Ten years later, Windows XP still dominates the Web

Which is an interesting point, because if your machine has one Gb of RAM, you could actually run Win 7.

 

True, but you're a lot better of with 2 gigs or more if you run a lot of programs under Win 7.

 

How about trying this...

-http://www.reactos.org/en/download.html

"ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system based on the Windows NT "

SSM could run on that.

Russian students are asking Putin to fund this free OS, btw.

I got interested with Reactos when Didier Stevens modified Reactos' cmd.exe as a cmd.dll to be loaded from memory without touching disk for his bypass on SRP, HIPS, etc.

 

I like the car analogies. They fit better than some here will admit. An older classic car didn't need a computer to control the fuel, spark, or monitor engine variables. The mechanical devices did it quite well. They were simple, straight-forward, easy and even fun to work on (fond memories of tuning 4-BBl carbs and test runs), physically tough, and got the job done.

The analogy carries over to the user. On an older vehicle, the user needed enough sense to not lock up the brakes on a slick surface and to steer into a slide, when to use the throttle to pull a car out of a slide, had to know how to park, etc. Now the cars do these things for you, when the technology works. The analogy fits all too well. Modern cars require very little skill or sense from the driver, just like modern PCs. Some call that advancement. All I see it doing is making dumb drivers and PC users.

 

reactos is still in alpha phase

 

Serapis,
There's nothing secret or illegal about these projects, yet. They're upgrades to older, unsupported operating systems. The projects for XP are in their infancy. Nothing really available for it yet that I know of. There's some for Win 2000, one of which adds XP API's and allow it to run more of the newer apps. The bulk of the projects are for Win 98. Most of these projects are at the MSFN forum or are linked to there. Some of them are complete like NUSB, which adapted USB components from XP and gives 98 full USB 2.0 compatibility. Others like KernelEx are in constant, albeit slow development. At least one of the tools/projects being developed for 98 is also being ported to XP and is being used to sort through the DLL hell MS created. It's ironic that that the XP users that were telling us to "get with the times" 10 years ago are now turning to the few of us who are left for help.

The list of fixes and solved problems for 98 is too long for me to try to remember, but it does include:
Hard drive size limitations fixed. It can handle drives over 1TB now.
2GB file size limitation fixed.
Poor resource handling has been largely mitigated by the Revolutions Pack upgrade, giving huge improvements in long term stability.
RAM usage problems largely fixed. 98 systems using 1GB RAM are common there. Some are utilizing 4GB. It might not sound like much in comparison to a modern OS until you consider than 98 commonly ran on 64MB of RAM. Unlike the current systems, almost all of the installed RAM is available to user applications, not consumed by the OS.

As support for XP ends, the unofficial projects will sprout up. At first development will be slow and erratic, but as more people get on board, it will pick up. Don't expect it to be like Microsoft patches or downloads. None of these are aimed at the casual or typical user. You have to want to keep that OS and be willing to really get to know it.

 

This is truly amazing, they've basically built a cutom OS that's just as compatible as newer ones while being extremely resource efficient enough to rival most linux distros. Also in the case of win98 it's actually safer since it lacks services

Thanks for sharing, I will keep an eye out for XP projects when they eventually come up.

 

XP should stay and Microsoft should give a serious thought of letting XP where it is and support it and provide updates: (XP is great) or at least comeup with a OS that is really really lite like XP, come to think of it, although the OS followed the natural way of evolution but the hardware kind of didn't or did Microsoft gave a serious thought about that too.
MS quite didn't give a serious thought about how much people could afford to buy a Win7 machine, that aside XP still rocks for me than Win7 with all its bells and whistles.

What Win7 can do, Xp can do equally well.
Although i can't qualify to give some technical differences but i am not a noob and i very much satisfied with XP.
But running some new games would pose a problem as it would require Direct x 10 and XP only supports Direct x 9

Besides i see no reason why i should prefer Win7. duhhhh

 

Well, that goes without saying. What I was alluding to was that (IMHO) the primary reason for much of industry, schools, colleges inter alia, let alone many individual average users, not to upgrade from XP was that they couldn't run Vista/Seven on their machines because they didn't have the RAM.

