This person is exactly right.. games were still all DOS practically when windows 95 came out. Sure there were a few windows games like leisure suit larry 6 (but also dos too).
99% of the games i played until 95 OSR2 came out were DOS based. Doom, lucasarts games, etc. After OSR2, over half were still DOS. Its not until I switched to windows NT 4 and 98 that i got into windows gaming.
The real problem with this strategy from microsoft is that it hurts open source and it also hurts APPLE! Mac OS X requires open gl.. if ati focuses on direct x stuff we may see hardware problems in apple's future.
Remember, microsoft's vision is that you buy a pc for everything but gaming. (windows media center, windows tablet pc, etc) and then buy an xbox for gaming. Many of their better games do not get released for Windows now. Maybe macs will be the gaming platform in the future. That would be an odd twist of fate.
Innovation is hampered because US companies have the additional burden of providing the back door in their products. Its an added cost, and security hole. If I lived in another country, I would not buy American products now. As an american, i may consider buying foreign products without the back doors. Obviously i'd have to mail order them for a less than reputable source as products imported will probably need the lame back doors too!
Great idea, but how do you find a truely impartial site? Many hardware sites are biased to some vendor . Look at tom's hardware for example. That site used to be a great resource, but reviews are often slanted. Usually it starts out with product x is always superior but in some obscure case product y outperforms. (the obscure case is actually common)
The only solution is to search google for sites and newsgroups about products and read everything you can find. Eventually you'll have an idea what is wrong with a product and then you can make a decision.
I use apple mail everyday. I wouldn't say it works well. The only reason i use it is because i don't want to check email in windows with all the lame worms.
Both mail.app and mozilla thunderbird crash regularly on my iBook G4. I suspect both have trouble with low memory situations on the Mac. I have 256mb of ram and with my mouse and external sound card drivers using around 70 mb of ram (estimate from top), I don't have much room to breath. I've filed several bug reports with apple on the mail.app crashes and behavior. They did email me a few times on one report and then 10.4 came out. I still have problems with 10.4 mail.app.
My setup: 3 mail accounts all imap. All three use TLS/SSL and two give me annoying nag screens each time i startup. The certificates were self signed with openssl and you can't ignore in the future like you can with thunderbird. I've even added them to my certs database. "Known issue" apple won't fix. Then, apple mail crashes often. I have noticed that 10.4.2 minimizes this problem a bit as it used to be a daily occurance. Try deleting a message when its downloading or viewing several messages while downloading. Activity viewer will never get rid of activity!
Thunderbird and firefox crash on my laptop constantly. Its a real problem now that 10.4 safari can't render pages from certain webapps. I have to use firefox.
Apple fixed the rulesets quite a bit in 10.4. The firefox bugs happened previously. Its very common on imap accounts with ANY mail client though. I've seen outlook 2003 and xp do the same thing along with netscape 7 and mozilla 1.5.
In short, if you use imap, give up on quality email clients. Also, note it depends on the behavior. I've used dovecot and UW imapd and different bugs pop up. Its not just the clients fault servers suck, but the lack of validation or handling of errors on the client software is that of the clients programmer.
procmail can do wonders for filtering server side! I ended up doing that on some accounts. I don't control the servers for all 3, but i do control one of them.
I use imap because I have several computers and its easier to view them on all and then download the mail to my mac. The other two accounts are controlled by my university (cs and general)
You have an interesting point. When you buy a new pc, many times the vendor includes something in the box that says you must agree to the EULA to use the computer. At work we had several dells come in with this sort of wording. What if I buy a computer that includes Windows, but play to install a linux distro or a BSD on it? I've had to agree to a microsoft eula for software I don't even want. Now it may only be legal if i actually use windows to do that, but thats not what the documenation with the computer says. I'm not sure what the law is in this case.
I've always wondered how this would apply to using a windows driver in a wrapper in linux or bsd to use a piece of hardware. Since the software was intended for windows environments, how does the license apply for the driver?
