Creaky Operating Systems Form IT Foundations

maotx writes "The Washington Post has an article on how aging operating systems are still widely used. The article states that "The research firm IDC estimates that of the roughly 514 million paid-for copies of Windows on desktops and laptops worldwide at the end of 2004, almost 21 percent were the aging Win 95, 98 and Millennium Edition releases." That equates to around 108 million copies being used."

If it's not broken..

[Anonymous Coward]

..don't fix it.

Lets not forget

[Anti_zeitgeist]

there are hospitals, companys, schools...etc that have ancient computer sitting around still doing random easy tasks. There is no need to update those computers...unless a larger load of work is needed to be done.

They're talking about Windows 95...

[jnetsurfer]

...doesn't that mean broken?

IDC Research

[rpozz]

"This research into making sure companies have the latest version of Windows was sponsored by Microsoft."

Inertia

[spaeschke]

Does Win95 still access the internet? Play Solitaire? MineSweeper? MP3's (even on old, creaky Pentium I systems)?

Then, quite simply, for most people who just want email and browsing it's more than sufficient for them. Same goes for a lot of small businesses. They don't need multi-Gigahertz machines or recent OS licenses. They just need something that will run their word processors, spreadsheets, and print docs.

What a non-story

[Dancin_Santa]

Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but not everyone is on the bi-annual hardware upgrade cycle.

And if you think that the weakest links in the IT department are the computers being used, then you're part of the problem. Hint: the problem lies in the parts you can't upgrade.

These work as well as they did when they released

[Saven Marek]

Remember these operating systems work as well as they did when they were released so why change?

Windows 95 or 3.11 doesn't suddenly lose features when they become 5 years old. the analogy to 'creaky' isn't flawed. operating systems don't wear out or 'break' over time they just get found exploits for or don't provide newer functionality that might be needed.

But you can patch them and do workarounds for their security problems that keep them every bit as secure as anything else new out there (maybe even more so!!!) and if you don't need newer functionality but just to keep doing a job then why spend money needlessly on something that doesnt need to upgrade and still works?

I bet there are many of completely secure Linux 2.0 and Windows 95 servers and desktops in use by business that will keep doing the job they are needed to for years to come, maybe longer.

Security disaster waiting to happen...

[chrispyman]

Although using an old operating system is fine for just some box sitting there not connected to any sort of network, once you plug it into a network you have a disaster waiting to happen. Many of these old operating systems are sitting there unpatched just waiting to become a sysadmin's worst nightmare. Although, if it was possible to keep these old OS'es patched, I don't see anything wrong with using them.

Half don't care, the other half don't know better

[msim]

Abelit being slightly offtopic, half of those people running older OS's probably don't give two whits about newer software (my girlfriends grandparents pc is still running win95 OSR2!) and the most complicated thing they have done is write aodoccument or print out an invoice.

The other half just accept their pc is getting slower and slower with all the cruft (and spyware too?) and other crap that is slowly killing their systems.

Then again i doubt anyone here is running anything older than win2k/ Macos X unless they are a tightarse.

(this is where i mention my laptop is a P120 running Win98)

Trustworthy Computing

[stevemm81]

For those of us afraid of hardware-based trustworthy computing, this is why it will not happen for a long, long time. More and more home users are going to be satisfied with the machines they have now until they break, and companies wishing to sell online content to them are just going to have to deal with the fact that they're not going to buy a new, trustworthy computer to access the content.

Re:Security disaster waiting to happen...

[dameron]

Put a DOS or WIN95 machine on your network, unpatched from the original cds (floppies!) and call me when it get's compromised.

-dameron

Stifled Innovation

[ozmanjusri]

What this really demonstrates is how stifling Microsoft's OS monopoly has been. When the core functions of a product have changed so little, have offered so little innovation, that there's no compelling reason to upgrade after more than ten years, it's clear that it is a stagnant product.

When no other businesses can enter the market and compete against your stagnant product, but a significant competitor for your product can be put together by a bunch of enthusiasts, then you have a company that has been successful in suffocating an industry.

There are many good reasons to run an "expired" OS

[humanerror]

Among them being that some of us simply have to make do with what we've got.

