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My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

woodfromeden.substack.com

141–150 of 323 posts

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#141
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the OP just needed to enable e.g. Nouveau with the appropriate kernel module parameters? I am regularly using a 14 year-old MacBook on plain X and it is surprisingly fast.

> just needed to enable e.g. Nouveau with the appropriate kernel module parameters? And that's why Linux will stay in the server for majority of people, not on their desktop. "You just need to enable something with some parameters and you're all set!" Seriously?

Yes, seriously.

You can either have a system where somebody else is deciding on your behalf how your system is going to be configured, or you can have a system where it's up to you to opt-in to the stuff you want. You can't have both.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#143

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.

I think a lot of companies agree with you more or less — well, companies don’t have personalities or psychologies, so psychopathy is not really possible. But charging for security updates is too much of a reputation risk. Of course because they are profit driven entities and they can’t charge for security patches, they just stop writing them.

Companies are not unaccountable entities. They're headed by people who make and carry out these decisions. And withholding security updates as a means of planned obsolescence is absolutely a consciously directed strategy. In many ways companies act as too much of a shield for bad behavior. When a "company" does something awful, it's not the company - but the executive leadership doing that.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#144
post #58
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.

> An attacker has to know about a vulnerability to use it.

The hacker does, GPZ does not need to know.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#145
post #14
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…

For me, the big change came with Windows 2000. It had user benefits from 9x in a stable package. That was the first version that I can play games on and also leave it running for months, just like a Linux box.

ntcompatible.com was a great resource for this - I spent a lot of time in those forums.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#147
post #102
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?

I was curious so I found the bug where they tracked some of the post-XP cleanup work: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=579196

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#148

I can feel this. My main work computer was/is a late 2008 MacPro, running OS X 10.9.5 (the latest MacOS you can run officially on this). After one and half years, I've still not transitioned fully to a shiny, yellow M1 iMac standing next to it. The usability and productivity on the MacPro, its OS and the apps on it are much better, and, on top of it, it's all software that I own. The real dealbreaker is evergreen bro…

> The newest browser you can run on this is Firefox 78.15.0esr

This made me wonder if there are still working dev kits/tools with browser components available in such a way as to provide a fairly simple pathway from basic dev skills (or just "web browser example" code) --> up-to-date browser engine, running on 10.9.5?

Thinking of somewhat more obscure dev tools too, e.g. PureBasic, etc.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#149
> The truth is I have never been hacked once in the eight years I have had this computer. And not since 2008 or 2009 with the one I had before.

How can you be that sure and are you confident to connect this computer to any random public network? That's just a demonstration of ignorance.

Re: My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)

#150

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.

Windows, and more generally Microsoft, updates regularly break things. Each time I see the update notification I kind of shudder. A notable one from 2018 was literally deleting user files. [1] Whenever there's an update for e.g. Visual Studio, I think most have learned that it's smart to wait for the update to the update. And see if there's an update for the update to the update, before finally risking going through with it. And I'm talking about the release channel!

It gets even better there as well, until somewhat recently after Microsoft would release a Visual Studio update, older versions would be removed from their site, and there was no way to roll back. So if you chose to update, and it broke stuff, then you were in a fun spot. Fortunately that is no longer the case, but ugh - bad memories. This is one of the big reasons I'd like to move over to Linux, but games + work make it difficult to pack up and move. For all my bitching about Microsoft's practices in general, I don't see myself moving away from Visual Studio any time soon, and it's Windows only.

[1] - https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/bug-in-windows-10s-latest-upda...

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