Oppressive Technology

I’m laughing:

If you’re curious how entrenched older Windows versions are, we can get a good estimate by visiting a dataset maintained by the United States Government Digital Analytics Program. This dataset contains a rolling summary of visitors to US government websites and the operating systems their browsers report that they use.

Let’s kick-off with the most bizarre observation: 15 users who accessed government sites are still using Windows 3.1! That’s a 30-year-old operating system. 3,255, 5,131, and 1,088 accesses came from people who are still using Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME, respectively. Hello? The 1990s called and would like its operating systems back.

It’s not that I’m so surprised that people still run older versions of Windows. I’m surprised they are still able to access the Internet, apparently without having serious problems. With all the horror stories out there, you’d think there was no way these systems could last more than a minute on the Net. It shows that the propaganda about the threat factor is way off.

From less publicized information, I’ve learned that you could run whatever you like from behind a good, solid firewall, and likely do just fine. Some ISPs will even play that roll for you. (Much as I hate AOL, I have to admit their “walled garden” approach actually works to protect ancient Windows machines.) Part of the issue is that the bad guys aren’t interested in machines that can’t handle a hefty workload, to include a very high network output. There’s no money in cracking WinXP or earlier. It’s no longer about bragging rights among the other hackers; computer crimes are all about the money. A great deal of malware simply won’t run on older versions of Windows.

Still, the big story in that linked article is that Microsoft has decided once again to zombie millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of computers by refusing to let their latest and greatest run on some older hardware. Except, this time the upgrade to Win11 is not even a real upgrade. It’s just Win10 with a different face — a very slightly different face, at that. Given the economic situation, this could simply fail massively, in that the vast majority of computer users, both private and corporate, cannot afford new machines.

Worse, no one at Microsoft can give a straight answer. Even their software package for assessing the hardware isn’t accurate, according to reports from people who track the ever-changing story told by Microsoft. Thus, a huge number of machines running Win10 right soon will be put on zombie status, with support ending in 2025. You’ll be very surprised how quickly that date arrives. Then again, it is quite likely the date will be extended, rather like the way it played out over WinXP.

Also, a great many machine owners cannot upgrade because they are running some essential software and hardware that simply is not supported on newer versions of Windows. Certifications mean a lot in highly regulated industries. So a great many XP machines are running in ATMs, for example. The banking and medical industries are notorious for running older versions of Windows on their peculiar machines. They bought good hardware and took care of it, and it’s now integrated into an entire ecosystem within the organization. The investments were big enough at the time to make it tough to justify buying an entirely new system now; the disruption would be too great, threatening human life in some cases.

I give thanks my own situation isn’t like that. Virtually everything I do requires only some kind of computing device that can access online services. If I had to, I could do it all from a smartphone the way so many people do now. However, I am far more comfortable using something bigger and more accommodating to my work habits. I had hopes that Microsoft would keep their promise that Win10 would be the last version of Windows. I’ve given up on their OS, though I still have strong confidence in their Office and online services.

I finally got PCLinuxOS working on my laptop. Every version of Ubuntu (actually Xubuntu and Kubuntu) I tried on it failed to boot consistently. Indeed, this past Sunday morning it steadfastly refused to boot into the OS at all. I lost a little bit of writing that was copied nowhere else, but nothing I intended to share. I would have been content with the Ubuntu universe, but there are too many bad corporate decisions along their path. I no longer enjoy checking out alternatives; I would much rather pick something and stay with it. For now, it’s starting to look like PCLinuxOS is where I’ll migrate for that.

My reasons for that choice probably won’t matter to you. But for the curious, it includes critical issues like not having to worry about systemd locking me out of control decisions on how things work. PCLinuxOS doesn’t have that. Most of the software I like to use is included in the standard repositories, and it seems like the management of PCLinuxOS aren’t doctrinaire about using stuff that isn’t totally Open Source. I don’t care about that, either. I just want to use my computer the way I like to use it.

There are a few other side benefits, like far better font rendering, that the system is zippy fast on slow hardware, and so forth. The flaws are minor, so far; I can live with it. To be honest, once I got used to MS-DOS and impact printers, I could have kept using that system forever. That simply isn’t a viable option for me, now. Technology has been harnessed to oppression, not to human need.