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Multi-boot Windows 9x with current GNU/Linux


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Hehee... let's look at a dual-boot system from a more general perspective. Raw competition happens every time you switch on the power button of your computer. Which system is better for one task or another? Windows or Linux? A dual-boot system gives you the power to decide and to take best from both worlds.

Therefore, on your and my scrappy old computers, LibreOffice does in fact compete against Word 97 about the task of producing texts in a more complex way than just a simple plain text file. Please consider my view as the view of a simple computer user. The programmers internals mean nothing to me, it's the result that counts. I have to operate these programs to achieve stuff.

Oh, it's always interesting to hear about new features! Tell me some! I was asleep in the last 25 years. What are the brand-new office suites capabale of, that I haven't heard about?

In the business world, people don't bother with Windows 98 machines anymore. They have faster equipment which is absolutely capable of running the current LibreOffice in a way so that it doesn't need 45 seconds to start. I agree 100% on the topic of LibreOffice being very important, probably one of the most important user-software on Linux. Very good to have them around. A world without LibreOffice? It would look quite dark on Linux when it comes to text production, I'd say...

The audio player named "Audacious" was mentioned, which is a good example of a fine light-weight program, doing just audio. This thing can compete with Winamp 2.95 on Windows 98. Gorgeous program! Proper operation on my old Pentium 2, even large files, 2 hours long, several hundereds of megabytes being played smoothly with that Audacious.

@UCyborg: Well, the age of the program doesn't matter that much, to be honest, because we are sitting here, end of 2021, with some of us having (mostly overpowered) old machines on their desks. Every computer has an optimal program to run a certain task. LibreOffice to big? Downgrade to AbiWord. Still too slow? Leafpad... oh GUIs are not available, well Nano then... to give some examples. Or mess around with older versions. What would the Windows chain be? If Word 97 is too much, then go along with Word 6.0 I suppose...
Which can only be found out by testing. It's a very individual choice, what someone needs. But next I want to hear some features of the new text programms to be amazed of!

@ArcticFoxie:
That odd 2004 single-core with Linux Mint, well, that might be too much for it. Of course only a test would show, if you would become happy with the performance. An SSD would be the killer application hardwarewise, speeding up things quite a bit. Unfortuneatly, you're losing some programs that don't get 32-bit versions anymore nowadays. Maximising the RAM shouldn't be too difficult on that computer, as the hardware probably doesn't cost anything.
For the dual-boot installation, I'd go first with Windows XP, format the disks in a way that some space for Linux is available too. Then install Salix. If the bootloader (LILO in the case of Salix) doesn't recognise one partition, stick a Puppy Linux Live CD in the drive and install the bootloader Grub4Dos, which can repair broken boot configurations. Do you have some hard drives in spare? Luxury would be seperate hard drives for Linux and the Windows partition. Because OS performance degrates the further away from the center of the magnetic plates your system is installed, so it would be unfair to have both OS on the same HDD.
These disadvantages don't apply for an SSD of course.

Edit: Lightweight would be the Xfce desktop. Try that one instead of Cinnamon.

Edited by Gansangriff
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Call me fan @Mr.Scienceman2000, no problem, DOS and Unix based despite flaws. What i don't understand is ranting and complaining. I recently had a Windows 98 fragmentation issue that took lots of time to test, troubleshoot and find obscure documentation. No rant, just another puzzle to solve. GNU/Linux has been good to me, pros greatly outweigh the cons.

If the Mozilla bashing thread has fizzled, maybe start a Linux bashing thread, then a thread about fellow members who don't know what they are talking about or whatever else makes you rage. Eventually the reflection will become an angry, old man. Use your time how you see fit, really what's the point. Fly away if you want, personally it would be nice if you stayed, your inputs are (still) appreciated.

I'll share some dirt, two most frustrating computing experiences, that's why they're memorable. An ISA sound card with dip switches (no documentation or internet help) in my early Windows 98 days and the first time a Samba network was installed at the office (GNU/Linux and Windows file and print sharing). Both tasks took far longer and were more frustrating than anticipated. In both cases the hardware and software worked fine, i just needed some learning and experience. I never needed another ISA card and now i have good Samba notes with a working config file example, subsequent setups took a fraction of the effort.

Whatever works best for the use case, of course, the purpose of multi-boot, use the strength of every system. This has extended the productive life of my old hardware many years.

Most kernel contributions are corporate, bad old Microsoft, at least they don't have full control yet (embrace, extend, extinguish). Eventually something big will surface and users will flee, it's all shifting sand. Use a different distribution, avoid systemd, PulseAudio, D-Bus, blobs, Mozilla and Chrome. Use a hardened or custom kernel, simple/lean distributions and software, Linux from Scratch. How far down the rabbit hole..

