My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#101

Post by masswerk » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #6

capableweb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 was trash, 98 was gold. XP was great, Vista was trash. 7 was great, 8 was trash. 10 was gold, 11 is trash. Seems Microsoft has to squeeze in at least one bad version between good ones. But never has a new Windows version been made available where people didn't initially hate them at first, XP, 7, and 10 included. It's not until the version after gets released when people really start appreciating what once was.

You have missed Windows ME between XP and 98, which was so awful people don't remember it anymore. For a revolutionary product, Windows 95 wasn't that bad.

Some things about Win95 are lost to nostalgia, as well. Like broken drivers, esp. in concert with up-to-date office, which came with issues of its own, like broken export formats. (It took more than a year for serious support for Postscript printers, etc.) Win95 became only somewhat functional with Windows 95B. (This one, however, started the IE integration.)

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#102

Post by nine_k » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:09 AM UTC

evmar wrote: post #24

nine_k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all the old vulnerabilities patched up adequately? Are all old expoloits defeated?

They are running a Chrome from 2016, so they are vulnerable to ~every exploit found in Chrome since then.

Won't a modern version of Chromium build for XP, with some tweaking?

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#103

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #86

causality0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're going to write security updates for this OS but we won't give them to you" is such psychopathic behavior.

Writing security updates costs money-and as the software gets older, the cost generally goes up too. Is it wrong for them to decide, after a reasonable period, to stop spending that money on outdated versions? What happens then when a small subset of customers says “we need those updates so much, we’ll pay extra for them?” Is it wrong to take their money and spend it on writing the updates they request, with a reason…

The problem with the newer options is that they are not paid strictly with money anymore. Windows 10/11 use a ton of telemetry you can't turn off.

I use them anyway but only for gaming to limit my exposure.

> Many vendors of on-promise proprietary software do the same-databases, middleware, ERP suites, etc-most of them have a special program for customers who want to stay on really old versions

You can't really compare enterprise class software with something that is sold directly to consumers.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#104

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:14 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #58

mulmen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Project Zero is a list of known vulnerabilities. It is not a comprehensive list of all vulnerabilities.

Does it matter? An attacker has to know about a vulnerability to use it. Unless there's some reason that security researchers would be more focused on vulnerabilities in new systems than attackers are, or something like that.

This totally ignores the concept of "zero-days", vulnerabilities discovered that are only known by bad actors or known but not patched yet.

This is very common, and these vulnerabilities are sold for a lot of money and the buyers make sure to protect their investment as long as possible. Of course that also means they go exclusively for high-value targets which means end users are most likely fine (see Pegasus as an example). But that's not the same as being actually secure.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#105

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

longcat wrote: post #41

parker_mountain wrote: post #38

>My belief is that computer security is highly overrated. With a decent firewall, which every router has these days, only your own activity can expose you to attack from hostile actors. All internet browsers also help you by warning when you are about to do something stupid like executing code from a remote source. This is a ridiculous thing to say. The reason that there are so few misleading ads, so few zero days be…

Plus a lot of vulnerabilities in Windows 10 or 11 also exist in Windows XP but they're no longer mentioned.

Good point, security researchers often simply don't mention obsolete versions in security bulletins.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#106

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:17 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #95

> But I store some crypto currency on my computer and I make crypto transactions from time to time. If my computer had been compromised by an invisible attacker I figure that attacker would have had an interest in crypto assets. Well that's an interesting idea for detecting certain classes of hackers.

But those classes only.

The author is much more likely to be targeted by automated botnets than a dedicated attacker who will actually manually look at his machine.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#107

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

jollyllama wrote: post #64

Many times have I lost hours, days, or functionality that was never regained to an update/"upgrade." Never have I had my personal computer owned by some exploit that resulted in data loss/breach. Thus, undesired upgrades are a greater risk for personal computing than security. Simple as.

Really? Isn't that a thing of the past?

In the last 10 years all my updates on Mac and Windows alike have been a matter of clicking OK and waiting 30-60 minutes.

On Linux and BSD I've had some more issues at times but that's been more because of my own messing around.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#108

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

rafark wrote: post #72

I no longer use windows, but I just came to say Windows 8 is the best windows.

Steve Ballmer? Is that you?

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#109

Post by hippich » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:21 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #102

evmar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are running a Chrome from 2016, so they are vulnerable to ~every exploit found in Chrome since then.

Won't a modern version of Chromium build for XP, with some tweaking?

From my experience, there is a lot of software that will not build for platform older than 7/2008 due to missing APIs. Visual studio stopped support for xp compilation awhile ago. You still can use clang or such for simple programs today, but chromium is probably too complicated to port at this point.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#110

Post by masswerk » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:22 AM UTC

brk wrote: post #23

thriftwy wrote: post #2

None of Microsoft's operating systems were as good as Windows XP and at least one (8) was a complete disaster, the shock waves from that catastrophe still rumbling around. By failing to reproduce that success, Microsoft has ceded most of the moral market share to Apple. Though, as a Linux user, every time I see a Mac desktop I can't resist noticing how often would it lock up and display that rotating "busy" mouse cur…

I’ve been using MacOS as my daily desktop for over a decade, switching from Linux. Seeing the busy cursor is so rare I can’t recall the last time. And I have tons of things open all the time.

Maybe it's related to some cloud service? (However, MS Word used to give you a fair amount of exposure to the beach ball. But I'm not familiar with any of the later versions.)