How many of you are OS holdouts / luddites? Still clinging to your favorite OS?

[escrow4]

I honestly wouldn't have a problem moving to Windows 10 if it didn't call home all the time and it would let me control when and what updates I allow on MY computer. Sure I could disable everything I don't like but it's only a matter of time before a forced update undoes my changes. It's just not worth battling an operating system daily to ensure it's reliable and keeps my personal data personal.

As opposed to the smartphone you probably have that is probably filled with personal data that is mined daily plus all that browsing and purchasing you do online can be easily linked back to you . . . . . . your personal data stopped being personal in the 21st century.

 

[balloonshark]

As opposed to the smartphone you probably have that is probably filled with personal data that is mined daily plus all that browsing and purchasing you do online can be easily linked back to you . . . . . . your personal data stopped being personal in the 21st century.

I finally bought a smart phone last year and it's used for emergencies only. GPS is disabled and I have a piece of tape over the camera. It sits in once spot 99.9% of the time. It's only turned on once a day to check for calls and messages which I rarely get. Myself and others realized a long time ago that smart phones and tablets were nothing but data collection spy devices. I treat mine like toys and assume all info will be shared. Nice try though...

 

[bruceb]

I have XP Pro with SP3 and all other updates to date ... has the registry trick to let it get updates that POS Terminals use ... My laptop has Windows 10 Home 64 Bit

 

[nerp]

I honestly wouldn't have a problem moving to Windows 10 if it didn't call home all the time and it would let me control when and what updates I allow on MY computer. Sure I could disable everything I don't like but it's only a matter of time before a forced update undoes my changes. It's just not worth battling an operating system daily to ensure it's reliable and keeps my personal data personal.

You're kinda misinformed about everything you've raised.

 

[Red Squirrel]

As opposed to the smartphone you probably have that is probably filled with personal data that is mined daily plus all that browsing and purchasing you do online can be easily linked back to you . . . . . . your personal data stopped being personal in the 21st century.

I see this argument brought a lot, the main difference is, a phone is an accessory and not a main computing workhorse. I personally don't store anything on my phone, all that stuff goes on MY personal servers. None of ths cloud BS. While I think it IS ridiculous the amount of spying and crap that goes on phones, I also don't use mine for much. But when that kind of stuff starts to happen on my computer that's a totally different story and is why I switched to Linux. MS is basically trying to turn your computer into a phone, as far as data collection goes.

There are some custom roms for phones though, I need to look into those at some point but looks quite involved. Not sure how good they are or if they even are built with privacy in mind or not. I always hated the idea that phones are pretty much designed to spy on you, just the fact that it requires an online based account just to use it. It does not have to be that way. I created a separate account for my phone though so at least it's not tied with anything I do on the computer, sorta... they use all sorts of techniques to tie stuff together anyway such as IP address and supersonic sound waves that get picked up by mic. (ever wonder why so many apps want access to the mic?)

Of course there is also the spying of what you do online because the NSA packet sniffs pretty much all traffic that passes through the states and possibly other countries, but that's a whole other issue and is somewhat solved with encryption and just the fact that there is a ridiculous amount of raw data that they have to sift through, as opposed to something like Windows 10 telemetry, or phone spyware that pretty much neatly categorizes all the data and is in an easier format for the NSA and other agencies.

 

[escrow4]

I finally bought a smart phone last year and it's used for emergencies only. GPS is disabled and I have a piece of tape over the camera. It sits in once spot 99.9% of the time. It's only turned on once a day to check for calls and messages which I rarely get. Myself and others realized a long time ago that smart phones and tablets were nothing but data collection spy devices. I treat mine like toys and assume all info will be shared. Nice try though...

Pretty sure you are already on a watchlist with a satellite orbiting where you live.

And how about other purchases? Use credit or debit?

 

[inf1nity]

I recently downgraded to 7 from 8.1 because it was too taxing on my system.

 

[Raduque]

Every PC I own except my server is running Windows 10. I retired my w7 HTPC - it was ancient anyway. My server is running WHS 2011 (Server 2k8 R2). I just built a new budget gaming PC using old parts and installed 10 on it.

