BushLin wrote:

They are actually trying to do you a favour by pointing out the obvious, this isn't someone being a killjoy, it is common sense. […]
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dr_st wrote:

derSammler wrote:

No offence, but anyone accessing the Web with XP or older should be flogged. No matter which browser, that's just irresponsible.

No offense, but this is just stupid, stupid FUD.

They are actually trying to do you a favour by pointing out the obvious, this isn't someone being a killjoy, it is common sense.
Microsoft don't release security updates for fun, they create patches as vulnerabilities are discovered and stopped providing this service to regular XP users 5 years ago.
I've seen infected XP systems which visited a mainstream website where malware was contained in the adverts, anti-virus and malwarebytes didn't detect anything. XP is an open goal for exploits and people nonchalantly using vulnerable systems make their internal networks and the internet at large more dangerous for everyone else.

looking4awayout wrote:

No offence, but I use my Pentium III Tualatin running XP on the web every day, and so far I never caught a virus nor a malware. And yes, I scan it frequently and I find no threat, unless cookies are now considered malware. Just a quick swipe with Ccleaner and I get rid of them in a jiffy.

How are you certain you've never been infected with malware/viruses/trojans?
Are you watching all outbound traffic and fully understand what is creating it?

Linux is free and far more secure. If you must use your classic hardware which can only run old MS operating systems on the web, multi-booting Linux for web browsing is a no brainer... or just keep your retro systems offline and safe from harm and use something more appropriate for the internet.

If a browser allows malware hidden in ads or other scripts, that's a problem in the browser, not the OS. XP has a built in firewall, though terribly limited in functionality, but it drops all incoming TCP connections at least by default. There have been no critical vulnerabilities found in the MS TCP/IP stack for a long time AFAIR. So, unless a user does something really stupid, it should be alright to surf the Net on XP. If paranoia prevails, one can always disable Java, JavaScript and Flash in any browser.

I admit Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD/etc. do a much better job on older hardware, but they also have dropped or limited support for many architectures considered legacy. You can still compile whatever you need from the scratch, though it's a pain in the arse to compile, say, Firefox on a 486. The last time I did something like this, I launched a copy of it in a VM running on a home 12-core Xeon server, SSH to the VM, did the job and copied the files back, but that's a whole different story.

If a browser allows malware hidden in ads or other scripts, that's a problem in the browser, not the OS.

Err... no. You don't seem to have any knowledge about how that works. Malware infection through a browser works by exploiting bugs in the OS. If the OS is not safe, NO application running on it can be safe either. Also, XP lacks any modern security features and the firewall is a joke. It drops all incoming TCP connections? No, it does not. If it would, you had no internet. It's irresponsible to still use XP on the internet today, period.

There have been no critical vulnerabilities found in the MS TCP/IP stack for a long time AFAIR.

Are you aware that TCP/IP is OSI level 4 (transport)? That's just completely irrelevant for getting infected with Malware.

ph4nt0m wrote:

I admit Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD/etc. do a much better job on older hardware, but they also have dropped or limited support for many architectures considered legacy. You can still compile whatever you need from the scratch, though it's a pain in the arse to compile, say, Firefox on a 486. The last time I did something like this, I launched a copy of it in a VM running on a home 12-core Xeon server, SSH to the VM, did the job and copied the files back, but that's a whole different story.

Last I looked Slackware still had the option to install using an i486 kernal by pressing one of the function keys on start up. No compiling needed. Use PLOP to boot from DVD/CD. I've created a thread for old *nix and *nix on legacy hardware. *nix software and systems Feel free to contribute...

Btw I use Epiphany curently on my P166MMX test rig running Debian 8 Jessie. Stretch and Buster will support i386 (iei586/i686) arch until at least 2022 despite Wikipedia saying i386 (ie i586/i686 arch) was dropped in Stretch. I checked the Stretch and Buster i368 repos and there are multiple i586 and i686 kernels included. Even the Debian official web sites state Stretch and Buster support i386 arch. Doesn't anyone read anymore? I know Devuans current ASCII supports i386 arch, so there's at least another 3 years of i586/i686 support.

All this thinking the linux needs a Zillion gigabytes of memory and a 64bit multi core processor is just horseshit. Jessie runs just fine on 256megs of ram. Windows Managers such as Window Maker, the Gnome 2 replacement MATE, XFCE4, ICEWM and a lot more run as fast as there equivalents did over 15 years ago according to my testing over the last 6 months or so. It's just the fact that lot of folk used Windows 9x back then and find *nix strange when in reality once you start to understand the core foundation, just like Dos, you can pick things up and there is a hell of a lot of help available. I'm only a hobbiest but have managed to get my around using linux quite comfortably. My favorate program is Midnight Commander fwiw. The same way I got around, Dos, OS/2, Win3.0-XP and now Win10.

derSammler wrote:

If a browser allows malware hidden in ads or other scripts, that's a problem in the browser, not the OS.