If apple were to use the DRM only for the operating system, I don't see a big problem with it. How is this different than the old Mac ROMS?
I have used my neighbors wireless network in the past. After several stories like this, I'm starting to get nervous about it. I think the solution is that vendors need to ship routers with a unique WEP key (or whatever security method) and include that key in the box. Then joe sixpack comes home with one of these babies, he has to add the key to his pc/mac/whatever before he can use it. Sure it will increase tech calls a bit, and they will probably need an easy method to reset the device to no security in case the key is lost.
If someone goes to the trouble to reset it or turn it off then I should be free and clear to use it.
My neighbor knows that someone with a Mac laptop is using his network. He knows the hostname and a rough guess at the operating system because he scanned me. He even knows it might be me. It hasn't stopped him from using wireless with no security of any kind. All my other neighbors are smart enough to use WEP or MAC address protection but him. Did I mention he's taking network security and system administration courses? My wife had a class with him this summer and he talked about it during class. She was using my laptop at the time. After he found out where she lived, he asked her the hostname but wouldn't say.:)
Yes, and if you can afford an Xserve it would be really great. The 5.3 release is now Mac OS X only. Previous versions let you develop on Mac OS X or Windows and deploy on Windows, Mac OS X Server or Solaris. Now only Mac OS X server is supported for deployment. You must buy the OS X server license to get a deployment license for 1 server. (minimum 500 dollars) Also, 5.3 is free to develop with on OS X, but OS X server still does not ship with 5.3 licenses. There are many bugs in 5.3 as well, although it is a development version and only available through ADC right now.
I bought 5.2 around christmas hoping to switch to it from PHP and ASP.NET. It was a big disappointment.. by the time i started learning it, apple released 2 new versions that had new problems. Everyone on the mailing list (apple's) claims its dead and to move on. Its been frustraiting..
If you already get apple's cocoa environment i'm sure i'd be great. Coming from a MS background, i'm struggling with it at every step.
I think it depends who you ask if AMD has won on the campus scene. I agree they have some great products, but how many large institutions actualy buy AMD? I think most companies and universities buy from large vendors like Dell, IBM, and HP/Compaq who mostly sell Intel based systems. In fact, most computers at my university are Dells. All dells are intel based... the remaining machines are HP/Compaq systems in a few labs or Macs. Thats why they only have 10%. On the server front, most machines are Sun sparc or Dell. There's a few legacy DEC boxes too.
To me, the best server offering for AMD systems is the Sun machines. I'd like to see more variety and price/feature ratio in the AMD server lineup. I know you can build servers, but i'm not in favor of that. When I think servers, i look at sun, dell, ibm, hp and apple.
I have to work in the basement of a building with no windows. We call it the dungeon. I'd love to have real light! This could change the way offices are built. Of course we'd need some lawsuits to get companies to spend the money. I think its possible since other structures are required to have windows like college dorm rooms and apartments. I spend 9 hours a day at work including lunch.
XHTML 2 removes the img tag and uses an attribute on other tags to include images. Thats why I said that. Pages would still be usable, but most websites I use would be pointless without images.
I used to get angry about this to. I asked dell tech support about it. They said the reason is that it costs more to support the FreeDOS systems. If there is a hardware problem thats not obvious, its hard for the techs to diagnose. Remember most are indian techs that only know windows! As them about linux or freebsd support sometime. You'll see what i mean.:)
Yes, and you can play most older mac games without a problem on this unit. Even world of warcraft would run on it. Granted FPS games won't run and sims 2 probably wont either.
Also, windows users don't get that most mac games don't require 64mb video ram yet. Some are starting too but many do not. Its not the windows world. Things are different.
The real problem with these mac mini's for games ins't the video card, its the hard drive. Its a laptop drive after all. They are either 5400 or 4200 rpm. Thats the bottleneck.