There have never been more OS options, switch to BSD or many other choices. To me the future isn't bright though, poor moral compass and corporate greed will win. Eventually probably just turn off the computer as much as possible and enjoy other pursuits. To me computing isn't nearly as fun as the earlier, more innocent, days of the internet.

Henceforth all heavy software will more appropriately be called full-featured @UCyborg. Even though my hardware is limited, full-featured software is required on a daily basis (office suite, browser).

Hi @Gansangriff, in general newer LibreOffice releases aren't much more useful for me, review the changelogs. I do remember, however, from v3 to v5 or v6 they added extra image manipulation features inside Word document tables, something that was useful here. The rapid update cycle gets tiring, though. We use fairly complex spreadsheets and on one occasion a major LibreOffice release required re-working some tabbed-sheet formulas.

Since most here don't use 20 year old hardware (22 year old BIOS), LibreOffice load time was tested on an 11 year old Windows XP dual-boot. after fresh Devuan Beowulf boot running MATE desktop. First load of LibreOffice to a new text document was 15 seconds, decent (2010 era, 3.2 GHz dual core, 64-bit, SATA drive).
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Your oldest hardware i would call fast @NotHereToPlayGames. GNU/Linux isn't for everyone, i use old Debian and current Devuan, check out Distrowatch. If all you want is a modern browser, Tiny Core Linux with latest Firefox, they use a script called firefox_get_latest or similar, the entire OS and browser should be about 300 MB.

If Windows XP is already drive one, partition one, then GParted from a liveCD can shrink the Windows partition, add GNU/Linux partitions for the filesystem and swap (defrag Windows XP first). If you want to lean out your Windows XP installation partition, for leaner backups of the XP operating system, create a second NTFS partition first to transfer 'My Documents' data. You won't need to re-install Windows XP, unless user error, though a full backup beforehand is a good idea.

The suggestion from @Gansangriff is very good if you can spare a second drive. Physically disconnect the Windows XP drive before the GNU/Linux install to prevent accidental over-write. After GNU/Linux is installed, reconnect the Windows XP drive (as primary). From here you can simply choose which system to boot from the BIOS or computer's boot screen (drive 1 Windows XP, drive 2 GNU/Linux).

More common, re-configure Grub2 (whatever boot loader) and install it to MBR of either drive (or both). If using Grub2 then commands like 'sudo os-prober' and 'sudo grub-install' will find Windows XP and you have a happy dual-boot. Now your Windows XP install, which took lots of time to set up and customize, can regularly be backed up to the second/separate physical drive with a copy/paste or 'sudo cp -axv ...' command, no future Windows XP re-install should ever be needed on that hardware.

Since i personally consider modern GNU/Linux more secure than Windows XP, and you'll likely use GNU/Linux for sensitive browsing like banking, one advantage is Windows XP won't have access to a GNU/Linux filesystem. GNU/Linux will still be able to mount and access FAT and NTFS, so file sharing can go in that direction.
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14 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Call me fan @Mr.Scienceman2000, no problem, DOS and Unix based despite flaws. What i don't understand is ranting and complaining. I recently had a Windows 98 fragmentation issue that took lots of time to test, troubleshoot and find obscure documentation. No rant, just another puzzle to solve. GNU/Linux has been good to me, pros greatly outweigh the cons.

If the Mozilla bashing thread has fizzled, maybe start a Linux bashing thread, then a thread about fellow members who don't know what they are talking about or whatever else makes you rage. Eventually the reflection will become an angry, old man. Use your time how you see fit, really what's the point. Fly away if you want, personally it would be nice if you stayed, your inputs are (still) appreciated.

I'll share some dirt, two most frustrating computing experiences, that's why they're memorable. An ISA sound card with dip switches (no documentation or internet help) in my early Windows 98 days and the first time a Samba network was installed at the office (GNU/Linux and Windows file and print sharing). Both tasks took far longer and were more frustrating than anticipated. In both cases the hardware and software worked fine, i just needed some learning and experience. I never needed another ISA card and now i have good Samba notes with a working config file example, subsequent setups took a fraction of the effort.

Whatever works best for the use case, of course, the purpose of multi-boot, use the strength of every system. This has extended the productive life of my old hardware many years.

Like I said this was not pointed to you. I meant I do not like to be called fan when you said "Windows fans" because fans are thing I hate. I know you are aware of Linux problems since wont run Ubuntu and thinking are super unhackable, rather devuan and avoid all bad things on mainstream distros but meant Linux community overall that does not like any critics or words that could be improved and any other community does same

 

Speaking that Mozilla thread it was not to bash Mozilla rather raise awareness from doublespeak and lies they do because best way to change things is raise awareness of people who were not aware of them. Only way change problems is make everyone aware of it, but problem with that is that taking red pill and see the truth is harder than taking blue pill and believe whatever you want and  internet is full of examples of that. I would not be surprised if my different opinion would have caused outrage is Mozilla diehard reddit.

