Win95 Lifecycle Draws to a Close 702
Mr_Perl writes "As many Everquest players discovered recently directx 8.1 is not being made for Windows 95, sending stores everywhere into a frenzy to slap little stickers over the words "Windows 95" on game box system requirements sections. Microsoft has picked November 30th, 2001 as the date that Win95 moves into the unsupported phase of it's career, making it even more useless to those who still keep it around for playing the latest games. Looks like Win98 is slated for execution June 30, 2003."
damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates should make a good product, not squeeze (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is trying to establish the idea that they can kill their products even when people still are using them.
When this happens with Windows XP, you will no longer be able to change parts in an old computer, because doing so would require re-activation, which Microsoft won't make available after a date the company picks. This is a way of forcing users to pay more, not only for software, but for hardware, too. (Microsoft's big customers are hardware manufacturers.)
I really, really don't like Microsoft's abuse. I don't like things like the Registry, which is a database that frequently has errors that cannot be fixed with the tools Microsoft supplies. All settings for most programs are contained in the registry, and if there is bad error, it can be necessary to start over completely, and re-install all programs. For some people with a lot of programs, this can take 20 hours.
I don't like the artificial limitations which cause Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME to crash even though there is plenty of memory available.
I don't like the sloppiness and built-in weak security. This has caused billions of dollars of grief for people all over the world.
I don't like the fact that the operating system re-configures itself without any notice to the user. When there is a problem with a connection, as there often is after a computer is moved, there is no notice that something has changed.
Monopolies are not necessarily bad. Abusive monopolies are terrible.
I am very much looking forward to the time when Linux configuration and documentation are good enough that I can stop supporting Windows completely.
Why does a man who has 70 billion dollars feel that he has to squeeze money from people? Why doesn't Bill Gates relax and make a good product? Does it really make all that much difference to him to make another billion?
--
Senator Biden (and Osama bin Laden) say that the Saudi government cannot continue without U.S. support: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com]
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't seen a registry corruption in years (not since win95, actually). And the reason for that was me mucking around in regedit before I had an idea of what I was doing. Otherwise, smooth sailing all the way. In my mind, the registry is better than a pant load of .ini files. Everything's in one place, so you know that if you need to find something, you just have to fire up regedit (and the trees are generally setup pretty logically, though you can't fault Microsoft for idiot third-party developers).
Without those "artificial limitations", it's likely Win95 never would've seen the light of day. See, much of Windows 95's vaunted instability was due to Microsoft buckling under the pressure of their ISVs. Microsoft had actually removed most of the 16-bit code, and many nasty bugs. However, many ISVs told Microsoft that they weren't going to develop for Win95 immediately, since they felt that their Win3.x apps still had some life, and many OEMs and partners told Microsoft that they would not upgrade to Windows 95 unless some app (depends on the company what app that would be) was available. Thus, to be able to make Windows 95, it needed to have much better backwards-compatibility. Which meant re-introducing lots of nasty 16-bit code and a number of bugs that win3.x developers had come to rely upon. Was it wrong for them to do that? Yes, probably. But when you're a business, making money is important. Had they not, no money would be made. QED.
Erm, choose the OS family you're speaking of. Yes, win9x had very weak security, and for a good reason -- it's a home system, and at the time win95 was written the internet wasn't so popular. Now, if you want to make the "billions of dollars" argument, you'll have to refer to NT, which is not win9x, and has some pretty impressive security features. Yes, there were problems, too (note that IIS is not considered part of the OS), but a lot of that (I'm not saying a majority, but a lot) came from admins who had no clue what they were doing when it came to NT security. My point? Pick one or the other -- either you're talking about win9x and the weak security argument holds up, or you're talking about NT and the "billions of dollars" argument could make a fair case, but not both.
I'm assuming you're referring to the fact that Windows networking defaults to DHCP. Don't you think the same thing would happen on any other OS that uses DHCP to get an IP address?
Either you're very naive and have no clue how publicly-traded businesses work, or you're deliberately trolling. I'll assume the former, as it's up to the moderators to decide the latter. Okay, quick lesson in the economics of a publicly-traded coporation: That money Microsoft makes does not go directly into BillG's pocket. Microsoft is responsible to its shareholders to continue to be profitable. It does that by releasing product. In the cycle of product development, there comes a point where you have to call it "good enough" and release it so that you can sell it and a) recoup your R&D costs, and b) hopefully make a profit to keep your shareholders happy. This is what Microsoft does. Yes, Microsoft, just like any other group of developers in the world, would love to sit on a product until it's 100% perfect. Doing that, however, is economic suicide. I'm not even talking just the loss of a monopoly position. Microsoft can survive without that. I'm talking about disappearing off the face of the free market. You can't run a business designed around selling product without releasing product. It's just not possible.
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:5, Insightful)
I've reinstalled Win98SE twice because of registry rot, and now again there are weird things happening that are impossible to localise. You could assume I'm a moron, of course.
In my mind, the registry is better than a pant load of .ini files. Everything's in one place, so you know that if you need to find something, you just have to fire up regedit (and the trees are generally setup pretty logically, though
you can't fault Microsoft for idiot third-party developers).
So as long as you only install MS products you'll be fine. I CAN blame MS for creating a system that crashes if you dare to install products from other companies.
I'd MUCH rather have a pantsload of ini files. Then I can sort them by date and find the most recently changed ones and fix/delete/restore them. I use an installer tracker and find the average large app inserts hundreds of entries in the registry, many just cryptic strings. It's beyond human understanding.
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:4, Flamebait)
No wonder everyone here hates MS so much--the article talks about Win95, you're using Win98SE. Trust me, THOSE SUCK. Win95 sucks, 98 sucks, 98SE sucks, ME is probably the worst of all of them. Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems. Not that 2000 doesn't have any problems, but it is a much, much better OS and the problems are fewer and farther between.
Even if you actually decided to buy the OS, the $100 or so would be well worth getting rid of the frustration of 95/98/etc. A guy here at my work uses 98 and it is nothing but trouble.
Amazing, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if Win95 was released 8/24/95, do you realize what version of the Linux kernel was released just 4 days later, on 8/28/95?
1.3.21 [memalpha.cx]
Is anyone here running that version of the kernel? If you don't want problems with Windows, the least you can do (besides not using it at all) is to use a relatively current version). I can only imagine the flaming if someone was on here complaining that their 1.3.21-based distribution had problems with their new hardware.
Re:Amazing, isn't it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a serious statement? I don't think any of the old win95 software is going to stop working. If you're talking about free upgrades, what you paid $100 for in 1995 isn't what they're selling in 2001 (not just MS, any company). I can imagine you going into a car dealership now--"Hey, my '85 Honda Civic didn't come with a CD player like you have now--I want mine for free! I paid good money for this car."
