Firefox to Drop Pre-Windows 2000 Support

cyclomedia writes "While more and more platforms are getting (or aiming for) Firefox ports, the trunk itself seems to be going the other way. In an effort to clean up the API calls used and reduce the codesize a patch was posted at Bugzilla removing support from pre-W2k versions of Windows. There's a fiery discussion going on over at the Mozillazine forums about this after a counter bug was filed. The official position appears to be that Firefox 3.0 will maintain this un-compatibility, but developers are, obviously, free to work on a separate Win 98 compatible 'port.'"

Why not?

[milamber3 (173273)]

MS has basically stopped supporting pre-2000 so why shouldn't firefox? Anyone using their computer to browse the web with firefox should probably make sure they have 2000 or better just to keep the nasties out of their system.

Re:Why not?

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

Nasties can only get in your system if you expose bad ports or use an insecure program to run it.

Up until now, the most secure thing for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it) has been to sit behind a router and use firefox.

Knowing that firefox won't support them will be bad news in my eyes.

Additionally, aren't Win 2000 and Win xp less secure than running an old OS which doesn't have the available OS features which l33t virus people exploit?

Re:Why not?

[truthsearch (249536)]

... for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it)...

'Cause they don't want to pay for a new version or bother getting a pirate copy, or deal with the headaches of upgrading, and maybe it simply works for them and feel no obligation to change?

Additionally, aren't Win 2000 and Win xp less secure than running an old OS which doesn't have the available OS features which l33t virus people exploit?

All versions of Windows have holes which Microsoft will never fix. But no updates at all will ever come for very old versions. Holes in 98 will forever be there while with 2000 and XP you can at least still hope for fixes. AFAIK most significant exploits and virii are applicable to all versions of Windows since they share the majority of their code base (especially the Win32 API).

Re:Why not?

[misleb (129952)]

'Cause they don't want to pay for a new version or bother getting a pirate copy, or deal with the headaches of upgrading, and maybe it simply works for them and feel no obligation to change?

I've personally never met anyone for whom Windows 98 Just Works. But I guess maybe that has something to do only being brought in when the Windows 98 shit hit the fan. Seriously though, who could still be running an original installation of Windows 98? Standard operating procedure for Win 98 pretty much dictates a fresh reinstall every so often anyway. Why not upgrade while you're at it?

What is it with Windows and legacy support, anyway? Only in the Windows world (it seems) do you get a significant number of people who stubornly refuse to give up their applications and OS from 1995. Well, I guess there might still be some Amiga users out there... ;-) IF they're happy with an OS from before 2000, they should be happy with a browser from 2006. Can they really expect developers to continue to support them?

-matthew

Re:Why not?

[just_forget_it (947275)]

I am currently at work using Windows 98. From my perspective, using Windows 98 is getting more and more awful. Especially since I have to coordinate with Engineers using AutoCAD 2007 on Windows XP machines, making it work with my Acad 2002 win98 machine.

Arguing against stopping support for windows 98 makes about as much sense as being against companies stopping support for DOS or CP/M. Windows 98 is in the same boat, eventually the only users will be people running highly specialized custom niche software that CANT run on any other OS.

Re:Why not?

[aywwts4 (610966)]

A floppy drive is all you need, transfer a whole image of a windows CD Rom directory to a fat32 partition. Boot via a boot floppy and navigate over to the \i3856\i386\winnt That will begin the instalation of xp or 2000 you desire.

Look online for windows instalation from harddrive or without CD or something like that.
Good Luck.

Re:Why not?

[ichigo 2.0 (900288)]

'Cause they don't want to pay for a new version or bother getting a pirate copy, or deal with the headaches of upgrading, and maybe it simply works for them and feel no obligation to change?

Why would these people even bother upgrading Firefox? 1.0 should be enough for those people. And if they don't care about their OS of choice's vulnerabilities, they surely won't care about their browser's either.

Re:Why not?

[zimus (68982)]

Up until now, the most secure thing for win 98 users (for whatever reason they are still using it) has been to sit behind a router and use firefox.

Actually, up until now the most secure thing for win98 users has been to leave the computer turned off, and unplugged from the wall.

Re:Why not?

[masklinn (823351)]

W98 support will be dropped for Firefox 3.0 because it's using Cairo (which does not build on W98

Firefox 3.0 is at least a year in the future, mid-2007 that is. If you haven't switched from W98 nearly 10 years after it's been released, you're asking for trouble no matter what.

