h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

yes if you know how to compile with gcc in linux now, then chanches are that when Linux 3000 comes out you can still do the same, (execpt faster)

-- DoctorMO --

since I've been learning to use windows since i was 2 I found linux immposible to use in a windows network ....
so we recycled the machine and this is the machine that did it running 98 like a ....
nightmare
it crashes with alarming regularity and evrything battles with everything else
Photoshop elements takes 10 minets to load
but the internet connection is really fast
but we have to reeboot the router a lot

It really is worth the effort to learn to use linux.

You can use it in a windows network by doing the file sharing using the "samba" program.

if you tried using NFS instead, it wouldn't like it (at the windows end).

As to using win98 on a network, the simple advise I would give is don't.

I know of more than one government department where connecting a win98 machine to the network is a sacking offence, due to the fact thatwhen win98 fails on a netwrok, it tends to take the network with it.

Thats true, but Win98 has one Very good aspect that I know, it's small, still 32bit and all of my other OS's will network to it, including linux, Win311 and XP.

-- DoctorMO --

true, but you can say the same about linux.

then you can also add that it will connect to amigas, archimedes, bbc micros, apple's (various) and a number of more obscure systems with little or no extra work.

it also works better due to a belief in actually finding and fixing bugs.

Well yes, OK so It took me 2hours to write an app to conect Win98 up to an amiga and only for simple file transfares. one thing I would not call linux is small, all these eaxtra features take up room, and I could never get linux on a 4GB HDD with Win98 some were else. linux dosn't like to network up to XP anyway.

-- DoctorMO --

I wouldn't know about XP, as it has only recently reached the second edition stable release (microsoft operationg systems have a long history of not being stable until the second edition), and a lot of people will not pay over £130 for an operating system that they only rent from microsoft (who could in theory revoke the license at any moment if you don't pay them for the next compulsory bug fix upgrade).

Most people are still using win98 (and a lot are still using win95).

As to the smallness of linux, I have a console type distribution called tom's root boot that fits on a floppy and will run on a 386, a full development system running in 200MB hard drive + 4MB of memory on a 486, and a full kde system (not kde3) running in 500MB and 16MB of memory on a pentium.

I would like to see you get any comparable systems from microsoft which work within those constraints. for comparison, win95 needs a pentium with 16MB of memory and 200MB of hard drive just for a basic level install that will work properly (ish).

I have also got a version of linux on a disk.

-- DoctorMO --

We were successfully running win95 on a 486SX for years (until the CMOS battery died. Decided to replace computer instead of just battery)

I was running Win95 on a 486SX (66Mhz) until I got a P75 then I went to Win98 (That I stil run on both my 13Ghz and 800Mhz, times have changed but software dosn't seem to want to) hehe

-- DoctoRMO --

I've installed Win95 and Word 97 on a 486/33 laptop with 4MB of RAM and a 120MB Hard Drive... I had to trash all the DOCs and TXT files, optional background pictures (mono screen anyway) and WAV files (no sound...) to make room for a swap file, but it is useable, if you keep all your actual documents on floppies...

Well, this piffed me off, seeing as we're talking of Windows here...

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/thanks.asp

I don't know, I think that just about sums up the problem nicely.

here we are talking about most of us still using 95/98 and microsoft is basically telling us to buy the latest or go to hell.

I am currently moving everything over to linux instead, as it doesn't really have this sort of problem.

Glad I've got linux, all it has to do is get a bit easyer to reatch updates without a net conection, but I might as well wait untill I get one and update to SuSE 8.0 looks good, they say it has KDE 3

-- DoctorMO --

Er, Pastey, what did that page say to piss you off? It's an ASP, and probably showed you something different to the explaination of the Windows Update process I got when I went to it in Win2000...

Which raises an interesting point for moderation - since ASPs can return different content to different OS/Browser combinations how can the mods be *certain* that an ASP is a suitable link in all configurations? Do they follow the link under Win95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Linux, Mac OS7, OS8, OS9, OS-X... etc...

yeah, sorry about that

-- quote --

Thank you for your interest in Windows Update

Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.

The latest version of Windows Update is only available on computers that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

-- end quote --

so, two fingers to those of us on 9x platforms

I remember the outcry in mid-2001 when Microsoft announced that there would no longer be any support for 9x-series Windows from January 2002, even to companies who had bought long-term support contracts which hadn't run out by then. They offered people in that position a "reduced rate upgrade", which was a lot of good to companies using custom hardware which wasn't NT-Kernel compliant...

Or people like myself that bought a laptop with ME pre-installed.

Ew, Yuk ME..

Could have been worse, you could have had XP.

-- DoctorMO --

I happen to like ME.

And I do hate XP.