Submitted by “Software giant Microsoft has named the day that Windows 98 and Millennium users will no longer have support. On July 11, the two operating systems will have their final breakfast before being wiped from Vole’s support brain. Although many expected Microsoft to stop supporting the quaintly antique software, the date for liquidation was uncertain.”
Come over to Linux and get your OS free, no need to shell out for XP or Vista. We’ll look after you, you poor things.
emmm.. that should be orphans…
As one of the main porters of our software to Linux, and a Slackware Linux user since 1996: whatever dude, as soon as my notation software, MIDI sequencers and softsynths will work on Linux, sure, I will switch my home PC to Linux.
In the meantime however, Win98 works better for me.
Well compromise, but I guess if your happy running insecure software then so be it.
as soon as my notation software, MIDI sequencers and softsynths will work on Linux, sure, I will switch my home PC to Linux.
Highly unlikely that any of them will, but there are som interesting alternatives:
http://rosegardenmusic.com/ – MIDI sequencer
http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/ – good softsynth
http://sound.condorow.net/notation.html – various notation software, I’d try out Denemo.
Of course there’s a chance you’ve stumbled over these being a Linux user, but if not, and to anyone else, I can tell there’s been very much interesting things going on in Linux Audio the past couple of years. Also check out the Jackit audio subsystem, it beats Rewire by the miles. ( http://jackaudio.org/ )
And as soon as a critical mass of users switch to Linux, your software (along with all hardware, drivers, codecs, etc) will be ported to Linux.
It’s a chicken-and-egg type problem; the Linux side are doing everything they can – building user-friendly, secure & stable OS’s – but they won’t be able to break MS’s monopoly until they get help from software and hardware producers, as potential converts will complain that their favourite program or graphics card, etc. will not work.
So it is not a question of the quality of Linux, but rather one of vendor lock-in, deliberately engineered by Microsoft.
Well, Linux has now a higher marketshare than Mac OS X. I don’t think it is the marketshare what still keeps software companys from supporting linux, i think it is the extreme diversity of even the widespread distributions which make supporting a nightmare.
Another thing is that even many of the most basic standard librarys aren’t very friendly to closed source apps. You could bypass some of the support problems by static linking but that would mean you couldn’t even use LGPL licensed librarys without open sourcing your software, which is something most companys will not do.
So it is a little more than just a small chicken-egg problem wich would solve itself (and probably would already have had solved itself by now).
So what we need is either a complete change in our whole society or less free licenses or lots of open source programmers.
A compromise could be more (and i mean *much* more) agreed on standards.
But who cares. Those of us who are using linux right now are obviously happy with it. Who said it should take over the Windowsmarket.
So it is not a question of the quality of Linux, but rather one of vendor lock-in, deliberately engineered by Microsoft.
The truth is, there are less Mac users than Linux users, but the Linux audio drivers have been all over the place. Not having a stable ABI may have something with it, but I believe it’s the fact that Linux users are much less interested into music creation than it is the case with the general population.
Microsoft has long been finding ways of not giving out patches for 98 and ME for many years now, so I expect the ‘support‘ Microsoft gives will not exactly be missed. The main support that people look for is the applications they still run on 98 and ME, and the fact that software vendors are still able to provide software for them. That has little to do with Microsoft.
Microsoft will face this more and more as Windows lumbers on. As more and more applications are written in companies for Windows, and people rely on them, you will see older and older version of Windows sticking around for a very long time. As people rely more and more on computers and software they will simply have to become more mundane pieces of infrastructure. There is simply no time or willingness to upgrade everything to the latest version of what Microsoft has brought out, even after all this time waiting for Vista. If Microsoft is unable to provide that, and bring their revenues down to more sane levels as a result, something else will have to move in and take its place.
Edited 2006-07-04 11:05
There is simply no time or willingness to upgrade everything to the latest version of what Microsoft has brought out, even after all this time waiting for Vista.
Upgrades are irrelevant, really. They comprise less than 1% of all MS’s computer OS sales. Microsoft makes most of its money from OS sales to OEMs in the form of new machines. Practically every new desktop and/or laptop sold will have a MS operating system on it. And because of this, it’s difficult to see how MS is going to fail to make every subsequent OS release a success.
Upgrades are irrelevant, really. They comprise less than 1% of all MS’s computer OS sales. Microsoft makes most of its money from OS sales to OEMs in the form of new machines.
