hell I have never managed to get them to support it in the past, I don't think I'll see a huge difference.
Its not on the internet, doesnt have USB and XP machines have no floppy drives, so its not likely to get virused.
We have several P1 laptops at work also running Win98 which are used to display floppies written by ATE machines that cost $20k each. New laptops have no floppy drives and the diagnostics woint run on XP or Linux. Are we supposed to buy new ATE kit because MS arent "supporting" something they have not ever supported (IMHO).
You are promoting landfill and profiteering by Gates and Dell. Get a life.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You failed on the first bullet point: NTFS is SLOWER than FAT32.
Plenty of benchmarks to prove it out there.
NTFS gives other capabilities that make it worth the small performance penalty for some users.
And if the size of the market is the reason why windows is so hacked, then win98 (4% of the market) is invisible, yes?
I specifically asked a friend of mine to use Linux for a month. She started on SuSE Linux Pro 9.0.
:-).
:-). Meanwhile, one of the kids has taken to coding, and I think she'll be good at it..
The situation: her (W98) laptop was about to die, so I scraped the data off with Linux. I didn't have anything lying around but a Linux laptop, so I asked her if she was willing to try (time was too short to put a Windows build on that box - another thing Linux is MUCH quicker at as long as the hardware in use is kernel supported).
Her profile: financial journalist, with teenage kids surfing the net. Almost nil system knowledge (read: an MS Office junkie). Her problem: her machine had out of date AV and was thus infested with spyware and trojans, and I can imagine that the case for a lot of people. I've found some of the hoops that people have to jump through to renew their package more complicated than installing Linux. The joy of a captive market. But I digress.
The result: after a month or so learning curve and a battle with a USB printer (CUPS wasn't quite ready for the ALl-in-one she had) she enjoyed not having to worry about virus infections. It never crashes, just works, and work, and works. She edits Word docs in OpenOffice and her clients are none the wiser (articles go in PDF
The only glitch she had was that she was sent an email by accident by a bunch of solicitors who claimed it wasn't a problem 'because she wouldn't be able to open it anyway'. Well, she could. Those guys were sold a security system that assumed Windows - stupid.
She's now been a Linux convert for over 2 years, and I'm thinking about moving her to Ubuntu as it'll be easier for her to get support for it - she doesn't need it often but it's that safe feeling that matters (I'm abroad so no help for her
Insert
I have seen Win98 beening switched for Linux. As a matter of fact, it has been me who does it. As the support "specialist" in the family/friends I often get asked to fix a Win98/2000 PC. Two years ago I made a cut and stopped supporting Windows. Just as Microsoft did. Its not a "religious" kind of thing, its more about self protection. I noticed back then that fixing issues was not a matter of minutes as it used to be, but became a matter of hours, often requiering me to reinstall OS/drivers/documents etc.
For anyone of those friends/family who know that I was the right person for them to keep as "admin" I have moved to Linux (SuSE 10.0 and 10.1). No new hardware was necessary for any of them (lowest being 800 Mhz and 256 RAM). As someone posted before, new network cards required for DSL that most of my family uses nowerdays, is badly if at all supported in Win98, but works flawlessly on Linux.
My experience is that if you don't tell your family/friends that you will install Linux and not Windows they will take months untill they have realized it. Its not that they are dumb, but they don't care too much. If you tell them beforehand, though they will rebell for no apparent reason (human behaviour, I guess). Heres a small list of why I prefer Linux over Win98/Win2000 (XP out of the question of such old hardware):
1. ssh: love to be able to dial up to their PCs to do basic maintanence. I know there are Windows tools to do this, but the command line is so much more productive over a slow network.
2. root: Just the concept of the system being true multiuser from the start makes my task as admin so much easyer. Again, I know I could tick Win2000 to do this, but why bother if it is the right way in Linux from the start.
3. security: I don't care if security is there because of better coding or because there are less Linux installs out there. My 2 year experience mantaining Linux can be boiled down to this: NO VIRUS/ NO SPYWARE. Don't try to convince me that there are Windows "tools" that remove this stuff, I just don't have to, thats why I install Linux.
4. customizing: All, and I mean ALL who have gotten Linux installed by me love the flexibility to customize. You would not believe it, but most non-PC literates absolutely love to customize the colors, fonts, backgrounds etc of their PC. Linux (KDE) just rocks on these grounds. Ohh boy, I again know there are "freewares" out there that enable you to do similar tasks on Win98/2000 but they allmost allways fuck up your stability.
5. amarok: This is the killer application on Linux. Everyone I show this app want to switch!
Part of the problem with "upgrading" to Linux is that it dumps all of the settings and files that users may have spent years accumulating. Where is the install that dual boots between Linux and Win98 from the same disk? Where is the Linux install that works on FAT32 and preserves the existing disk contents? Or offers to copy all of their files during installation? Where is the install that replicates their existing printer, ISP, file shares in Linux? Where is the Linux that sets up Wine to run any programmes they have copied?
