First off, I'd like to say I've used Windows since 3.11 (in school) and 95 at home. I appreciate the speed and general responsiveness of Windows 9x as they are features I value in operating systems. Installed XP a few times, added lots of software and reinstalled XP again a few times. I discovered Linux a few years ago and Puppy Linux is one of my favourite distros. Its system requirements are roughly equivalent to Win Me, Barebones Puppy versions might even compete with Win 98. In terms of features, it really outshines 9x. For modern machines, 9x needs tweaking to handle RAM between 512Mb to 1.5Gb and above, but Puppy has no such upper limit (except 64Gb on 32-bit CPU). Mainly because of FAT32, 9x lacks HDD stability between 64Gb and stops at 137Gb, again Puppy has no upper limit. Puppy can run live (think BartPE) which is both wonderfully convenient and beefs up already good security against malware. These same advantages of Linux apply to Darn Small Linux (profanity filtered out the proper name) and SliTaz. Puppy Linux wifi support ain't bad either. In terms of applications out of the box, Puppy can open and create OOXML, ODF, DOC, XLS, PDF, ZIP, RAR and 7Z - whereas 9x can only open DOC (Wordpad) and ZIP (in Me). A tabbed web browser, photo manager, torrent client, instant messenger, optical disc authoring/burning software are all applications that Puppy includes and 9x doesn't. I see posts on here calling for Win 9x to be open-sourced, and even to build a totally open source Win9x. Well, Puppy Linux is open source and completely free now, so why struggle developing to sustain 9x? Or why struggle as a user to keep applying fixes to 9x?