I quite like 10. I liked 8 and 8.1 too. But then again, I liked Vista and never had a problem with it. I ran Windows 7 for maybe a year on my main machine before I replaced it with a gaming laptop.

I recently downgraded to 7 from 8.1 because it was too taxing on my system.

Windows 8.1 is much lighter than Windows 7. 10 even moreso.

 

[MongGrel]

Every PC I own except my server is running Windows 10. I retired my w7 HTPC - it was ancient anyway. My server is running WHS 2011 (Server 2k8 R2). I just built a new budget gaming PC using old parts and installed 10 on it.

I quite like 10. I liked 8 and 8.1 too. But then again, I liked Vista and never had a problem with it. I ran Windows 7 for maybe a year on my main machine before I replaced it with a gaming laptop.



Windows 8.1 is much lighter than Windows 7. 10 even moreso.

+1

OMG, the NSA or someone will see me doing something they can't all ready...

If you're doing something they are worried about in reality, they probably see it all ready.

If you don't know other things in some regards, NM.

 

[Raduque]

+1

OMG, the NSA or someone will see me doing something they can't all ready...

If you're doing something they are worried about in reality, they probably see it all ready.

If you don't know other things in some regards, NM.

I'm not important enough for the NSA to watch me. So much content and metadata is moving through their systems, that you already need to be a PoI for them to be paying attention. I do what I can to keep confidential information secure (strong passwords, change them often, etc) but for the most part, it really doesn't matter that a company is getting anonymous usage and telemetry data from my OS, when the e-commerce store you buy things from shares your purchase data with all of their affiliate partners, who then share it with theirs, who share it with theirs and so forth.

I don't care HOW secure you think you are, or how much tracking you think you've disabled, everybody that is online, unless you literally do nothing but basic web browsing and light email through a private server connected with a VPN, is condensed down to a single identifier that's attached to multiple gigs of metadata.

It's only going to happen more, and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of throwing out ALL your technology, driving a car from the 60s and living in a shack in the woods. Of course, then you get put on the watch list and the NSA is sitting in ice cream vans outside your woodland shack and going through your garbage.

 

[blankslate]

How do they still give you updates every month?

iirc there is a registry setting that makes the OS appear as if it is installed on an embedded system and MS is still providing updates for those.

Steve Gibson didn't move from XP to 7 until well after XP was EOL and those are the details I remember from the Security Now podcast from twit.tv when they talked about it.


______________

 

[Shamrock]

I'll hold on to Win 7 as long as it will boot. (I do have a cloned image of it already activated), after that, maybe Vulkan will be good enough to use Linux.

 

[Red Squirrel]

+1

OMG, the NSA or someone will see me doing something they can't all ready...

If you're doing something they are worried about in reality, they probably see it all ready.

If you don't know other things in some regards, NM.

I'm not important enough for the NSA to watch me. So much content and metadata is moving through their systems, that you already need to be a PoI for them to be paying attention. I do what I can to keep confidential information secure (strong passwords, change them often, etc) but for the most part, it really doesn't matter that a company is getting anonymous usage and telemetry data from my OS, when the e-commerce store you buy things from shares your purchase data with all of their affiliate partners, who then share it with theirs, who share it with theirs and so forth.

I don't care HOW secure you think you are, or how much tracking you think you've disabled, everybody that is online, unless you literally do nothing but basic web browsing and light email through a private server connected with a VPN, is condensed down to a single identifier that's attached to multiple gigs of metadata.

It's only going to happen more, and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of throwing out ALL your technology, driving a car from the 60s and living in a shack in the woods. Of course, then you get put on the watch list and the NSA is sitting in ice cream vans outside your woodland shack and going through your garbage.

Well I do believe in trying to at least make their job harder, by not using stuff that makes it easier.

We have to fight the system, not submit to it. Don't use cloud stuff, don't use stuff like Google, store all your data locally on a system that you trust (ex: not windows 10) to not share your data. etc... Lot of things you can do to at least minimize exposure.