This is not just a problem for Win98. It is probably even more important for NT4.0 and W2K that network and share settings are preserved or replicated as closely as possible. And if not that, that the installer offers to print or save a tasklist to disk that can be done automatically or manually after installation. Needless pain and suffering will simply cause users give up and go with Microsoft.
I dimly recall reading that some dists do boot from FAT32, but these need to be mainstream features.
This was covered earlier on Slashdot and I remember writing that not even Xubuntu would ever come close to Windows 95/98 in managing small resources. But I wouldn't think of trying Gnome or KDE fer cryin out loud.
I had a laptop that I ran Debian and IceWM on anyways, because when sitting idle Linux would only consume 1% processor power, whereas Windows 98 would be more at 20-30%. Add to that that the machine had a VERY noisy fan that would turn on ever so often on Windows because of it and you have a reason for running Linux (and that fact that Windows 98 is VERY insecure).
EDE (http://ede.sourceforge.net) + Slackware
or even better, STX (http://stibs.cc/stx)
that they are using a 8 year old os.
Why would they rush out to install linux cause it isnt supported.
Somehow it is hard for me to imagine that type of user using the update feature.
I do computer support to small business. Fuel stations, mechanics, farmers, small retailers. A lot of these people are 40+ and intend to computerize _once_. They have may specialist or POS software (often text mode, always windows) that often requires DOS, Novell 5 etc. compatibility. It was bought circa 1994 typically. They don't use the internet except for email or maybe a supplier gateway or two. They are very conservative and don't web surf - they leave what they don't know alone. They use text mode ribbon printers on the generic windows drivers.
Their computers typically run untouched for years. They keep all the disks well organised. I can replace failing hard drives but the newer hardware isn't as good as the old hardware and I feel guilty every time I replace a part.
These people aren't stupid. The software handles their taxes, its simple, they learnt it. They are the best people to deal with (spyware people are the worst!). The support for the niche sofware is often small scale and very good (much better than any large corp support). Anyone deriding these people is suffering from a solipsism of technophilia.
Then of course there are the supermarkets run on windows 3.1...
some distros that would be written from sratch and oriented towards usability might turn the balance upside down (glad to see that real and novell are doing their part)
Taking the Linux Plunge http://www.linuxforums.org/misc/taking_the_linux_p lunge.html
switcher \'swi`ch &r\, n.
A person who thinks that they are a Mac user but are really just trying to be. The mistake they make is to try to become a Mac user, when real Mac users are all about not trying to be anything and following your own rules. There is no fashion code to being a Mac user. There are no rules as to what applications you have to run.
Recent converts like you are ruining the old school Mac community because you are posers. Apple releases one OS that popularizes Fitts' law and the Genie effect, and suddenly people assume being a Mac user is all about owning a Mac. But a real Mac user is born, not made. You "switchers" are misrepresenting yourselves and the Mac platform. You're giving people the wrong idea of what Macintosh is.
switcher: shops at hot topic, thinks Firefox is a good Mac app, waiting for OS X port of PayrollPro 2000, follows any hint of a fashion trend (instead of setting them!), wouldn't know Clarus from Carl Sagan.
real Mac user: someone true to who they are, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world.
Many of the boxes that can happily run 98, can run neither Vista, nor XP and not even GUI on top of Linux (and these users will of course expect to have GUI). And before you flame me for this last opinion, think 486 @ 100Mhz w 16 MB of FP RAM. A perfectly usable win98 machine. Not even the smallest distros provide you for that (according to recomendations... however, once I have time, I'll try to get it to run with XFCE or some *box). In fact, even MMX on 233MHz with 256 MB of RAM is sluggish under Knoppix (KDE... great but demanding) compared to Win98. It is barely acceptable under XFCE on top of Slackware (Yay for XFCE! Yay for Slack! :D ) - it works, but you feel a little time lag when you move mouse.
On my workplace this here Duron machine was stalling under FC4 (KDE) before RAM was boosted from 256 to 512 MB, but back then when it was new, 128 was quite enaugh for win98. Windows apps under Wine were still slow on 256MB and I haven't even tried them with 512MB. A hunch: RAM is probably the major bottleneck. Probably, if you could rig a GB of RAM on an 486, Linux would fly on it (I wonder how this could be tested, though... perhaps a simulation?). Perhaps some adjustment of VM system, or object allocation in apps and libraries would solve it.
Many old machines now running win98 have Mobos with RAM upgrade capacity of 128MB (Pentiums) or 64MB (486s) limit.
IMHO to win over ex-win98 users, a live CD distro with a slim desktop as default, intended for at least Pentium I class (hopefully for a 486s too, when accompanied with a boot floppy) computers is very needed at the moment!
``Tons of hardware support was dropped from the 2.6 kernel, not all of it legacy hardware by any means.''
Seriously? That's news to me! Do you know what sort of things were dropped and why?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The $ symbol being, AFAIR, a derivative symbol for pieces of eight (peseta).
Tons of hardware support was dropped from the 2.6 kernel, not all of it legacy hardware by any means. I still have a computer with a Via 10/100 ethernet card that worked perfectly with the 2.4 kernel and still works fine with DSL, but no distro with a 2.6 kernel can configure it.