And I wont talk bad from things to shill some fake projects like brave unlike some do. And I am not any anti Linux user. I got Linux running network level firewall, DHCP, Content filters (Pihole to block some things I do not want in my network). I also use Linux on main workstation and all servers exposed internet are running Linux and only allow Windows powered servers work on isolated LAN behind VPN.

And what are browser choices for Linux? Well GNU Librewolf which is Latest FF without most nasty stuff and secondary browser I use is SeaMonkey and then for anything that does not need "modern" browser I use Webbrowser which is Palememe based and I also use Iceape UXP.

If you still think I am Linux and Gecko engine hater then it must be that way.

15 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

There have never been more OS options, switch to BSD or many other choices. To me the future isn't bright though, poor moral compass and corporate greed will win. Eventually probably just turn off the computer as much as possible and enjoy other pursuits. To me computing isn't nearly as fun as the earlier, more innocent, days of the internet.

there seems to be rule that before some thing is mainstream it is hard to use but generally has better feature set instead of having nasty stuff and whenever some thing becomes more mainstream is start turning into bad.

One benefit of Linux compared to Windows is that Kernel is open source like desktop and toolkit and there is some very good distros like Salix (easiest to configure), Devuan (allow control without too much hassle), Artix Linux (for those who actually want control over OS and not just brag off like arch users) and Gentoo (for those who got no life and got plenty of free time to compile, but in other hand you get more freedom to decide what your system will have.)

 

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Hi @Mr.Scienceman2000, thanks for your feedback. The simplest definition of 'fan' was implied, 'a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular person or thing'. Fanatical fan, that's different. Similarly, nothing derogatory was implied with 'beloved (mobile or old) Windows software'. Thanks to this forum i have a large hoard.

Blue vs Red pill, yes easier to be happy not knowing. Sometimes i wonder if that's why entertainment and social media are so strong, another method to avoid the truth about a multitude of significant, earth-changing and depressing issues.

I have no doubt you're a GNU/Linux user, you use it for more tasks than used here. If you use LibreWolf and SeaMonkey then, of course, Mozilla-based isn't viewed as pure evil (yet). Concerning is that without Mozilla's involvement, most systems requiring full-featured browsers would almost exclusively run Chrome-based. I'm aware of ungoogled-chromium, but still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-202011-202011-bar.png

Your general rule seems accurate. For me this was the end of the Windows 9x era (Microsoft) and mainstream adoption of overly complex GNU/Linux software, systemd for example. To me software in general has become overly complex and following KISS principle is usually best. Eventually i may likely use BusyBox-based systems or OpenBSD exclusively, hand-pick a few applications.

---
Interesting snippet from a Tiny Core Linux post a few days ago:
I've had the great pleasure of communicating with some REAL OG's of unix.  Some of our forefathers so to speak. Quite a few these days have resigned themselves to just running the terminal inside their Apple Macs.  Some may be doing likewise in an Ubuntu or sometimes a *BSD box.  Lamenting about how there are too many "distributions" are out there, or simply giving up with a big-box computer.
---
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Does average mortal have anything to gain by worrying about stuff like systemd or PulseAudio? I learned enough about the former to have the slightest clue about configuring something to run in the background and have it managed like a service and use PulseEffects with the latter to tweak the audio output (though I heard about PipeWire, which could be better for some use cases and generally leaner than PA).

But then again, people here worry about lots of things I couldn't care less about, LOL!

Edited by UCyborg
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On 12/8/2021 at 8:38 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

To me the future isn't bright though, poor moral compass and corporate greed will win.

Relatable comment I found:

Quote

This world is a f***ed up place . Humanity is a lost cause, they're Self centered lunatics .

This world can never be fixed , it's beyond evil . Humans are c***s, monkeys with God complexes .
Monkeys which take part in vague rat races to please their capitalist pig daddies .

Edited by UCyborg
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14 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Does average mortal have anything to gain by worrying about stuff like systemd or PulseAudio? I learned enough about the former to have the slightest clue about configuring something to run in the background and have it managed like a service and use PulseEffects with the latter to tweak the audio output (though I heard about PipeWire, which could be better for some use cases and generally leaner than PA).

They are not too bad to run but problem is that many programs use those as unnecessary depency. For example firefox by default wont work without pulseaudio without good reason but you can make it work without.

SystemD, Dbus, Pulseaudio etc are more things that power user may not want in their system but for average mortal does not have to worry about them.

