Microsoft has announced it will discontinue providing user support to the estimated 70 million users of Windows 98 still out there as of today. Security updates for Windows 98 will no longer be available either.
Windows 98 is very old technology, and although Microsoft urges users to upgrade to a more recent version of its operating system, many of the 98 users are on personal computers that just don’t have the hardware required to lift a more robust operating system such as Windows XP.
Considering this, many people will have to buy new computers. As even upgrading hardware on one of these older systems may not be possible, or cost effective.
Perhaps this is a time to consider switching to a different operating system such as one of the non-proprietary, open-source, free software, Linux distributions.
If you have never tried Linux before, I recommend you start with a LiveCD distribution such as SLAX. SLAX is so small you can run it from a mini CD (8cm), or even a USB key! And you don’t even need to install anything in the process. This particular LiveCD distribution is based on the Slackware Linux distribution, and is primarily the fruit of Tomas Matejicek’s efforts. I was very impressed by it!
Another Linux distribution which is very popular, and has pretty much everything you’ll need to do with an operating system (including OpenOffice.org 2, Firefox, etc) on your computer, featuring a wealth of software applications, is Ubuntu. Keep that name in mind, because I’m convinced Ubuntu is soon going to be huge. Considering it is already popular, open source, community driven, free – and the software that comes with it is free, and there’s an abundance of other free software supported by it, this could be the last time you payed money for an operating system.
Once you test drive Linux, chances are you’ll instantly fall in love with it. It is fast, sturdy, secure, lean, and best of all it isn’t proprietary and it doesn’t cost you anything to buy. You can download freely and use it right away.
Have fun with it.
Relative Links Elsewhere
Ubuntu is indeed impressive. You can try the live CD and then install from there if you like it. A lot of people are moving to Ubuntu and so there is a very active community of helpful people (including myself). You can even get free CDs here.
Giving out free CDs, how cool is that. Considering many people are still on dial-up, and some (most really) don’t even have connections to the Internet. I’m sure Ubuntu will soon be able to rival the big guys – since it does deserve all the recognition it can get.