And this is why Linux will never be a serious desktop OS. Server guys can be expected to compile their own custom kernal with their choice of drivers, but not all desktop users can; so a consumer monolithic kernal only works in a closed hardware environment, otherwise it bloats. Drivers for a consumer OS cannot be part of the kernal.
Why is Linux monolithic? Because it was originally one man's hobby and a monolithic kernal is easier to write than a microkernal architecture. Linux was always something of a hack, and in my opinion it has reached the end of its life. Let's have a modern micro-kernal architecture, folks!
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I jut put Suse on 5 machines at a client site when 3 of theier machines got cooked by a lightning storm.
They where running 98se and now they are running Suse.
A lot of the change over is education.
Show them / lend them a linux box
Then help them convert all of thier applications to run on linux
We took this clients third party foxpro for dos app and made it a web based app
hosted it on one of the linux machines now they no longer need windows
except for quick books which they are evaluating a few different solutions
They love the fact that they are no longer tied to MS.
Even better the "Guest Machine" is knoppix cd and has no HD
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
Because NT based Windows is an ongoing disaster and Linux isn't ready for prime time yet? Could be other reasons. Inertia and unwillingness to replace an old Pentium or even fast 486 that works acceptably could have something to do with it in some cases.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Becauase I have an old IBM PC300GL that's used for picture scanning, editing and printing. It has an ACEcad serial tablet. It runs Win95. I think it has 384MB RAM which is actually a lot for that machine and it doesn't even make good use of that. As I said it's a Pentium 450 and it runs fine. Also has an old version of Corel WP, runs Netscape 7.2. Doesn't have a sound card and the scanner HP IIc is attached via an old 8-bit SCSI-1 ISA adapter. 30GB drive which the BIOS can't handle correctly so it's cut up into a bunch of smaller partitions.
Now I have to check, because I *think* nVidia may have some drivers that support this card and work with new kernels. I'd have to check. If so, I'm wrong. Some time ago, it really was the case that the old cards were not supported. Some time in the future, it will probably be the case again.
- anyone still using Win98 at this point in time has no intention of switching to a new operating system - EVER!
You linux mongoloid bitch fucks cannot change people FUCK OFF!
Since I've never been able to get anything other than XFCE to run in 128MB, I'm sure as hell neither KDE or GNOME are going to like 128, never mind 64, unlike Windows 98/SE/ME which functioned just fine for the most part. Go ahead and prove me wrong. And running a custom haxx0rz version of FVWM doesn't count.
The first thing to note is that XFCE is just as good and better than a Windoze GUI. It gives you everything that Windoze does and virtual desktops.
The second thing to note is that 128 MB is enough for most distributions. The minimum required memory to run the Mepis Live CD, which uses a KDE desktop. Knoppix is even lighter and provides a little better performance. The default Etch install is Gnome 2. If you have not tried it in the last six months or so, you have missed some very impressive performance gains which make it very fast. A default Etch install will boot in less time than w2k and run with comparable speed.
Finally, I've see it done with less. For a year and a half I did all of my graduate classwork with a 233 MHz PII running Sarge. It started with 128 and I moved it to 196. I ran KDE but moved to Enlightenment. Uptime measured in months and it could run OO. I've seen Mepis run on a 133 MHz PI. It was slow, but it got the job done. With more memory it would have been fine. People who want to run OO should get 256MB for performance reasons. That's not hard to come by. People who want to run with even less hardware should look into Puppy, Feather, DSL or Xubunto which do all Win98 ever did for anyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Wait twitter - when Microsoft goes five years without releasing an OS you do your nyuck, nyuck M$ Winblows is finished routine, but then you turn around and actually complain about the upgrade train? That's rich.
Yes, M$ can be both intentionally wasteful and incompetent. I know it's been a six year long time since they dumped XP on the world, but that's not for lack of trying. I read once that Vista would screw out something like 33% of the existing software base. It does this for what amounts to be a facelift to XP and 64bit port.
The free software world does better. In the same time period Debian has released three stable versions, Woody, Sarge and Etch, each with real improvements. Those improvements did not come at the price of hardware, data or software. My computers migrated flawlessly without loss of information. Instead of having to throw printers and other gadgets away, I was able to buy and use more hardware.
Microsoft is finished because they depend on the intentional waste of the upgrade train for revenue but their development model does not give them the ability to create the functionality that drives it. Use of XP has just gotten out of the 70% range, if you believe web OS stats that have the combined Mac and other at less than 10%. Now they are starting up the Vista train? It's going to be a wreck. Sales of Vista are going to be even lower than sales of XP were, which was bad news at the time. They won't be able to make up for it this time with Office sales.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You're clearly .. uninformed.
.NET 2.0 killed it). So I bought a new PC, and wasted almost three days getting things "Just so" -- Cygwin/X running right, all my work apps on it, keyboard remapping (control key is NEVER where it belongs these days!), visual-cortex-assaulting graphics gone, proper network drive connections, etc, ad nauseum.