An upgrade is also the process of throwing an old machine away and getting a new one, and then trying to transfer your data and find out if the applications you use still run ;-).
And because of this, it’s difficult to see how MS is going to fail to make every subsequent OS release a success.
People keep staying on older hardware and software as the software and set up they are running continues to do its job for people, and they can’t afford the hassle of upgrading. It happens in the mainframe world, and is why there are still many Unix servers out there. As people come to rely on computers more this phenomenon will spread to desktop users.
An upgrade is also the process of throwing an old machine away and getting a new one, and then trying to transfer your data and find out if the applications you use still run ;-).
Good point.
People keep staying on older hardware and software as the software and set up they are running continues to do its job for people, and they can’t afford the hassle of upgrading. It happens in the mainframe world, and is why there are still many Unix servers out there. As people come to rely on computers more this phenomenon will spread to desktop users.
It depends on how specialized the applications are — and whether the vendors for those applications continue to support backward compatibility with subsequent app upgrades.
It is about time they dropped them to be honest!
And why would that be ?
clearly you have never working in the following sectors.
banking
accounting
solicitors
payroll
all these people use old computers to run old packages and they have no reason to upgrade.
That doesn’t matter to Microsoft.
What matters to Microsoft is this:
Can we give those with no reason to upgrade, a reason to upgrade?
In this case the answer is “eventually”.
Ah, the joys of a monopoly.
That really sums it up. Regardless of all the screaming about Vista, it will take off .. eventually. It took years for Windows XP to take hold, but now (according to the browser stats) it makes up about 74% of the market; Windows98 is round about 1.8%.
It’s not as if MS is going to go broke while waiting …
So what was the motivation for Apple to drop Mac OS 9 Support which is a younger OS than Win 98. Is Apple worse than Microsoft?
Unstable and insecure should be enough reasons…
unstable…. hardly unstable if these users have been running the same systems without change for almost 8 years….
insecure ? nope. Windows98 has less malware around than Windows XP has.
DO NOT BELIEVE ALL THE CRAP MICROSOFT TELLS YOU !
“they have no reason to upgrade”
Haha, they do now
“”they have no reason to upgrade”
Haha, they do now
“
I don’t see why. The best security for Windows has always been a firewall and anti-virus software, as long as those two are available and up to date for Windows 98 then the systems are safe enough for anyone who wants to chance staying behind.
For that matter Windows has always had a sizeable number of security holes that went unpatched for extended periods of time, and firewalls and anti-virus software have kept those safe. With Windows 98 finally having reached the end of the line chances are malware and attacks now are going to be geared more towards newer version of Windows, and Windows 98 might go almost completely neglected by attackers if it isn’t already.
Anyone still using Windows 98 at this point is probably willing to take the risk of going on without support from Microsoft. For the last few years it felt like Windows 98 wasn’t getting any updates except emergency ones anymore anyway.
Well, this will cause a major hit for people still running Win98 (there’s LOTS of them). But from what I know, Win98 didn’t get much love from MS anyway. I hope abusers won’t exploint this event even more by hitting still running Win98 computers with some malware.
Upgrades in linux are more transparent. I can easily upgrade my FC4 to FC5 just with yum command, and everything will work, without reinstall and other stuff
This is true. I can easily upgrade my SuSE 10.1 just with … oh now wait a minute
Pardon ?????
YAST is your friend… just point the repositories to 10.2 and away you go…. or are you chicken ? hehehe
Pretty opaque that transparency you talk about – In ubuntu, apt-get dist-upgrade broke my whole system twice. warts to breezy and breezy to diaper. Upgrading in Linux is overrated if you ask me, it’s never worked for me. But it’s never worked with MS stuff either!
I don’t know Ubuntu exactly but I’m using Debian Sid. In Sid, upgrade is everyday. Sometimes it breaks (rarely), and in this case you have to use your brain to fix
. That said, I’ve been using debian sid since before debian woody become stable (in 2002 IIRC), and I’ve been upgrading everyday without any major problem. Since Ubuntu is based on Debian Sid, I suppose it should be more or less the same.
Strange that it works so well for others. Wonder what could be the cause of YOUr problems?
I ahve never had an upgrade in Fedora or Ubuntu go “That” smoothly, but it is nice to dream, isn’t it
In the case of Windows Millennium, euthanasia might be the better term. :@)
Sit-rep:
A user who has Windows ME or 98/98SE on their aging pc.Mostly for web browsing, word processing and email.They can buy a new pc with Windows preinstalled.Money spent to learn Windows XP and more or less in about two years Vista.
