End of support for 16-bit Windows

Posted Dec 30, 2003 22:14 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
Parent article: LWN's Obviously Incorrect 2004 Predictions

The other big event is the end of support for the last 16-bit Windows operating systems (Win 98SE and Win ME).

People are looking for a supported operating system for their Pentiums and Pentium IIs. It seems to me that the currently popular Linux distros don't fare too well here (not supporting xfce as an installation choice, etc).

The people that aren't looking for a replacement OS are going to leave their 16-bit Windows machine as it is. So at some stage in the next two years we can expect a worm which exploits those platforms, a worm to which the only response is "throw away your kid's computer or disconnect it from the Internet forever or install Linux".

As a result, I'd expect to see more new users trying to run Linux in graphical mode on computers which are now regarded as too underpowered.

End of support for 16-bit Windows

Posted Jan 15, 2004 0:55 UTC (Thu) by iwilcox (guest, #18701) [Link]

> The other big event is the end of support for the last 16-bit Windows operating systems (Win 98SE and Win ME).
> People are looking for a supported operating system for their Pentiums and Pentium IIs

Who wants paid-for support of OSs that old? Desktop users don't pay and have long since moved on to 2k/XP anyway. The only bodies I can imagine being in that position are companies with an investment so large (and budgeting/foresight so poor) that they missed a whole (3 year) hardware replacement cycle and now have a huge investment in what is now very dated hardware that does its job very slowly. No company in that position with any sense or serious buying power (and therefore any market sway) decides to miss yet another replacement cycle and reuse the hardware yet again. This market doesn't even register.