Gamers should buy powermacs. You can upgrade your video card later as the need arises. My wife went from a geforce 4 mx 32mb to a radeon 9800 128mb agp 4x retail.
You can't play games on a 500 dollar dell either. They typically have INTEL VIDEO CARDS. They dont even have ram.. they use shared memory!
And it already works great in the game industry. Besides the obvious posts others have made, every time i boot up a recent game i get hit with a nvidia or ati screen. I paid money for ut2004 and i get hit with nvidia, nvidia, nividia everytime i load the game on my radeon card. Likewise i believe ati cards are pushed in half life 2.
The problem is that people have a choice with movies. They can watch a DVD and skip the ads later instead of going to the theater.
There is a solution to this problem. Support open source game development. Start working on games! Some jerk can make money selling you the strategy guide and manual (o reilly, jboss documentation project types) instead of the ads. If your will to figure the game out yourself, great!
Ah, remote services. That makes sense. Aside from normal RPC and windows file sharing stuff, 98 was not attackable. I think nt4 and higher introduced the remote registry service and some of the other stupid things.
I did not look at the type of vulnerabilities, just a general count.
I read about the differences with NTFS on v-com's system commander website. It caused problems dual booting the two operating systems and the workaround was to hide xp from 2000 and vise versa. I guess xp in some cases will upgrade the drive and cause 2000 not to boot. Thats what I thought happened to you. I know there was a problem similar with nt4/2000 migration. I did not know about the partitioning bugs. Thats interesting. Maybe v-com is wrong too.
I think the fact that users have broadband connections and they were not popular during the 98 era might have increased the spread of worms as well. Its possible to attack more hosts quickly, although your theory about vulnerabilities could be a factor as well. If I were going to write a worm, it would be more exciting to do it now with so many on high speed connections.
Prior to 5.4 it was often said on freebsd-questions and a few times on freebsd-hackers. I'm on both mailing lists. I've read the handbook and was told several times its usually safe to do an install kernel and mergemaster -p. If the kernel boots ok, you can do an installworld and mergemaster and then reboot again safely.
Here are some rough statistics using securityfocus.com. Each page of vulnerabilities has 30 entries except for the last of course.
There are 4 pages of security vulnerabilities for windows 98 (gold). There are 3 pages for 98 SE. Windows 2000 had 10 pages and Windows XP Home edition had 7. If you consider 98 SE a service pack on 98 that you had to pay for, thats 7 pages of vulnerabilities which is equal to the number of holes in XP home currently. XP has been out several years so I think thats pretty good. It shows that even with all the new features (which does equate to services and potential holes), that XP is similar to 98 in terms of security. Windows 2000 did rather bad of course and you are correct on that OS. I'm not saying in this statement that XP is better, just that it has more features. (good or bad)
Also, the problems you experienced with dual booting xp and 2000 do not suprise me. They use different versions of NTFS and are known to not play nice together.
I don't remember posting anything about Linux originally. I'm sure you must have mentioned it previously. I do agree that Linux is more secure and reliable than Microsoft's current offerings. And using a distro like gentoo can minimize the software installed and help in that regard. Mandrake is bloated and would be more vulnerable by your logic. As for quality, Linux works fine for servers and sometimes on desktops if you can get the proper hardware driver support.
Linux can kill things better than windows, but with the kill utility from an old windows reskit you can usually kill anything in windows as well. It works better than task manager in that regard. Likewise, any non windows OS that happens to be unix like would have the same functionality. I know it works fine in FreeBSD and OS X. Its a basic obvious feature of UNIX. (and its cousins)
I guess I found your original post silly since I always jump to specific security issues in operating systems like file permissions, firewalls, ability to turn on and off services, etc. Windows 98 has no file permissions or firewall. Its like Classic Mac OS. Security was not a factor only usability. Its lack of features made it harder to crack from the outside but a joke locally.
I feel your pain here. I bought an ibook g4 because i couldn't find a pc laptop that actually was 100% supported in FreeBSD or Linux. I really didn't care, just required a unix like operating system. My experience with windows shows that its always slow on laptops.