Until very recently, I was still running Win98 on the desktop. Why? Because when I bought my last desktop, it was 1999, and that's what came installed on it.
I never re-installed anything, always kept it behind a hardware firewall, didn't surf where I wasn't s'posed to, and ran Mozilla, then Phoenix, and eventually Firefox on it.
Visio 4, Office 97, Visual Studio 6, eVC++ 3, blah blah, all works fine. (And actually, I run them on my XP box now, except for eVC++ because I stopped doing WCE. VS6 is only for personal toys, real work is done on UNIX).
Finally, the time came when it just got too slow -- Win98 probably needed a reinstall after 7 years (or maybe
That three days of my time is worth a LOT more than the cost of the new PC.
Which is why I hope not to upgrade again until at least 2011. 2016, preferably.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Lots of cool replies in this thread. Every w98 box I've seen in the last 3 years or so has been in the home or office of someone who -- well, let's just say "series of tubes". I based "almost always" on this and stand corrected, sorta.
One thing I'd mention is that people running W98 for the various reasons posted in this thread aren't going to jump ship for Linux now that 98 is unsupported. So I actually think the gist of my point stands. I don't predict a significant 98-Lx migration.
A couple months ago I bought a 512M hard-disk out of a box from a guy and was able to boot W3.1. Awesome
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I haven't bothered searching for LPT ports, but my most recent laptop came without serial ports... which is a serious no-no in the Land of a Thousand Sun Boxen.
$70 or so later, I had a commodity USB-to-Serial adaptor. I'll bet they make parallel port ones, too.
Incidentally, a P75 with 16MB of RAM will run Windows 3.1 VERY nicely. You must be doing something wrong. I can remember the day when a 486 DX/2-66 with 500MB of disk and 16MB of RAM was a *spankin'* box. It even ran Chicago (Win'95 beta from late '93) nicely.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
At this moment in time we are way beyond the stage in which we ponder if Linux is ready for the desktop.
Any rational person can see that it is ready and very usable.
But the point missed is that people do not know about Linux. Linux adoption is no longer a technical issue, Linux is good to go for the enormous majority of tasks and people. Linux adoption is a matter of marketing. Yep, there, I said it.
If you want people with basic computer literacy only to try Linux, they need to know it exists. And that my friends is the crux of the matter, because the Bazaar model work wonders for software development, but seems innefectual in the dissemenation of ideas.
People that would like to see more widespread use of Linux do not have the economic muscle to use big media outlets for promotion, and the Internet is not a medium for wide dissemination of ideas because its fragmented nature (what I mean with this is that most people using the Internet rarely venture beyond their comfort zone, thus are unlikely to stumble accrss the enthusiastic users of Linux).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I keep seeing all the comments about how easy the conversion is, talk about all the multiple systems other readers have at home running old versions of windows, how corportations care more about the operation cost, etc. Unfortunately 99% of the people here are way too overqualified to even discuss or follow the thought process of what the average person running an old system with win98 really is thinking. These people want easy, familiarity, and the ability to keep going without having to invest time or mental power to keep doing what they already do and know how to do. They know where the "buttons" are, they know how to do what they already do right now. If it works fine for them, why do they need to spend time and/or money to change? Most have never heard of Linux and won't because they have no sources to tell them about it. There are no TV commercials, no slick salesmen pushing it in Futureshaft, and alot won't have a techie family member to take them by the hand. A good number would rather have someone wipe their system and re-install their old version of windows since they "don't really do anything important on it" (or do it themselves). Some that are finally convinced they need to get a new system are looking at Macs, because they are being pushed as the new easy to use systems that can use familiar things like office, don't have to worry about viruses, and all the other things the annoying and often misleading commercials are telling them. People want easy to buy, install, and that everyone else is using. They really don't want to have to hunt the net for a package, figure out how to install it for their kernel, and hope its what they want. Alot of old time users of 98 aren't even going to be aware that it isn't supported anymore, or be aware of any way that is going to affect them. They will go on as they have been. As far as companies worrying about the operating cost, the person that made that comment is still looking from a tchie point of view. What about the manhours involved in training the staff. A majority of staff are technophobes, even in large corps. Lost time while they learn it, lost time for all the mistakes made because something is unfamiliar. This list goes on and there's no CFO that is going to miss all those details. Until a version of Linux comes in a pretty package, with easy to purchase software, and its stuck in their face, its not going to catch those users.
I'd be perfectly happy to upgrade my Windows 98 box to Windows 2000, but that expense just doesn't make sense to me. (Vista? Riiiiight.)
I'm not an early adopter, even though I read Slashdot. I finally got a DVD-RW drive a couple of months ago. I buy games that are three years out of date. I play Guild Wars because there is no monthly fee. I play SNES games because I can get them for free. I also happen to be cheap. Did you notice?