I am the IT department for a non-profit in San Francisco. We're an Apple only shop, and our charter does not allow us to spend money on hardware. Everything is donated. The result? Besides 8 Rev C and D iMacs and 3 Rev 1 Yosemite G3s, the other 40 or so machines are a motley collection of older, even ancient Macs.

On the iMacs and Yosemites, Jaguar is about as high as you should go if you actually need to get your work done in a timely manner (especially when you only have 192-320M in them). The other Macs run mostly 8.6-9.1, with a couple still running 7.x (if it ain't broke...).

While I (and the admin peeps) would love to have everyone on an OSX box running OpenOffice.org, it's simply not possible at this time. So, we have Office 98, 2001, and 2004 running... depending on the OS installed. I have AppleWorks installed most everywhere, but no one really uses it. Fortunately, Mozilla 1.2 is serviceable on the 8.x-9.x machines.

Like Sting said, "when the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around." Creaky or not.

Re:They're talking about Windows 95...

[jnetsurfer]

For whatever reason, though, there are always the fucktards who decide they'll mod up the same God damned garbage they've seen other people mod up.

Maybe because they liked the "God dammned garbage"?

Just because you're tired of the jokes and didn't find something funny doesn't mean someone else might not...

Upgrades are Incompatabilities

[buckhead_buddy]

PepeGSay wrote:

If that many people still see their OS as viable and are willing to use it... then should the OS companies really be holding a gun to their head in what can only be an attempt to wring more money from them?

That sounds reasonable, but major software upgrades aren't about popularity or making money; they're about making changes that break things. Sometimes the changes make a new feature possible, but often times they bring instability, data corruption, or regressive preformance issues.

Apple's difficulty to getting people to upgrade (since the days of System 6!) have given them a perspective that they market each major upgrade (a.k.a. burdensome incompatibility) with flashy new features, programmer optimizations, and cosmetic improvements that all could have been added to older releases but are saved and introduced as the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Their marketing actually makes many people eager to pay for a set of major changes and incompatabilities each year. (All the Mac rumor sites are awash in speculation over the release date, pricing, and last minute features for Tiger.)

Microsoft's attempts to do this with Windows don't work nearly as well. Programmers willingly forgo new api's on their projects to reach a bigger market. Any cosmetic changes are made available by third-parties for older machines and many people demand a way to regress changes to the older, less-flashy version. Free code doesn't isn't always persuasive either. The major incompatabilities of services packs make some people choose not to stay current if it means that they don't have to hassle with making changes where they have no interest in making changes. If the changes benefit MS, they should be paying me to sabotage (err upgrade) my own system is how one of my previous bosses looked at it.

One of the disadvantages to free software is that there is no automatic way to transition the data, email, porn, and games over to a free software OS in a way that sates the desire people have to not have to screw with their computer. There do appear to be some software projects that are working on these issues, but I bet a partial hardware upgrade (e.g. new hard drive with Linux, transition tools, and way to make a complete archival backup of the old system) would be more along the lines of what Joe Artist or Grandpa Smith would want.

Single app, single task - no need for newer OS

[Alwin Henseler]

Working in a call centre currently. No-name, don't want to risk getting fired ;-)

The shop uses a single user, single task, DOS-based app. On some machines in a fullscreen DOS-box under Win95, on some machines even pure DOS. PentiumPro/Celeron era hardware.

Ancient? Sure. Stupid? Nope. If I would run this shop, I'd use network-booted thin clients, power-saving LCD screens, and some small opensource system like NetBSD, with maybe some custom code on top of it.

But this DOS-based setup isn't all bad: Windows may provide multi-tasking and GUI, but what's the use? If you run a single-user, single-task app all the time, DOS is good enough, and relatively stable. License-wise, DOS is virtually free, Win95 licenses should come almost free these days. With very limited selections to make, DOS-based menu's navigate as quickly or faster than any GUI. The system requirements to run this, make the hardware almost free as well. Sure it's old, but it works, and replacement hardware costs nothing.

Win95 not updated anymore? So what? The hardware doesn't change all by itself, right? Insecure? Maybe, but that only applies if you connect it to networks outside your own control. I doubt these machines have internet connection (not sure though). Maybe you could wreck operations here with a floppy disk smuggled in, but likely you'd get spotted, fired, and made to pay damages. If you work here, why would you risk that?