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what everbody used to say about NT 3.51, then 4.0... Supposedly it was going to "revolutionarize the way we do computing," or some such crap, very similar to the XP propaganda.
And you know what? Back in 1998, I tried to install NT on a machine that had Linux, SCO OpenServer, and Windows 95 on it. The Windows installation program wiped out my entire partition table, then said there was some kind of error and it couldn't continue (and it only gave an error code, it's not like it actually explained what the error was).
This product, my friend, is below any conceivable standards of software quality and engineering. I haven't used any MS junk since the above incident, and I've been happily running Linux with 12-15 months uptime on average, and unparalleled flexibility and robustness.
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:4, Insightful)
Which points out one of my real peeves about Microsoft: at a certain point they stop releasing service packs and patches, and start releasing changes to the OS using all sorts of sneaky non-documented methods. If you were an OEM and had access to OSR 2.5, great. But if you were a home user of W95, after Service Pack 1 (W95 SP2 being basically useless) you were out of luck. Same with NT 4 today: where is Service Pack 7?
sPh
Re:Bill Gates should make a good product, not sque (Score:3, Informative)
Try 2000 and you won't have to worry about all those problems.
No, you'll just have problems with Win2k not flushing the write cache on IDE drives before powering off. The "bugfix" from Microsoft didn't fix it.
What did it cause us? Registry problems, incidentally. Win2k refuses to boot because the registry is corrupt. Not even safe mode. And having an ERD or using the backup registry doesn't help; every time you log in the registry changes and trying to roll it back to a recent (2 days ago) backup confuses the shit out of AutoDesk Inventor since they're paranoid about pirated software. Using an old registry also confuses Office 2000. So I ask again, what use is this proprietary, very undocumented, unreadable and practically unfixable single point of failure? Hell due to its very nature backups don't even work!
Give me separate ini files or give me a human-readable, fully documented registry. Ideally, give me all of that and a bugfix that actually works!
Win2k is a lot better than anything that came before. It is not, however, infallable. These problems are experienced on high-end (dual proc, 1G RAM) CAD workstations with mid-end (AutoDesk, Inc.) software. Who do you blame now? Microsoft, for creating a horrendous single point of failure, Microsoft, for not actually testing their bugfix, or AutoDesk for following Microsoft's reccomended programming practises and using the registry for everything and anything?
When XP is no longer "supported for reactivation" (Score:4, Troll)
This is so goddamn true, and has never even occurred to the mainstream press. Or it has and they are just ignoring it. Sometime in the future, probably after the 2003 "end of life" for WIn98, WindowsXP .NET will appear, and MS will say "We no longer reactivate unsupported products" - i.e., Windows XP.
This is the reason I am going for Windows 2000 because hopefully by the time games are no longer made to work on it, say by 2003 or 2004 (whenever the future .NET/XP codebase splits from the 2k one irrevocably), Linux will be mature enough to be a true alternative (playing catch-up with Win32 by KDE and GNOME is not my idea of an alternative, unless you are a MacOS freak who thinks that running Office 98 on MacOS really is "Thinking Different").
Re:damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the old days, when hardware was the sole bottleneck, some hacker in his garage could write something that shocked the world. Look at Doom-a shareware program by a few hackers. Look at Wolfenstein-a slick but fiensishly complex work produced by experienced corporations. The complexity of software is now orders of magnitude greater than it was ten or fifteen years ago.
Suprisingly, this exponential increase in software complexity has begun to outstrip Moore's Law: only the newest 3d games require the latest hardware. Almost everything else runs well on a 2 or 3 year old system. Furthermore, graphics cards are the key to top performance, and chip speed, while relevant, isn't as critical as it used to be. This trend will continue as ambitious projects run into barriers set by graphics cards and network connections.
What does this mean? While certain hardware components will remain critical, the new bottleneck for most applications will be software. The latest applications with all the bells and whistles will be fiendishly difficult to develop and debug. Security will become more important with the advent of always-on broadband connections. Since software development is holding things back, software companies must give users compelling reasons to upgrade; they can no longer rely on rising cpu speeds to drive sales.
Microsoft is the monopoly on the desktop, and therefore the most threatened by these changes. Some people still use windows 95, and still prefer it over new versions, in 2001. That's six years! The product line has already begun to enter stasis and fragment. 95, 98, NT, ME, XP, 2K vs. Linux, MacOS, BSD, BeOS, Solaris...there are as many competing strains of windows as there are competing OSes! If Microsoft allows itself to stagnate its power will erode, and third parties will find reliable ways around the barriers to competition MS has set up. The MS leadership has many faults, but stupidity is not among them. Something is going to give.
Planned obsolescence is Microsoft's new model. If the old system does everything it needs to, nobody will upgrade. Therefore, believes MS, the old system must not be allowed to do the necessities. Since the necessities will soon be effectively free from hardware constraints software must be the new control mechanism. Hence, product activation, .NET and passport, and the end of support for old OSes. Product activation codes will create an artificial link between new hardware and new software, while .NET, passport, and digital rights management place control of the most critical applications and data almost irrevocably in Microsoft's hands. Online, with everything dependent on MS servers, they can easily block out third parties (just as AOL's AIM fought with MSN messenger) and discontinue support for old software. They can sell subscriptions and monitor users. If MS has its way the existing hardware driven revenue engine will be replaced by one of purely artificial control. By leveraging its monopoly and turning proprietary crippleware into a standard Microsoft hopes to be a far more formidable presence in five years than it is now.
Think about it-by various methods you can currently communicate with windows users, even if you use another OS. However, in Microsoft's vision this is impossible. With the ability to constantly change its closed standards MS will block out any attempts at compatibility with its proprietary formats; you will only be able to exchange word documents if you have an up to date and registered version of office on a supported OS. Even linux users will *need* access to an updated windows box to interact with the rest of the world. MS considers linux it's number one threat right now, and this sinister plan is the only way it could possibly eliminate that threat.
Microsoft's existing monopoly will allow it to quietly build this trap. Businesses will fear the costs of changing to something new and different, a herd mentality will prevail, and MS will not be foolish enough to drive companies away prematurely with licensing extortion. Once a business is locked into .NET it will be almost impossible to convince it to reimplement its entire set of mission critical information services with something completely new; a gradual transfer will not be possible. Users will naturally want a platform compatible with the one they use at work as computing becomes more tightly integrated into the fabric of everyday life. In fact, use of an incompatible platform may severely inhibit the ability to perform many jobs, as well as precluding telecommuting. This is how Microsoft plans to rule the world in the future, and this scenario is not at all farfetched. The only thing standing between them and absolute power in the world of personal and business computing is the acceptance of their new control mechanisms by the mainstream of users. So far the mainstream has been frighteningly compliant. There was a time when predictions such as these would have been dismissed as paranoia or trolling, but today there exists irrefutable evidence that Microsoft has already put these plans into motion. After all, these plans are the logical course for a capitalist to follow.
