Support for Windows 98/Windows ME Ends July 11, 2006

Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) ends on July 11, 2006. Microsoft will end public and technical support by this date. This also includes security updates. Microsoft is providing final notifications to customers to end the extended security update support for these products.

Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition Support ends on July 11, 2006

With this move, hundreds of thousands (even millions) of hardware will be "orphaned" and a large fraction of those will ultimately end up as toxic waste in landfills. Does it have to be that way? I'm sure the internet community will continue to come up with unofficial patches and fixes to help extend the life of Windows 98 and Windows ME but finding these unofficial patches and fixes will not be easy.

Nope, I know enough to raise a call to Microsoft to release the source codes of these OS's as Open Source -- they didn't do this with DOS and Windows 3.xx and I'm sure they won't do it this time too. So what will the owners of computers currently running these flavors of Windows to do? Do they sell their hardware? Do they simply put them in their dumpters? I DON'T THINK SO.

I say that its time for them to start looking for alternatives. There are lightweight Linux distributions such as SLAX, Damn Small Linux (DSL) and Puppy Linux that will run pretty well on machines currently running Windows 98. These Linux distributions were designed to be small and compact and easy to use. Installation of these distros is as easy (sometimes even easier) as installing Windows with users not even seeing the command line throughout the installation process.

I think this is a big opportunity that the open source community/linux advocates needs to exploit -- spread the word that the end of life for Windows 98 and Windows ME does not mean that its also the end of life for their hardware. That there are viable alternatives out there that can still breathe life into them.

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