Bye, Windows 98

[pikaunforgiven]

like i have always said to my friends.... use what hardware suits the job at hand. if its just email and small business chores, you dont need a brand new computer to do it, the old stuff is just fine. there is no sense upgrading when what you already have does what its designed to do and thats all you need it to do. i cant help but laugh at people who buy new laptops with windows xp when an older laptop running windows 98 or 95 would do the same job they do with theirs just fine with even longer battery life if current battery technology were to be applied to the older laptops. i have very high respect for those who still run windows 98 and keep it stable, because i sure as hell couldnt keep it stable for more than a week when i used it. thats why i personally use windows 2000 instead, its free from the bloat of xp (while being just as capable) and is stable enough for even my abusive usage.

as you can see from my sig, i do run pretty decent hardware compared to many here, although its a far cry from a new machine. do i have a good reason to upgrade just to use xp? besides gaming no way, im happy the way it is. its reasonably fast considering the hardware involved, its very stable (only time i ever have to restart is windows update), and does everything i ask of it and more. im sure many others here who run windows 2000 on their own computers will agree with me, dont fix what aint broken. im happy with my setup, not sure why people think they can dictate what others are happy with. wether its a high end machine running vista beta or a 486 DX/2 running windows 3.1 or a slim linux distro why should anyone care? as long as the hardware and software combination meshes nicely and does what it is asked of it in an efficient manner there is no reason anyone should care.

if you ask me insulting people just because their OS of choice isnt yours is both unfair and ignorant. i have used windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP and a few various flavors of linux and i really dont have any problem with any of them besides the stability problems that come with 98/ME when in my hands. other people dont have that problem and its perfectly fine by me because it works for them. dont give me any of this "technical" bullshit either, because back when the operating systems were created they worked just fine the way they are today. wether the OS is using FAT16, FAT32, NTFS or any of the various journaling filesystems means absolutely nothing to the end user. all the end user wants and expects is that it turns on and does its job.

for technical sake, wtf makes fat32 so bad that it shouldnt be used by ANY OS? i have been using fat32 for my secondary partition to have read/write across OS'es just fine for many years without any problems. in fact to me its superior to NTFS because its much faster when it comes to read/write operations by comparason. FAT12/16 always worked just fine for me on my 286 for many years till the hard drive itself failed (disk bearing siezed) so to me it looks like you are basing your bias against FAT on your own experience alone and not the experience of others or any real techncial basis.

[douray]

There are no alternatives to Mozilla Firefox in Linux.

...And YOU'RE knowledgeable about computers?

[Hybrid]

...And YOU'RE knowledgeable about computers?

I assumed that the above would have included "viable" for alternatives based on my own criterion. It was not meant to be literal (e.g., "So you broke up with Suzie?" "Yes, there are no good girls out there.")

or technical sake, wtf makes fat32 so bad that it shouldnt be used by ANY OS? i have been using fat32 for my secondary partition to have read/write across OS'es just fine for many years without any problems. in fact to me its superior to NTFS because its much faster when it comes to read/write operations by comparason. FAT12/16 always worked just fine for me on my 286 for many years till the hard drive itself failed (disk bearing siezed) so to me it looks like you are basing your bias against FAT on your own experience alone and not the experience of others or any real techncial basis.

I mentionned above what FAT was lacking and that is only the tip of the iceberg. But without error recovery, for example, if power is cut to the drive, you risk corruption (which is why 9x scanned the disk before boot and why failures to the OS would occur by simply rebooting). These aren't experiences (I have never personally had 9x installed on my own PCs) but limitations to the filesystem. It's funny you mention that FAT is faster than NTFS, that is a myth that has never been backed up with numbers.

dont give me any of this "technical" bullshit either, because back when the operating systems were created they worked just fine the way they are today. wether the OS is using FAT16, FAT32, NTFS or any of the various journaling filesystems means absolutely nothing to the end user. all the end user wants and expects is that it turns on and does its job.

Yes, the first 1950 colour TV works just fine, but you don't see people clammer to get them. I can't even begin to touch your claim that journalling, error recovery, and that all filesystems (which you claim are created equally?) are inconsequential at the end of the day.

I never said life was fair. But thanks for illustrating my point perfectly. You can be my poster boy for an Anti-98 world. Look, there is a reason why XP is based off 2000 code and not the 9x code. There is a reason it uses NTFS and not FAT, and there is a reason why MS was attempting to dump NTFS. There was a reason why they pulled Dalkon Shield IUDs off the market and why we have moved to LCD over CRT. Technology moves forward. Whether it moves in the right direction in terms of usability is another question, but it is always a leap forward. Next thing you are going to argue that the first discman or first cell phone is still just as good was what's out there now. We are not speaking in terms of aesthetics or sadly even usability, we are speaking in terms of mere technology (and that in itself is a better making feature).

Try using defensible arguments based on something other than emotional rantings. I may a jerk, but I don't perpetuate the stereotype of a ranting loon on a BB.

