Leythos,
Well, you might as well be a M$ salesman, because you're saying almost exactly what I'd expect
to hear from them.
Sorry you look at it that way, I did present the Linux solution, but you
must not have seen that part.
I'll comment in line with your reply:
My response to your "solutions":
1. Win98 is only unsupported b/c M$ is EVIL and wants to use hackers to make more money in
"upgrades" by leaving previous versions to be riddled with viruses when it's probably even
easier for them to release patches for 9x kernels. Besides which, I figured that due to its
age, Win98SE would have all of its major bugs worked out, and wouldn't have to sustain a major
hit like this poses. Furthermore, there's still an OS/2 group in my city.
No, Win98 is no longer supported because MS, being a free company, has
decided it does not want to invest money into OLD TECHNOLOGY. It would
not benefit them to continue to invest money into a product that does
not fully support the current direction/platforms of the company. Any
company in the Free world does this and should be able to do this, not
just Microsoft.
There is a Commodore group in my city, but it's not supported by
Commodore - so it's really meaningless to expect them to continue to
support a dead OS.
2. I already bought a good virus scanner and firewall (SystemWorks and ZoneAlarm Pro), so
until now, I've been relying on updated virus definitions. I thought that was a workable
solution until this, where a key part of Windows has been totally exploited.
The problem is that the exploits, even for Linux and it's apps, are
evolving, just look at the HPUX sites for their holes. The longer
Windows 98 is around the more chances of finding something that can be
exploited. It's your choice to use it.
3. No, why should I pay to make my PC even slower? I don't need the extra "features" (read:
bugs) of newer M$ OSs, and Win98 has all the functionality (plus extra compatibility) that I
need. Besides which, I'm not going to let an EVIL MONOPOLY dictate how I run any system, and
will certainly not be pressured into any "upgrade".
If Win98 has all the functionality that you need, then so does Fedora
Core 4 and the Windows Emulator. Since you've not specified what you
really need from the OS/Apps, I can tell you that Office versions
through XP will run on Linux Fedora Core 4 using a Windows Emulator
program - and they run quite well too.
You are NOT pressured to upgrade, you are only going to have to accept
that the FREE MARKET is a real thing, part of most every company, and
that you've decided to live with OLD technology that is no longer
supported - again, it's your choice.
4. Oh, so you think I have all the money in the world? A year later, I'm still buried in
credit card debt paying for a $6000 USD (approx. conversion) theft that I couldn't afford to
insure, and I know quite a few people who aren't rich enough to have a fast enough PC to even
look at 2000 (like somebody I know who still has a P233). I'm just a student who's having to
work to pay for a drug-dealing gang's gains, so I still have my university tuition to have to
pay. Since I use laptops, the lack of compatibility and ease of use deters me from learning a
*nix OS, especially as I'm not a programmer and wouldn't enjoy having to recompile my OS.
I didn't suggest anything concerning your finances, but my old P2
laptop, a not so old P3 and even my new Toshiba P4 3.2ghz laptop run
Fedora Linux just as well as Windows XP. Oh, and I didn't have to
compile anything, just download the FREE ISO images, burn them to CD and
it's installable for free.
I still won't use XP on principle that I completely disagree with M$ violating privacy with
WPA, and I'm not going to ask PERMISSION to use something that I had to PAY FOR and own the
rights to.
No one asked you to use it, but you want to stand the high ground and
then not give a vendor the same right? They have every right to stop
supporting a product that's been replaced for a LONG TIME.
My question is, if security people have developed an unofficial workaround for the NTFS kernel,
then why can't they release one for the Win9x kernel? Why isn't there DLLs that I can
unregister, or "features" that I can disable?
Windows 2000/XP are not even close to Win98/Me, it's not even close to
the same type of platform. Why would you expect a company to spend
thousands of $ on a solution for a discontinued and unsupported OS?
I had plans to make all Win98 machines secure by not connecting them to the Internet, and to
keep anything that could run XP using 2000, switching to Macs when PCs are forced to use their
TCP chips, and then finally learning to use a friendly form of Unix when there was a real
purpose like CompSci courses, but this exploit (I again figured that since the majority of
people had bought into M$'s tactics to force "upgrades", that virus writers would target the
NTFS kernel which had more undiscovered holes, because it had become the common medium, and
therefore NTFS exploits simply wouldn't work with Win98). Because of my dire life situation,
these plans have remained daydreams, until I can find some charitable help to give me a hand up
in building my future, but that I've never been able to find, needed because I simply don't
have the means to fix damage done by other people which has become too much for me to control...
If you can't handle the fact that it's not going to be supported, that
you already had this information available, and you don't want to do
anything to test/try Linux, then you're stuck. You can't blame any
vendor for failing to support an OS that you've already known was
unsupported and didn't take steps to upgrade/update to a supported OS.
Try Fedora Core 4, it's painless, at least it's been painless for us.