Additionally, aren't Win 2000 and Win xp less secure than running an old OS which doesn't have the available OS features which l33t virus people exploit?

W98 is a piece of crap security wise.

Firefox 2 EOL + a solution

[kbrosnan (880121)]

Firefox 2 which will be out in the third quarter of 2006 is the last version of Firefox to support Windows 9x. Mozilla has a policy of supporting a milestone release till two add ional milestone releases are made. This means that Mozilla will be supporting Firefox 2 with security patches until Firefox 4 is out or whatever the milestone release after Firefox 3 is named. An educated guess would be that Mozilla support of Firefox 2 will end some time around the middle of 2008.

mozilla.org bug - Don't kill Win [mozillanews.org]

Re:Why not?

[GWBasic (900357)]

Firefox should support DOS, CPM, and run on a PDP-1!

Let's do a reality check here. If you're running Windows 98, do you care if you can run the latest and greatest programs? Probably not. My guess is that the best approach is to maintain a feature-locked fork that only gets major bug and security fixes.

Re:Why not?

[Short Circuit (52384)]

Pre-W2K systems are still in wide use in the home. I know this because my Computer Club regularly services them at PC Clinic [grc4.org]. Dropping support for pre-W2K systems puts Firefox in a bad position for these systems. We may have to look at Opera instead.

Re:Why not?

[Chris_Jefferson (581445)]

Don't rush.

The support is being dropped from Firefox 3. Firefox 2, out later this year, will have windows 98 support. Firefox 3, which probably won't be out for another 18 months after that, will be the one without windows 9x support. By that point I would expect to still see some, but even less, windows 9x boxes.

Re:Why not?

[SiChemist (575005)]

I would say the main reason you don't see many machines running that vintage of Linux is that they could be upgraded to a newer version for free. I don't think there will ever be a large number of machines running an extremely obsolete version of a free operating system.

Re:Why not?

[kentyman (568826)]

I don't think there will ever be a large number of machines running an extremely obsolete version of a free operating system.

What about Debian Stable? :)

Re:Why not?

[Dan Ost (415913)]

For Linux, the increase is negligible.

While that may be true of the kernel, it is not true of the desktop
environments (Gnome, KDE, etc) or of any apps that make use of the
large widget libraries (qt, gtk, etc).

Re:Why not?

[Richard Steiner (1585)]

I use Windows 95 OSR2 on several boxes at home, and nasties don't happen. Why? Because OSR2 doesn't support many of the infection vectors present in newer Win32 flavors. It's too old.

Re:Why not?

[misleb (129952)]

I use Windows 95 OSR2 on several boxes at home, and nasties don't happen. Why? Because OSR2 doesn't support many of the infection vectors present in newer Win32 flavors. It's too old.

You use them or just happen to have them sitting around gathering dust? There is a difference. I used to "use" and old HP 9000 server in my house until I realized the difference between using a computer and simply being an ubergeek with a tendancy to collect crap.

-matthew

I use them.

[Richard Steiner (1585)]

I use them rather heavily. Since I have an 8-port KVM switch at home, I can use a rather large mix of boxes on a regular basis, and I find that I tend to bounce between Warp 4 and Win95 OSR2 most of the time.

One of the Win95 OSR2 boxes is my secondary desktop box at home which I use almost daily (mainly things like Word 97, StarOffice 5.1a, FireFox, various MIDI apps for my Yamaha keyboard, Visio, etc.) and which is still my main gaming box (I play a lot of classics like UT, Tribes 1, TA, SC, AOE2, HomeWorld, NFS 3/4, Madden 2001, etc).

A second Win95 OSR2 box is my main fileserver (a Proliant 2500), and a third is smaller fileserver dedicated to MP3 files (an IBM IntelliStation 6899, which is a VERY nice PPro box).

Most of the others are multiboot boxes which are booted into other things most of the time (Linux variants, eCS, or OS/2), but which are booted to Windows 95 OSR2 with a QuikMenu 4 desktop if I want to put together a gaming LAN, so those copies are mostly idle. That much less reason to upgrade them, though.

Re:Why not?

[Tackhead (54550)]

> I use Windows 95 OSR2 on several boxes at home, and nasties don't happen. Why? Because OSR2 doesn't support many of the infection vectors present in newer Win32 flavors. It's too old.