Re-tool that user with linux.No new machine needed.No need to upgrade to a new distro in two years since the community has a wealth of info and only doing simple tasks of email, web browsing , word processing anyways.
They can be introduced to the programs they will be using on linux via the windows versions.Thunderbird, FireFox, Abiword , OpenOffice.
How much technical hurdles does it take to achieve that ?
If their still using windows 98, the technology is not going to be the hurdle. Having some capacity to learn after 8 years of doing the same thing might be.
Who are these people?
I don’t support family members computer’s as I really don’t have time for that. If I did, I literally would not help anyone with Windows 98.
“Who are these people?”
I work at a place which still use NT4 workstations that replaced windows 95 workstations about 2 years ago.
Yes they are 2k , XP Pro and WS2k3 machines about but they reserved them for the new machines coming preinstalled.
All using the same old software just new OS/hardware.
We also still use some NT4 mashines for some ancient software (that would probably run easily on a recent box), but they aren’t connected to anything public and i would be whipped in public if i’d dare to install even a tiny patch on them.
Ususally those ancient but still running mashines are “no touch” anyway.
Are those nt4 machines connected to the internal network?
Yes, but none of the mashines are connected to the internet and there are no notebooks allowed into that network. WLAN isn’t there either. It is all a big legacy management Network. So no danger at all.
“Re-tool that user with linux.No new machine needed.No need to upgrade to a new distro in two years since the community has a wealth of info and only doing simple tasks of email, web browsing , word processing anyways. ”
What is the difference ? If you dont’ upgrade, you will always have a system where bugs and security issues won’t be fixed, be that system windows98 or Red Had 6.0. And I’m sure you won’t be able to use any recent linux distro on an aging machine.
About the validity of your comment.
I recently installed FC5 on a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 8000 Laptop. With the exception of the modem everything was running OOTB. With a quick google and dowload of the right winmodem rpm it too was running.
If the support you want is not OOTB then, if you look into the modules in the Kernel that can be included and/or built you will find stuff going back 10 years at least. So IMHO with a bit of work the ‘old’ computer can run linux pretty well.
My caveat to this are some of the more esoteric systems such as old Compaq DLxxx servers. Without some custom drivers you are up the swanee without a paddle but otherwise I think you are wrong in your statement.
Fact is you can run a distro that was released later than Windows 98 and have on par or better performance on the same hardware while being more secure.
Edited 2006-07-04 16:14
Why not a recent distro on a older machine? I have a 450mhz PII with 256mb of ram and it works great with debian etch.
What about MS Money? Does Linux have a personal finance app that can connect to my bank and reconcile statements automatically; without me having to fiddle about with downloaded files?
the positively ancient windows xp.
Now that’s support for you.
So can i Update my Suse 6 simply with yast? I don’t think so. Can i just punch my OS X cd in my ancient System 6 Mac and Update to OS X?
Man, those are ancient versions of Windows, how much longer should MS support them? Until 2050? No one else does either.
Of course i can Update from FC 4 to FC 5 but i can also Update from Win 2000 to XP-Sp2 without a reinstall. Let’s just put things into perspective for a change.
Of course i can Update from FC 4 to FC 5 but i can also Update from Win 2000 to XP-Sp2 without a reinstall.
Vista borked my xp-install by the way 🙂
Yeah, that’s bad, but Vista is a beta where such behaviour isn’t unexpected. Even MS recomends not to install it on production boxes.
Having said that, Suse 9.3 (or maybe 9.1 – can’t remember which one) borked my XP install as well and it was not a beta. I guess, sometimes shit just happens.
Vista is a beta, can’t trust a beta
Of course i can Update from FC 4 to FC 5 but i can also Update from Win 2000 to XP-Sp2 without a reinstall. Let’s just put things into perspective for a change.
Sort of. You cannot upgrade 2000 to XP Home. You have to upgrade to XP Pro. You can’t even upgrade to MCE. Upgrading Windows usually causes a lot of problems anyway. It’s usually better to just reinstall than to upgrade. You end up having to reinstall some applications anyway. XP home to XP Pro is usually the easiest upgrade to do (it should be, they aren’t much different at all) but that doesn’t always go so smoothly either. I’ve seen more than one system get borked this way.
I don’t think MS dropping support for Win98 is going to get these people ‘upgrading’ anything.