Re:damn... (Score:3, Insightful)
So true.
Just for a lark, I installed Win3.1 and '95B on a ~1GHz, 7200RPM drive, 256M, decently-high-end machine.
Holy fsck, it boots fast. 3.1 in less than a second. Win95B took up less than 100M when all the extraneous crap was configured out of the install.
Side note on the Registry. Is it just me, or is a good portion of "boot time" reading in the 7-8M of fragmented files that USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT become after a few months?
I suspect defragging doesn't work, because the files are in use during defragging, and many defraggers (with good reason) ignore system/hidden/readonly files.
I concur with the "gimme 1000 .ini files any day" approach. Put the config files (and any custom DLLs) in the application's directory, where they belong. I should be able to "uninstall" an application by merely deleting a directory tree.
MS-DOS (Score:3, Funny)
And I have a still shrink-wrapped 6.22 upgrade...I wonder if it'll ever be collectable....
Re:MS-DOS (Score:2)
Re:MS-DOS (Score:3, Informative)
Hummm... (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Hummm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hummm... (Score:2, Informative)
Which is precisely why I question the quality of the upgrade. Why would it hurt MicroSoft to release Win95 for free if 98, ME and XP are so wonderful? 98 was 95 with USB, ME was 98 with new icons, which leaves XP as the first major upgrade to the home user's version of Windows since 1995.
Re:Hummm... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hummm... (Score:2)
Probably because Win 3.11, aka "Windows for Workgroups" was targeted at corporates rather than consumers. Some companies are notoriously slow at upgrading ("don't fix what ain't broke") and I wouldn't be at all surprised if WfWG was still in use.
Re:Hummm... (Score:2)
Not really. If anything, Windows 95's DOS 7 was even better than 6 if you negate the downgraded utilities. Sure you had to buy a new version of QEMM, but the only things that wouldn't run were broken version-locked garbage anyway. ME's DOS 8 (boot disks) is another matter, though, and I've had some problems using that. But since ME is supposed to "kill" DOS, is that really a surprise?
If they do that... (Score:3, Informative)
That's exactly what I use Windows 95 for.
I put a copy on my Dad's old P-133 laptop so that he could do word processing for his job (he's not quite Linux ready, and neither is the laptop). It runs. And so do the programs I installed on it.
I know what you might be thinking: "that's old stuff, and old stuff is as supported as it gets on 95." Well...
there are still a lot of products out there that use simple Pentium chips and small memories that keep coming out that could use a good Windows API every now and then.
So what is our recourse for "Lite" systems, if not older versions of the software if Windows is required?
I suppose if we wait a few more years, the Windows clone will be ready, and that could replace it...
Re:If they do that... (Score:3, Offtopic)
"Nice" and "Simple" ??? (Score:2)
There are actually tons of OSses which are nice and simple around: BeOS, RiscOS, AtheOS...
But no: definitely not win95.
This had indeed quite more features than win3.1 but I am not sure it was that better as all the new features it had were as many reasons to crash.
It therefore seems that stability approaches with 2000 and XP (though the latter crashed at boot time yesterday... nor eason but I had 3 differently moving mouse pointers on screen...).
So, no: What was "nice" with win95 was that it triggered the disparition of the former Presentation Manager Ergonomy features.
It didn't make these as simple, though as it was using many features which were coming from differently designed platforms (NeXTstep, MacOS, RiscOS, AmigaOS...) hence making its behaviour not relevant in some situations... (the situation has not evolved ever since and besides the keyboard text selection flexibility, there is not that much either revolutionary, nice or simple in win95 GUI).
Re:If they do that... (Score:2)
Re:If they do that... (Score:2)
If you want a lite version of win98 try win 98 lite [98lite.net] to remove the internet exploder.
But there are always light versions. If you want simple word processing you can choose wordpad. If you want simple browsing you can use opera (5.12, 6.0 is beta quality) or ie. 3.0 (or netscape 2.0). However if you want all the latest you will find that you need all kinds of updates of the OS. Lots of cpu and ram help, however you do not need them (yet) for you wordprocessing.
Note that i am writing this on a windows 95(b) company machine, that still does telnet fine, and will telnet fine the next year. (I could get NT4, but they block the registry there, I like to edit the registry for oracle)
Re:If they do that... (Score:2)
Does this add any rights? (Score:4, Flamebait)
Questions
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no legal definition of abandonware (nor any legal concept of it).
Have there been any court decisions on abandonware and whether it's legally okay to trade it/hack it/despoil it in general?
Copyright does not require support of the copyrighted work.
Has MS been enforcing MS-DOS licenses?
Yes. SPA and other copyright enforcement goons still catalog and penalize illegal copies of MS-DOS.
If not, will that make Win95 sort of a free-for-all too?
No.
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like it or not, just because a company ceases supporting software dosn't mean that they have in any way abandoned or renounced their copyrights, which still last 95 years.
Since MS, quite overtly, ceases support to force upgrades expect quite vigorous defense of their intellectual property rights.
KFG
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:2)
* abandonware is a legally useless term
* it is still illegal to trade what people refer to as "abandonware".
The only people the term mean anything to, is those that want to justify trading older games.
Personally I think copyright should not go that far back. People SHOULD be able to trade abandonware, because society earns nothing from having people live on their royalties instead of coming up with something new.
Copyright should be ~5 years, that leaves enough of a window for people to exploit their material/software.. After five years they better come up with something new.
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:2)
2) Even if there were, win95 would clearly not be abandonware, as other versions of Windows are still supported. One can hardly say that v2.0 of a program is "abandoned" because the company only supports v3.0 - the program is still supported.
Re:Does this add any rights? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the lab I work at we still have a few AT machines, that run an early version of DOS and have programs in Basica to control some instruments. When we thought the system and program disks had been lost for a while we couldn't figure out how to re-obtain the things we needed, but at least all we had to look for was some disks, and not also a registration confirmation.
I am thinking maybe the reg scheme that I expect to become commonplace will require upgrades every 5 years, whence you can no longer reinstall the OS, which lets face it, you have to do quite a bit with Windows.
The wait (Score:5, Funny)
It always takes so long to execute criminals in this country...
Microsoft support (Score:4, Interesting)
Face it, the opportunity cost of maintaining any product in the 9x/ME line will continue to rise in the upcoming years. The fact that 95 through ME were essentially the same product with performance tweaks, bug "fixes," and feature additions made it easy(er) to spread DirectX willy nilly. But now we face Windows 2000 which looks like MS already wants to kill and XP, two projects that (supposedly) share minimal common code with their older brethren.