"It's too old", by the way, doesn't mean "Nobody bothers to find infection vectors for it", it means "they were never implemented."

Other than the TCP/NetBIOS stuff (that never, to the best of my knowledge, had a remote exploit that let anyone take control of the box), a box running 98SE runs no services. No uPNP exploit. No DCOM/RPC. No Messenger. No nothing. For all intents and purposes, it's already firewalled when you plug it into the wall.

Warning: Rant coming on.

I'd go so far to say that 98SE out of the box, plus Mozilla, is more secure than XP ever was. After a user actually runs the malware, it's a draw. 9x has no security model, and the XP box wins in theory: an OS that supports privileged/nonprivileged users is at least capable of defending against user stupidity. But in practice, the 2K/XP malware uses privilege escalation bugs to turn XP's security model something effectively identical to 9x's: "None at all."

9x is also IMHO more recoverable than XP; replacing a borked .DLL for an updated (or downgraded, because some idiot installer overwrote it) .DLL is easy when you've got a "talk-to-the-bare-metal" DOS prompt and there's no OS in the way telling you you can't overwrite the file. DRM? What DRM? You can't do DRM when you've got no security model. 9x doesn't phone home. 9x doesn't care - doesn't know - if you make a drive image (ah, a DOS prompt again!) of your boot partition, burn it onto a CD, and file it away until the user hoses something badly enough that it can't be recovered.

Sure, the OS was a fancy DOS shell that sucked balls compared to any real OS if you were trying to develop software on it, but it made a damn good single-user home/gaming platform. If it weren't for the 137GB drive (not partition, drive) size limit and the 512MB RAM size limit, I'd run it today as my gaming rig.

OK. Rant over.

I suspect that the real reason the Mozilla team is dropping support for 9x is because the OS sucks balls, and the ball-sucking makes it not fun to develop software on it. It's got nothing to do with security. Because the OS that runs no services, doesn't get 0wn3d.

Re:Why not?

[NutscrapeSucks (446616)]

Why? Because OSR2 doesn't support many of the infection vectors present in newer Win32 flavors. It's too old.

This is true only if you didn't install the IE4+ desktop update. Otherwise you have a load of vulnerable shell components that will never be patched.

Re:Why not?

[JonLatane (750195)]

Expecting a version of Firefox to be released in 2007 to work on Win98 is like expecting lunchmeats produced in 2007 to work on bread made in 1998.

shrug

[aleksiel (678251)]

i'd be hard pressed to find someone who runs anything pre-win2000 as their main/only computer and also has technical sense enough to want to use firefox.

Re:shrug

[ArmyOfFun (652320)]

I should post anonymously to avoid horrible embarrassment. My home computer was bought in '99, (550 mhz), and while intended for useful work, it was also an awesome gaming rig at the time, it came preloaded with Win98 SE. While still my main machine, it's only regularly used for web browsing now. XP would slow the thing down, and I have no desire to purchase/pirate 2k. The only stability problems I've had were due to a stick of memory going bad (so it has even less RAM than when I bought it in '99). That said, I don't care about this announcement. I understand my setup is outdated, and I don't expect any software to support it. I have no desire to upgrade my machine, or rather, any desire to upgrade is outweighed by the cost of a new machine. I have only two reasons I would need a bleeding edge computer. The first is to play PC games, but I've moved to consoles for my gaming needs simply because it's cheaper (I can't justify $200 every 1-2 year just to play new games). The other is do work on my home machine but I'm not interested in doing any work during my off hours (the main app I need to run often slows my 1ghz work machine to a crawl). For web browsing/paying bills, my setup is more than adequate.

Re:shrug

[Nutria (679911)]

I NEED MUH FIREFOXEN!

There's no logic bomb that says that NEXT YEAR when FF 3.0 is realeased, FF 2.0.x suddenly stop running on Win98.

Re:shrug

[misleb (129952)]

Sounds like a candidate for LInux (without KDE or Gnome).

-matthew

One way to go...

[truthsearch (249536)]

Deciding on when to drop compatibility can be a tough problem. I think a good policy would be to drop support for an OS when support from that OS has been dropped by the vendor. In Windows' case I believe the majority of home users are on XP while the majority of office users are on XP or 2000. So it would seem reasonable to drop support for the older OSs.

The last version of Firefox to support 98 and earlier should be kept up for easy download.

Do you want to live forever?

