mockingbird wrote on 2025-01-06, 13:18:

dionb wrote on 2025-01-06, 06:59:

In terms of performance and software capabilities maybe, but in terms of security: absolutely not. XP is new enough to run contemporary malware but out of support so defenceless against it. Whether you want to use it for retro builds is up to you (the fact 32b WinXP still can run 16b code means you can run old Win3.x things on it; also it still supports hardware accelerated positional audio, which is also a valid retro use case) but please don't use XP for daily work.

I don't want to sound disputatious but I have to disagree. I was using XP as a daily driver up until a few months ago... The only reason I switched is because of the memory limitations and needing many tabs open in a browser.

In other words, security was not an issue.

N=1

Security is an issue, you got lucky - possibly helped by sensible behaviour - but that doesn't stop it being a risk. Particularly as specifically the things that OSs get patched against are exploits that don't rely on user input. Idiots clicking every link can easily get Windows 11 infected, the risk with unpatched vulnerabilities is that you can get hit even if you don't do anything wrong.

Microsoft recently has patched out a huge security hole in IPv6 (dated all the way back to Vista days) that required no user input or access to PC to exploit. Who knows how many holes NT 5.x has acquired after 2019.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-04-29, 23:45:

Microsoft recently has patched out a huge security hole in IPv6 (dated all the way back to Vista days) that required no user input or access to PC to exploit. Who knows how many holes NT 5.x has acquired after 2019.

How many security fixes has MS released after 2019 and divide by 2 would give an optimistic ballpark figure I'd think.

Newer versions still share a hell of a lot of code with XP.
I think I'm been generous in assuming that half the security issues only affect newer technologies only found in newer versions of windows.
It's a well-known tactic to see what holes MS has recently patched and then use that information to write something to exploit that same hole counting on the fact that a lot of computers aren't up to date.

It's also the reason I see no point applying updates to an OS once support has ended. it's like locking the front door but leaving the window wide open.

Computer security has been a pipe dream ever since 32-bit flat memory models entered the mainstream.
As for the socket 478 build: there's nothing wrong with installing both Windows 98 and XP on it. All of my PCs have at least a dual-boot setup.