In the end, I gave up and bought the Mac. I asked on newsgroups, etc. Most people told me things like " i bought a dell that works, but they stopped selling that model" or "I think dell just changed the video and wireless chipset again.. not sure if it works" I didn't just look at dell, but i was strongly interested in their products. I also asked about AMD64 machines and was told the systems were buggy with anything but windows.
When will pc vendors get it? People want good hardware in laptops. No intel video cards! No brand x unsupported wireless! And for god sakes dont modify the sound card chipset!
Look at the source code for the init process some time.. you might see why they are thinking about it. Luke's code was mostly shell scripting. Its nice, but its not a rehaul on init to get it caught up to current security and style coding practices. Unfortunetely, I doubt the replacement will be all that great either. I've had a lot of problems with lauchd on my mac so far.
It was asked on the freebsd-ppc list why they are still doing the port. The main guy, Peter Graham (sp?) said the plan was to port it for IBM hardware to begin with. He considers that the important step. The mac stuff was a nice bonus and a way to get help with the project.
Yes, if you have PHYSICAL access to a machine its POSSIBLE to upgrade from 4.x to 5.x. Its also strongly discouraged.
I've actually tested several times doing an upgrade from source using ssh on two machines here to see if it would be possible on a 4.x production server I have colocated. Its not possible in the least bit with 5.4 release from 4.10. I followed/usr/src/UPDATING.
Now if you were to have serial/console access and could go into single user remotely, then maybe it would be fine.
I'd love to upgrade 5.x as i'm running it at home on several machines. I hope port maintainers remember people like me or its going to be a real pain in the near future. I have a feeling the 6.x release will spark the 4.x is two versions behind argument.
Also, for anyone thinking of upgrading to 6.x or running a beta on an amd Semptron 2300+, dont. I can't even boot the iso install cd. Kernel panics like crazy. I've got an MSI nforce2 based motherboard with an nvraid sata controller and my install partition is on an ide drive. I tried to contact someone about this, no response. The sata controller is not supported in 5.x with my patches.
But XP also has a firewall built in and 98 doesn't.. less services maybe for 98 but they are all open to the world by default. XP has a firewall to prevent such issues. Granted its not the best firewall, but its better than 98, me or even win 2k pro in this sense.
As for worms, i've had to clean up more 9x tree boxes in the past than XP/2000 machines. The internet has more use now, and i don't think an increase in worms says anything about security on less this metric is counted in.
I find it interesting how many people cling to windows 98. They must use it different than i did. Mine BSOD and never came back about every 3 months. Ever since i started using NT4 through xp i've had my windows install last at least a year. Mind you i do use software from the internet which can cause some issues. I also install visual studio and the debuggers seem to mess with the system as well.
My favorite arguments for 98 usage are: 1. faster 2. better hardware support 3. more reliable and now 4. less viruses/spyware
My favorite arguments against those are: 1. Not on a good computer. My dual xeon's second processor wouldn't even be used! 2. funny.. got that patch for usb support? My motherboard chipset is supported out of the box. Is yours? 3. You must like blue. Error messages are only red huh? 4. Not only can you get newer viruses possibly that affect IE/OE but you can still run the classic dos viruses of yesteryear! kewl!
Even if you dont' like microsoft's firewall this is a mute point.. anyone with a brain has a firewall installed on their computer. And noobs buy broadband routers with NAT and occasionally SPI which would prevent some attacks.
I've met people who swear windows 3.1 was the end all.. does it make it true?
You stick to 98 but don't come on here and bitch in a few years when no new software is available.
I think Windows Virgin is a better name. We've already seen Windows XP.. aka Experienced.. this one has a new "kernel" and eye candy.. its a virgin to hack for the very first time!
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This person is exactly right.. games were still all DOS practically when windows 95 came out. Sure there were a few windows games like leisure suit larry 6 (but also dos too).