[orangeguru (411012)]

I would like to see current user numbers? Windows 95/98/Me can't be big anyway. Maybe it's time for these people to upgrade or buy a new machine. There isn't much NEW software that supports these setups anyway. And anyone who is using them simply might be stuck with FF1.5. So what? You can't have all the new technologies on a five or ten year old machine / OS.

Re:Do you want to live forever?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's about 10x more Windows 98 users on the Internet than there are Linux desktop users. So the numerical argument doesn't fly.

It's a technical decision -- Win98 doesn't support the transparancy APIs or something like that.

Typical Microsoft mindset

[hausmaus (684529)]

It seems to me that the developers of Firefox have fallen down the same pothole-filled path that Microsoft has - forget about your past, focus only on the future. As an guy who does quite a bit of home-based computer repair, I see a lot of people who are NOT using Windows XP and are using older versions of Windows (pre-2000 - I use W2K myself). What's happening to Firefox is that it's getting splintered apart slowly. I wouldn't be suprised to have four or five distinct versions of FF in the next few years (note I'm not saying ports, but distinct versions).

Firefox is already much slower-loading that it used to be a few years ago, loaded with a lot of things that probably aren't really necessary. Not all of us require the latest and greatest thing to do what we need to do and I feel that the developers of FF have lost touch of that, being driven by feature creep and "keeping up with the neighbors" mentality.

Re:Typical Microsoft mindset

[LWATCDR (28044)]

I see the exact opposite. Windows XP still runs DOS programs. How often do you use that? None is as bad as Microsoft about holding on to the past.
As a programmer I understand why the developers of Firefox are doing this. Win 95, 98, and Me are actually pretty different from NT, 2000, and XP. They use a different code base and have a lot of different APIs.
At the company I work at we have just also ended support for the 95-Me code base. It was getting too hard to support both the new OS and those old and inse

Then the 98 people will all move to Linux!

[ElleyKitten (715519)]

I dunno, it's what people said when they found out IE7 wouldn't support 98.

I guess it's a little mean to the 98 people, but I think it's reasonable. It's hard to support a lot of platforms, and with Vista coming out that would have been 4+ Windows platforms to support without dropping 9x. Also, since it's open-source, there's plenty of opportunity for people to make a fork designed just for Win9x if there's enough interest. 9x people should really upgrade though. Win2k, FYI, is one of the easiest Windows to pirate. There's a hack that someone found to make the CD not even ask you for a key to install. I'm sure most of the ISOs at http://www.isohunt.com/ [isohunt.com] have it, if anyone needs it. Or here's [ubuntu.com] another place to get your upgrade.

Re:Then the 98 people will all move to Linux!

[christopherfinke (608750)]

I guess it's a little mean to the 98 people

I'm not sure if this means "people who use Windows 98" or "the 98 people who uses Windows 98," but I think I'm going to go with the latter.

Nothing to worry about.

[jZnat (793348)]

Firefox 3.0 is a long way away, and there's still Firefox 2.0 along with its security releases through Firefox 3.0's early lifetime as well. By the time 3.0 is absolutely necessary, the pre-2K computers could have already upgraded to Ubuntu [ubuntu.com].

Good!

[misleb (129952)]

What's wrong with this? Does anyone care if Firefox runs on 7 year old Linux distributions? No. Do Mac users care if an application still runs on OS 9? No. There is no reason why anyone should be running anything less than Win 2k. If they are, they certainly shouldn't expect to be able to run the latest and greatest of software. If they are OK with an OS older than 2000, they should be OK running a browser version stuck in 2006. I say clean up the code and drop legacy support. Don't make Microsoft's mistake.

-matthew

Re:Good!

[Nimrangul (599578)]

You're wrong, people do care about if something still runs on Mac OS 9, the people who have hardware which is still perfectly fine and an operating system that still does everything they need. These people see no reason to upgrade to a new machine with new operating system because it hold no benifits, it's just a bunch of money they'd rather use on something like bills.

The same is true for many Windows 95 users, they have machines that will still run fine for years and will do exactly what they want - their e-mail and some web surfing. I have met these people, when I can I upgrade their hardware so that it's able to at least run 2000, I do so, but sometimes I just don't have the spare parts sitting around waiting for them.

Not everyone has a couple grand they are able to flop down at the drop of a hat in order to get the latest and greatest, some people have very tight budgets.

While it is true many of these people don't expect the biggest and best of the software world to run on their machines, it's not that they don't want them to.