Before Vista most average computers were not designed to run even one Gb of RAM as XP didn't need it.

 

@ noone_particular

BIG thanks for the MSFN forum link & info etc

That's true, & i checked my RAM usage just now with ALL my normal Apps running on XP/SP2 = 500k out of 2Gb Of course some installed Programs can use Lots of RAM for eg, Audio/Video production etc. But that's not XP's fault !

 

It isn't just "bells and whistles" that were added to Windows 7 With the addition of UAC, which when enabled, runs the first account as Protected Administrator with only Standard user rights unless something is elevated, Windows Integrity Mechanism, including User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI), and better implementation of 64 bit technology, Windows 7 is a vast improvement over XP in terms of security. Even in terms of functionality and user-friendliness, I view Win 7 as equal or better than XP in most areas.

It's nice to reminisce about the good ol' days, but going backwards with technology is not conducive to handling present and future needs in the way the security landscape is met.

 

Yes, really.... and all the exploits to bypass 7 UAC and co. ?

 

You mean all one or two of them out of the thousnds out there, especially the ones where the user is at fault

 

Microsoft should stop the "one system fits all" idea. Just as 98 wasn't designed for the corporate environment, the NT systems weren't designed for the home user. Each gets stuck with features, services, and all the overhead and vulnerabilities that come with them, many of which are of no use to one or the other. If you look back, it's been a strange path for PCs in regards to non-corporate environments. They started as personal units for hobbyists. Afterwards they became family units. Now the trend is back towards personal units.

They're taking the best of both, getting rid of the bloat, and fixing problems on the way. Projects like KernelEx are completely custom built. Others fix flaws in the existing code, not an easy thing to do without decent documentation or the source code. It's not as efficient at resource handling as linux, but is far better than it was. In some cases, it's better at it than the non-server versions of the NT systems. With Tor for instance, the "WSAENOBUFS: Running out of buffer space on Windows" has plagued all the non-server versions of Windows for many years. I've been running an exit node for some time and have never seen that error on this unit. Even with the upgrades, 98 doesn't match Linux in the ability to run almost forever with no loss of performance, but instead of having usable times measured in hours or days, it's now weeks or months.

Regarding services, I totally agree. They are not and never were necessary on PCs for home users. In addition to being exploited directly, now they're targeted in memory via thread injection. Instead of developing anti-rop technology to protect those services, get rid of them. They weren't necessary in the first place, but that contradicts planned obsolescense and the bloating of the OS that forces users to replace perfectly good hardware.

 

I am sure that my notebook wasn't originally designed to run Vista. It only has 1Gb of RAM. XP would run really well on it I reckon.

 

If one has mechanisms in place to intercept malware at the threat gates then the argument of 'upgrade for security' becomes a moot point. Patching is a sisyphean exercise designed to keep consumers reliant on the vendor.

 

I couldn't agree more! sysyphean...word of the day http://www.wordreference.com/definition/sisyphean

 

Patching is a mechanism inherent to software, regardless of security and regardless of vendor.

 

I agree...but does mean it is (always) better?...to upgrade or patch.

 

No, I think "better" is hard to talk about. In fact that's the issue inherent to software - trying to understand the implications to each line of code, to each software patch, is just impossible. That patch may very well introduce new vulnerabilities.

 

I'll leave others to continue the discourse...I have run out of ideas!

 

Just as the threat to withhold those patches from all but the most current OS is an excercise in coersion intended to separate the user from their wallets.

 

Just to see things a little differently...symmetry in numbers.

 

I couldn't disagree more. If that were true then you'd have to pay for each update. Patching is the only way to fix unforeseen security holes in the architecture. The patch process is actually a result of a lack of design (or a poorly laid one).

That is more plausible. Although the counter argument to this is Linux distros have life spans as well. No one makes any money when a *buntu flavor reaches EOL.

 

If you would like to believe that the security technology implemented is all just a gimmick feel free but you should remember that most everything implemented in Windows was once implemented in *nix and I certainly doubt that they would be implementing features with the motivation to get more money.