99% of the games i played until 95 OSR2 came out were DOS based. Doom, lucasarts games, etc. After OSR2, over half were still DOS. Its not until I switched to windows NT 4 and 98 that i got into windows gaming.
The real problem with this strategy from microsoft is that it hurts open source and it also hurts APPLE! Mac OS X requires open gl.. if ati focuses on direct x stuff we may see hardware problems in apple's future.
Remember, microsoft's vision is that you buy a pc for everything but gaming. (windows media center, windows tablet pc, etc) and then buy an xbox for gaming. Many of their better games do not get released for Windows now. Maybe macs will be the gaming platform in the future. That would be an odd twist of fate.
Innovation is hampered because US companies have the additional burden of providing the back door in their products. Its an added cost, and security hole. If I lived in another country, I would not buy American products now. As an american, i may consider buying foreign products without the back doors. Obviously i'd have to mail order them for a less than reputable source as products imported will probably need the lame back doors too!
Great idea, but how do you find a truely impartial site? Many hardware sites are biased to some vendor . Look at tom's hardware for example. That site used to be a great resource, but reviews are often slanted. Usually it starts out with product x is always superior but in some obscure case product y outperforms. (the obscure case is actually common)
The only solution is to search google for sites and newsgroups about products and read everything you can find. Eventually you'll have an idea what is wrong with a product and then you can make a decision.
I use apple mail everyday. I wouldn't say it works well. The only reason i use it is because i don't want to check email in windows with all the lame worms.
Both mail.app and mozilla thunderbird crash regularly on my iBook G4. I suspect both have trouble with low memory situations on the Mac. I have 256mb of ram and with my mouse and external sound card drivers using around 70 mb of ram (estimate from top), I don't have much room to breath. I've filed several bug reports with apple on the mail.app crashes and behavior. They did email me a few times on one report and then 10.4 came out. I still have problems with 10.4 mail.app.
My setup:
3 mail accounts all imap. All three use TLS/SSL and two give me annoying nag screens each time i startup. The certificates were self signed with openssl and you can't ignore in the future like you can with thunderbird. I've even added them to my certs database. "Known issue" apple won't fix. Then, apple mail crashes often. I have noticed that 10.4.2 minimizes this problem a bit as it used to be a daily occurance. Try deleting a message when its downloading or viewing several messages while downloading. Activity viewer will never get rid of activity!
Thunderbird and firefox crash on my laptop constantly. Its a real problem now that 10.4 safari can't render pages from certain webapps. I have to use firefox.
Apple fixed the rulesets quite a bit in 10.4. The firefox bugs happened previously. Its very common on imap accounts with ANY mail client though. I've seen outlook 2003 and xp do the same thing along with netscape 7 and mozilla 1.5.
In short, if you use imap, give up on quality email clients. Also, note it depends on the behavior. I've used dovecot and UW imapd and different bugs pop up. Its not just the clients fault servers suck, but the lack of validation or handling of errors on the client software is that of the clients programmer.
procmail can do wonders for filtering server side! I ended up doing that on some accounts. I don't control the servers for all 3, but i do control one of them.
I use imap because I have several computers and its easier to view them on all and then download the mail to my mac. The other two accounts are controlled by my university (cs and general)
You have an interesting point. When you buy a new pc, many times the vendor includes something in the box that says you must agree to the EULA to use the computer. At work we had several dells come in with this sort of wording. What if I buy a computer that includes Windows, but play to install a linux distro or a BSD on it? I've had to agree to a microsoft eula for software I don't even want. Now it may only be legal if i actually use windows to do that, but thats not what the documenation with the computer says. I'm not sure what the law is in this case.
I've always wondered how this would apply to using a windows driver in a wrapper in linux or bsd to use a piece of hardware. Since the software was intended for windows environments, how does the license apply for the driver?
If apple were to use the DRM only for the operating system, I don't see a big problem with it. How is this different than the old Mac ROMS?