I'm sure most properly designed software that runs on 98 through ME will still run on 95 for years to come. You just won't see the latest gaming patches for it. And who runs Quake IX on Win95, anyway?
Re:Microsoft support (Score:2, Informative)
I also found that IE5.01 is out of support as well, and installed IE6 (which I need to test pages, as a web developer, don't worry I have a couple of Mozilla versions to make up for it
My old PII 333 can't keep up with the latest XP
Seriously, most Windows INF (installation script) files have $CHICAGO$ at the top as their version signature, the codename of Windows 95. I've yet to meet one that says '$MEMPHIS$' or similar. Surely it's just an exercise of finding the right installation/'advpack' DLL versions to get these programs going, as the core system API can't be that different once installed? Perhaps just install DX8, and manually copy over the DLLs and any relevant registry settings for DX8.1?
At the moment I'm running IE4, 5 and 6 concurrently. Come 2003, I'll relish the challange of adding 7 and 8 to the mix
Re:Microsoft support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoft support (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft support (Score:2)
Any product that supports Windows 98 must also support Internet Explorer 4. Internet Explorer 6 is available for Windows 95 (have to dig a little bit), so your argument makes little sense.
Also, any
Get back to this when
Support for MS OSes? (Score:5, Informative)
MS DOS x.xx (December 31, 2001)
Windows 3.xx (December 31, 2001)
Windows 95 (November 30, 2001)
Windows NT 3.5x (December 31, 2001)
Windows 98/98 SE (June 30, 2003)
Windows NT 4.xx (June 30, 2003)
Anyone else find it odd that MS will be supporting DOS, Win 3.x and NT 3.5 a month longer than 95? I mean, seriously. I can count the number of people I know that have win 3.x system on one hand.
I only wish I could do that for people who use 95.
Re:Support for MS OSes? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, Windows95 systems have many more capabilities and require actual human beings to troubleshoot and whatnot.
So considering how much more money the must be losing to support Windows95, and how cheaply Windows 3.1x can be supported, it probably makes sense in a capitalist way.
Course, I could be reading too much into it.
Re:Support for MS OSes? (Score:2)
Hardware and software running with Windows 3.x or MS-DOS however can not generally be assumed to be upgradeble to W98 or newer.
Re:Support for MS OSes? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that odd, since everything that can run W95 can run W98 too, IOW there is no reason not to upgrade from W95 to W98.
How about not wanting to spend $106.99 [amazon.com] upgrading a shitty installation that's only there so I can play some Windows games?
Re:Support for MS OSes? (Score:2)
MS explains [microsoft.com] it (somehow):
"Windows 95 as produced for the OEM channel includes a version of Java technology that Microsoft has not been able to manufacture since March 31, 2001. Given that inventory supplies are limited, Microsoft notified OEMs in March 2001 that we would continue to license Windows 95 only through the end of November 2001."
Hmm, I thought Java wasn't too well "tied" to the OS at the time, is its removal really that hard? Couple of years ago I bought a CD-ROM of AmigaOS for emulator use [cloanto.com], and all "third-party" stuff was removed very successfully... =)
Re:Support for MS OSes? (Score:3, Informative)
Win2k next... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Win2k next... (Score:2)
And that's just the things that Microsoft does AFTER a product is considered obsolete. You should also count in how Microsoft designed NT 4 to not support hard drives larger than 8 Gigs, made different version of DOS incompatible, designed the OSes to slow down as they get a couple months old, and oh some many incompatibilities.
Geee, welcome to software planned obsolescence (Score:5, Interesting)
The hardware underneath has not changed much. A month ago they celebrated the last of the 16 bit code again. That chunk of code could have run on an 8088, just like MS DOS 3.2 can run on my AthlonXP. The hardware folks have gone to great lenghts to maintain compatibility. In the same way I can move Linux hard disks around the room from a 486 to an Athlon and have it boot.
Where's the software improvement? Can anyone out there name one thing that I can do in XP that I could not do under Win3.1 or DOS? Movies, check, audio, check, ethernet, check, IP suite, check, instant messenger, check, dancing icons and goofey sounds, check. All of it was possible, despite the artificial 16Meg RAM limitations, under their dinky single user non multitasking software. Today, their dinky single user non multitasking softare acts much the same, but it's a little faster thanks to hardware improvements. Win 3.1 flies on the same hardware that 9x chokes with more code than it takes to fly the space shuttle. If bloat is improvement, OK, there has been some real change.
M$ would have you believe that you are a "consumer" of software and that bytes somehow go stale in time. I've never eaten a byte in my life. It's hard for me to believe that their non compatibility issues are anything but planned.
Not the end of DOS (Score:2)
why bash microsoft for this? (Score:2, Insightful)
MS couldnt stop supporting older versions that
easily. the majority of people doesnt seem to
have a problem with activation, doesnt seem to
have a problem with higher costs, huge required
diskspace, enforced digital rights management,
sloppy support for MP3, discontinued support
for older games and applications and more.
its similar to politics: people get the politicians they vote for and they get the
OS they buy.
Re:why bash microsoft for this? (Score:2)
When it's as simple as checking a box during installation (or 5 minutes on the phone, if don't have an internet connection), sends no personal data, and is very non-intrusive (you have to do some major hardware upgrades to force a re-activation, and XP doesn't need the customary yearly re-install like the win9x line), what's the problem? It's simply a company protecting their IP.
Yes, XP takes about 1GB of disk space for installation. But with 80GB drives running for $150USD (less, even!), that's roughly $1.88 worth of disk space. Stop living in the past.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Care to explain?
Bullshit. Windows Media Player never did encode mp3's at a bitrate higher than 64kbps, but it played them just fine. XP's version of WMP can encode at a higher rate if you pay $10 for an add-on pack, and it plays mp3's just as well as previous versions. As well, there's nothing stopping you from installing other apps to rip and play mp3s.
As far as older apps go, only things that relied on low-level system calls are broken (things like Norton Utilities, for instance). For games, I don't follow your reasoning at all. All the games I currently have run perfectly fine (even Quake1!). Hell, I can still run the old Commander Keen games just fine (no sound card sound, but that's simply because I'm lazy and it's nostalgic for me to use the PC speaker for those games). Yes, XP is based on Windows 2000, and yes, Windows 2000 did have some compatibility problems with games. That's fine, as Win2K was not aimed at the gaming public. Microsoft made a concerted effort to make sure many older games work well in XP. You may have to update your video driver (the native nVidia drivers don't like OpenGL, for instance, though if you get nVidia's latest release it works fine), but if you're a gamer you do that already.
