July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

Technocrat

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

zogger

Tue May 30 19:12:59 -0700 2006

Open+Source+Software.

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July 11th has the potential to get millions of people to look at linux, because that is the day MS drops support for 98, 98se and ME. In the background, millions of people running those systems will now need a viable alternative, and short of buying a new computer, they don't have a lot of options out there-unless the F/OSS community can point them to something that might work on their older machines.

Unfortunately, I don't think *any* of the big name linux distros would run very well on anything still using 32 or 64 megs of RAM for instance. It might technically run, but just barely in GUI mode, whereas 98 sure will. So, these folks will be looking to struggle by until they get compromised so bad with malwarez the machines are useless, then they will buy a new machine, most likely with MS preinstalled. Or perhaps with a RAM upgrade this could be possible. Either way it is going to make something of an impact later on this summer.
Sort of a shame there hasn't been as much emphasis towards the low resources end of things, also a consideration for the developing world,a rather *large* market, where a lot of older computers get shipped as scrap or ultra cheap computers.
That's why last week or so I was wondering about the status of the "one laptop per child" minimal system would be like, seems a nice effort to be used "only" on those machines. I checked their "download" page, so far just media images of the laptop prototypes, but no code yet, although it is promised to be there sometime. Now here is something to chew on: Once those machines start shipping by the millions, it will become the global default defacto Linux "distro leader" in installed base in rapid order, something to consider that I haven't seen mentioned anyplace else yet.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

WeblionX

Tue May 30 19:42:58 -0700 2006
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Unfortunately, I don't think *any* of the big name linux distros would run very well on anything still using 32 or 64 megs of RAM for instance. It might technically run, but just barely in GUI mode, whereas 98 sure will
I see your slow Linux system and raise you a slow Windows 98 system. On a laptop I have with 32MB of RAM, both Win98SE and Slackware Linux (With windowmaker) run equally sluggish with Firefox taking about the same time to load. (Even IE takes just about the same amount of time to load).

Two of the biggest obstacles I can think of is the lack of ability to easily upgrade software that comes with the distro and the general unfriendlyness of installing new programs. While it might be easy to tell your friends to open a terminal, extract an archive and make && make install and then create a shortcut on the desktop, I would like to avoid that with the people I'd give one of these systems to. Heck, even I get problems sometimes, especially when installing media programs and codecs.

I believe Linux could really start encroaching into the desktop space a lot quicker via low-end systems if a distro that is truly optimized for low-end machines comes out. Does anyone around here know of a distro that's at least close to what I'm hoping for? It'd be great if there was a kind of Ubuntu with a lighter desktop and smaller footprint.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

Justin

Tue May 30 20:33:56 -0700 2006
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How about Xubuntu? I've never tried it, but it's basically Ubuntu with XFCE as the window manager.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

the womble

Tue May 30 22:26:57 -0700 2006
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What about Vector Linux?

It is nowhere as good as the heavier modern distros, but it is well ahead of Win 98,

It would probably be a good ideas to install Opera to have a decent browser that is more light weight than Firefox.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

Paradise Pete

Tue May 30 20:03:59 -0700 2006
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I don't get this at all. Why will those people suddenly need anything? These are people whose computer does as much as they need. Most likely email and chat and some web browsing, with a little word processing thrown in. The fact that there's no official support doesn't mean anything. Nothing changes.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

Matt Fulkerson

Tue May 30 20:33:50 -0700 2006
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And the people who do want to upgrade will just wait for a sale and get a budget computer with monitor and printer for $350 after rebates.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

zogger

Wed May 31 06:32:50 -0700 2006
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No more security updates for them will be the main reason they would want something different.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

jeremyh

Wed May 31 06:52:39 -0700 2006
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The people I know that still run win98 would not notice a difference, as they (to my knowledge) have never attempted to install an update.
Unfortunately I think the people that know enough about computers to care just aren't running win9x anymore. Then again, maybe my upbrining has shelted me from the poorer sides of the community who may be effected by this.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

