What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

And yet new vinyl is still being produced today (not only for dance music which has always been played by DJs on vinyl) and in fact you pay a premium for it over a digital media.

Indeed the demand for vinyl has increased greatly (ergo it's "gaining in favour") over the last couple of years so how does that tie in with it's apparent obsolescence?

Demand has nothing to do with it. When something is SCARCE, then demand appears higher. How many LPs are actually *pressed* each year? Contrast with CDs? Digital downloads?

Why haven't we seen a whole lot of new "portable record players" introduced -- so you can take your vinyl with you while jogging? :>

I do agree the use of old OS like Windows 98SE and even DOS6.22 is basically to support the interest in retro gaming and retro hardware, but yet again the retro gaming scene has increased in popularity over the last few years, as is witnessed by the eye watering prices that are being asked for some old hardware these days - eg Super socket 7 motherboards, K6-III+ CPUs ,early graphics cards (Geforce 256 3D blaster, voodoo 2,3 and 5 etc) and old computers like the Amiga 1200. I have an old 386DLC40 PC in working order myself. I found it in a skip (dumpster) and it is worth a considerable amount of money.

The Delorean was a dog of a car. Yet "classics" command a pretty penny, today. I have a 35yo vehicle that would sell for more than 10 times what I paid for it 35 years ago. But, its still a 35yo car -- and, if demand was so great, why hasn't it been reintroduced into production?? (ANS: people want the 35yo edition, not a modern IMPROVED version)

[BigTroll]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

And yet new vinyl is still being produced today (not only for dance music which has always been played by DJs on vinyl) and in fact you pay a premium for it over a digital media.

Indeed the demand for vinyl has increased greatly (ergo it's "gaining in favour") over the last couple of years so how does that tie in with it's apparent obsolescence?

I do agree the use of old OS like Windows 98SE and even DOS6.22 is basically to support the interest in retro gaming and retro hardware, but yet again the retro gaming scene has increased in popularity over the last few years, as is witnessed by the eye watering prices that are being asked for some old hardware these days - eg Super socket 7 motherboards, K6-III+ CPUs ,early graphics cards (Geforce 256 3D blaster, voodoo 2,3 and 5 etc) and old computers like the Amiga 1200. I have an old 386DLC40 PC in working order myself. I found it in a skip (dumpster) and it is worth a considerable amount of money.

Again these items are apparently gaining favour of late - and gaining in value too

Keep your phone for 20-30 years - it may be valuable by then

I know its driving me nuts trying to find a decently priced voodoo 3, what really cracks me up is how the Chinese built some fake Geforce 2 MX400 but are really voodoo 3's and made the bios show up as a geforce 2, so fake geforces 2s and they ended be worth substantially more later for being a real voodoo...

[dicky96]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

And yet new vinyl is still being produced today (not only for dance music which has always been played by DJs on vinyl) and in fact you pay a premium for it over a digital media.

Indeed the demand for vinyl has increased greatly (ergo it's "gaining in favour") over the last couple of years so how does that tie in with it's apparent obsolescence?

I do agree the use of old OS like Windows 98SE and even DOS6.22 is basically to support the interest in retro gaming and retro hardware, but yet again the retro gaming scene has increased in popularity over the last few years, as is witnessed by the eye watering prices that are being asked for some old hardware these days - eg Super socket 7 motherboards, K6-III+ CPUs ,early graphics cards (Geforce 256 3D blaster, voodoo 2,3 and 5 etc) and old computers like the Amiga 1200. I have an old 386DLC40 PC in working order myself. I found it in a skip (dumpster) and it is worth a considerable amount of money.

Again these items are apparently gaining favour of late - and gaining in value too

Keep your phone for 20-30 years - it may be valuable by then

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

Seeing as both computers serve the purpose I intended them for, and indeed a later OS would not serve that purpose, then that would suggest the Win98SE OS is not obsolete.

Obsolesence to me, would be when something has no use, or something else serves that purpose vastly better.

Would we consider vinyl, or a turntable, obsolete (for music)?

Would we consider through hole components to be obsolete?

I would argue no in both cases.

Obsolete can mean many things. By your own (above) definition, don't digital media formats "serve the purpose vastly better" than vinyl? When was the last time you heard a "skip" in an MP3? Or, turntable rumble/wow/flutter? Or, encountered duplication losses? Or, allowed random access within a title? Or...

The obsolescence of an item that is no longer in use is likely not going to be questioned.

An item that is "losing favor" in its intended market/application domain is obsolescent and likely to become obsolete (e.g., thru-hole components as cost and size increasingly favor SMT devices).

[You can probably find a cache of DTL somewhere that likely still works... but, would you consider it NOT obsolete?]

If I have an old cell phone that can't get service (3G and earlier) -- but it keeps great time! -- is it "obsolete"? Obsolete as a phone? Obsolete as a clock?

