How did anyone use Windows 98?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bigg Jun 06, 2009 7:21 AM EDT |
Windows 98 was the king of the world at the height of the 1990's tech boom. Absolutely everyone was getting on the internet and learning to use computers then. Only the stupid would argue that learning to use Windows 98 was easier than learning to use Linux is today. I remember my grandmother, with only a 4th grade education and was almost fifty before she even had electricity, using Windows 3.1. |
| jhansonxi Jun 08, 2009 1:12 AM EDT |
Windows 98 was horrible. I had to support it as an admin. It wasn't stable until 98SE. This is a recurring M$ trend: 98 vs. 98SE, XP vs. XP SP2, Vista vs. 7. |
| gus3 Jun 08, 2009 11:44 AM EDT |
Win98's immediate need for service packs is what drove me to Linux... sorta. The early reports indicated noteworthy stability problems, so I was sticking with Win95 on my dual-boot. Then Chernobyl hit on 1998-04-01, wiping the partition table. There were recovery tools for Windows, but not Linux. I decided if Windows was going to pose that kind of hazard to non-Windows systems, I didn't want it around. The next day, I made it a single-boot Linux system, and never looked back. |
| bigg Jun 08, 2009 11:48 AM EDT |
I had never heard of Linux in 1998. |
| caitlyn Jun 08, 2009 12:17 PM EDT |
In '98 I was running Red Hat Linux 5.x. I also first tried Caldera Open Linux sometime around then. I thought they were interesting but still not ready for mass consumption. The default desktop environment in Red Hat back then was FVWM2. Apps were definitely limited. The problem was that the handwriting was already on the wall for OS/2. This was before IBM's DOJ testimony so we didn't know about the 11th hour deal with Microsoft yet but it was clear that ISV support and marketing were gone and that IBM wasn't interested in promoting their OS anymore. That left two alternatives: Windows '98 and Windows NT 4.0. I mainly used NT. With no really good alternatives the world seemed destined to be Windows centric. |
| tracyanne Jun 08, 2009 4:55 PM EDT |
I first saw Linux around 1996-97, I don't know what the bloke was using as the DE but it seemed primative compared to Win95, except that the multiple desktops seemed intriguing. I forgot about it until I next saw Linux late in 1999, a bloke I worked with had a Debian/NT4 Server (We used NT4 Server as our desktop development machines) dual boot, it caught my attention, and he was responsible for getting me to try Linux, which I did in 2000. |
| tuxchick Jun 08, 2009 5:07 PM EDT |
I thought Win98SE was cool, but then I was still a relative PC noob, so what did I know :). It was way better than Win95, and way prettier than Win 3.1. But still awkwardly bridging the 16-to-32-bit application transition. Though I didn't do much actual work with it, mostly I Web-surfed with Netscape and learned about Linux, and I spent a lot of time playing with the themes and sound effects. And Doom and Quake. Those were fun. The thing is, as an introduction to computing it was OK. But I guess I miraculously escaped the brainwashing that seems to afflict so many Windows users, who cannot conceive of there being any alternatives. Back then you still had to fiddle a lot to get things working right. Remember driver pain? Remember DLL hell, where MS for whatever moronic reason didn't bother to use versioning of any kind, so software installations would overwrite each other's DLLs with their own? Now we have all this whining over the most trivial tasks, it seems that as computers get better users get dimmer. |
| jdixon Jun 08, 2009 5:19 PM EDT |
> I thought Win98SE was cool... Win98 was when I turned away from Microsoft completely. Up to that point I'd kept a dual booted machine, but seeing the direction Microsoft was going with embedding IE into the OS and bloating the system, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it. Win95 came on 13 floppies, and took up less than 20 MB. Win98 came on a CD and took up over 50MB, and it was essentially a service pack for Win95. That's when I deleted my Windows install and went with a pure Linux system for my home use. I believe that was a 386SX with 8 MB of memory and a 500 MB hard drive. I still keep a dedicated Windows machine for work compatibility and a few games, but everything on the net is Linux (except when I'm at work, like now). When the need for work compatibility goes away, I should be able to get by with only a Linux box, as all of my games should run in dosbox. My current machine is a bit slow running dosbox, but the next one I get should handle it with no problems. |
| techiem2 Jun 08, 2009 5:21 PM EDT |
I got my first computer the end of '93.
I first used Linux in '94 (maybe '95) I believe when I installed Slackware from floppies . :)
I was never overly enthralled with MS since I started with Win3.1/DOS and was pretty much OS-experimental from the start.
I played with Linux on and off alongside the various versions of Windows, as well as OS/2 and BeOS Personal (remember that critter?) until I finally switched to using Linux as my primary around 2000 with Windows being there for games and occasional work.
And it's only gotten better since then! Yeah...some of us remember tweaking ini files, tweaking the registry in 9x (gah! that has to be one of the WORST design decisions MS made - "Hey, lets just throw most of the system and application settings into one binary file! It'll be great!), hacking config.sys and autoexec.bat and such to get Dos programs and games to work right (or to get windows to SEE a CD drive...)... Oh yeah, Windows has always been soooo much easier than *nix! :P |
| hkwint Jun 08, 2009 5:36 PM EDT |
Well, from what I saw there was a timeline. Something like C64, DOS, Win 3.11, Win95; and then Win98 didn't seem that bad. It ran on the first computer my parents bought.
