Re: CONFIG_VFAT_FS_DUALNAMES regressions

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> I don't believe that Microsoft is still providing updates for Win98. But I 
> think Windows 2000 might still be in use

Definitely.  The mail server belonging to a company that pays me for
embedded Linux work runs on Windows 2000.  I moved it to a virtual
machine about 1 year ago - it's still in use.

> - I for example have a Win 2000 
> installation on my ThinkPad T23, although I didn't boot it for about a 
> year or so. Has it been tested against Windows 2000? I digged for the mail 
> where you said something about against which Windows versions you tested, 
> but I didn't find it anymore.

Heh.  I still use Windows 95 and Windows 98 occasionally.  I'm a bit
disappointed to find Samba no longer tests against them :-)

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows ME has fewer users than 98.  98 had
a reputation for being the best of the non-NT series.

> > When the vendor of an operating system doesn't even bother to display
> > a clean "sorry, you don't get updates any more" page for their OS then
> > I think it is safe to say that the operating system is dead and
> > buried.
> 
> It is safe to say much. But still users might not behave according to your 
> saying or might even not be able to. A potential customer asked us to 
> migrate a Windows 98 installation into a virtual machine, cause the 
> software that is running there would not run with any newer version of 
> Windows. Sometimes people are locked / forced to a specific Windows (or 
> Linux) version at least is they do not want to pay lots of $$$ to replace 
> their proprietary special hardware + software combination by something 
> which is supported on a newer version of an operating system. And for a 
> coincidence I think digital photos have been involved in that use case.

I think you've described commercial ancient Windows users.

But I suspect there are more non-commercial users - that ancient PC
someone has in their home which is good enough at running Word 2 for
_their_ word processing needs.  You know the sort of thing: ancient
14-inch CRT still going strong, friend probably replaced the disk 5
years ago and cloned the original working OS, fan's getting a bit
noisy but the old clunker isn't worth replacing just yet.

-- Jamie