I think a better definition of obsolete is "when something can no longer be kept operational". What will you do when your games can't find suitable hardware to host/emulate them? Clearly, the software and OS still are operational (the code hasn't changed); there's just no platform available on which they can be made to operate!

[dicky96]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

I have an interest in retro gaming and have two PCs that run Windows 98SE

One is a Core 2 Quad with AGP and a Geforce 4ti 4200 which I use to 'max out' the settings on Win 98 games

The other is a period correct Super Socket 7 machine with K6 CPU, ISA Sound Blaster AWE 32 and a Geforce 2 AGP (that I want to upgrade to voodoo3) that can play games which will not run properly on faster hardware, and supports DOS games very well.

Seeing as both computers serve the purpose I intended them for, and indeed a later OS would not serve that purpose, then that would suggest the Win98SE OS is not obsolete.

Obsolesence to me, would be when something has no use, or something else serves that purpose vastly better.

Would we consider vinyl, or a turntable, obsolete (for music)?

Would we consider through hole components to be obsolete?

I would argue no in both cases.

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

Speaking of obsolete OS's....I was given an Acer 720 Series Chromebook, which even google doesn't support anymore.... With some firmware hackery, I was able to install UEFI based Windows OS's (W8 or newer).... I threw W8.1 on it, but it wouldn't activate with the DAZ loader because of the UEFI partitioning, and it's not worth buying a license for....so Linux Mint runs quite nice on it....and modern browser support = revived system. Worthless, but revived....as a matter of fact, this post created from it. Dual core celeron, 2gb RAM and a 16gb SSD. None of which are upgradeable....

I use a rescued ASUS Eee PC 1000 with NetBSD 8.1 to, periodically, download "packages" for my *BSD boxen. Internal SSDs (I think there is one for the "system" and another for "scratch") are way too tiny -- the packages are many hundreds of GB. But, hang an external disk on it and it's a nice, safe way for me to grab all that stuff without having to involve a Windows machine!

(previously, I would drag out a SFF machine, keyboard, monitor, etc. What a PITA! The Eee PC has all that rolled into one -- and, it's *tiny* so I can store it in a desk drawer)

[stj]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

Imagine having to cut your steak with a butter knife

that's the future for the u.k. unless there is a violent revolution soon!

[Topcat]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

Speaking of obsolete OS's....I was given an Acer 720 Series Chromebook, which even google doesn't support anymore.... With some firmware hackery, I was able to install UEFI based Windows OS's (W8 or newer).... I threw W8.1 on it, but it wouldn't activate with the DAZ loader because of the UEFI partitioning, and it's not worth buying a license for....so Linux Mint runs quite nice on it....and modern browser support = revived system. Worthless, but revived....as a matter of fact, this post created from it. Dual core celeron, 2gb RAM and a 16gb SSD. None of which are upgradeable....

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

dont get me wrong, modern coding practices are shit - object-oriented lego bloat!

It's not just OOPS that leads to bloat. Much of it comes from trying to leverage existing "packages" to provide some feature or capability. These invariably have lots of extra cruft to cover uses that your application likely won't need.

i had a bootable floppy once with the o.s. AND a functioning web browser on it.
it was a demo from VX-Works.

QNX had a similar offering.

personally i learned to program in machine-code with a hex editor (6502)
followed by learning to program pic's using assembly.
then 68000 assembly.

i cant stand all this multi-gB IDE shit with blated abstract languages we have now!

The trend is to insulate the developer ("programmer") from the mistakes that he is likely to make -- instead of educating him on how NOT to make those mistakes in the first place! It's equivalent to giving a child "blunt tipped" scissors -- out of fear he might hurt himself with "real" scissors -- instead of just teaching him how to use the real scissors properly/safely.

Imagine having to cut your steak with a butter knife to protect you from injuring yourself with a real, SHARP knife! (fine, if the world consisted solely of 2 year olds)

[stj]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

dont get me wrong, modern coding practices are shit - object-oriented lego bloat!

i had a bootable floppy once with the o.s. AND a functioning web browser on it.
it was a demo from VX-Works.

personally i learned to program in machine-code with a hex editor (6502)
followed by learning to program pic's using assembly.
then 68000 assembly.

i cant stand all this multi-gB IDE shit with blated abstract languages we have now!

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

well to be fair, that was a command-line system and if it had a GUI it was probably similar to GEM on the atari st.

Sure. OTOH, I was running X under SysV on a 2MB OPUS coprocessor with a 40MB disk in the mid 80's (the PC acting as a fancy "I/O controller" to manage the disk and VGA display)

[stj]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

well to be fair, that was a command-line system and if it had a GUI it was probably similar to GEM on the atari st.

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

but the livedisks many of which are live-dvd's decompress to ram - so it;s not so much to run the distro as to hold it in decompressed form.

