Operating(this is a relative term) System?

I used to have a 3D desktop program for my laptop. Wasn't a true OS, but kind of. Called 3d Top or something. You had a desktop that floated in the middle of this huge sphere. You could put custom pics onto the sphere surface (I had a Japan landscape), the desktop (had Megumi Hayashibara), and place a seperate picture object (which I had one of Sabrena, my girlfriend). Icons could be flat, cubes, spheres, or tetrahedrons. Never crashed. But if you didn't register after 20 days, it would stop reading your custom settings. It was actually pretty fun, and easy, to use.

Windows 98

It runs dos games, old 95 games, new 98 games and derectx 8.1. Why would I use anything else? Pointless coding fetures that I never use? Obscurer system fetures I've never even heard of, and wouldn't use even if I did? some stupid anti-microsoft bollocks I couldn'd give a flying fuck about? NO.

Fredrik said:
Pfft, backwards people.

What do you think source ports are for?

People play other dos based games besides doom you know.

I currently use Windows XP, just because it doesn't bitch and errormsg as much about my cable connection as Win98SE did... Unfortunately that's about the only good thing I can find about this XP... I use Windows 98 on a "virtual machine", for testing if I can get 'fake' IPX (like zoneLAN) to work 'under' WinXP.

-- ADDED

But the computer I use most uses the CBM-BASIC operating system... :-P

I have a dual boot system of Windows 98SE and Windows 2000. Any time I feel like playing an old DOS game with sound, I use Win98. And because my internet sharing software is balls, I need to use Win98 to be able to use anything but IRC. Otherwise, most of my time is spent in Win2K. Nice and stable, and it's possible to recover from a crash (which is rather important for me considering I'm a programmer and all - a reboot every crash isn't a nice option). I've considered upgrading to WinXP but I'm happy with Win2K at this point in time. I'll probably have to upgrade sooner or later though to make sure my code still works properly in WinXP (damn Microsoft incorporating silly security measures to cover up the gaping holes they made).

People play other dos based games besides doom you know.

Then set up a dual-boot system for great justice.

for single-user use at home, there is NOTHING useful that windowsXP has that Win98 doesn't. just like WMP, XP tries to be every OS to every kind of user... and in the end, just makes it overly difficult to manage. they intentionally hide configuration tools and make it very hard to administrate. Why buy that?

Fredrik said:

Then set up a dual-boot system for great justice.

Stop controlling my mind. :P

XP doesn't do anything any of you are saying. It doesn't intentionally hide anything, it doesn't intentionally make things harder to manage. And, in fact, it has a shitload of features that win98 wouldn't dream of having - first and foremost among them being that it's based on the infinitely superior WinNT kernel.

XP is far superior in every way to any previous windows with the possible exception of the 2K server editions, which are, naturally, better for use as a server. But I wouldn't run a microsoft-based server anyway.

If you're so concerned about XP lacking DOS support, build another DOS machine. 486es and Pentiums, even PIIs can be had for like $30 at goodwill. Come on, people. Really.

Could someone please explain why it is called Windows XP?

Kat, I don't give a shit about how stable winXP's 32-bit kernel is.(and it is stable. conversely, Win98's lack of stability only comes from it's configurability and compatibility.)
Win98 can play Doom, Quake, and Doom3 perfectly. XP cannot.
I can find a browser, text editor, etc.. for any OS. there is only one OS that can run all these games. (okay, maybe 2000 can)
and XP does intentionally make it difficult to administrate. it hides almost everything in the registry. modifies setting without prompting the user.
can you show me a single bit of documentation on the command switches for XP's programs? of course not. Microsoft hides that from its customers.
I'm not saying that XP is crap. I'm saying that it is not nearly as useful as 98.
and no home user should have to dual boot or have 2 computers when one can suffice. That is like having 1 TV for cable and 1 TV for watching DVDs.
XP: Microsoft's answer to the monopoly trials. guess who got the last laugh there... 5 years from now, when you logon to their domain everytime to want to surf the internet, you'll understand what I mean.
heck, some of you are doing that already...

I've given up on trying to convert any of you mongoloids to the goodness that is WinXP. You rabbit on about it's complete lack of configurability when I took five minutes and had every useless service, program, and "feature" disabled and rendered about as useful as the United Nations. And, what's more, I never once had to touch the registry.

Fact: WindowsXP will run doom.exe. Now, it won't run that with sound, but that's actually not a fault with the XP DOS emulation scheme. But, as was mentioned before, any slope-headed troglodyte with the ability to move a mouse uses source ports anyway.

Quit bitching, do a modicum of research, and get off XP's back. Win98 was several pains in the ass to use and we all know it.

DC

Doom-Child said:

Fact: WindowsXP will run doom.exe. Now, it won't run that with sound, but that's actually not a fault with the XP DOS emulation scheme.

I run Doom with sound on XP all the time :|

Huh. Maybe it's just my sound card, then.

