Re: CONFIG_VFAT_FS_DUALNAMES regressions

From: Jamie Lokier
Date: Wed Jul 08 2009 - 09:54:01 EST


Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> I don't believe that Microsoft is still providing updates for Win98. But I
> think Windows 2000 might still be in use

Definitely. The mail server belonging to a company that pays me for
embedded Linux work runs on Windows 2000. I moved it to a virtual
machine about 1 year ago - it's still in use.

> - I for example have a Win 2000
> installation on my ThinkPad T23, although I didn't boot it for about a
> year or so. Has it been tested against Windows 2000? I digged for the mail
> where you said something about against which Windows versions you tested,
> but I didn't find it anymore.

Heh. I still use Windows 95 and Windows 98 occasionally. I'm a bit
disappointed to find Samba no longer tests against them :-)

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows ME has fewer users than 98. 98 had
a reputation for being the best of the non-NT series.

> > When the vendor of an operating system doesn't even bother to display
> > a clean "sorry, you don't get updates any more" page for their OS then
> > I think it is safe to say that the operating system is dead and
> > buried.
>
> It is safe to say much. But still users might not behave according to your
> saying or might even not be able to. A potential customer asked us to
> migrate a Windows 98 installation into a virtual machine, cause the
> software that is running there would not run with any newer version of
> Windows. Sometimes people are locked / forced to a specific Windows (or
> Linux) version at least is they do not want to pay lots of $$$ to replace
> their proprietary special hardware + software combination by something
> which is supported on a newer version of an operating system. And for a
> coincidence I think digital photos have been involved in that use case.

I think you've described commercial ancient Windows users.

But I suspect there are more non-commercial users - that ancient PC
someone has in their home which is good enough at running Word 2 for
_their_ word processing needs. You know the sort of thing: ancient
14-inch CRT still going strong, friend probably replaced the disk 5
years ago and cloned the original working OS, fan's getting a bit
noisy but the old clunker isn't worth replacing just yet.

-- Jamie
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