These people are out there, and will stay out there for a long time. The Internet will always have traces of these legacy systems as long as it exists in it's current form, is it not better to at least try to give them something reasonably up-to-date in order to protect ourselves from their inevitable infections?

That is why OpenSSH runs on so many systems, it was meant to remove a insecurity via telnet and rlogin from the Internet, for everyone's benifit.

Re:Good!

[misleb (129952)]

You're wrong, people do care about if something still runs on Mac OS 9, the people who have hardware which is still perfectly fine and an operating system that still does everything they need. These people see no reason to upgrade to a new machine with new operating system because it hold no benifits, it's just a bunch of money they'd rather use on something like bills.

The same people for whom OS 9 is still good enough tend to be the same people for whom old applications are good enough. And besides, they

...but Windows Me is newer than Windows 2000!

[Xenomorph.NET (969401)]

Its a bit misleading saying Firefox/Mozilla is dropping "pre Win2k" support. It would be more accurate to say it's dropping NT4/Win9x support, and going NT5+ only. Windows 2000 was released late 1999/early 2000, and Windows Me was released later mid 2000. WinMe (and therefor parts of Win9x) is newer than Windows 2000. Anyway, I don't know how this will affect people. I use Windows 98SE on some older systems. My mother uses Windows 98SE on her only system. (mostly Pentium MMX 233MHz w/ 96-256 Megs RAM). Using something like WinXP on those systems would be a joke, and even going with Win2k isnt good. They'd run a lot slower and lose all support for DOS. Win98SE runs perfectly stable on the systems we use, and all of our programs work. I know we're not the only ones who use computers like those. If Windows 98SE "just works" - why upgrade? Most of the software out there now runs on older computers and operating systems - at least on the Windows platform. That's one reason why Windows is still so popular. Backwards compatibility. It's a shame to see Firefox specifically drop support for an older OS.

Lots of People Still Use Windows 95/98/Me

[CritterNYC (190163)]

There are lots of people in the world that are still using Windows 95/98/Me. More than Mac, Linux and UNIX combined. Many have older machines that don't support Windows 2000. Most have no idea how to upgrade an operating system. Some only get a new operating system when they buy a new PC. Many can't afford either a new PC or a new OS. None have a clue what Linux is or how to use it.

But, many of these people can, with a little help from a webpage or a techie friend, install a new browser. One that can protect them from online nasties. One that doesn't let people install random bits of code. One that lets them explore new areas online. This is far easier than an OS upgrade. Or a new PC. And it's free.

Firefox officially dropped Windows 95 support quite a while back, but it does still run fine on Windows 95. I keep instructions on how to Run Firefox on Windows 95 [johnhaller.com] on my website for just this reason. It gets a couple thousand page views a month. And I still get emails from people thanking me for compiling it.

Windows 98, on the other hand, has been officially supported this entire time. And lots of people are running it. While we may not have a solid source for stats (and, no, W3 Schools is not a solid source for stats... it's geek-centric and not reflective of the overall web), something like TheCounter.com provides some global OS stats [thecounter.com] that are a bit more indicative of the net at large... at least in terms of those visiting smaller sites.

So, basically, dropping Windows 9x support would be a disservice to lots of folks around the world. Now, if Firefox 2.0 is going to keep support for it AND have security patches issues for quite a while after FF3 is released, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But having an actively-maintained, secure browser for these older Windows users is important.

I'll tell you people who are using 98

[Sark666 (756464)]

I have a bunch of friends who bought their first computer around 98-99 when everyone and their grandma were getting computers. Most of them have gotten hooked and jumped on the upgrade bandwagon. They all have new hardware now and xp except 3 of them.

These 3 found it nice to have a computer but didn't feel the need to get a new machine. Nothing's broke and everything works, well except, strangely to them, their computer keeps getting slower and slower, and crashes more. They don't want something new, they just want it in the state that they originally got it.

I have reinstalled for them a few times but sooner or later it gets back in the 'bad' state. I'd recommend xp but these machines are pII 450's,- pIII 600's and I think only one has 128 megs of ram.

So in the end I made a ghost image of their drive and even showed them how to restore it.

Now, every so often they restore their image, and everything back the way it was and they love it. Cause this way, it's not just a fresh install, it's got all their drivers, programs installed, email configured, shortcuts they like etc all ready to go. I just tell them back up my docs (and save everything there) and copy that back once the restore is complete.