When I built my current PC, I didn't want to spend a single cent to replace a functional OS. For the price of an OS upgrade, I bought a RAID card, a hard drive, and a faster P4 than I would have been able to get otherwise. I would like to switch to Linux, but I don't know that my Adobe programs will run, or my DOS games, or the third hand soundcard I have. I have enough trouble finding the right drivers for some of the older parts of my setup for Win9x; I don't expect Linux to be easier in that respect. I know that is comparing apples to oranges, but that is my fear. I'm not afraid of working on my computer; I spent hours just finding a patch for a file just to allow Win98 to run on a processor faster than 2.1 GHz. Those are risks I know. I have reinstalled the OS enough times to almost have my CD Key memorized. I keep my OS on its own partition now because of that. That is a risk I know.
When I get around to making a disk image of my old compy's drive, I will be able to fool around with Linux comfortably. Until then, it's just not a high priority.
Up until 1 month ago, I was running Win98.
OK, "running" isn't quite the correct term. It was running on my machine, when I booted it to play Half-Life mods (that would be the first one), Quake MegaTF (yes, the olddd one), or Ghost Recon. Or if I needed to do some DVD authoring. (I have a couple of programs that I use, that I still haven't found a good enough replacement for on Linux) But I think that was about it really. But to your point, I didn't see a need to reinstall it. I finally did, with Windows 2000, because it just kept locking up on me. But as long as I didn't leave it up for very long, or did single tasks on it, it was fine. My wife's machine still runs 98, she uses it for the web, email, and Quicken. Honestly, if you just need a simple OS, for simple tasks, Win98 just isn't that bad.
Of course, it is my secondary machine, my main machine runs Kubuntu, which is up 24x7.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I found the biggest fear factor (happily enhanced by MS sales people) to lie in the "it's going to be hard to learn something different" argument.
..
You can answer that in two ways:
(1) practical experience. LiveCDs are a very good 'selling' tool for this, or indeed do what I did as described. Mine was a genuine attempt to find out what problems there were, and there were few worth mentioning - and I had a willing user after a couple of virus infections nearly destroyed all her records..
(2) Find users who changed Windows versions, and were upgraded from one version of Office to the next. Good gaps to focus on are W98 -> W2K/W XP and Office 2000 -> 2003 (I can't believe how they neutered Visio's fairly effective interface).
Changing to Linux is actually less change, and the delta between new versions of the GUI and applications is much less pronounced, partly because there is no NEED to be 'new' and 'innovative' because nobody needs features just for having a sales argument. That stability alone is worth money to a business - which is also why it's buried under FUD..
Been there, done that, annoyed MS wth my T-shirt
Insert
Why are these machines still running Windows 98? Because their owners are too lazy to upgrade them. More than likely, when the machine breaks, it will be thrown away. Why the hell would they take the time to install Linux on it?
Call me pessimistic, but I just don't see a person who wasn't able to upgrade from Windows 98 in the last few years suddenly feeling brave enough to try Linux.
Whether it's ready for the desktop or not, we're talking about a group that obviously isn't into change.
Are you guys on drugs?
Can you honestly delude yourself into thinking somebody SO non-tech-savvy that they are still using Win95/98 are going to want to... learn an entirely new operating system?
OMG.
Let's not even consider the fact that they have probably not upgraded solely because they don't want to reinstall all their applications. I have a friend who was freaking out because they couldn't use their ancient version of Quicken anymore, that the new version was all different, etc. Yep, she sounds like a future Linux guru. I'm sure recompiling the kernel is going to become her new favorite pastime.
People using Win98 at this point fear change, or just don't need to change. When they do upgrade, why learn a whole new OS when XP can be made to look 90% like Win98?
And they're not going to stick with that old hardware forever, the power supply, hard drive, or motherboard in those old computers will die sometime. Anything you buy new will have XP on it, which is how most people get XP I bet.
Fixing it required a format and reinstall + configuration + drivers + applications = hours and hours of my time.
Just a thought but did you ever think to make an image of the computer once you had a fresh install with all of your software and drivers. The purchase price of ghost and perhaps a drive for imaging would probably have been cheaper in the long run.
Applications are not supported on Linux (modify to any other platform) -- and that's why people use Windows.
Just about the ONLY "apps" that don't have support are high-energy fps games.
As to the rest? There is "support" in terms of availability. The BIGGEST difference is that Windows provides a "standard platform". It is easy for device vendors to simply toss in a CD, rather than have to work with external (and anal-retentive) developers. It is easy for the box vendors to simply order the software and throw it in. Perhaps receiving kick-backs. It is easy for the user when EVERYTHING is integrated (even to the detriment of security). It is GOOD for Microsoft to be the lynchpin of the whole show (for Microsoft, anyway).
Why upset any of this? BSD, Linux, Solaris, ___ could be 10 times as good -- but the ecosystem wouldn't exist. And Microsofts job is to ensure platform control; to ensure that Microsoft Windows REMAINS the platform. In my opinion Microsoft will go to (almost) any length for this -- giving away product to end users, giving away assistance to device manufacturers, giving to the box vendors, and ignoring piracy. The more the network effect, the worse the lockin.
And it has NOTHING to do with application support. Once in a while, an "application category" goes away -- the latest is security. But the platform remains.