Err... no. You don't seem to have any knowledge about how that works. Malware infection through a browser works by exploiting bugs in the OS. If the OS is not safe, NO application running on it can be safe either.

I do actually. Modern browsers run with a high level of interprocess isolation. They are multithreaded/multiprocessed with every thread/process having limited access rights. For example, a thread rendering a web page to the window doesn't need access to files on the machine or to the network stack. Even if the underlying OS has critical vulnerabilities which can be exploited, the browser developers can address these issues if the OS developers don't. The problem with all popular browsers dropping support for XP is because their developers don't bother themselves to maintain the list of XP vulnerabilities once Microsoft abandoned it. They don't bother to implement fixes either. It's possible, they just don't care.

derSammler wrote:

Also, XP lacks any modern security features and the firewall is a joke. It drops all incoming TCP connections? No, it does not. If it would, you had no internet. It's irresponsible to still use XP on the internet today, period.

Ugh, what features are you talking about? The OS isn't supposed to implement every hot feature showing up on the market. These can be, and should be, done in the userland.

Yes, XP drops all incoming connections by default while Vista and newer can block outgoing connections as well. It has nothing to do with "no Internet" in common sense because it initiates outgoing connections starting with a UDP DNS query on port 53 and a TCP 3-way handshake on port 80.

derSammler wrote:

There have been no critical vulnerabilities found in the MS TCP/IP stack for a long time AFAIR.

Are you aware that TCP/IP is OSI level 4 (transport)? That's just completely irrelevant for getting infected with Malware.

The TCP/IP stack spans 4 layers from physical to transport and is a part of Winsock. This is kernel mode and something that cannot be fixed in userland should there be a vulnerability found, though there is a deprecated way to extend the functionality of Winsock through the LSP. Any issues on the higher OSI levels can be addressed without Microsoft.

Caluser2000 wrote:

All this thinking the linux needs a Zillion gigabytes of memory and a 64bit multi core processor is just horseshit. Jessie runs just fine on 256megs of ram. Windows Managers such as Window Maker, the Gnome 2 replacement MATE, XFCE4, ICEWM and a lot more run as fast as there equivalents did over 15 years ago according to my testing over the last 6 months or so. It's just the fact that lot of folk used Windows 9x back then and find *nix strange when in reality once you start to understand the core foundation, just like Dos, you can pick things up and there is a hell of a lot of help available. I'm only a hobbiest but have managed to get my around using linux quite comfortably. My favorate program is Midnight Commander fwiw. The same way I got around, Dos, OS/2, Win3.0-XP and now Win10.

Linux and *BSD can be configured to run on low memory systems. 20 years ago, I was running FreeBSD 4 on a K6-2 based notebook with just 64Mb of memory. XFree86 + AfterStep or WindowMaker. Aterm was excellent, though lacked the Unicode support. Midnight Commander was also there. Early Firefox and Opera ran just fine.

edit: I'll start a new topic for this, sorry.

ph4nt0m wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

All this thinking the linux needs a Zillion gigabytes of memory and a 64bit multi core processor is just horseshit. Jessie runs just fine on 256megs of ram. Windows Managers such as Window Maker, the Gnome 2 replacement MATE, XFCE4, ICEWM and a lot more run as fast as there equivalents did over 15 years ago according to my testing over the last 6 months or so. It's just the fact that lot of folk used Windows 9x back then and find *nix strange when in reality once you start to understand the core foundation, just like Dos, you can pick things up and there is a hell of a lot of help available. I'm only a hobbiest but have managed to get my around using linux quite comfortably. My favorate program is Midnight Commander fwiw. The same way I got around, Dos, OS/2, Win3.0-XP and now Win10.

Linux and *BSD can be configured to run on low memory systems. 20 years ago, I was running FreeBSD 4 on a K6-2 based notebook with just 64Mb of memory. XFree86 + AfterStep or WindowMaker. Aterm was excellent, though lacked the Unicode support. Midnight Commander was also there. Early Firefox and Opera ran just fine.

Good for you. Mandrake 6.1 ran fine on my Compaq Presario CDS524 486dx2/66 system with 64megs of ram. Picked up all the hardware. The on board 512k video was a bottle neck though and GIMP did some funky things to the desktop when it was running.No tweeking what so ever needed. Mandrake wasn't ment to run though as it was an i586 distro. Back then my IBM PC300GL,with Celeron 400, tower running the original release of win98 was the families ppp internet gateway and file server.

Some more MyPal tinkering... When you follow these instructions https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal/issues/22 it looks like this:

Definitely like the clean lay out. Makes change for all this fuzzy modern curved edged crap that look like they were made by a kindergartener.

Sorry to necro post but have been having issues with MyPal on my XP box so decided to try some diff ones.
This Chromium XP seems to work the best so far, though you may need to add/change some fonts depending on your setup.
https://github.com/weolar/xpchrome/releases and read this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/1 … xp_without_one/