Drop something newer like Win2k or XP in there: massive upgrade of hardware required, license and maintenance costs skyrocketing with these bloated systems, and maybe a full rewrite of the known, working, and trusted app needed. Please point it out if you see any advantage in there.

Yes, newer systems may provide nice functionality, but if you don't need it, upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, is stupid. Upgrade if it lets you do something you couldn't do before, or if it fixes a (potential?) problem you have. If not, leave it.

Re:3.1

[Anne Honime]

You'd be amazed at the speed of an original IBM AT firing up DOS + Word 5.5. You'd already have been typed one or two pages before XP splash vanish.

Of course, there would be no internet, no USB, no MP3, no nothing except what's really needed to work in most situations.

While windows evolution broadened the scope of use of computers, I compare the different versions to dinosaurs : ever more bigger, still severly lacking in the brain departement, and nearly collapsing under their own weight now.

I bet that history will repeat : time has come for smarter, smaller, devices, and the desktop computer as we know it will soon be a fading memory.

aging operating systems are still widely used...

[i.collect.spam]

"aging operating systems are still widely used"

I'm pretty sure that the numbers will even further increase when Longhorn comes out with a working Digital Restrictions Management.

There are already a lot of IT people that use win2k instead of XP because of several advantages they see in win2k.
Those are not the people who don't care or don't know what they are doing and still they refuse to use the newest and shiniest MS OS.

Besides that there is a undeniable trend towards F/OSS software even among Joe Sixpack users.

So it seems more and more people will use old windows versions or a *nix OS instead of a new windows version in the future.
Personally I think that is a good thing.

Re:So what about Linux?

[jericho4.0]

Agreed. xfce4 is the only lightweight desktop that looks good, but has next to no 'desktop' to it. Firefox brings a 300MHz machine with 64M to a crawl. This should not be.

Re:Windows 3.11

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

They use old operating systems because they work and there's years of data showing that they work. I, for one, DO NOT welcome our money's new touchscreen windows xp embedded flash animated overlords.

Re:If it's not broken..

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

Yes, and lots of older worms won't work on WinXP or 2k. To think you are safer on something 10 years old with no updating is crazy.

Win2k and XP got rid of a lot of problems for people by leaving the 9x series kernel in hell. I have no problems with windows, but 9x series stuff, and pre-XP stuff I want nothing to do with. If only longhorn would do a Macos9->OS X jump and axe nearly all backwards compatibility and be a real start over i might move back to windows. Maybe by the time MS does that OS X will have gotten to be a pile of cruft and I will be tired of it.

Re:I used NT 4.0 for a long time because

[Anonymous Coward]

Got it, uncertified 3rd party low-level drivers caused NT to crash, so the OS is at fault.

Strange, I ran several NT servers for years without seeing that... but I guess it's the OS at fault for allowing people to write buggy drivers that weren't certified.

Thanks, got it, you're perfectly clear.

Re:If it's not broken..

[Blackhalo]

"If only longhorn would do a Macos9->OS X jump and axe nearly all backwards compatibility and be a real start over i might move back to windows."

Yea, that worked really well for Itanium.

If all of my legacy applications are going to break in Microsofts next OS rev, I may as well switch to Linux and get off the MS OS treadmill.

Re:They're talking about Windows 95...

[quanticle]

Only in the sense that a running Model T is broken.

Re:Of course.

[MBGMorden]

Don't underestimate the power of an older system. Sure they might not play the newest version of Unreal, but you can still get online, check email, read newsgroups, read Slashdot, etc on those machines, and though the interface feels just a bit clunky, Office 95 (which was targetted for Windows 3.1) still retains a very large subset of the features available in the current batch of Office suites.

Remember that these machines do no less than they could when they were first introduced, and people payed big money for that functionality back then.

Re:I used NT 4.0 for a long time because

[Anonymous Coward]

My NT4.0 Servers, (PDC, BDC, and member) have uptimes measured in seasons, limited by UPS battery time and local power that's less than stellar in reliability. Maybe you ought to consider non-buggy drivers? Buggy drivers will bring most any operating system to its knees at any moment. I like both FreeBSD and Solaris running Samba better for servers, but I'm just cranky and off topic. The Solaris box is Solaris 7 on a 4 processor Sparc 10. Does that count as a creaky OS on creaky hardware run by someone both cranky and creaky?