If they were going to upgrade they would have probably done it by now as MS hasn’t exactly been supporting Win98 for some time.
Sure they officially supported it (on paper) but how many updates have they released in the last couple of years ? Barely anything.
The people running Windows 98 will probably . . . continue to run it.
Upgrading is complex. Is more complex if subsystems change between releases, like migration to udev. I upgraded from warty to breeze and then to dapper without major inconveniences. Granted I’m not the average Windows user, but there is no perfect world. I’m content with being able to solve the problems without buying a new PC.
When they start looking for their C: or A: you will see. Probably they will have problems to find MSN messenger too. Not a big deal, anyway. But people are animals of habit (I’m not sure if this is the right translation <- from spanish).
Well, i don’t think that would be that much of a problem, office people get used to what you force them to use. But ancient pcs are usually around for running one certain ancient custom developed application.
I wouldn’t touch them if it is not absolutly mandatory. Believe me, i have seen *major* havok from unnacessary patching and upgrading.
Some german Banks still use OS2 because they don’t want to port their custom developed apps. It makes sense, since upgrades in such an environment a royal pain in the ass.
generally “…creatures of habit.”
but close enough
What would they be supporting then??
I have a computer sat next to me it has a mpactII graphics chip in it and no viable way to upgrade. It has 512MB of memory and an 800Mhz CPU it is more than fast enough torun XP and Linux.
But it will run neither. The drivers are not available for XP or Linux. An upgrade is never going to happen.
It is a very usable machine, and has been a good compliment to my linux box. Its been fast enough for Word processing and surfing tasks.
I suspect more of you will be familier with this when Vista comes out
Not disputing your point, but wouldn’t it be simple enough to buy a bottom end graphics card off of eBay to use in this computer?
You could pick up a GeForce 2 or something similar for absolutely peanuts.
you could always put in a PCI Video card
Why does it feel like I have been hearing this for years? How many levels of “no support” are there?
More like;
MS: We want you to spend the money and upgrade.
(Time passes, still running 98)
MS: Ok, seriously, time to upgrade,
(Time passes, still running 98)
MS: Right then, if you won’t upgrade, we’ll reduce support.
(Time passes, still running 98)
MS: Enough’s enough! This time we’re cutting support, and we MEAN it!
(Still running 98, switching to alternate OS)
MS: AAARRRGGGHHH!
Seriously, for me, switching was actually easier than trying to upgrade past 98.
I tweak a lot, and KDE is much easier to make behave like I want than XP’s desktop. Plus, even back in Win 3.11, I’d rip out most of the crap that came with Windows and install the software I wanted.
(Difficult with 98, damn near impossible with XP, and I sure don’t see Vista getting any better.)
runs well on Pentium 2s. Just add a little RAM. Never had problems with software that wouldn’t run except buggy games (mainly from EA and Lucasarts).
Whatever MS decides, but our company software product (financial app) will support most Windows versions (from W95OSR2 to W2K3 currently) anyway. Nothing to do – too many corporate users using these old OSes, we cannot force them upgrade.
Surprised they did not wait until Vista to strong arm those users, makes me wonder if they delayed Vista just so they could panic the herd, force a switch to XP then force them to Vista next year for the double whammy! Almost have to admire the iron fist of software in action.
Surprised they did not wait until Vista to strong arm those users
Please, name one other OS with support from 8 years ago. They aren’t strong arming anyone. Even OS/2 is being dropped by IBM. I can’t think of a single linux distro that wouldn’t tell you to upgrade as the answer to any problem you have running a linux distro from those days. Even Red Hat, who is going quite strong, is not going to tell you to keep using Red Hat 6.0 over their newest server build. Macintosh doesn’t even support stuff from 5 years ago. I know, because I am now a primarily OS X user and theres nothing more annoying then downloading a program to find it was written for OS 9 when you’re running an intel Mac.
Sorry, but this is one area where the arguments just aren’t making sense. You can’t expect them to waste the money and manpower on such a tiny portion of their consumer base at this point. I’m shocked they waited this long, I wouldn’t have.
Solaris 7 has been supported for an incredibly long time, and if I recall correctly, the Sun official policy for Solaris support is a 9 year lifecycle – which, apparently, is often exceeded.
I can still download docs for 2.5, for example. Well, I was able to a short while ago, didn’t check in a couple of months.