[Noobie]

I'm having trouble seeing where Windows 98 is actually useful these days.

If you are a complete novice you won't know how to download other programs like Firefox anyway.

If you live in a country where people can't afford newer computers you are probably better off with Linux anyway.

If you insist on using Windows 98 because you think it's "perfection" and you refuse to upgrade for some reason, you can either consider Linux, or you will be technologically savvy enough to figure out how to get hold of a Firefox 3+ build which works on Win98.

[douray]

If you insist on using Windows 98 because you think it's "perfection" and you refuse to upgrade for some reason...

That's a caricature. I don't think there are very many sane people (even among 98 users) who would say it's "perfection". Actually, pikaunforgiven makes some pretty good points. Usefulness to you might be complete extraneous rubbish to someone else.

Hybrid, maybe you should start using that superior intellect in efforts to say what you mean and mean what you say.

Anyway, as a soon-to-be-former Windows 98 user, I have no problem with Mozilla's decision. It's part of the natural flow of things. A question, though: any word on when Opera will drop Windows 9x support?

[Uncle Spellbinder]

It's probably going to be no different whenever Vista is made public. Sure, many will flock to it. others will stay WIN XP as long as possible. About 8 years from now, when Vista is on service pack 2 or 3 and Firefox 8.0a1 is being tested, somone will start a thread here called "Bye, Windows XP", and we can all start this again.

[douray]

Sometimes I wonder if Vista might be MS's undoing

[Uncle Spellbinder]

The same was said of XP, years ago.

[douray]

The same was said of XP, years ago.

Yeah, but there seems to be much less enthusiasm for Vista than there was even for XP before its release. But yeah, MS will find a way to stay on top, no doubt.

[ehume]

One good reason for sticking with Win 98: if it's already on your old computer, it's free. Is it secure? No. But the last time I looked, buying a legal copy was the same price as Win XP. I don't know if legal copies are still available.

In any case, we will continue to run the old machine because it has ISA slots and we can run old DOS games on it, with sound. DOSBox software is not yet up to emulating the old systems well enough to play some of the old games and eduware. But no Firefox: this box will remain off the Net. It's a jungle out there.

[pikaunforgiven]

pfft.... i already knew xp was a resource whore even before i tried it on my own machines. at the time i had nothing better since my winME OEM cd broke and i couldnt find anyone who would let me "borrow" their win98 cd. thankfully after about a year of hell with xp (constant reinstallations due to the OS degrading within a month or two in my hands and overall slowness compared to ME) i finally got a hold of win2k. finally i found an OS that does everything i want without needless resource wastage on nonsense i dont even want or need yet is stable enough to keep my computer happy for months at a time. been happy ever since, and will continue to use win2k just like those who swear by win98 long after vista comes out. by the time everything will require vista to run i will have already outgrown my appetite for gaming and ill switch to linux instead. thats just my experience, take it however you want.

[ehume]

Thanks for the info on Win 2K.

[pikaunforgiven]

no problem.... im quite sure many others here who also use win2k use it for similar reasons as mine. most probably want to stay out of the OS wars and go on with better things tho.

[cycloid]

I have two computers at home, one has 98SE on (specifically 98Lite, sans Internet Explorer, very stable). it's a 2.8ghz P4 with 512MB of ram and it goes like a rocket. It's very good for building and compiling GCC projects, but it's main job is that of running Firefox and Office 97 (and, er, Doom). The other has Windows 2000 Server on it, and has Visual Studio .Net and all that real work stuff, it's only a 1.4 Athlon but gets the job done, it just seems so slooow compared to the 98 box, totally unresponsive. I should probably have done them the other way around but i physically interact with 98 most of the time, whilst the 2k box just sits there churning away at the other end of the network cable. For a laptop 98SE is teh sheet, Win ME drivers usually help with the newer laptops and there are plenty of free 98 licences floating about because of all the people who've upgraded. You hear me go "yay" every time, when rummaging through a box of computer garbage i find a 98SE manual replete with key and hologram. I am starting to hit a wall though, as i'm wanting to digitise my family movies, and even at crappy vhs quality i'm going to be running up against the FS limitations.

So, to summarise, don't lump all 98 users into a dumb-fk box, it's elitist and not the attitude that should be found around an OSS project. If the trunk really wants to move away from compatiblity then so be it. it doesnt support my Psion Revo out of the box (i've got a version of Opera for that) and, being GPL, there's always the chance of a pre-2k port for the willing.

[csdibiase]

I'm sorry for all the people that refuse to upgrade, but at some point software development companies HAVE to drop support for old OS's. Is there a Firefox version for MSDOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1? No, of course you don't. At some point the code base MUST drop support for the older platforms or else it becomes too much of a maintenance / test / support nightmare.

I'm sure that official support is not being dumped because of some elitist "Win9x sucks" attitude. In the long run it's good for the project.