I recommend newbie to just get just work distro like Linux mint or Salix and not think Artix, Devuan or Gentoo and avoiding pulseaudio and others before is advanced enough (and even then is not requirement)

14 hours ago, UCyborg said:

But then again, people here worry about lots of things I couldn't care less about, LOL!

If systemd would be my biggest worry and not worry from making enough to to pay bills or any other actual issues I would be happy

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OpenOffice hasn't been updated since 2014 (didn't realize).
https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice-vs-openoffice/

Correction @UCyborg, 'Does average mortal have anything to gain by worrying about anything?'
No but we do anyway.

The systemd software, for example, works. It just turned the GNU/Linux community upside down, as it is more than a simple 'init' system, breaking the Unix philosophy of minimalist, modular software development. And, as @Mr.Scienceman2000 indicated, dependency issues with lots of software. So to many it's neither mimimalist or modular. Now that it's mainstream, distributions not desiring this 'init' system have to put forth extra effort. Personally, run what you want, what do i care. This forum is full of members running all sorts of interesting stuff.

I think the fear was that it would take over the entire GNU/Linux ecosystem and become more similar to Windows, no disrespect intended. From what i see the various GNU/Linux communities are strong, there's lots of diversity and it's still possible to run as lean and modular as desired. It also seems to have spurned more interest (diversity) in 'init' systems. To me this can only be a good thing, especially regarding OS attack vectors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

https://www.howtogeek.com/675569/why-linuxs-systemd-is-still-divisive-after-all-these-years/

Since this is in Windows 9x sub-forum and some may be using smaller drives, recommend reviewing anticipated hard drive footprint before installing the distribution of choice. The smallest distributions require only a few hundred megabytes while full-featured distributions many gigabytes.
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9 hours ago, Mr.Scienceman2000 said:

If systemd would be my biggest worry and not worry from making enough to to pay bills or any other actual issues I would be happy

I got for the bills and can't say I'm happy. Just work, sleep, rinse and repeat. What's the point? Too tired to really live in what little time is left.

 

 

On 12/8/2021 at 8:38 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

First load of LibreOffice to a new text document was 15 seconds, decent (2010 era, 3.2 GHz dual core, 64-bit, SATA drive).

Just tried launching Writer on my regular 11 years quad-core PC on Win 8.1 x64, 10 seconds on first start, but subsequent starts take about 4. Oh well, I'm patient, I survived 5 minutes load time of Call of Duty 2 and Need for Speed Most Wanted in the old days on the old PC. :D

Seems there are lot of incredibly impatient folks out there. Not saying software makers shouldn't strive for good optimization, but nervousness from impatience doesn't do anyone any good. That's for life in general.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/10/2021 at 10:36 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

graphic issues

Doesn't sound like you had major problems fixing issues on your side.

Is Windows 98 added to the list of bootable operating systems by simply running sudo update-grub?

I've yet to try custom resolutions on Xorg. Should look into fixing monitor layout on login screen first, might be an easier problem to solve that it seems. Maybe just writing current settings to default config file Xorg.conf does it. It's a small thing since very little time is spent on login screen and you get to input login data on one screen anyway. These days you can mostly rely on things being setup automagically as they should be, I've read Xorg was PITA to configure many years ago before you even got graphical environment running, forget multi-monitor and such.

I've had a bit of fun with Wayland, still glitchy with proprietary NVIDIA drivers (both visual and performance/stability kind of glitches), at least up to driver version 495.44. There was one thing that worked better, no tremendous lag in OpenGL rendering in one graphical application while opening another. Generally, OpenGL seems to work as well as on Windows with these drivers.

I have a feeling my GPU won't be supported anymore by the time it could be used with Wayland properly.

Nouveau isn't looking too good after 7 years since the GPU was released, kinda OKish for simple 2D usage, though I also got some glitches with text in Konsole.

Might try it on my a bit more open-source friendly laptop these holidays. Hopefully, they usually fly by way too fast. Should turn the laptop on every once in a while anyway before battery dies from not being used.

On 10/10/2021 at 10:36 PM, Wunderbar98 said:

There are occasional regressions in GNU/Linux too. Not usually intentional, like Microsoft or Apple, moreso because not many still use, test or bug report this old hardware.

Yeah, most of the population have moved on. Seems most well known distros aren't compiled for 32-bit anymore. Regarding archiving older software versions, compiling for multiple architectures really adds to used storage. I'm a bit divided regarding 32-bit vs 64-bit thing on Windows with my 4 GB of RAM, which is just on the edge (64-bit Win with mix of 32-bit and 64-bit stuff). Then some code sequences might go through faster in one mode than another.

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