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Win98 usage in 2005


Jlo555

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Anyone that knows anything, leaves IE alone, and opts for Firefox or Opera (and I wont debate the better, its very much opinion oriented, they are both good, I prefer Opera) ;)

I just downloaded Opera, which is now for free. It doesn't have Java, so I've downloaded Sun's Java. I'm not sure which to install first, or if I even need Sun Java.

Any help would be appreciated.

ivman

Edited by ivman
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I'm not saying that anyone in his/her right mind should upgrade from 98 or 98/SE to XP, but if for some weird reason he/she has to.....for God's sake, leave the HD in FAT-32 mode. Just use an XP Upgrade CD and keep your old FAT-32 hard drive.....so if you need to get into your files, you can do it with a simple Windows 98 boot floppy....Great for removing viurses, spyware or just doing drive maintenance.

Unknown to most of the world, XP will run just fine on the FAT-32 file structure. Some even say it runs faster.

I won't go there..... :no:

I have six PC's that will run and they all have Windows 98/SE on them,,,,except this one.

That's because I had to learn XP for my computer business.

I'm able to tweak out 98/SE so it runs quite well, thank you.

I'm in full support of anyone who wants to keep their ol' 98, 98/SE. :thumbup

Cheers,

Andromeda43 ;)

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You guys are tempting me to pull out my old Win98SE, see if I can tweak it to take everything out, and see how it runs on my old, old computers.

Heh, maybe give one to my parents so they can get emailed photos.

Anyone know an easy way to get rid of IE and Outlook Express on 98SE?

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@ Saugatak,

The easiest from what I can tell, is probably Winmization, the others generally require messing w/ file lists etc, or purchase for full features (LitePC.com)

But instead of ripping it like you do Win2K, honestly I'd recommend Gabe's unofficial service pack (patches 98 complete in one step), and if you can get ahold of a WinME disk, MDGx's 98SE2ME -- which is 98 at its core, with the good stuff of ME, like better ICONS, compatible (higher version) dlls, exe's etc.

And if you want them to not use something like IE, Outlook, just use TweakUI to remove them from the desktop & delete shortcuts, then install Firefox and Opera (always nice for ppl to have a choice ;) and dump those shortcuts onna desktop.

But that's my .02 - I was very happy w/ the above, and just used Opera, while keeping my system completely compatible w/ whatever I might toss at it.

Edited by Crash&Burn
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Crash:

As always, good advice.

On these old PC's though, I don't really want to do anything on them other than email, browsing and a little wordprocessing.

I'd love to get like a 40-50 MB install of Win98SE on some of these old comps. I don't mind paying $25 for WinLite if it can help me do that, worth it.

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I am willing to bet that if a world wide survey was done of microsoft os users most would be surprised by the results. I am sure that there are still a good percentage of people useing pre 2000/xp oses.

This my be off topic. But I have heard rumors(i think on slashdot but I am not sure) that the next generation of windows servers will complete cut non nt oses out of networking. So if this is true it will be one more blow to win98. I am an avid windows 98 user but I must admit that I the future is looking grim. Already lots of new software will only work on nt based oses. Driver support is also becomeing less and less. The way I see it if current trends continue win98 users will be forced to stay with legacy hardware and legacy software.

I believe that for those of us who do not want to follow microsoft's evul plan to dominate the world plan we sould look to opensource for our future. Projects we should be watching:

1. Linux - With linux distrobutions becomeing more and more user friendly and wine becomeing better and better linux could become a viable alternative for us in the future. Wine although is growing rapidly is probably one of the main things holding it back, As I asume that most people here would desire microsoft compatability. Sites to watch:

http://www.linux.org/

http://www.winehq.com/

http://distrowatch.com/

2. ReactOS - This project is being designed from the ground up to be NT compatable. It is still in a fairly early stage but it has great potential. This may be a more likley canidate than linux due to its focus on windows compatablity. Site to watch:

http://www.reactos.org

http://reactosde.re.funpic.de/

3. E/OS LX - This is taken directly from the home page "E/OS is an open source graphic operating system under GNU GPL 2,0 license, suitable for the execution of Microsoft programs Windows, Apple MAC OS, IBM OS/2, MSDOS and Linux." This is a great project that has already impressed me greatly, but this project is very ambiguous. Though if the developer does accomplish everything he wants it will be quite spectacular. Sites to watch:

http://www.eoslx.tk/

Well thanks for listening to my rant. You do not have to agree with me. As of right now win98 users are still ok. But as time passes that will change and unless we want to be like other mindless microsoft users we must look for alternatives.

Also does anyone know of anymore oses that are atempting to offer microsoft compatability?

Again I am sorry. I know I have gotten way off topic.

Farewell

hankjrfan00

Edited by hankjrfan00
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This my be off topic. But I have heard rumors(i think on slashdot but I am not sure) that the next generation of windows servers will complete cut non nt oses out of networking.

God forbid that ever happens (which I hope doesn't) there would still be a way around it. Use an older NT base O/S as a shared gateway. So then all info is transferred between the NT gateway and the rest of the non-nt-hating-networking.

Problem with if that rumor ever came to light, microsoft would shaft a large portion of it's customers. Also, to do so would involve redisigning the whole TCP\IP protocol which in turn would cut even XP out of the picture.

Edited by Chozo4
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I guess I can't stop progress... this may sound weird (coming from someone who's only 16) but technology wise, I hate the 21st Century. Frankly, I don't think software in particular is advancing for the better. Decreasing compatibility (DirectX and apparently networking now), implementing multimedia restrictions (DRM) and producing software full of bloat (any software title made by a multi-billion dollar corporation after 2002) are all steps in the WRONG direction, and I'd say Microsoft is now the epidimy of all of this.