I need to do more myself actually, my biggest culprit is probably my phone, it's fairly vanilla, and is on my wifi network, so who knows what kind of sniffing it does when I'm not paying attention. My wifi is on a seperate vlan though. Not to mention it could be recording me at any time. I do believe all phone OSes do have backdoors for this, from what I've read.

If I was REALLY paranoid I'd compile my entire OS from source, and comb through the entire source, but I trust that there are probably already hackers doing this regularly with popular distro code. The NSA could easily ambush a kernel dev at gun point and force them to put a backdoor in it for example so I'm sure all the main devs and other 3rd parties have processes in case that happens.

 

[MongGrel]

Well I do believe in trying to at least make their job harder, by not using stuff that makes it easier.

We have to fight the system, not submit to it. Don't use cloud stuff, don't use stuff like Google, store all your data locally on a system that you trust (ex: not windows 10) to not share your data. etc... Lot of things you can do to at least minimize exposure.

I need to do more myself actually, my biggest culprit is probably my phone, it's fairly vanilla, and is on my wifi network, so who knows what kind of sniffing it does when I'm not paying attention. My wifi is on a seperate vlan though. Not to mention it could be recording me at any time. I do believe all phone OSes do have backdoors for this, from what I've read.

If I was REALLY paranoid I'd compile my entire OS from source, and comb through the entire source, but I trust that there are probably already hackers doing this regularly with popular distro code. The NSA could easily ambush a kernel dev at gun point and force them to put a backdoor in it for example so I'm sure all the main devs and other 3rd parties have processes in case that happens.

I still try to make their jobs harder of course.

Have been awhile now, but I still try to upgrade things.

I still haven't used the MS cloud on Win 10, but for all I know the fact that it is an option it may be watching me a bit.

I haven't been wearing my tin foil hat in a long time, but I'm not running totally bare ass in Win 10 insider builds.

I'm probably giving them a lot of feedback on the side just using it on the main. Got me.

You've brought up a few other good points.

Nuff said

 

[TheGardener]

On windows 7 because I purchased the license. And it meets my needs.

 

[Dude111]

I just installed win98se

Good for you!!

I also have 98se and I love her........ In my opinion one of the BEST os's Microsoft ever released!!

 

[Magic Carpet]

I also have 98se and I love her........ In my opinion one of the BEST os's Microsoft ever released!!

... and I thought, it was one of the worst, imo. Have to say, I hated the whole 9x family, though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

... and I thought, it was one of the worst, imo. Have to say, I hated the whole 9x family, though.

Atrocious memory-management, lack of true native protected-mode multi-tasking like NT - Win9x family was horrid!

It wasn't if you would blue-screen, but when. You couldn't get up times of months, like you can with Win7.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah win98 was not really my favourite, I found that it got slow and sluggish and unstable over time, I had to format all the time, then it would be nice and snappy and stable, then slowly start to crash more and get slower. Rinse and repeat. Then I built a new computer, and windows 2000 was out so I put that. That was the best damn OS EVER. MS had perfected the desktop operating system then.

Then it went south from there. XP was actually quite a disaster when it was first released. It only got better after many years of patching and hardware catching up.

I also remember trying Linux during those days and you had to manually compile the kernel and stuff, Linux has come a long way since then. I still find it needs work if it wants to get mass adoption though, but it's getting there.

And lol @ blue screens and win98, I totally forgot just how bad it was for that. The best was walking in the computer lab at school and being the first class to use it since the last few hours and more than half the machines had a BSOD. Win98 would literally BSOD for zero reason when sitting idle.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I couldn't have said it better myself. Pretty much agree on all points. It was so bad, I didn't even mind to learn/use *nix in the first place. And *nix back then wasn't as sweet and straightforward as what it is today.

Yeah, Windows 2000 Workstation was the first usable consumer Windows OS with a decent uptime. But XP SP2+ later was the icing on the cake, though. Fixed a lot of compatibility problems 2000 had. Sure we had NT 4.0 and below but I didn't use them much, and I bet they must have been plagued with even more compatibility issues. Drivers/software support was very scarce, at best. People had to use that crap a.k.a Windows 9x just to get things working. I'd rather use pure dos instead.