Care to list more so I can debunk those as well?
If you're going to bash something, please at least try using it so that you have something on which to base your arguments. You seem to be regurgitating the same old arguments that have been thoroughly disproved over and over again. At the very least, get creative if you're going to make up stuff.
Re:why bash microsoft for this? (Score:4, Troll)
When it's as simple as checking a box during installation (or 5 minutes on the phone, if don't have an internet connection), sends no personal data, and is very non-intrusive (you have to do some major hardware upgrades to force a re-activation, and XP doesn't need the customary yearly re-install like the win9x line), what's the proble
m? It's simply a company protecting their IP.
"
Advance the clock five years. Windows XP is now 'unsupported'. You have a hard disk crash and need to reinstall your operating system. How do you intend to do that when the phoneline has been shut down? Suppose you upgrade your PC after support has been discontinued - new OS for you.
That's not protecting their IP. That's disabling software I purchased.
Do they have a number I can call to register the transfer of my software when I sell it or move it to a different computer?
Secondly, scale this up so every application you have needs to be registered before use, and every audio CD has to be registered against each of your CD players, every book has to be registered against your ebook device. Now, if you think it's a hassle dealing with the insurance company after your laptop got stolen think how bad it will be now after you have to get each and every application reissued to you and disabled from someone elses use.
How does this improve the world we have today?
Re:why bash microsoft for this? (Score:4, Funny)
In all these cases, if you write down the number the person on the other end of the phone gives you then you can reinstall later to your heart's content.
The XP authentication will use the same number if there aren't hardware changes. Hence your written down response number will work and you wouldn't have to call.
Furthermore, Microsoft *will* keep a database of registration and activation and if you call back in 5 years I'm sure they'll still be able to look up your pertinant info.
David Coursey over at ZDNet [zdnet.com] actually approached Bill Gates on this "deactivation" concern at a special dinner surrounding the XP launch. Here's a quote from the article [zdnet.com]:
WILL WINDOWS XP EXPIRE?
"Nonsense!" was how Gates responded to my sharing the concerns of some readers--this is the urban legend I wrote about last Wednesday--that Microsoft plans to use its activation technology to turn off copies of Windows XP when Microsoft decides to stop supporting it.
This idea was so far from left field that I had to explain it a couple of times before Gates responded and then reminded me he doesn't license his software that way--you get to use it forever, and Microsoft has to convince you to give them more money by offering new innovations.
While I agree with Gates that the fears are unfounded, there are people who believe this nonsense, which I've already tried to debunk once. So, remember the words of Chairman Bill: "Once you buy it, you have the right to use it forever."
There you have it from the man himself. "Once you buy it, you have the right to use it forever." I especially like the fact that when asked about this it took Bill a couple of times before understanding what the question was. The idea of "deactivating" users honestly never crossed his mind.
So....when support is no longer provided for XP in the future, you may not be able to get updates, patches, etc., but you will deffinately still be able to run it. That wonderful legal agreement called the EULA protects your interests too you know.
Buy?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an strikingly disingenuous quote from a man who has gone to great lengths to emphasize that when you purchase Windows you are buying, not software, but the license to use it.
They've made quite clear that Micros~1 is shifting its focus from selling applications to selling *service*. In other words, you are not buying anything, you are renting -- and have the right to use it as long as you continue to pay up.
It's like saying, "Once you buy a satellite dish, you have the right to use it forever". Sure, you do. But unless you pay for the service, all the dish does is hang off the side of your house.
Planned obsolescence (Score:2)
Okay, so I admit Win95 and Win98 are truly atrocious DOS-based turds, and M$ is technically right to phase them out.
*but*
Consider this : have you ever tried RealNetwork's RealPlayer ? you'd download the free version, install it, then after a while, it tells you that it didn't want to work anymore and that you have to go download a newer version from RealNetwork's site. You're happy with the version you have, but the software maker refuses to let you decide whether or not you want to keep the old version and not go through the pain of re-installing again.
Well, similarly, there are a whole lot of people out there who have a Win9x OS installed, and a bunch of apps that work reasonably well with it, and they'd be quite happy to keep using it. But M$ has decided to discontinue support for Win9x, so in effect, they've decided for the user what they should use. RealPlayer is a royal pain in the @ss when it disables itself, but at least it's free. When M$ discontinues support for Win9x, they slowly and painlessly force you to go *buy* a newer version of their OS !
Of course, it's nothing new, every manufacturer in the world (software, hardware, automotive ...) ends up discontinuing products, but usually it's only after the product is really very deprecated. I can still find aftermarket parts for my 30 year old car for example, but who's going to make aftermarket "parts" for Win9x ? nobody, because M$ is the only one to know what is in their products. And do you think a 5 year old OS is deprecated ? Linus Torvalds probably begs to differ.
So at the end of the day, it just goes to show that people should really consider opensource OSes as a long-term alternative for Windows : in 15 years, if you don't find a driver for your Linux kernel v1.2, you can always end up making it yourself if it's important enough to you. Or you can recompile this old program that you really need badly. Just like I can adapt parts from other brands of cars to mine, or even remanufacture one from scratch if I have to, because the car isn't "closed source".
In short, fsck planned obsolescence and fsck Micro$oft ...
Re:Planned obsolescence (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this is totally ridiculous. How are they deciding what the user can't use? It's not like Win95 is not going to work anymore (well, whether it worked or not in the first place is debatable, but that's another post) once it's unsupported, it just means they're not going to patch it anymore. You can use Win95 for the next 50 years if you like, they're just not making new stuff for it.
Sega hasn't "supported" the Genesis/Megadrive in six or seven years, but I can fscking well still play it! Or should they be obligated to keep making new stuff for it, as you seem to be insinuating Microsoft ought to be doing for Win95? Considering how outdated Win95 is at this point, I'm suprised they supported it this long.
Re:Planned obsolescence (Score:2)
Just to clarify, I wasn't taking issue with your statement that open-source software is superior- because I'd agree with that. It would be nice if they could at least release the source to their products at the end of their supported life, if not completely open-source it from the get-go.
I was disagreeing with your assertion that because they're not supporting the OS any more, it's suddenly become unusable.
Re:Planned obsolescence (Score:2, Interesting)
Rule #1 for defending Microsoft:
Be so narrowminded and shortsighted to fail to see any future developments. And call everybody ridiculous who does.
It's correct that Win95 continues to work, but for WinXP you will need Microsoft's good will (aka WPA). Of course they will grant you gracefully to use XP, so that people like you can tell how nice Microsoft is and nothing changes. However the version after WinXP, will have WPA that works and will be enforced so people like you will tell us that nothing changes, MS just enforces what they did not before. BTW, they force XP on new PCs and inflate [zdnet.com]
XP-selling numbers to proclaim XP as "the standard" and abandon older versions earlier.