Just look at thecounter.com and notice that in January 2000, usage stats for Linux didn't even show up. But in September 2005, Linux is #7. Obvioulsy, we're not the only ones getting fed up!

Better watch out, Bill Gates...

Edited by Jlo555
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*chuckle* Software in very few instances actually gets better between updates. Kerio is a good example, the 2.1.5 version clocks in at 1.9MB, the previous version TinyPF 2.0.15a clocked in at 1.2MB, there was little to no change between the versions but perhaps a couple non-critical bug fixes. And the current 4.+ version is well over 4 megs w/ very few additional features added.

Things get "prettier" and bigger, but rarely actually more useful or functional.

One particular oddity in all this is Opera (not to soapbox but), if you check the filesizes since version 6, the installer hasn't strayed much beyond 3.5 megs, and not many years before that the whole thing could fit on a floppy.

[OT]

This is kinda OT but whatever ;) I really think people just don't know how to code anymore, coding is not a science really, its more of an art... and people have BloatWarez like Microsoft, Symantec, etc to draw inspiration from. Also the prolification of obtuse and useless languages like C# or C++, anyone that actually knows anything about computer languages, knows that "Object Oriented" code doesn't require crap like those languages, any regular C or geez even Assembly can create OO code, its how you design, not the bloated tools you use to create with.

[/OT]

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Well, I'm not a programmer, so I just read your second paragraph, nodding in agreement. As for what you said in the first paragraph, I totally agree with what your saying. I've especially noticed this when I installed XP Pro SP2. Right after the clean install (non-nlited), I noticed nearly 4 gigs of my hard drive filled already. What the hell could possibly be taking up that much space? Perhaps that mediocre security center that I attempt to disable everytime I use XP... who knows? Windows 98SE installs for me, usually between 250-310 megs (and I know a lot of people like to make it under 20 megs, though I have no idea how they do that.) 98SE does everything the way I want it to, along with Win2k (most of the time.) XP is so full of sh!t that I gotta go through with XP Lite and clear out all the crap that I can, and I still see the windows folder is over 2 gigs.

I plan on getting Beta 2 of WinVista, and I can honestly say that I'm afraid to stick that on my computer right now, after seeing all the bloat and s***ware (aww, I made up a new word) of XP.

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This is kinda OT but whatever ;) I really think people just don't know how to code anymore, coding is not a science really, its more of an art... and people have BloatWarez like Microsoft, Symantec, etc to draw inspiration from. Also the prolification of obtuse and useless languages like C# or C++, anyone that actually knows anything about computer languages, knows that "Object Oriented" code doesn't require crap like those languages, any regular C or geez even Assembly can create OO code, its how you design, not the bloated tools you use to create with.

It may not be as OT as you think...

Lately, I've found that assembly language is often much easier to factor into

suitable units of functionality, partly due to the verbosity of assembly source

code making code reuse attractive, and partially due to the unbeatable

flexibility at hand.

Perhaps even more importantly, it's much easier to debug. Whenever

something goes wrong, it's usually obvious from the register and memory

dump. No need to insert printf() stratements and rarely does one have

to code special routines for debugging data structures that printf() can't

handle directly.

For third party code written in assembly language, you almost have the

source code, even if it was never released. Most of the Win9x kernel

modules, such as the VMM, are written in assembly language, so it's

possible to step through them with a debugger in a finite amount of

time, and understand what they're doing. Try that with XP some day.

While the speed of assembly language programs tends to be impressive,

it's compactness is even more so. For example, a trivial implementation

of multi-threading for DOS took about 800 bytes. A simple "hello world"

program in even the most concise of 16-bit DOS compilers I've tested -

Microsoft C 6.00 - takes over 4000! Imagine what that does for a

whole operating system kernel.

As far as I'm aware, the Win9x series includes the only non-

experimental and reasonably capable 32-bit kernel written in

assembly language that the world has seen up to this point.

Thus, when both completeness and conciseness are taken into

account, it has no competition. It is also the end of the line, so

it should hardly come as a surprise if Win98 seems to be in

relatively wide use. There is simply nowhere to move on, as

were the case with Win95 and others.

Moving on is inevitable, however. Considering the speed of

CPUs today, it's not unreasonable to older operating systems

in environments such as VMware, and the obvious host platform

would be an operating system like FreeBSD or Linux. Although

rather bloated, they are far better than XP, and they come with

full source code. Although contemporary operating systems,

they are still based on over 30-years of Unix evolution - to be

compared with an experiment that has only barely gained

market acceptance despite the perseverance and marketing

power of Microsoft. The Alpha, PowerPC and MIPS versions of

it went the way of the dinosaurs years before Win9x.

Alas, much like XP, the design philosphy of Unix is not one of

compatibility, and its goal of portability, although reasonable

makes optimisation for size or performance more or less

impossible. Thus, my long term plan is a new platform, and

it should be easy enough to beat even Win9x in compatibility

and compactness.

The only reasonable approach to that, of course, is not to

attempt to write an operating system from scratch, because

such a project is doomed. Just like Windows started as a

little DOS shell, a new operating systems that aims for any

kind of usability should start from a similarly stable platform.

A simple approach is to begin with a DOS-extender and to

build debbugging and performance monitoring tools into

the kernel from the very start. A reasonable next step is

to begin implementing environments required by various

kind of useful software - possible including Win9x VxD

kernel modules, perhaps graphics drivers from the X-

Window System, and network drivers from XP, and so on.

DOS-based drivers should remain fully supported and

there should be no hurry to replace them, in the absence

of better alternatives - quite the opposite of the NT

approach.

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