Damn, I was going to point to my SP^RCstation 5 here…
I thought they orphaned them four years ago, still shocked with that big a user base running those and able to cut off that they didn’t wait til Vista to do this and drive up the adoption rate. I understand perfectly their desire to ditch support for legacy code, who wouldn’t want to.
Windows 98/ME still have 4.27% marketshare according to this source:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&…
which- transplated in the number of computers – gives us millions of PC running outdated Win9x generation OS. ( http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html )
Although I’m big Linux fan, telling people simply to switch to Linux is not that easy and there are so many reasons for them to stick with “lovely Win9x/ME” PC.
Just take a look at this: on a “small” LAN ( 20 computers total) built around Windows 2000 Small Business Server only five computers can be converted to Linux . All other machines still have to run Microsoft OS simply because mission critical applications (Adobe PageMaker 6.5/7.0 and ACS People http://www.acstechnologies.com/products/people) have no adequate counterparts for Linux platform.
Sadly enough just to upgrade those Win9x/ME machines
to XP would drain approximately 3.000 USAD from our tight budget which is not acceptable nor necessary by any means (other than security and stability)
So,yes, I agree Win9x machines will still be around for next decade or so for sure. Even isolated behind good firewalls they do what they are supposed to do.
I understand that Microsoft cannot support all their products forever but also they cannot simply “exterminate” all ’98 machines. That’s impossible.
It’s not Microsoft software obsolescence policy nor Linux inadequacy which holds me back tied to Windows 98 but applications availability.
So as long as there is Pentium III era hardware available for my aging machines ( for spare parts)
I will stick with Win 98/ME.Period.
I’m sure there are still houndreds of thousands small businesses in similar or same situation.
According to w3c, Windows98 has a 1.8% share on the browser stats.
Hard sto say which is more accurate; it’s possible that not all Windows98 machines are connected to the ‘net, in which case, they’re not going to have much of a malware problem anyway …
Check it out -> [url=http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=91]Unofficial Win98 SE Service Pack[/url]
Actually some people are working on win98: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=91 they have kernel update project and service pack and revolutions pack… I was realy amazed when i saw that.
To be fair supporting your current OS and the last version should be pretty practicle. I say its resonable to buy a new computer every 4 years. In Microsofts case its just taken a long time for them to produce their next OS.
The reality is as a 98 user do I now go out and buy XP an operating system thats going to be out of date as soom as Jan 2007, perhaps not even upgradeable to vista, or do I hold out for Vista.
I belive the timings for this and WGA are just to squeeze as much money out of XP in the light of their delayed Vista
Windows 98 was good but know it’s time is up. Let us all try to get these Win98 users out of the ‘dead’ ages of computers and introduce them to something better. (Like PC-BSD for example)
I think the whole point behind the ‘support’ was for piracy. Now well, 98 and ME are so archaic, people don’t even want to use it rather than not pay for Windows.
If you’re going to trust production systems to <wince> Windows 98 or an OS like it, I think it makes sense to plan for the inexorable obsolescence of what you’re running on when you’re initially developing or deploying the software that runs on it.
As someone else pointed out in this thread, there are operating systems with longer lifecycles, and I know that I use fairly old Solaris machines on a daily basis and they work fine.
It may well be that people don’t care about MS dropping support, especially if these old Win9x machines aren’t connected to the internet, and that’s fine, but there’s little room to stand to complain about if you’re running important software on a dodgy consumer OS anyway.
When Vista is released, and applications start to be developed for it, it makes sense to plan a five to six year plan for their eventual migration – Perhaps an audit around year 4.5 when the beta for the new OS comes out (I may not have my timing right but you get my drift).
People resist change and roll their eyes whenever they are required or requested to upgrade to a newer OS version. This is a fact of life. Plan for it in advance; you’ll have years to come up with a migration plan for whatever comes next. Stay on top of it. IT personnel need to make sure that this is a line item in their budgets.
I have a production system running on Debian; this year in my objectives I specifically requested a few hours of “downtime” budget for moving on from Woody to Sarge.
Not that it’s particularly relevant here but downtime was about 8 minutes, which was taken up by rebooting and fscking. I was pretty lucky I guess.
For large enterprise deployments of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of machines, clusters, etc. there needs to be a plan in place in advance, accepting the fact of life about upgrades. For ultra-high availability systems, there are far better platforms to choose than your basic consumer-grade Windows.
I’m not a big fan of Microsoft but I don’t blame them one bit for washing their hands of these miserable outdated operating systems in 2006.
Question is will they release it as abandonware?