Is Microsoft evil? No, they just don't care about laws and can get away with it. (BTW: Didn't Bill Gates lie under oath? Wouldn't mere mortals go to jail or at least be fined?)
Is Windows a safe investment? Only in short-term.
Windows 95 abandoned long time ago (Score:3, Informative)
Until I upgraded my computer, I still had Windows 95 on it. When I replaced the 300 MHz K6-2 processor with a 450 MHz one, I was surprised to see that Windows did no longer run.
The problem was well-known; K6-2 processors of above 350 MHz were incompatible with Windows (or surely, it's the other way around?). A patch was available, but guess what? It only applied to Windows 95 release 2 or later. We poor souls still running the very first Windows 95 release were left in the dark.
After throwing out Windows, the following years were a happy multiboot-story of Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD and DR-DOS. Windows is not missed, other than the occasional urge to play Need for Speed again;-)
Not a moment too soon ... (Score:2)
I remember going to a pre-release technical thing at the end of 94 and the reaction they got when they explained what 95 actually was (can't remember clearly 'cos I had a very heavy night the night before) was incredible. We had to sign an NDA so we weren't allowed to tell people that it was basically Win 3.11 with a few bits rewritten as 32bit and a mutex (yes, just one) around the bits that couldn't cope with the pre-emptive multi-tasking (most of it). How they managed to get away with selling it as a "32 bit multi-tasking operating system" is beyond me. It's not 32bit, it's not (properly) multi tasking and I'm not sure it's worthy of the name "operating system. They admitted at the time that half of it was still 16bit - hence the constant "out of system resources" when the 64K user/gdi heaps ran out. The number of times I've heard users ask "why is it out of memory when I have 256Mb RAM?". The only answer I could give is "because your operating system is a bastardised heap of 16bit crap". My work machine runs 2K and people can't believe it when I say I reboot about twice a month (and yes, I develop in C++ on it). 2K might not be very good, but it beats the crap out of 9x.
I shall not mourn its passing - not that 98 is much different. They should never have been developed.
If someone's got a link to an official looking article on the subject, please post so I can send to the management along with a comment "now can we get rid of this fucking shit".
Ding dong the shit is dead!
A minute of silence... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A minute of silence... (Score:5, Funny)
MS is just making business (Score:2)
On XP, anyone who has experienced any real trouble on their own with the licenses? I haven't, but I don't use a home licence (I do run legal mind you all, msdn subscription). As far as I've understood it, you to have to get a new serial if you do something, you have a 30 day grace period and there is no trouble at all getting this number if you have internet access. We are just talking minutes online or minutes on a phone. Could be it be that people who don't want to pay for their windows screaming out in anger about this?
Why are people still using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also the last version I will ever have bought.
I don't blame MS for moving it into the dustbin of history, but I believe they should be asking themselves what it is about their later products that people would still be using Win95.
If Microsoft, as a corporation, were capable of asking themselves such questions, they wouldn't be Microsoft.
Newer! Slower! Bigger! Less Modular! More Microsoft!
Bob-
Unfortunate (Score:2, Interesting)
If MS continues to publish OS's with license restrictions like XP (which they will) I think it will force more alternatives like Linux to evolve and compete...Especially if the older MS alternatives become unusable...
Help me out here (Score:2, Interesting)
I only ask this question since M$ seems to ignore things like my 5-year-old laptop which could never handle anything above Win98, but works fine with Win95
Impossible... (Score:2)
Hey just because it was popular doesn't mean its the right thing to do... I mean would you jump off a bridge if all the popular kids did it? Of course I say all this while I wait for Win98 to download the 50 gig of updates it needs since it was released over a modem (ick).
Support can't last forever (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has big labs full of computers, and testers who work in these labs. If they support DirectX on Win95, that means they need to run tests on Win95, which means they need computers set up and running Win95, and they need to pay the testers who will run all the tests on Win95. When the testers find bugs, the DirectX developers need to fix the bugs, too. None of this is free.
It's not that Microsoft will be going out of their way to make sure things break on Win95; they just won't pay any attention to Win95 anymore. Stuff might even work, especially since MS will still be testing against Win98, which is similar to Win95.
One of the things I like about HP: they have an official policy that they support their products for five years after they stop selling them. Microsoft seems to have chosen a similar guideline of about five years after they stopped selling stuff. That's not bad.
It's true that when everything older than WinXP is dropped, that you won't be able to buy any non-activated MS software new. By then I expect to be running 100% Linux, including games, so I'm not worried about it, but even if I were there is a huge pool of Windows software out there at swap meets, on eBay, etc. It will still work as well as it ever did.
MS isn't doing anything evil or unexpected here. Support can't last forever.
steveha
Re:Support can't last forever (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, backwards compatibility generally means that new OS releases will run old apps, and new apps will use old file formats. Microsoft doesn't break this (much). They're saying that new apps won't work on old OS's and new file formats won't work in old apps. I'm not their biggest fan, but I think the killing of support for Win95 is pragmatism, not malice.
The End of my Windows eXPerience, I guess... (Score:2, Troll)
Windoze 98 dies in 2003, huh? Well, then I guess that's when I can no longer buy new Windoze-based games for my machine, since there is absolutely no fscking way I am installing Windows XP on this system. I will absolutely not tolerate invasive spyware and pervasive copy protection measures on my machine under any circumstances. Nor will I move to Windows ME Harder, which was even more crash-prone than Win-98.
If game companies wish to continue to enjoy my custom, they can bloody well port to Linux. Hell, I'll even buy a Mac if I have to. But Windows XP will absolutely never cross the threshold of my home.
Schwab
Re:The End of my Windows eXPerience, I guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point: It's none of their damn business.
Once they sold me the copy, the business relationship is at an end. Who I am, whether or not I install it, my hardware configuration, and any future hardware upgrades are my business and mine alone.
Even if you're not an adherent of the classic value of MYOB, I simply don't trust them. Microsoft has shown again and again that it is not a trustworthy entity. I don't trust them as a business, and I don't trust their products to not defecate all over themselves at the first opportunity, destroy my data, or cede control of my machine to a hostile third party.
Now they're insisting that I offer to them as tribute my personal information (what, the $200 they soaked me for wasn't enough?). The justification for this is to thwart "piracy," to which they claim to "lose" billions of dollars a year. Yet, somehow, the company continues to post record earnings quarter after quarter.
Sorry, I'm not buying it for one nanosecond. Their alleged excuse doesn't stand scrutiny and -- even if it were legitimate -- it doesn't change the fact that it's none of their damn business.