So why use alternate platforms at all? NOW the answer is: its the apps... One driver to Linux is the availability of MythTV (there was an earlier post about someone who tried Linux JUST to use MythTV -- and it really is that good). There are other apps that "just work better" under Linux. Microsoft will try to have them ported to Windows, or (if commercial) simply buy them. Since there is less "competition" in the alternate platform space, there is a good chance that "cooker" projects can survive better. I give you (partially) Google as an example of this effect.
In conclusion, enjoy the Windows Platform. There are many benefits to being in this space as an end-user. If you want "cutting-edge", or have a new "killer" idea, I urge you to look at alternate platforms.
YMMV
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Its not a true fix but it removes that annoying message about not haveing flash 9
I've tried Crossover for switching my mom from Win98 to Mandriva, and was very pleased with the installation process--everything got up and running smoothly. But when for some reason a Windows application would crash (believe it or not, this happens sometimes in Office 97, which is what she is using), that Windows application would refuse to start thereafter without a fresh install of Crossover and MS Office. Their tech support was no help in the matter (not even a suggestion of where I should look for a locked config file, etc) despite several months of effort, so eventually she ended up with a new box running WinXP. This is a great sadness to me, and I really wish I could've figured out how things could go differently. The situation might be different with a current version of Office, I don't own one so I can't check.
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
Some people view the computer as a tool and nothing more. My wife is one of them, she has an old clamshell mac running os9 (I think the closest macos equivalent to win98) It's hard for me to fathom using a computer this way, but when she needs it, takes it from its drawer, turns it on, completes her work, then she shuts it down and puts it back into the drawer. She has no need to upgrade, and never will - until some piece of hardware dies.
I also have this theory that she's Vulcan.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
Face it, *nix needs a marketing plan.
It needs no such thing.
Its not a lemonade stand, you've got to go and GET the clients.
Exactly wrong. No one needs to go out and "GET" any clients. Let's break it down. Microsoft and other proprietary software companies' capital is... well, capital. Money. Lewt, if you will. FOSS's capital is entirely different. It comes in the form of more developers, more bug reporters, more people poking the nightly builds for defects, more people writing documentation. People coming over from Win* for the sole reason that it's cheaper/free are unlikely to contribute anything to anything.
I think we're looking at the issue from very different perspectives. You seem to think the goal is to take over the world. I thought the goal was to make good software.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Most windows 98 users are not going to switch because of the announcement, most probably never even heard it.
For the most part, the people currently using windows 98 bought it preinstalled. Bought the applications they need, and are happy with that. Their next upgrade will occur when their current machine dies.
Several of my older friends will talk about upgrading to XP every once in a while, but never do, they do not want to buy an office suit, a card maker, genealogy programs etc all over again.
I have an Aunt, who is still happy using WFW 3.11, it runs her applications. The machine does all she needs.
Get a free ipod.
You paid 70 dollars for a serial to USB converter?
I don't know when that was, but it's crazy. You can get them for 13 bucks at tigerdirect. When they first came out, they were like 30 dollars, IIRC.
For 70 dollars, I'd be expecting a whole breakout box, with serial, parallel, network, and even sound.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
To buck the perception that only people over 60 use Win98, I have to say that I have used it happily over the last well almost 10 years (if you include the Win95). I still use it as a second OS on a MEPIS 6 machine at home, because it runs any software that I need it to run, like CorelDraw and AutoCAD (and some really ancient pieces of Win 3.1 software), and does it much faster than my work XP machine. It's very frendly, unlike Win2000 or XP a lot of the tweaking options are on the surface instead of being burried deep inside 15 layers of menu options. Working with it is more like working with Linux than working with XP, users are not treated like sheep and I can actually get the OS to do what I want. Security is really good as well, though it's more like security through obscurity, a couple of Win98 machines that run some research instruments haven't had any problems (other than hardware failure) for almost 10 years now, while the 2000 and XP machines have been plagued with all kinds of spyware and virus problems. I don't really understand why would a Win98 user want to switch anyways, unless it's some sort of institutional mandate, the support for Win98 has been a joke for the past few years anyway. I think that most of the forum activity comes from people who are ignorant enough to be scared by the end of the support and are now looking for a cheap (free) solution that would work out of the box. If they actually wanted to spend some money on a new computer they would've done it long ago. They'll probably look around and finally decide that they'll take the chance on running Win98 for a few more years.
I bought Lindows once, just before Lindows changed its name to Lin---s and then to Linspire. It was very glitzy, but it certainly wasn't a distro for people who didn't want to spend money. IIRC, without a paid subscription to their service, you couldn't even do things with it that you could do a normal Debian installation, such as updating non-proprietary software.
Looking at their CNR, Click N Run, warehouse they have hundreds of apps anyone can download and install. You can also install rpms and apts or whatever. I didn't so much buy Linspire as much as I bought the PC with Linspire installed. It had a price I could afford, and I didn't have to order it and wait for it to be delivered. For now, er when I get it setup, it'll basically be used until I can get a Macbook Pro. Once I get the MB Pro I'll setup the PC as a server. Whereas the MB Pro only has a 120 GB hd, I got a 300 GB hd for the PC. And the PC I'm using now has two hds, one has 120 GB and the other 40 GB and I only have a few GBs of free space.
