On 2/4/08, Ralph Goers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> First, this is just my opinion. Although I have Windows XP and use it
>  all the time, I despise using it for anything other than windows
>  specific applications. I use VMWare on Windows so I can develop in
>  Ubuntu on my Windows laptops.  I have had too many weird things happen
>  in Windows to use it anymore for development or testing work. I used
>  cygwin for quite a while and it helps about 95% of the time, but the
>  other 5% sucks. Now having gotten that off my chest I will say that we
>  will support Windows XP because we can run and test there.
>
>  Second, as this link,
>  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx, points
>  out,Windows 98 hasn't been supported by MS for over a year and a half.
>  You can hardly expect open source developers to test or support that
>  system, especially since you'd be hard pressed to find a commercial
>  company any more that does.  We can only test on the hardware and
>  operating systems we have.
>  Ralph

[Hoping to prevent a discussion about OSes]
My opinion is people should use a real OS (Linux or BSD.)  If stuck
using Microsoft, use Windows 2003 R2 or Windows 98 SE.  Windows 2003
licenses are only available in blocks of five so buy in bulk -- $80
each at 20 licenses.

Professionally, I work mostly with the largest companies.  They still
insist on Windows (usually 2000 or XP) for the desktop (and Word and
PowerPoint, which are even more painful.)

I have not been successful in efforts to convert friends and family
away from Windows.  XP was an abortion -- still requiring monthly
patches after 7 years. Vista is another abortion -- every user
complains.  I refused to allow XP or Vista on PCs that I support.
Microsoft EOL'd Windows 98 because Windows 98 was still a major
competitor to XP.   Windows 98 is limited to 512 MB (actually ~700
MB).  A Windows 98 PC with a 512 MB RAM and a 2-3 Ghz CPU is very
fast.  When these PCs need replacement, I will either force migration
to a real OS, use Windows 2003 with at least 2 GB RAM, or maybe Apple.
 I am not worrying about the next generation yet because nobody using
Windows 98 has any complaints.  (I am waiting until someone notices
that no iTunes client is available for Windows 98.)

I am teaching several of these Windows 98 users about Web development.
 Cocoon is my preferred platform.  We can use Cocoon-2.1, but I hoped
Cocoon-2.2 would work.

I am very grateful for the assistance provided by this ML.  I am not
expecting open source developers to support Windows 98; I can work
around or fix any issues.  I was surprised that Eclipse 3 added the XP
bug -- "transparent text" is invisible on Windows 98, seems to add no
value to Eclipse, and is difficult to disable.  Cocoon and Maven are
Java and should have no issues with Windows 98, yet Maven 2 refuses to
work.  I have proven (to myself) that the issue is Maven 2 rather than
Cocoon.  I am diving into the Maven source and hope to fix it.  That
conversation will be on the Maven MLs.

Thank you,
solprovider

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