Schwab
Re:The End of my Windows eXPerience, I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
I really ought to more officially document it, including tcpdumps of whatever the system is sending to MS and what is in the response, if any, from MS. Just because you aren't sending in for Product Activation doesn't mean it's not spyware. Also, I re-installed the OS later after formatting and both logged and blocked to see if it changed the install at all, and the install performed almost exactly as it had before, except a bit slower in places where it would timeout on a connection and try another IP until the list of IPs was exhausted. So the net connects don't seem to positively affect the install whatsoever.
Don't believe me? Try the experiment for yourself. Being a sys-admin I can toy around with the company firewall and license, but at home you can set up something similar.
This is just their income plan ... (Score:3, Informative)
So how do MS make sure that they have a sustainable income? They create an OS that is ever changing, "Rent your software!".
Ok, if they had come up with that idea in 1995, then they would have achieved their sustainable income (with minimal effort) and be on easy (easier) street. But they have to get rid of these older OSes that people won't upgrade. How do they make people go to XP? Start cutting out support of course!
So in a few years, XP will be it, MS can maintain their income with minimal effort and the hardware industry will we happy supplying new PCs for an ever growing OS that will make older PCs whine and cripple under its fluffiness
I guess the point is that it's business. That is the whole deal with capitalism. I'm not a communist, I'm just baffled at everyone's amazment at this issue. It's a dog eat dog world and MS the fattest dog
Re:This is just their income plan ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Independent developers design software for MS products because of the platforms' ubiquity. One 'feature' that Microsoft customers are implicitly paying for is the availability of software. By taking away that platform's continued availability to new users, MS dries up the development market for older platforms, forcing users to upgrade even if they have no compelling need for the upgrade through the upgrade's intrinsic changes. Users upgrade to keep up with the newer software and for the continued hardware support, not for the OS itself.
It is a particularly vicious circle. It would not be so dangerous if Microsoft did not have such a chokehold on the software market. I am hopeful that this chokehold will encourage the development of viable alternatives, like Linux. On the other hand, MS's monopoly advantage might be too great for simply the best technology to win out.
The issue raided of "abandonware" in earlier posts is a reasonable one. Copyrights and patents are given so that creators may benefit from their creation, for the benefit of society. When intellectual property rights are enforced to discourage the dessemination of knowledge, as in the case of "abandonware", the intellectual property laws have had an opposite than originally intended effect.
When MS pulls the plug on an OS, they are effectively pulling the plug on all the people who developed software for and worked on that OS. Because these people added value to MS's product, they have a legitimate proprietary interest.
If Microsoft was explicitly renting out their software, their actions would be somewhat more defensible. As they are claiming that they are selling a perpetual license, however, but acting as if they are only renting it, there is a legitimate case to be made for MS's misreappropriation of previously sold goods.
Downgrading... (Score:2, Funny)
Now if only I could figure out how to downgrade RedHat 7.2 to XP, so I can get microsoft support.
About fucking time. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like trying to develop for 5 different unixes, but you can't use the preprocessor since it has to all be the same binary.
Kinda a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget your roots.
say what you will, it is characteristic of MS (Score:3, Interesting)
The irony is, of course, that while Microsoft has been learning on the job and shipping outdated software, customers have been financing their learning experience and suffered from frequent, incompatible upgrades to boot.
Sue microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)
Our consumer laws says that a company must keep support for a product up to 5 years after it's dicontinued.
Since win95 were discontinued only in 1998, they must keep support for it (at least here) until 2003.
If you think this is bad... (Score:4, Funny)
From an ISP standpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Now before this gets modded into oblivion, just think about how fast the web is changing everything. People (other than gamers) aren't just using their computers for word processing, it's all about email,browsing,home finance, online banking, shopping. As the websites get larger and more complex, they suck up more space and memory on the computers.
Luckily windows 3.1 dialup support died for us Dec 31 2000, so we didn't have to worry about Trumpet winsock et al. anymore.
Windows 95 can be a major problem when working with a newbie who still thinks that the mouse is a "foot pedal" like that on a sewing machine (yes it's true, I actually had a call like that). I mean the Internet Setup Wizard is a piece of cake, but the majority of the people who are hip enough to navigate the web have allready moved on to 98/ME/XP/2K whatever.
This can actually help out ISP's by not having to worry about support for computers that were "given" to people without the CD. (ever try changing DUN settings or reinstalling Client for MS without the CD on an "upgraded" system where the CABS weren't installed?)
I've experienced this first hand with "Why is the internet so slow?" check the settings, and the person has 8MB o RAM running w95 and someone gave them a CD with I.E. 5.x and somehow they got the thing to kinda run. By the time they have to go out and get SIMMS enough to run the browser du jour (Opera notwithstanding) they might as well go out and get a whole new system for $700 USD.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the way MS handles things is correct, but at some point the lower end of the bell curve of internet users has to catch up to really experience everything the web/net has to offer.
Look at dialup, without updated modem drivers/init strings, the cheap HSP modems
won't maintain a connection. If the computer starts losing memory, the winmodems die. It doesn't occur to these users who think that computers just magically "work" that it could be their own system, and not the network and support that the ISP offers.
But I still love all the phone calls I get because the default error message states "call your network administrator" everytime something happens... NOT!
So I guess in closing this is going to be a way to keep people happy in the long run.
I mean hey I still have netscape 2.0 running on a 1MB RAM Macintosh, but other than email, what good is it?
No, not yet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Isnt non NT (win32) all the same anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Isnt non NT (win32) all the same anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head, actually. The base API is the basically the same across versions. So something like, say, a word processor should run on any win32. But it's the "bells, whistles, and included driver support" that prove to be the sticking points... a lot of the fun stuff (games and other multimedia) uses these bells and whistles, as does anything that accesses the hardware directly (drivers, cd burning, etc etc).
Not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, even within the Win9x world Windows 95 is a nightmare. The original release doesn't even support USB and can be a pain just to establish a net connection. It has drivers for, well, almost nothing beyond very bland generic basic hardware--and home users aren't very prone to updating drivers manually. Which reminds me, in the original release, no functional Windows Update to get the system updates for most people. Plus, there are three distinct flavors of Win95, and just try asking a home user "Well, is it Win95 A, Win95B, or Win95C? Well, right-click on 'My Computer' and select 'About this computer', then read off the very very long number..." And any recent USB devices can be very flaky even on the Win95 versions with USB support.
And even non-USB hardware may not work on Win95. Some hardware vendors have abandoned support for Windows 95, long before MS is abandoning it. Just try to get supported Win95 drivers for a brand new ATI video card if you isbelieve--their website explicitly disclaims all support for Win95; so, maybe Win98 drivers will work, maybe not.