For long, I didn't want to use WinXP because I was really happy with Win98 and I probably knew the ins and outs. I always kept a Win98 boot CD around because sometimes it was the only thing that could defillibrate failed Windows boot sectors. Although, that was what I was told. Only after two years of using XP I understood how bad 98 actually was. A few years ago there was some program my father wanted to use which required Win98 or so; so I offered to install it because I had some spare partitions. Needless to say Win98 wasted my ReiserFS partitions even where it was not going to install something or do anything. It was not ought to even _look_ at those partitions, but it screwed them, truncating much of my fine - back then legal (NL was an exception!) MP3 collection. Then I decided I never wanted to use that garbage anymore. So how did anyone use it? Well, the same way people used C64: They were happy with what they had, it seemed better like what they had before, they became used to it until a level where they became experts, and they were not aware of alternatives. |
| jdixon Jun 08, 2009 5:38 PM EDT |
> I first used Linux in '94 (maybe '95) I believe when I installed Slackware from floppies . :) Likewise. My first install was at work in Feb. 94 on a spare machine. > I was never overly enthralled with MS since I started with Win3.1/DOS and was pretty much OS-experimental from the start. I started on the Tandy Color Computer. Compared to a Color Computer 3 running OS-9, DOS and Windows 3.x were no more than glorified application launchers. And it wasn't until the 486 came out that Intel finally managed to surpass the performance of a 2 MHz 8 bit processor (the Motorola 6809). But, that's what all the games were written for. :( I remember when I finally found one program which made using Windows worthwhile, namely Mosaic. Of course, it also ran under Linux, and Linux finally made Intel hardware good for something other than running games. |
| vainrveenr Jun 09, 2009 11:06 AM EDT |
Quoting:Windows 98 was the king of the world at the height of the 1990's tech boom. Absolutely everyone was getting on the internet and learning to use computers then. Only the stupid would argue that learning to use Windows 98 was easier than learning to use Linux is today.Guess that there are many "stupid" people around then, both in the "1990's tech boom" as well as today. Probably depends to a large extent upon Who is "learning to use" the OS and What they are using their PCs for. Newbies learning how to power-on the computer, use keyboards, use mice, learn about menu systems and icons, and then properly shutting down a computer ?? Power users who can install and uninstall both the OS and applications, can apply upgrades/patches/SPs, can run complete virus scans, and can tweak OS performance through the Windows 9x command-line and the registry ?? Those using Windows 9x solely for MS-Office and related office applications, e.g., word processing, spreadsheet, database, personal information managers ?? Use of Windows 9x mostly for collaboration software (Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise) or a more limited number of in-house application ?? Use of Windows 9x primarily for advanced gaming and the burgeoning use of browsers (MSIE, Mosaic,Netscape Navigator) to finally get on the Internet ?? So again the ease of use for both Windows 98 AND Linux depends mostly on Who is "learning to use" the OS and What they are primarily using their computers for. AAMOF, Windows 98 FE and SE were considered to be "much less bad" versions of their immediate 16/32-bit WIndows predecessors; Windows 95 OSR1 and Windows 95 OSR2. Plug-and-play was improved upon, driver issues were resolved, and other benefits came about (thinking now about improved support for USB). Even with all the memorable issues -- such as the continued GPFs and BSODs!) that kept arising with the evolution of Windows, Windows 98 FE and SE were a vast improvement over Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and even the "truly 32-bit stable" and mighty Windows NT 4.0. Quoting:Well, from what I saw there was a timeline. Something like C64, DOS, Win 3.11, Win95; and then Win98 didn't seem that bad. It ran on the first computer my parents bought.DOS versions up to 5.0, DOS 6.x overlapping with Win 3.1 and 3.11, Win95 OSR1, Win95OSR2, Win98 First Edition, Win98 Second Edition, then the end-of-the-line 16/32-bit transitioner Windows Millenium Edition. Following Windows ME were, of course, the true 32-bit Windows; Win2K and WinXP. More detailed rundowns of all this at such URL's as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows . One could now successfully argue that WinXP SP3 is much "less bad" than its 32-bit Windows predecessors WinNT and Win2K, and again, similar in a sense to 16/32-bit Win98's being "less bad" than Win95. There are even certain similarities between Linux's growing curve and that of 16/32-bit Windows. Specifically, in the ongoing evolution of the Linux kernel to better support more devices, features, and processes. Timeline advancements from Pre 2.2 kernels===>2.2.x kernels===>2.4.x kernels===> our current 2.6.2x/2.6.30 kernels (refer of course to 'The Linux Kernel Archives' site at http://www.kernel.org/) |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 09, 2009 2:10 PM EDT |
I avoided Win98 entirely. I used '95 until that crapped out on me (ok, I crapped it with a mis-type, but such is life) and installed Linux on the last machine of mine to have Win installed. But I'd had a Linux system since 1995, Debian on 14 floppies. I wanted Win95 for games. No joke. I laugh at those who talk about Linux as the "desktop newcomer", since I was using Linux as a "desktop" before Win95 was officially released, surfing the web with Linux before Internet Explorer existed, directly linked to the Internet through Linux before Windows even came with an IP stack. Anyone who calls Linux a "newcomer" instantly demonstrates the absurd level of their own ignorance. |
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