I have used my neighbors wireless network in the past. After several stories like this, I'm starting to get nervous about it. I think the solution is that vendors need to ship routers with a unique WEP key (or whatever security method) and include that key in the box. Then joe sixpack comes home with one of these babies, he has to add the key to his pc/mac/whatever before he can use it. Sure it will increase tech calls a bit, and they will probably need an easy method to reset the device to no security in case the key is lost.
:)
If someone goes to the trouble to reset it or turn it off then I should be free and clear to use it.
My neighbor knows that someone with a Mac laptop is using his network. He knows the hostname and a rough guess at the operating system because he scanned me. He even knows it might be me. It hasn't stopped him from using wireless with no security of any kind. All my other neighbors are smart enough to use WEP or MAC address protection but him. Did I mention he's taking network security and system administration courses? My wife had a class with him this summer and he talked about it during class. She was using my laptop at the time. After he found out where she lived, he asked her the hostname but wouldn't say.
Well NeXT designed OS X, apple just added a few tweaks here and there and made it a little more classic like.
Yes, and if you can afford an Xserve it would be really great. The 5.3 release is now Mac OS X only. Previous versions let you develop on Mac OS X or Windows and deploy on Windows, Mac OS X Server or Solaris. Now only Mac OS X server is supported for deployment. You must buy the OS X server license to get a deployment license for 1 server. (minimum 500 dollars) Also, 5.3 is free to develop with on OS X, but OS X server still does not ship with 5.3 licenses. There are many bugs in 5.3 as well, although it is a development version and only available through ADC right now.
I bought 5.2 around christmas hoping to switch to it from PHP and ASP.NET. It was a big disappointment.. by the time i started learning it, apple released 2 new versions that had new problems. Everyone on the mailing list (apple's) claims its dead and to move on. Its been frustraiting..
If you already get apple's cocoa environment i'm sure i'd be great. Coming from a MS background, i'm struggling with it at every step.
I think it depends who you ask if AMD has won on the campus scene. I agree they have some great products, but how many large institutions actualy buy AMD? I think most companies and universities buy from large vendors like Dell, IBM, and HP/Compaq who mostly sell Intel based systems. In fact, most computers at my university are Dells. All dells are intel based... the remaining machines are HP/Compaq systems in a few labs or Macs. Thats why they only have 10%. On the server front, most machines are Sun sparc or Dell. There's a few legacy DEC boxes too.
To me, the best server offering for AMD systems is the Sun machines. I'd like to see more variety and price/feature ratio in the AMD server lineup. I know you can build servers, but i'm not in favor of that. When I think servers, i look at sun, dell, ibm, hp and apple.
I have to work in the basement of a building with no windows. We call it the dungeon. I'd love to have real light! This could change the way offices are built. Of course we'd need some lawsuits to get companies to spend the money. I think its possible since other structures are required to have windows like college dorm rooms and apartments. I spend 9 hours a day at work including lunch.
XHTML 2 removes the img tag and uses an attribute on other tags to include images. Thats why I said that. Pages would still be usable, but most websites I use would be pointless without images.
I used to get angry about this to. I asked dell tech support about it. They said the reason is that it costs more to support the FreeDOS systems. If there is a hardware problem thats not obvious, its hard for the techs to diagnose. Remember most are indian techs that only know windows! As them about linux or freebsd support sometime. You'll see what i mean. :)
Yes, and you can play most older mac games without a problem on this unit. Even world of warcraft would run on it. Granted FPS games won't run and sims 2 probably wont either.
Also, windows users don't get that most mac games don't require 64mb video ram yet. Some are starting too but many do not. Its not the windows world. Things are different.
The real problem with these mac mini's for games ins't the video card, its the hard drive. Its a laptop drive after all. They are either 5400 or 4200 rpm. Thats the bottleneck.
Gamers should buy powermacs. You can upgrade your video card later as the need arises. My wife went from a geforce 4 mx 32mb to a radeon 9800 128mb agp 4x retail.