The problem is made worse when considering WinME, and how the subtle changes made to ME to keep average joes from seeing any DOS underpinnings broke some drivers and code. Consequently, that leaves a hardware vendor or software maker with supporting Windows 95's lack of all features and libraries in later versions, Win98's much better "completeness" of libraries and features and compatibility, WinME's not-total-compatibility with Win98 thanks to its stupid "features", Windows NT which is even more archaic in terms of compatibility and libraries and worse to support than Windows 95, Win2k and its quirks, and finally WinXP which is the new standard in the MS world. Or, they can require Win98 or Win2k minimum, as many are already doing. A lot of hardware and software makers probably don't even test on Win95 anymore even if they do claim Windows 95 will work with their product, since most of the time it *probably* will, in one way or another.
So, I think it's great that MS is dumping Win95 support at last, and not releasing new packages like DX 8.1 for it. Now, I'm all for backwards compatability--in a recent post, I even lamented that nVidia doesn't seem interested in either including rudimentary Glide support in their drivers or releasing what code they can for the Glide API, for the sake of continuing to be able to use a few great Glide games that are out there. But that's a far cry from dumping support for a 6 year old OS when Win98SE runs everything Win95 can and a lot better. After all, would you expect a Linux distro compiled in 1995 to run most apps compiled today perfectly? No--libraries have changed, and a whole lot of code everywhere has been updated since then. Win9x has always strived for compatability, so the situation is much better with Win95, but surely it's time to drop any official support.
That said, I went to the MS support download site about a month ago to download all the Windows updates to keep handy, since I have copies of all flavors and like to set up archaic OSes in VMware, and I couldn't find most of the Win95 updates. There was a download for administrators of all of them, but the link is broken now.
So, offhand, can anyone think of a place to easily obtain all of the Win95 updates at once?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest one is that the Win32 API has not changed since it came out with Win95. The system organization and a number of other things have, but that's stayed the same. That's why all the stuff that says "Reuqires Windows 98 or higher" on the box will all still run in Win95. There are a number of applications out there that require NT or 2000, but I believe that's more for organizational/security reasons rather than API incompatability and many of them you CAN get to work on Win95 with a bit of hacking. Linux, however, has had MANY feature changes, evern major revision of the kernel, and therefore supporting new apps on the old version would become increasingly difficult.
The other point is that Microsoft is a HUGE worldwide monolithic monopolistic corporation (not slamming, just using the words that best describe it) and also has great profit margins and INCREDIBLE sales. The amount it would cost them to support old OS'es compared to the profit they make on new sales is fairly insignificant, especially considering that to have a support contract with M$ is prohibitively expensive for any OS they make/have made. Linux is supported and developed by a worldwide loosely knit group of developers and hackers that has constantly shifting membership. Many OSS/Linux projects do make at least some attempt to support multiple kernel revisions/etc. but for many of them the effort would be just way too much, i.e. grokking 10,000 lines of code someone else wrote 3 years ago and didn't comment at all.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
You mean you CAN'T find libc4 binaries anywhere? Man, what Internet are you from?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
Completely untrue -- This [indiana.edu] is a post regarding a bug in Linux 0.01. And here [indiana.edu] Linus assigns the maintainer of the 0.01 Kernel. That beats IBM's 7-year maintenance policy.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2)
http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/dists/ [debian.org]
Re:This is not very good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ford makes parts for '95 Mustangs because, (A) They make a profit by selling them, and (B) The market for the parts is there because the original parts have worn out.
None of your Windows 95 code has ceased to function because of wear through use.
Now, I don't happen to like what MS is doing here, and my turn will come when they drop support for Win98, which I have no desire to upgrade, but my Win98 OS will keep operating.
Now when the PC manufacturers stop making hardware it will run on, THEN I'm screwed. I only retired my 8088 Compaq transportable running DOS 5 a couple of years ago. Not because it didn't fulfill the functions that I required of it, but because I couldn't find a replacement for a floppy drive.
KFG
Re:Why cry? (Score:2, Insightful)
In addition, quite a few of the older systems out there are a little quirky-they're happy with the factory default 95, but they don't work well if you try to install 98. Those systems might not need DirectX8.1, but unsupported means unsupported. Eventually MS's forced upgrades will render such systems useless as new versions of critical apps, such as explorer, are designed specifically not to work on older versions of windows. Why should a terminal used only for checking email and browsing the web require the latest hardware?
That's not all, MS has also announced they plan to drop support for 98 in 2003. That's only a year and a half away. ME was released in fall 2000-less than 3 years before it becomes the only supported non-XP non-2k version of windows. That's right, in a year and a half MS will all but kill legacy windows boxes. With a new generation of hardware out and the move towards XP and 2k, expect the latest games to give up on nonXP/2k windows shortly after 98 dies.
Re:Id get ready (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Directx was made to kill OpenGl and and attract developers away from more portable, less proprietary systems. I mean c'mon, the only reason linux isn't on the desktop is a lack of good games. Most Godlike PCs are purchased for playing games among other things. Otherwise we'd still have 486 terminals doing everything in textmode.
Re:Weird (Score:2)
1)Buying MSDOS for purposes of embedding
2)calling MS support for dealing with code problems
From what I hear, there are still people out there with things that run embedded MSDOS, so they probably left it in circulation as long as possible. Now, they (MS) can push WinCE or embedded NT/XP, so they (MS) just EOL the old product.
Re:the blight is really bloat (Score:3, Insightful)
Ho hum.
I don't have the Karma around to burn on this, but there are about a thousand different things wrong with that description of the situation
And before anyone tar's and feather's me for supporting Microsoft, note that I use Debian for Everything - I have 2K hidden on a partition that's getting dusty in case someone releases a cool game.
Now:
So the sad, truth of the matter is that yes, Microsoft sucks. And yes, I will never install XP. But to call it bloatware because it takes 1.5 Gigs to install (and then to refer to that as a "windowmanager") is somewhat misleading.
Re:the blight is really bloat (Score:4, Interesting)
Yay, innovation.
Can't happen quickly though... (Score:3, Insightful)
Though they can make minor changes, but for now backwards compatibility prevents them from axing any backwards compatiblity.
The problem for Wine remains the same, the API is huge and not well documented, and while not deprecating calls, they are still adding calls every release. As far as releases not being made with Win95 in mind by 3rd party companies, that has been and will remain their pergative. Some already say "no, we don't support that" Others will continue to test against it even if MS says it's unsupported.
Wine is catching up really fast, and the Win32 API is changing slowly (not a bad thing). I doubt MS sees Wine as that much of a threat right now. Wine is only useful for Desktop-level applications, and MS's only real threat is in the server arena, where all applications are run natively and thus wine becomes a moot point. The relatively small segment of Desktop linux users doesn't cut much into MS's bottom line. That's the whole deal with the