XP was actually quite a disaster when it was first released.

Oh yeah, pre-SP2 it was very buggy. Hell, I couldn't even install when I first got it, got some kind of blue screen, but then I re-visited it later when SP2 was out and it had become good enough by then. SP3 made it perfect later on.

So yeah, Windows 10 RTM, wasn't that bad, compared to what we had to go thru in the past, lol. (Still annoyed at how Windows handles IDE/AHCI switching though).

I recently downgraded to 7 from 8.1 because it was too taxing on my system.

In my experience, 8.1 has been faster than 7 literally in every way (on the same hardware). I'd only downgrade, if hardware isn't properly supported by drivers. If I were you, I'd give 10 a shot though. 10 is great, compatibility wise. Hell you can even run Office 95 on it. Also the pink Assistant background is fixable, I am running Office 2003 w/ all updates without issues (yes, Windows does update this unsuppoted office). Amazing, lol.

 

[MongGrel]

I just installed win98se on one of my boxen. I had to go out and find an unofficial service pack to install directx 9 cause whatever directx was installed with 98se would cause a crash on my geforce fx5900xt if I changed the resolution to be greater than 800x600. Finding drivers and middleware for win98 is a $&(*^(^#@(!!!

Good for you!!

I also have 98se and I love her........ In my opinion one of the BEST os's Microsoft ever released!!

Pull the other one

()

 

[JimmiG]

Still use AmigaOS 3.1 (ClassicWB) in WinUAE occasionally

I also run WindowsXP in VirtualBox with USB pass-through for scanning, because there are no scanner drivers for anything after XP. I would never install it as the primary OS, though.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Yeah win98 was not really my favourite, I found that it got slow and sluggish and unstable over time, I had to format all the time, then it would be nice and snappy and stable, then slowly start to crash more and get slower. Rinse and repeat. Then I built a new computer, and windows 2000 was out so I put that. That was the best damn OS EVER. MS had perfected the desktop operating system then.

Yeah, Windows 2000 Workstation was the first usable consumer Windows OS with a decent uptime. But XP SP2+ later was the icing on the cake, though. Fixed a lot of compatibility problems 2000 had. Sure we had NT 4.0 and below but I didn't use them much, and I bet they must have been plagued with even more compatibility issues. Drivers/software support was very scarce, at best. People had to use that crap a.k.a Windows 9x just to get things working. I'd rather use pure dos instead.

Oh yeah, pre-SP2 it was very buggy. Hell, I couldn't even install when I first got it, got some kind of blue screen, but then I re-visited it later when SP2 was out and it had become good enough by then. SP3 made it perfect later on.

Agreed. Windows 2K was very good for its time. I'd go so far as to call it one of the best OS of all time. Rock solid and reliable. What more can you ask?

People have a tendency to forget just how poor XP RTM was especially compared to 2K. But to be fair, even XP RTM was one heck of a lot better then 98. Or that abomination called ME... D:

SP2 made XP what 2K had been. SP3 was really just icing on the cake.

And lol @ blue screens and win98, I totally forgot just how bad it was for that. The best was walking in the computer lab at school and being the first class to use it since the last few hours and more than half the machines had a BSOD. Win98 would literally BSOD for zero reason when sitting idle.

Ah. Those where the days... :\

I also run WindowsXP in VirtualBox with USB pass-through for scanning, because there are no scanner drivers for anything after XP. I would never install it as the primary OS, though.

Have you tried just connecting it to something newer? I'm continuously surprised by how much hardware is supported out-of-the-box.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Atrocious memory-management, lack of true native protected-mode multi-tasking like NT - Win9x family was horrid!

It wasn't if you would blue-screen, but when. You couldn't get up times of months, like you can with Win7.

Microsoft's recommendation was to reboot Win98/Me machines every two hours.

 

[JEDIYoda]

win 95 here,,,,,