If you find that's still the case, I suggest you try Ubuntu (or Debian itself, if you're more technically-oriented). Less BS and more getting-stuff-done, IMHO.
I've thought of that, and might try to install Ubuntu on the PC I'm using now. I might give Debian a shot but I'm not really knowledgeable about Linux. I took a Linux class, well not really Linux per se but a unix class we used Coherent in if I recall right, back in 1998 but things have changed a lot since then and I haven't really used it since.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I could bean 3 programmers right now from where I sit. You're only outlining my point.
;)
Regedit is useful.
Does the average user need to or know how to use it? If the rest of the UE was incomplete enough that you HAD to use regedit on a day to day basis you might have had me scratching my head, but as it is I think your grasping.
There's nothing wrong with layers. Nothing. But when you're layers don't work seemlessly you create something different: unnecessary complexity.
Which of course was my point.
You'll argue your point about layers till one or the other of use turn blue. But that doesn't change a thing. Linux is complex. Cobbling together legacy code to create the basis of a modern UE is, well, like DOS all over again. HIMEM anyone?
Anyway, I'd love to continue to argue with you, but I've probably got some drivers to recompile. Hell, maybe even some work to do.
Quack, quack.
The purchase price of ghost and perhaps a drive for imaging would probably have been cheaper in the long run.
I thought about it, then realized it would do nothing to fix the increasing frequency of the need to rebuild due to amount of exploits. That would be a band-aid. An upgrade of Windows is a hole in the pocket for a marginal upgrade. Let's face it. Windows XP came out 5 years ago. Dapper Drake came out less then 6 months ago. The price was right and I could always fall back if it didn't work out. Turns out to have worked well with less hastles with a price that was just right. It also came free from any issues with MS Genuine Advantage, Internet Explorer, or MS DRM.
Finding all my hardware out of the box was icing on the cake. The only hardware not working was an HP Scanjet 3300 scanner. I pulgged in a cannon scanner instead and it just worked. No drivers were needed for any hardware unlike Windows which needs motherboard drivers, scanner drivers, printer drivers, card reader drivers, network printserver drivers, etc.
The truth shall set you free!
If I didn't still use Linux every day. I'm not an idiot.
:)
Whether its on the server or the workstation its still got the same issues. Frankly I'm getting tired of outlining them so I'll leave the fencing to someone or something else.
You like Linux. Thats great. Hell, you might even be part of what helps to make it better. Has it been getting better? Sure. Of course. What gets me is these little stories that pop up and the wide-eyed users that rally around them.
I think its interesting that your sensibilities have devolved. Considering Linux came into being in part, because one size (Microsoft at the time, I'm obviously not speaking about Linus' original creation of the kernel) does not fit all. Variety is, even today, a good thing. Letting your biases cloud your judgment really accomplishes very little. So you don't like the Mach5 core (giving no reasons). *shrug* Why should you have to. What is important is that some people do. Some people are very productive on their OS of choice. I don't see anything to fault in that.
Not support it? Okay. I can't say you'll be the richer for it but homogeny suits some people. Don't get me wrong, as I stated I'm now mainly an XP Pro user. But honestly, this kind of thuggish trumpeting seems silly no matter what the campain. We get so attached to one way of seeing things sometimes we endup stunting the very thing we are trying to support.
Without honest dialog Linux will fail. Fortunately while there are plenty of rabid 'believers' there are also some more even-haned supporters. Like Linus. And he has a little sway.
Quack, quack.
That's cool, and of course you can put old machines to multitude of good uses and what You described would no doubt swoop a DOS user for sure, but nevertheless it doesn't sound like it would live up to expectations of a Win98 user. As someone already wrote in these comments, Windows 98 appeared to most users almost as having the same functionality as some later versions of them and it did it with very modest hardware requirements. In a way it was a near perfection of single-user operating system - the climax and crown of DOS evolution.
Linux and Unix were not intended by design to fill that purpose from the very begining. It was only later that Linux and Windows became comparable, not "apples and oranges", when Windows encroached into server market while carrying Win 98 UI with it. Then, on the suitable hardware, with bloom of Linux GUIs, Linux and Windows could compete on the level field.
Now, the overall conclusion would be that in order to be Win98 replacement to the point, Linux would either have to be very much stripped and dumbed down, perhaps the whole philosophy would have to change for worse, or else, if not, most magnificent optimisation and scalability solutions and breakthroughs would take place, probably coming from embedded and handheld devices' world, in other words: from environments where memory is at a premium.
What a thread!!!! lovely
You are already paying for TS licenses to use Citrix, so why not cut out the middle man?
(Unless you need the capability for hitting the server farm to run published apps... which I can see if you have a lot of end-users of a few key applications).