Yes, pretty trivial stuff to the average geek, but my friends feel impowered now that they can always get their machine back into a perfect state if it every starts acting up.

And, to put off restoring, my main piece of advice was never ever launch ie and always stick to firefox.

Ya, I guess these machines are getting really long in the tooth now, but it still does what they want, surf the web, check email, listen to tunes, burn a cd. Thats all they want and these machines and 98 still fit the bill. And sadly, linux isn't an option here. Kde or gnome are pigs on machines like these and believe me they'll want kde or gnome, anything less will seem too barebones to them. Xfce is close, but not yet.

It's not like FF 1.5 will just stop working

[TomorrowPlusX (571956)]

I don't see the big deal here. Firefox -- today -- runs fine ( I suppose, I use OS X ) on win98. When Firefox 3 or whatever comes out and drops support, so be it. But 1.5 and 2.0 ( I suppose ) will continue to work, right?

So what's the big deal? The people *still* running win98 are clearly not bleeding-edge upgrade-or-die types, so what's the commotion? It's not like they're being forced to upgrade to a new, incompatible firefox.

I still use Win '98 and I'm proud, damnit!

[popo (107611)]

Why? Because I own it. So for me its free. And Windows XP is absurdly expensive.

Unlike XP which "phones home" with each install, Win 98 can be installed, and re-installed on successive machines.

Its stable. And perfectly fast enough for coding, web design, etc. I have resisted purchasing
XP almost out of pride: I *like* '98. It does what any good operating system *should* do: it works.

And it runs all the software I want it to run: OpenOffice, Flash, Firefox, Outlook, etc.

Saying "Microsoft stopped supporting '98, so why should Firefox?" is an absurd question.

Microsoft stopped supporting '98 because they'll do anything in their power to get users to
purchase the next version of Windows, (even if that new version does virtually nothing to enhance
the experience of most users).

Why the Firefox team is asking users to purchase a new version of windows makes little sense to me.

Microsoft hasn't even come close to convincing me that Windows XP is worth the upgrade cost. So
why should I?

Re:Misleading title

[Tim C (15259)]

A better title would then be "Windows 9x Support Dropped", as presimably versions prior to Windows 95 were never supported in the first place.

Sorry, wrong.

[The MAZZTer (911996)]

9x/ME/NT support is dropped. Check the Bugzilla bug linked to in the article, it states it right in the title.

Re:i don't understand

[Jaruzel (804522)]

Because then, no-one would upgrade. Upgrading = More Money for MS/Intel/Dell

Hell I'd love to try out Windows 3.1 with the abstraction layer that emulates Aero Glass! Watch my i386 become l33t before your very eyes!

-Jar.

Re:Pre-2K ?

[Spad (470073)]

Windows Millenium can barely be considered as an Operating System.

Re:Excuse Me?

[ElleyKitten (715519)]

You want me to dumpster this, invest in a new box -- and why?

I believe the gp actually said you should install Linux on it, not dumpster it.

He recommends Debian, but if you don't know a Linux guru, I recommend Xubuntu. You can try out the live cd and see if you like it without hurting Windows.

Re:W3Schools says pre-2k only 2.1%

[Sancho (17056)]

You can't play the statistics card to win this one, unfortunately.

Only 3.3% of people are using Linux. Might as well drop support for them, too.
And who's maintaining a Mac build for only 3.6% of the population? WTF?

Re:Good

[Turn-X Alphonse (789240)]

Or maybe I'm still running 98 because it does everything I need and other than Doom 3 (which my PC won't run any way), I've not found any reason to update. Maybe you've got a spare £100 to waste on an OS, but as a student I don't have this sort of spare money laying around.

And no I can't switch to Linux untill I get a new modem since mines a Winmodem. Which again costs money.. So that leaves me using 98 happily or using my DS to play pictochat alone. Which do I pick now?

Re:Old Games Machine?

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

No, you're not. I'm still running 98 on my kids' PC because Reader Rabbit etc. don't work until Win2K and I don't want to shell out for XP for no reason. I also keep an up-to-date copy of Firefox on it so they can browse Playhouse Disney and other preschooler-friendly sites.

It's on the same LAN as my wife's relatively new iMac, a FreeBSD server, a Linux laptop, and an OpenBSD firewall. It's not that we're technically illiterate or poor, but that there's no legitimate need for us to upgrade the little g