Broken, and Orphaned...

[quarkscat]

Of course, those 108 million users of ancient
Windows versions DO NOT represent new WinXP
customers for MSFT -- their hardware will not
support the new OS (and vice versa).

MSFT will not, under any circumstances, release
the complete source code to their ancient OSes --
they would rather let the email worms, viruses,
and spyware so impede these stubborn users that
they spring for new hardware, including the
built-in MSFT tax.

These 108 million users represent the most likely
candidates for a switch to linux -- Linspire or
some other linux/wine implimentation. IMHO, a
grassroots movement of this sort to linux would
drop MSFT stock by 5%. All these users need is
the encouragement (and assistance) from the linux
community. Some well-placed ads (a la NYT/FF)
that also listed LUG websites and phone numbers
could provide the tipping point. A well-designed
and implimented (bootable) single CD solution
that was available (and free as in beer) could
help the process along. Imaqine a free linux CD
released on the scale of (any) AOL "coasterware".

Re:Windows 3.11

[ralphdaugherty]

This equipment does the job, but it ain't exactly Hot Shit anymore. Personally I think it says alot about how schools here in Sweden are low priority.

I think the same is true here in the US from what I read. On the other hand, I went through school and college before PC's were invented and I really don't have any idea what is supposed to be taught on PC's. I remember a niece saying something about "keyboarding", whatever that is.

As if these IM generation kids need to be taught about a keyboard.

I also think "Does The Job" is the point. Fundamentals are fundamentals, and I think I'm better for learning programming with a Microsoft Basic interpreter and Z-80 assembler on TRS-80 with a cassette tape drive (nowadays Java in a text editor on a low end PC) than if I started on a Hot Shit XP computer pointing and clicking.

Schools should deliberately be teaching the fundamentals with low end, corporate cast off PC's in my opinion.

rd

Re:Bootable Live Windows CD

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who use these old systems don't have the time or the tempermant for open source. Similarly, I don't know what "Live Windows CD" (your link notwitstanding) and if I don't know what is is then the local hacks at the computer store in cambellford arn't going to be able to fix it from them.

For instance, my granparents run Win 98. When there computer breaks, they ask for help from thier local computer teacher. Who doen't know Linux. In fact, I bet no one in the small town they live knows linux. Hell, I don't know Linux, even if I am geek enough to feel bad about the fact that I'm too lazy to learn it. Even if I could help them, they live 200 miles away and I don't have a car. Why should old people with very little interest in computers use a system that no one around them could help them with. They recently learned how to use email and thier digital camera and I am very happy for them. I will probably help them buy a new computer soon. What OS will I suggest? Sorry, I know Microsoft is evil, but most of the world uses windows. Although its not particularly 'easy to use', at least there are people in thier local community that can help them use it. Esoteric software is for people with the time and inclination to learn it, and then to fix it themselves when it breaks.

Re:I used NT 4.0 for a long time because

[justins]

But I do that I saw somewhere in a text file on a Windows NT installation that stated that IDE was not supported.

Blah. You're totally wrong. I used plenty of IDE drives in NT 4.0 with no problems. Hardware compatibility is something MS is fairly good at.

The maximum size of a FAT16 parition for DOS was 2GB. Even if you selected NTFS as the file system, selecting a partition bigger than 2GB would result in an error from setup saying that it would not be able to boot that partition because of DOS.

There was a problem similar to what you describe in the installer, but the size limit in question is 4GB. (32bit FAT vs 16bit FAT, I guess) You could format the drive in another machine before you ran setup for a system volume size of 8GB. Since the system volume didn't need to be exactly huge, and other volumes could be as large as you want, this wasn't a major limitation for anyone except those who freak out when everything isn't on one big partition.

Even if I am wrong about slipstreaming in NT, what's to stop a program from overwriting system files that correspond the the installed service pack?

NT relied on the same mechanism that any decent OS can rely on: file permissions. A lot of people who used FAT32 with NT so they could dual-boot with 95 or 98 or whatever probably missed out on that.

Re:Single app, single task - no need for newer OS

[Antique Geekmeister]

Until the day you need to print with it, or send an email based on the information. Then you need to do a forklift upgrade of the whole system.