Yes, but my first BSD distro was only a hundred megabytes. And, that included the sources and tools to rebuild the complete system!

Files:

Base distribution: 16M
Compiler/tools: 8M
Text (nroff/troff): 2M
Docs (man pages): 2M
Games: 4M
Misc: 4M

So, a complete system of binaries is ~36MB.

Add the sources:

Kernel: 6M
Userland: 43M
Share: 9M
Security: 1M

for another 59MB. So, 95MB of RAM-disk would hold an entire system. You'd then have to add swap and working memory (as little as 4MB plus another 4 for swap)... almost exactly 100MB total!

I recall downloading it all with a modem and creating 5" floppies for install media!

[stj]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

(sigh) I can recall running *BSD on machines with 4M(ega)B. Now, I imagine the browser itself would be thrashing!

i can remember running amiga with full basic, and a compiler in 1MB,

but the livedisks many of which are live-dvd's decompress to ram - so it;s not so much to run the distro as to hold it in decompressed form.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

i second the linux livecd idea. its what i use for internet banking. no storage devices connected except the cd/dvd drive of course!

im surprised sam cant get this working. i use imgburn to burn the ubuntu livedvd image and also to customise the contents on it if necessary. works great!

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

you can use a Linux livedisk on any 64bit machine with atleast 2gig of ram,
you can then put your bookmarks etc on a usb stick.

(sigh) I can recall running *BSD on machines with 4M(ega)B. Now, I imagine the browser itself would be thrashing!

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

I have tried to do this before but could not get it work correctly

<frown> Not much I can say in response to your comment... WHAT didn't work?

Usually, the livecds need to be reconfigured on each boot (unless you are running everything via DHCP). But, you can move the configuration stuff onto a thumb drive and "install" it from there.

The thumb drive (or any other external storage) is also useful for saving stuff (email, bookmarks, etc.).

I'm not sure if any of the "turnkey products" designed with this in mind have kept up with changes in browsers -- last I looked at this approach was many years ago (at the time, I figured my other half would forever be grumbling about how "tedious" it was to use -- hence my reason for adopting the "autorestore hard disk" approach).

One thing that would be quick and easy to play with is something like Sandboxie -- though subject to the caveats I mentioned previously. At least it tries to protect the content of your machine from being altered/corrupted/infected.

What would your computer system requirements need to be for this to work correctly
ram , rom , cpu , video card and so on

You'd have to check the distros on which each of these "products" are based. The bar keeps moving higher as the OSs get more and more bloated and browser requirements mushroom. AFAICT, folks are still making things with the idea that everyone *needs* the "kitchen sink" in EVERY product (if I just want to browse the web, why do I need support for SMB? NFS? NTP? my own FTP server? etc.).

Many of the lessons from the dumb terminal/X terminal era seem to have been forgotten (or never learned!)

[E.g., I could browse the web using an X terminal with no disk drive and ~60MB of RAM]

What program do you use to create the image that does not cost an arm and a leg to buy

You could try something like Clonezilla. But, I don't think it can install a "restore partition" and create a turnkey environment (I wrote my own "one-off" tool to build the image on the ecommerce laptop)

Where can I get the right information on how do this so it works

If your machine already has a restore partition, you'd have to research the format that it uses to store the image as well as where to "put" it (HPA, DCO, "unused" partition, etc.) The laptop that I used had *no* disk in it when I rescued it so I had to build everything from scratch; NO, I'm not going to BUY "restore media" -- esp when it would undoubtedly restore all the crapware that the manufacturer bundled with the laptop and *fail* to install/configure all of the OTHER apps that I wanted in place!)

Also is this product any good

https://firewalla.com/products/firew...xoCnUAQAvD_BwE

No idea. I just use an old linksys router with it's internal firewall set very conservatively. The downside is, that it is unaware of which application is trying to punch through the firewall so I have to take that into account in how I configure it.

OTOH, its hard for malware on the PC to twiddle with the router's/firewall configuration (though you have to be sure there are no known exploits for your router/firewall)

Best advice: don't engage in behaviors that are likely to make you a target of malware. I.e., don't sleep with someone with an STD thinking you can be "cured" with medications; easier just to AVOID the problem, entirely!

[stj]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

you can use a Linux livedisk on any 64bit machine with atleast 2gig of ram,
you can then put your bookmarks etc on a usb stick.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

If you just want a machine for browsing and email, I think there are some bootable CDs that will give you this; pull your hard disk out and run off the CD!

I have tried to do this before but could not get it work correctly

What would your computer system requirements need to be for this to work correctly
ram , rom , cpu , video card and so on

What program do you use to create the image that does not cost an arm and a leg to buy

Where can I get the right information on how do this so it works

Also is this product any good

https://firewalla.com/products/firew...xoCnUAQAvD_BwE

[Curious.George]

Re: What TRULY Renders an Operating System Obsolete?