DC

Win98! 7 years ago I had an ancient computer with windows 3.1………

Epyo said:

Win98! 7 years ago I had an ancient computer with windows 3.1………

Ah yes, 3.1 ... had that for many years, had it till 1998...then i got win95 ..then got new puters, and got win98 11 months ago. heh, 3.1 ruled. ;P

oh god 3.1

I had to work with some ancient 3.11WFW boxes recently and THOSE ARE A FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS

I've run every version of windows since 3.1

3.1 - good at the time, but not very stable
95 - crap
98/SE - decent enough, but not the most stable thing in the world, though it beats the pants off 95
ME - ugh. About two months into use it started getting massive IRQ conflicts for no reason amd there was no way to fix them. I finally uninstalled it and put 98SE back which cleared everything up
2000 - best windows ever. stable, not at all bloated (have it running on a k6-2 400 back home, something XP could never do) and just a damn nice OS. God knows what dos games you people play, but rebooting win98 every other day is not my idea of a good OS in the least. \\ATHLON has been up for: 11 day(s), 22 hour(s), 23 minute(s), 19 second(s) Let's see win98 do that.
XP - stable and has some interesting features, but it's horribly bloated and the home version is pretty shitty. It doesn't enjoy networking with the win2k and linux machines at home either. Still, I'd much rather use this than 98.

I also have a machine running Debain/Stable, though I will probably switch to unstable over the winter break.

I'll prolly forget about this thread.

Cyb said:

\\ATHLON has been up for: 11 day(s), 22 hour(s)

Oh ya? My win98 was up for 11 minutes(s), and 22 Seconds(s) Ha Ha!!........wait a minute....aw, dammit...

Cyb said:

95 - crap

OSR2 was good though. I'd run that instead of 98 if I didn't have driver issues with it nowadays :|

I am running XP atm, but I like 98 most... :)

Cyb said:

God knows what dos games you people play, but rebooting win98 every other day is not my idea of a good OS in the least. \\ATHLON has been up for: 11 day(s), 22 hour(s), 23 minute(s), 19 second(s) Let's see win98 do that.

My Windows 98 computer (my old desktop, Pentium 120) has been up and running without a reboot for at least two months. Probably more. My XP computer crashes at *least* once a day.

TeamKill said:

My Windows 98 computer (my old desktop, Pentium 120) has been up and running without a reboot for at least two months. Probably more. My XP computer crashes at *least* once a day.

Heh, weird. With me it's just the other way round... My old Win98 configuration (with bad cablemodem software) crashed AT LEAST once a day, while my XP is running for a month and a half without rebooting, now... Too bad that and the internet handling are about the only good things I have to say about XP...

I used to run Win3.11 with the 32bit-patch and the Calmira front-end. Then switched to a dual-boot configuration running either DOS 6.22/Win3.32/Calmira or Win95. Now it's WinME... never got around to make another dual-boot configuration because, after a while, I didn't see the point anymore.

Cyb is right, at least majorically, Win98 can't stay up for more than 2 days without having a memory-address problem.
but, IMHO, why does a home user need a pc up for that long at once...

DEMOn said:

Cyb is right, at least majorically, Win98 can't stay up for more than 2 days without having a memory-address problem.
but, IMHO, why does a home user need a pc up for that long at once...

The crash may as well occur within the first 30 minutes of usage, and:

1. Rebooting is annoying and takes time.

2. There's a very large risk that a crash will make you lose information to some extent.

I don't mean crash, I mean reboot.
I have used win98 for many years... I guess since 99 or so. I've only crashed crashed like twice. most crashes, that are somewhat recoverable, happen on every OS and are usually program-driven. yes, even linux, Mac, and XP.
no one is saying win98 is perfect, or even great.
my point is that until someone makes a better OS for DOOM, I am stuck with win98's problems... and if XP had legacy 16-bit support, it would also be unstable.

Win2k and debian stable on my other computer. At work mostly nt4/hp unix, we also have one 3.11 only needed for running jetadmin, a 16bit prog. We had one crash with a novel machine (out of five) due to broken ram (compaq proliant), don't know how much time and effort it took to configure them right. Sofar no crashes with our hp's, the worst thing sofar a slowdown due to a process absorbing all memory. Think btw that xp and win2k share the same kernel. According to ms win2k is 13 times as stable as nt4.
I have to reinstall win2k every six months, after a complete crash or very slow performance. Debian refuses to install on that machine.

Win98SE until the day I die. :P

OR until whenever Microsoft brings out a completely stable and compatible Windows. In other words, never.

TeamKill said:

My Windows 98 computer (my old desktop, Pentium 120) has been up and running without a reboot for at least two months. Probably more. My XP computer crashes at *least* once a day.

The only way a win98 machine could ever stay up that long is if it gets next to zero use. I had a win98 machine up for around 3 - 4 weeks at one point and all it was doing was downloading files, it had an instance of xircon open and I used ie on it at a few points. At the end of its life I tried to open IE and the os like ate itself up from the inside. Since win98 has no task manager (another reason it sucks compared to newer versions of windows btw) I couldn't restart explorer so I just gave up.

Anyway it had kazaa and xircon running, both of which have memory leaks, coupled with win98's not too good memory management, it was down to maybe 20 or 30% of the system resources. Ugh.

As for your XP computer crashing, it sounds like you might have a mobo or hard drive issue going on there. I'm not much of an XP fan, but stability is one thing it does have unless you run it on a system less than 1ghz and 256ram or so.

Also I forgot to mention FAT and FAT32 are shitty filesystems compared to NTFS. So I poop on you!

That's right, I didn't forget.

Win98; no problems here.