It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
avatar
hedwards: Redhat primarily does it because they're focused on the enterprise market. And there's no guarantee that a particular patch won't need to be completely rewritten to run on an older version. What's more, people using those versions pay a ton of money for the ability to do so.

AFAIK, nobody backports security patches to the 1.x Linux kernel.
WTF does linux 1.0 have to do with anything?! This is becoming a twilight zone episode. Seriously.

The points are these:

1) Microsoft said that by reverse-engineering patches for Windows Vista. 7 and 8, people might find ways to attack Windows XP which will no longer benefit from security patches. That is true.
2) The above statement applies to any piece of software which means that by examining the source code of patches or by reverse engineering the binary patches one can find means to attack previous versions of any software because the code is shared across releases.
avatar
Darvond: Do you mean: A new Linux Distro?
No one knows what it's really called, but some call it "seven".
avatar
hedwards: Redhat primarily does it because they're focused on the enterprise market. And there's no guarantee that a particular patch won't need to be completely rewritten to run on an older version. What's more, people using those versions pay a ton of money for the ability to do so.

AFAIK, nobody backports security patches to the 1.x Linux kernel.
avatar
silviucc: WTF does linux 1.0 have to do with anything?! This is becoming a twilight zone episode. Seriously.
Well, it was the logical response to your assertion that older versions receive patches. Which they don't, unless you have an application that only runs on that version and you pay somebody a crap load of money for support.

avatar
silviucc: The points are these:

1) Microsoft said that by reverse-engineering patches for Windows Vista. 7 and 8, people might find ways to attack Windows XP which will no longer benefit from security patches. That is true.
2) The above statement applies to any piece of software which means that by examining the source code of patches or by reverse engineering the binary patches one can find means to attack previous versions of any software because the code is shared across releases.
They may have said that, but it doesn't make it true. It is possible, but in practice, there's little point in developing an exploit that's been patched in newer versions of the OS in order to catch the small number of machines that are still running older versions of the OS.

Sure, it may happen, but there isn't much money in doing so. Similar to why there are so few exploits on OSX or Linux compared with Windows, there's comparatively little money in that.

As for 2, I can't think of any other software, banking software excepted, where doing so would be profitable. Sure, it is possible, but examining patches to exploit older software is far less profitable than attacking newer versions in most cases.
avatar
hedwards: Sure, it may happen, but there isn't much money in doing so. Similar to why there are so few exploits on OSX or Linux compared with Windows, there's comparatively little money in that.
Of course there isn't when about 40% of computers still run XP. Pfft logic, let's ignore it.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
I've seen a wide range of systems from DOS to Windows 7 being used by sites that I've worked with for technical or other problems. Not every place decides to upgrade to the latest operating system. If you have ever stayed in a hotel, chances are that property is not running Windows 7. A supermarket may be using a customized Pentium 3 machine to run the pharmacy, the phone system, and the intercom(possibly also the registers). When there are some systems or programs that just won't work on the newer OS, you may not be able to afford a migration or it can't be done from a software or hardware perspective.
I still work on some Windows 2K systems. They will be upgraded within the next two years, but I still have to work on them. Mostly just XP and 2K that I work on for my career. I'm running 7 and it get's frustrating to remember how to do something in XP/2K when I am personally using 7.
I can't imagine having to work on a Windows 9x system again, that would be a nightmare.
This reminds me, I really need to get serious about setting up my OS partitions on my machine. I had a dual boot XP/Ubuntu set up on one of my throwaway machines, but I could never get the wireless network setup under Linux. However I did like it enough and have decided to upgrade my Vista machine with Windows 7, with the XP mode for older software, and the latest version of Unbuntu. I've got a 50GB partition setaside for just Windows, which has been and should be plenty. I just need to decide how much I should dedicate to Linux.
avatar
Tarnicus: Now if only I could remove Metro...Win8 is a fucking horridly annoying OS for anyone who doesnt want to pretend their PC is a touchscreen Android phone. It came pre-loaded on my laptop, and yes I can (and will) get rid of it but first I wanted to learn how horrid it is. I honestly don't understand how anyone could prefer it to 7 or XP.
Perhaps because it's a fair bit faster and more responsive than 7, and with a start menu software installed, you can work with it precisely as you would with win7? Not to mention the restart into bios thingy, I've been waiting for such a feature for ages...
win 8? i deleted all apps and appstore
inserted Startisback and will compare it with linux mint 15
avatar
Fenixp: Perhaps because it's a fair bit faster and more responsive than 7, and with a start menu software installed, you can work with it precisely as you would with win7? Not to mention the restart into bios thingy, I've been waiting for such a feature for ages...
Exactly I have Win8 on three of my computers since it was released and I pretty sure I only spend at most 1 or 2 seconds in Metro every day, mostly to press on the "desktop" tile, and then I totally forget about it's existence. (when 8.1 is released I won't even have to do that anymore apparently)

