Microsoft promotes Linux!

[mdlbear]

Microsoft ends support for Windows 98 | The Register

So Microsoft is ending support (and security updates) for Win98, 98SE, and ME. Leaving users with four choices: keep using it and take their chances, try to upgrade (spending $100 to upgrade a machine that's probably not worth more than $75 by now and probably doesn't have nearly enough horsepower for XP), replace the machine altogether, or switch to Linux.

Most consumers will probably keep using Win98 until their machine dies of bitrot; the corporate users will pick one of the other two. I'm guessing that enough will opt to keep their old machines and switch to Linux to be noticable.

Or at least I can hope so.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Anyone who's kept the same computer around for so long probably is making only marginal use of it, and won't go to the trouble to switch it to a new OS.

The people they sell those $75 machines to, on the other hand...

[mdlbear]

You'll see more switches in business -- a machine that's just used for web browsing and email will be much cheaper to upgrade to Linux than to replace; businesses tend to be (at least a little) more security-conscious than home users.

[gmcdavid.livejournal.com]

Interesting this should come up, along with your subsequent post about Firefox. The box I am using now is a P-166 running Windows 98 in our dining room. I use it for web browsing or to ssh into my main Linux box (in the basement) for e-mail. Even before this notice came out I was being frustrated by frequent crashes. So I think I will rebuild it with Slackware 10.x (that's the distro I know best). No way I will get Win XP on this, and I don't want to pay for it anyway.

The only thing holding me back was that mia_mcdavid also uses the machine and she is not familiar with Linux. However, her main use is web browsing and she is used to Firefox. So she says she can cope. I think I will use a lightweight window manager (e.g. Fluxbox or Icewm) since I don't have a lot of cpu power to spare here.

[mdlbear]

You might also give Debian a try -- it's easier to keep up to date. Sounds like a good idea.

I have several dual-boot Linux/XP boxes at the moment because everyone else in the family has their favorite collection of Windows games.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

So, here's the two things I struggle with slightly with recommending Linux as the "basic appliance system", particularly for a laptop - I've been digging for suggestions from people:

1) I still don't like the wireless connection managers that I've seen for Linux, though whatever it is that ships with SuSE 10.0 isn't horrible. Personally, I think that Windows utterly, completely sucked... until XP SP2, at which point they actually got it almost exactly right. (I have only two complaints with it - it identifies AP's entirely by ESSID - which means that, say, if you ever need to use an AP called "linksys", then it will automagically connect you to any AP called "linksys". It also should offer a "master password" type system for your WEP/WPA keys.)

2) Do you know of a way to convince Linux to always query multiple DNS servers from resolv.conf? The problem is this; the DSL router that Qwerst hands out - an ActionTec - lists itself as the primary DNS via the wireless side's DHCP no matter what you do... and it won't actually answer queries there. Now, under Windows, the query fails, and it just retries on the secondary (which will work fine). Under Linux, most of the time it just fails completely.

[mdlbear]

The connection picker that ships with the Nokia 770 works astoundingly well; it may be worthwhile downloading their entire source tree just to find it.

There may be a way to override DHCP's suggested DNS server, but it would probably depend on which client your distro ships with. If all else fails, you can do in after making the connection and fix resolv.conf manually (or, better, script the whole thing). On Debian-based distros you can set a hook to run after ifup; there may be something similar on SUSE.

Linux will, by default, wait a very long time (~30 seconds) before giving up on a DNS server; some applications will time out before it gets to the second one. It's probably an adjustable parameter, but you're better off just fixing resolv.conf.