You can't play games on a 500 dollar dell either. They typically have INTEL VIDEO CARDS. They dont even have ram.. they use shared memory!
And it already works great in the game industry. Besides the obvious posts others have made, every time i boot up a recent game i get hit with a nvidia or ati screen. I paid money for ut2004 and i get hit with nvidia, nvidia, nividia everytime i load the game on my radeon card. Likewise i believe ati cards are pushed in half life 2.
The problem is that people have a choice with movies. They can watch a DVD and skip the ads later instead of going to the theater.
There is a solution to this problem. Support open source game development. Start working on games! Some jerk can make money selling you the strategy guide and manual (o reilly, jboss documentation project types) instead of the ads. If your will to figure the game out yourself, great!
Ah, remote services. That makes sense. Aside from normal RPC and windows file sharing stuff, 98 was not attackable. I think nt4 and higher introduced the remote registry service and some of the other stupid things.
I did not look at the type of vulnerabilities, just a general count.
I read about the differences with NTFS on v-com's system commander website. It caused problems dual booting the two operating systems and the workaround was to hide xp from 2000 and vise versa. I guess xp in some cases will upgrade the drive and cause 2000 not to boot. Thats what I thought happened to you. I know there was a problem similar with nt4/2000 migration. I did not know about the partitioning bugs. Thats interesting. Maybe v-com is wrong too.
I think the fact that users have broadband connections and they were not popular during the 98 era might have increased the spread of worms as well. Its possible to attack more hosts quickly, although your theory about vulnerabilities could be a factor as well. If I were going to write a worm, it would be more exciting to do it now with so many on high speed connections.
Prior to 5.4 it was often said on freebsd-questions and a few times on freebsd-hackers. I'm on both mailing lists. I've read the handbook and was told several times its usually safe to do an install kernel and mergemaster -p. If the kernel boots ok, you can do an installworld and mergemaster and then reboot again safely.
Here are some rough statistics using securityfocus.com. Each page of vulnerabilities has 30 entries except for the last of course.
There are 4 pages of security vulnerabilities for windows 98 (gold). There are 3 pages for 98 SE. Windows 2000 had 10 pages and Windows XP Home edition had 7. If you consider 98 SE a service pack on 98 that you had to pay for, thats 7 pages of vulnerabilities which is equal to the number of holes in XP home currently. XP has been out several years so I think thats pretty good. It shows that even with all the new features (which does equate to services and potential holes), that XP is similar to 98 in terms of security. Windows 2000 did rather bad of course and you are correct on that OS. I'm not saying in this statement that XP is better, just that it has more features. (good or bad)
Also, the problems you experienced with dual booting xp and 2000 do not suprise me. They use different versions of NTFS and are known to not play nice together.
I don't remember posting anything about Linux originally. I'm sure you must have mentioned it previously. I do agree that Linux is more secure and reliable than Microsoft's current offerings. And using a distro like gentoo can minimize the software installed and help in that regard. Mandrake is bloated and would be more vulnerable by your logic. As for quality, Linux works fine for servers and sometimes on desktops if you can get the proper hardware driver support.
Linux can kill things better than windows, but with the kill utility from an old windows reskit you can usually kill anything in windows as well. It works better than task manager in that regard. Likewise, any non windows OS that happens to be unix like would have the same functionality. I know it works fine in FreeBSD and OS X. Its a basic obvious feature of UNIX. (and its cousins)
I guess I found your original post silly since I always jump to specific security issues in operating systems like file permissions, firewalls, ability to turn on and off services, etc. Windows 98 has no file permissions or firewall. Its like Classic Mac OS. Security was not a factor only usability. Its lack of features made it harder to crack from the outside but a joke locally.
Ok... big words from an anonymous coward.
I feel your pain here. I bought an ibook g4 because i couldn't find a pc laptop that actually was 100% supported in FreeBSD or Linux. I really didn't care, just required a unix like operating system. My experience with windows shows that its always slow on laptops.