Although if you learn a bit about TS in 2003; using a 3rd party RDP client and/or some policy configuration in the AD, you can get the same effect as a "published application" on a cluster by hitting an application gateway at the right port (this can be abstracted away in RDP connection files that are distributed by DFS or what have you, maybe a intranet portal page)
Because a RDP session can ask to run any application as a shell-- this is the same mechanism that Citrix uses to make published applications work, so its no surprise the same can be accomplished with naked TS. Microsoft keeps "stealing" the stuff that Citrix added to NT 4.0 TS, incrementally adding the features to each revision of its server OS, much to their dismay.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
But I would have trouble consistently when docking and undocking.
:-(
I had an HP Omnibook and a Dell Latitude, and I had trouble with both with that issue. It wouldn't happen all of the time, only some of the time.
For example: the docking bay CD drive would randomly fail to be detected. Or it would fail to switch from the onboard networking controller to the one in-dock.
I gave up and installed linux on the omnibook. That worked surprisingly well if I didn't try to use ACPI. APM suspend/hibernate and dock/undock was solid.
Now I use an IBM X31 with 2003 and Fedora 4 (using ACPI, not APM !). Never had a problem with power related or docking related issues with that at all. It took the OEMs and the OS vendors long enough.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Absolutely -
The direction MS is going with windows will definitely not fill that niche - particularly for businesses that have to be cost concious and can't blow thousands or millions of dollars on new installations that support the latest and greatest from MS.
I wouldn't load Win98 on a 486 66 - even in 1998 - and as I mentioned that system only ran DOS before I got it. I do believe you can build a minimal Linux system on a Pentium 100 or better system that can appear just as full featured on the GUI as Win98 systems. The problem is no one in the Linux arena has that as a goal, that I am aware of (educate me if there are - as an aside, I do know there is a windows work-alike project called ReactOS that is going for binary equivalence to run win32 apps - and already has many native windows apps - MS Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop etc.. - that will run on it).
To start such a project in Linux, you could list all the things you want to see on the system from an interface and tools perspective that a typical Win98 user would expect - and build to that standard. You would reach into your embedded systems bag of tricks to build highly tuned kernels that are fast, efficient, with a small footprint designed for those low-end processors. You would tweak the window manager to be more 'windows-like' (start with fvwm'95 or other lightweight window managers). On top of that you would add all the requirements for strange drivers - again the embedded approach would have merit - minimalistic and targeted. Finally, you would probably need to load WINE or Crossover Office in order to run ancient DOS and Windows apps that interface with the hardware or data produced by it - unless, of course, you could reverse engineer these applications and build them natively as a linux binary. I can see why this appears at first glance to be a daunting task.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything on the radar that targets this - which could be a missed opportunity for integrators - and a danger for those Win98 systems still attached to the network - as security erodes, or even those doing critical tasks off the net could be lost to corruption as drives fail over time - OEM installation disks notwithstanding. At some point these businesses will have to make a move - either replacing all the old gear, or spending the time building an open source solution that can have a lifespan longer than dictated by a vendor.
Not an easy problem; thankfully I don't have that problem to deal with - hence why I thought I could spend a few moments pointing out some alternatives.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I don't actually think Windows is good. Its simply good enough. Like Linux is good enough. But Linux is good enough for a few different things. What I take issue with (and this probably isn't you directly, I was responding to the original 'article') is the common fantasy that Linux is good enough in the same areas Windows is, so good in fact that it will work as a drop in replacement for these poor souls using Windows 98.
Like I said, I love Linux. My livelihood depends on it. But that doesn't make Linux an end-user distro, its still niche. And it should be while we continue to work out some of the large issue people tend to turn a blind eye at.
Better is good. But its not 'there' yet.
Thats my spiel.
Quack, quack.
It seems to me that microsoft's decision to stop supporting win98/ME will make little difference in the grand scheme of things.
What does lack of support mean to the average 98/ME user? In my opinion, not much.
When we talk about support we are often talking about business users. Since the average business replaces computers about on average every 3 years, and new computers generally come with new windows versions, the majority of 98/ME users now will be home users. They generally won't want to pay for an upgrade and support is usually to ask a friend. Just because microsoft stops making fixes, won't remove the 'friends' knowledge of how to support 98/ME and won't help with the learning curve of switching to linux.
So who will actually switch? I can't see much reason to switch just because Microsoft say they are no longer supporting an OS.
I work and play with linux all the time and would love to see more users, but this just isn't going to make much difference. What we need is a more user friendly linux and more bug fixing to remove the negatives of linux before we will see a large increase in the user base.
Even if this happens I see linux as always being a poor alternative to an OS with such a large income stream. Money is the driving force of the market and the driving force of development. Until linux users are willing to pay for the effort that thousands of people are putting into developing linux it will always be a minor player in the whole market.
Think I'm talking trash, then just look where we have got in the last 15 years I've been using linux. We have made great strides, lots of improvements, great user interface, but still only 0.4% usage. There's still lots of distro's many having come and gone over time.
Lots of minor distros claiming to be the best but never going anywhere. And a few at the top fighting between themselves for a minor share of the whole market. I know it will never happen, but just think where we could have been if all linux developers all over the world had been working together on a single distro, we'd have a market share 10 or 100 times what we have now and a product worthy of decent consideration.
Comments please.