Yes Microsoft are morons to try to force Metro down peoples throats and Win8's Metro is silly, not in itself but in it's current implementation (it's kind of sad when mockups looks 1000 times better and more usable than the official implementation), but it's very easy to use Windows 8 without ever having to use Metro and it itself Windows 8 boot a lot faster, is slightly faster and as one or two nice improvements and the desktop side, so it's a nice Windows 7.5, not a "required" upgrade, but definitely not a "have to rollback because it's unusable" kind of thing as some pretend.
avatar
Hesusio: I'm amazed that they're actually still supporting XP in the first place. It's as old now as Windows 3.0 was back when XP was new.

In any case, should I require a new PC between now and a good version of Windows, I'm just going to pirate Windows 7. Microsoft can get fucked if they think I'm actually going to use Windows 8.
I haven't had a legitimate copy of Windows in the last 10 years, except on the laptop I bought in Spain, as most computers in Asia are run with bootleg Windows operating systems as you can buy one for about $3.50.

And no, there's no chance I will ever switch to Win8. It's garbage, and has been a bit of a disaster for Microsoft so, of course, they're trying to push more people to buy it.

Nope -- I'll be using Linux first :)

Personally, I think a non-American company needs to develop a good operating system. They'd make millions, as so many of us are sick of having to use American operating systems that are, in all likely, allowing easy access to the NSA et al.
avatar
Bloodygoodgames: Personally, I think a non-American company needs to develop a good operating system. They'd make millions, as so many of us are sick of having to use American operating systems that are, in all likely, allowing easy access to the NSA et al.
Then maybe you should start by stopping using a network originally developed by the US military which, for the majority, is running using router and switches developed by a US corporation (with ties with the NSA), and all that probably using a computer running with a CPU made by an US company. And by the way, the NSA contributed to both Linux and the BSDs codebase.

What PRISM, and Echelon before it, monitors is mainly communications, it doesn't matter if you are using an un-patched version of Windows ME or OpenBSD it won't make it any easier or harder for the NSA to track and monitor what you do on the Net, if you want to prevent that then start using Freenet (But AFAIK GoG forum doesn't exist yet on Freenet).
avatar
Stevedog13: I did like it enough and have decided to upgrade my Vista machine with Windows 7, with the XP mode for older software, and the latest version of Unbuntu.
Note that XP Mode doesn't have hardware acceleration suitable for gaming purposes; many games wouldn't run very well or at all under it (of course it's fine for non-gaming software and most 16-bit Windows games). XP Mode is not supported on Windows 8.

That said the vast majority of games that worked on XP can be made to work on newer versions so you probably wouldn't need to resort to such solutions that much either way.
Two things are sure:
- I'm not touching Win8, even with a stick. When I buy a new computer, I put it together myself so I'm not bothered with pre-installed systems and my good old copy of XP still works great. If I'm forced to, I'll buy 7.
- XP stays on my computer one way or another - as a second system or on a virtual machine, but it's not going anywhere.

Now, I downloaded Ubuntu. Is this a good choice for someone who never had much contact with Linux? Or do you recommend me some other distibution?
avatar
Spinorial: Forum platitudes are fine and all, but when you have corporate security and massive migration costs to contend with, things aren't quite so straightforward. As I said, there is precedent for this.
avatar
AndrewC: When your corporate is dumb enough to not be able to have an upgrade plan even with a clear roadmap provided by Microsoft well in advance then I feel sorry for them, and I feel sorry for (hypothetical you) for working for them.
Totally agree. Then again they don't care. They buy shiny new win7/8 boxes for themselves and force the rest of the staff to have old crummy xp boxes. It took our IT manager forever just to convince management that the ordering system should be recoded in VB.net (other programmers are stuck fixing the VB6 version all the time) I lucked out to have a win8 machine after I managed to convince them I needed it for the sole purpose if testing the website in IE10. Too bad I can't code with HTML5 (because of IE8, can't force clients to switch to another browser or use chrome plugin unfortunately. I would force them if it was my decision) except for in house web programs where I can tell staff too bad, you can't use IE8 to run it.
Post edited August 24, 2013 by Kabuto