How do you setup a computer system so you are not exposed to hackers and like and still surf the internet on one computer

How do you setup a computer system so you can get and read your email and go to there web page to view there products or is this asking to much

What operating system would you use
What programs would you use to keep you safe from predators

I have gotten away from using a computer to surf the internet and just use an iPad for this purpose

I personally do not like Windows 8 or Windows 10 for different reasons

I can tolerate Windows 7 for the most part

I like Windows XP for the reason that you pointed out and some other reason that you did not mention

But I do not think that you can surf the internet with this os very well anymore

We have one computer that is "online" 24/7/365 (THIS one). We use it for email and web browsing. There is no AV installed. Windows Update is disabled. The most recent Windows update was from June of 2017 -- manually installed when this disk image was built (verified, just now, by viewing "Installed Updates")

The machine sits behind a router with its own "external" firewall -- so I'm not dependent on Windows for that security.

Aside from the initial image, there are no backups of the computer.

We are careful about where we browse -- no pron, warez, etc. We never open email attachments -- even from "friends" (cuz they can be spoofed).

Aside from email (and those addresses), we have nothing "precious" on the machine; if it caught fire TODAY, we'd not lose anything (email is backed up on the server hosts).

Once or twice a year, I copy the contents of the desktop(s) onto an external drive (cuz that stuff likely only exists ON the desktops) along with the email folders/address books/browser shortcuts. Then, I pull the disk from the machine, write the date on it and put it on a shelf.

I then restore the original image to a clean disk. And, download up-to-date copies of free/trial AV products. With the disk that was removed BEFORE this most recent removal (i.e., a year or so old) in an external USB carrier, I scan it for malware. I.e., "was my machine infected a year ago -- BEFORE I had reinstalled the image for this most recent ~year. If the answer is no (it always is), I wipe the disk and put it in with the spares -- for NEXT year!

Then, reinstall the original image AGAIN on the current disk to overwrite the AV products (cuz I don't want them interfering with the machine's operation/performance). After that, I copy the email/address book/browser shortcuts/etc. back onto the clean image (which was created with those "users" already defined). So, I now have a machine that SHOULD be identical to the configuration it was in just a few hours earlier (except for any "settings" that may have been changed in the previous instance) but that should be free of any malware (recall the disk just pulled from it has NOT yet been scanned for malware -- cuz there may be some malware on it that the AV products can't YET detect -- hence the reason for putting it on a shelf for ~6-12 months while the AV vendors "catch up")

Now that the "last" (?) updates for W7 have been released, I will likely build a new image for "all but the final update" (to avoid the nag screen). Then, return to this process going forward.

We have a *second* machine -- a laptop -- that OCCASIONALLY goes online... for banking and etail. But, there is no "browsing" done, there -- we've already done that on THIS machine (in case we stumble onto something that we SHOULDN'T!). We manually copy the URLs to the laptop when we have made up our mind re: ordering.

There is no email done, there, either! (I don't think I even set up any email accounts on it!)

So, it's an "ecommerce TRANSACTION appliance" and nothing more.

Because it is ONLY used for those things, it gets shut off after a few minutes or maybe an hour (whereas THIS machine is NEVER shut off).

On each startup, the machine automatically does a "restore" so the contents of the hard disk are reset to what they were immediately after the last time it was powered up -- which is the same as the state that the machine was *built* as! So, any malware on the disk is overwritten.

This is essentially the same practice that we follow on THIS machine; but, here, it is done far less often and over a longer period of time -- cuz we let stuff accumulate on the desktop, in our browser, email client, etc. FOR CONVENIENCE. If you want to save anything on the laptop, you have to transfer it to an external drive (the laptop and THIS machine can only access the Internet -- none of the other machines or storage devices in the house)
BEFORE you shut down.

You can get *some* of this protection by running key apps in a sandbox (e.g., mail, browser). This prevents those apps from making PERMANENT changes to your drive's contents (when you exit the sandbox, any data written to your disk is discarded!).

Note that this does not prevent malware from being installed; it just prevents it from "staying" (assuming you close the sandbox frequently).

It also doesn't prevent malware that gets INTO the sandbox from looking at "stuff" on your machine. So, if you go to a pron site, get infected, and then try to do some online banking, your banking information can be compromised by the malware that is still present *in* the sandbox.

Likewise, that malware can snoop around your machine and harvest email addresses, etc. before you clear the sandbox.

And, you are still running with whatever "priviledge" you had before entering the sandbox. So, if you were Admin, any malware that gets into the sandbox is ALSO Admin!

All of these approaches have one thing in common: they represent a certain level of "inconvenience" for the user. And, require a level of commitment to ensure your actions REMAIN protected.

If you just want a machine for browsing and email, I think there are some bootable CDs that will give you this; pull your hard disk out and run off the CD!