In the end, I gave up and bought the Mac. I asked on newsgroups, etc. Most people told me things like " i bought a dell that works, but they stopped selling that model" or "I think dell just changed the video and wireless chipset again.. not sure if it works" I didn't just look at dell, but i was strongly interested in their products. I also asked about AMD64 machines and was told the systems were buggy with anything but windows.
When will pc vendors get it? People want good hardware in laptops. No intel video cards! No brand x unsupported wireless! And for god sakes dont modify the sound card chipset!
Look at the source code for the init process some time.. you might see why they are thinking about it. Luke's code was mostly shell scripting. Its nice, but its not a rehaul on init to get it caught up to current security and style coding practices. Unfortunetely, I doubt the replacement will be all that great either. I've had a lot of problems with lauchd on my mac so far.
It was asked on the freebsd-ppc list why they are still doing the port. The main guy, Peter Graham (sp?) said the plan was to port it for IBM hardware to begin with. He considers that the important step. The mac stuff was a nice bonus and a way to get help with the project.
Yes, if you have PHYSICAL access to a machine its POSSIBLE to upgrade from 4.x to 5.x. Its also strongly discouraged.
/usr/src/UPDATING.
I've actually tested several times doing an upgrade from source using ssh on two machines here to see if it would be possible on a 4.x production server I have colocated. Its not possible in the least bit with 5.4 release from 4.10. I followed
Now if you were to have serial/console access and could go into single user remotely, then maybe it would be fine.
I'd love to upgrade 5.x as i'm running it at home on several machines. I hope port maintainers remember people like me or its going to be a real pain in the near future. I have a feeling the 6.x release will spark the 4.x is two versions behind argument.
Also, for anyone thinking of upgrading to 6.x or running a beta on an amd Semptron 2300+, dont. I can't even boot the iso install cd. Kernel panics like crazy. I've got an MSI nforce2 based motherboard with an nvraid sata controller and my install partition is on an ide drive. I tried to contact someone about this, no response. The sata controller is not supported in 5.x with my patches.
But XP also has a firewall built in and 98 doesn't.. less services maybe for 98 but they are all open to the world by default. XP has a firewall to prevent such issues. Granted its not the best firewall, but its better than 98, me or even win 2k pro in this sense.
As for worms, i've had to clean up more 9x tree boxes in the past than XP/2000 machines. The internet has more use now, and i don't think an increase in worms says anything about security on less this metric is counted in.
I find it interesting how many people cling to windows 98. They must use it different than i did. Mine BSOD and never came back about every 3 months. Ever since i started using NT4 through xp i've had my windows install last at least a year. Mind you i do use software from the internet which can cause some issues. I also install visual studio and the debuggers seem to mess with the system as well.
My favorite arguments for 98 usage are:
1. faster
2. better hardware support
3. more reliable
and now 4. less viruses/spyware
My favorite arguments against those are:
1. Not on a good computer. My dual xeon's second processor wouldn't even be used!
2. funny.. got that patch for usb support? My motherboard chipset is supported out of the box. Is yours?
3. You must like blue. Error messages are only red huh?
4. Not only can you get newer viruses possibly that affect IE/OE but you can still run the classic dos viruses of yesteryear! kewl!
Even if you dont' like microsoft's firewall this is a mute point.. anyone with a brain has a firewall installed on their computer. And noobs buy broadband routers with NAT and occasionally SPI which would prevent some attacks.
I've met people who swear windows 3.1 was the end all.. does it make it true?
You stick to 98 but don't come on here and bitch in a few years when no new software is available.
I think Windows Virgin is a better name. We've already seen Windows XP.. aka Experienced.. this one has a new "kernel" and eye candy.. its a virgin to hack for the very first time!
Thats a feature, not a design flaw!
Don't forget printers, web cams and coming soon.. your pda when docked!