rubycodez

Wed May 31 07:46:49 -0700 2006
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heh, all us windows 98 users are poor? I have a machine to occasionally run windows software and a couple "win-peripherals". Boots up nice and fast, even faster than my main box which is a Xeon running SuSE. Any newer MS OS would just slow the 500MHz Celeron down and take up more of the very lmited disk and 255MB RAM. The impending lack of security updates is a concern, though, maybe I should put 2000 pro on there and hope it doesn't gunk up the works too much.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

zogger

Wed May 31 14:26:37 -0700 2006
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I know a lot of (non IT professionals)folks who are running 98se, because they paid a pretty penny for the machine back then and it isn't broken. Usually just maxing out the RAM on those older machines will do the trick. Heck, until last summer when lightning or something zapped my machines here, I was running an IBM built in 97 with a 200PP as my main machine. I had 226 megs of RAM in there and was running FC2 on it. Less than that it was dismal, but that last stick of 128 I added to it did the trick, made it usable (that and completely trashing FLASH, never to be installed again if I can avoid it). I think CPU speed is way overrated for most folks normal surfing/email/chatting purposes, and RAM is more important, mostly from browsers really wanting that extra memory. I guess for modern gaming you would want a lot more, but there's still a ton of older games you could still play.

The MIT laptop is specced at a 500 mhz chip and 128 megs RAM, with a (IIRC) half a gig flash memory to work as the main drive. It's being designed for *low* electrical power demand and decent enough OS to work as a surfer and e-book reader. My GFs machine I cobbed together for her only has a 333 mghz chip and 256 megs RAM, it runs MEPIS from the optical drive OK. the hardrive itself has 98se on it, never bothered to trash it, sometimes it is handy, for instance it's the only thing I have right now that will take my crappy digital camera photos, my regular linux box is still having USB "issues" as in won't work with the camera or my HP printer. I had the printer working once, but since I upgraded to fc4 it just stopped, had it print *one* time, next reboot it lost everything, it doesn't even *see* any USB devices when they are plugged in, and I just gave up on trying to fix it. Followed every help thing I could google up, no dice. Oh well, that's how some things go. I'll keep trying distros until I find one that uses all my peripherals with no hoop jumping, then I'll stick with that until it breaks again.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

r_a_trip

Thu Jun 01 11:39:15 -0700 2006
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They have been on win98 with its own problems for a very long time. The dropping of the nearly non-existing support will not make much difference. These people are perfectly happy with Win98.

Truth of the matter is that the current crop of malware doesn't even target Win9X anymore. An unpatched Win98 machine is safer than a current NT machine. The recent malware attacks on the Windows OS level weren't even DOS compatible.

I can't blame people for holding on to Windows 98 (SE). It truly is one of the nicer OSes MS released. You get most of the benefits that Win32 has to offer and you can still dive under the hood if it screws up and fix stuff.

July 11th Potentially a Good Day for Linux

phred14

Wed May 31 06:53:13 -0700 2006
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Support?

I have a machine that dual-boots Win98SE, and I guess I regularly visit WindowsUpdate for it.

But that machine needs Windows of some form to run Myst Uru and Ultimate Roller Coaster, so it's not likely to become Linux-only in the near future.

Microsofts Support Life Cycle Policy for their older OS

rubycodez

Wed May 31 08:06:31 -0700 2006
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the Microsoft lifecycle page says June 30. The free security updates Microsoft provides (and other services as noted) are covered under the "Extended" column, and critical updates under the "custom/other". There's more opportunity than just for the desktop, note dates for NT4 workstation and server also provide server side possibilities for migration (my company has some manufacturing clients that still run NT4 servers (and Novell too!), common in manufacturing realm to run an OS and machine into the ground)

Wikipedia's list of lightweight GNU/Linux for low end machines

rubycodez

Wed May 31 08:34:18 -0700 2006
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Twelve of those lightweight GNU/Linux distros listed here.