Windows Platform Death Revisited

After my KDE article, comments are everywhere complaining about the headline.
OSNews, Linux.com, and even the Dot. One guy even blogged his grief about it.

So here I offer a response.

First off, Get a grip. Articles need good titles. This one was too good to pass up.


Second, according to the company that produces Windows XP, end of life is Jan 2009, 11 months from now. See Microsoft Lifecycle

Third, the article clearly states that my Windows development platform was going unused for months at a time. No more .Net and no more embedded coding. I preferred to use a text editor on the linux box. Kate for embedded, Kdevelop + QT for cross platform apps. In that sense it was dying. Giving me Kate on Windows does a world of good for it's usability.

My only question is, Why don't these people ask these questions here?

Windows is the market leader, it will be for some time. We all know this. However, I bought my last copy long ago. I recommend it to no-one, I support it not at all. OK, I still help my mother out when she calls.

At my home there is one laptop with XP, explicitly for the purpose of maintaining .Net applications, testing cross platform apps and re-programming an embedded processor.

This was the KDE for windows test machine. Since KDE installation, It has been very popular with my pre-Teen daughter, who never even touched it before. She now wants KDE4 on her Kubuntu box. She doesn't even know about all the cool Plasma, KWin compositing stuff, only what KDE for Win shipped with.

In my circle, Windows isn't dying, it's all but dead. Our next Laptop will be a Everex Cloudbook or Asus eeePC. All of our PCs run Linux with KDE for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it works.

Hold on while I check what the end of life is on our distros. Oh yeah, there isn't one. That is no small distinction. Planned obsolescence is not something I intend to support with my money, but to each their own.


MrCopilot

Update 3/24/08: Computer World has a nice explanation on the XP lifecycle titled:

Windows XP: Going, going ... gone?

Covered by Slashdot with the Headline: The Death of Windows XP

I fully expect all you complainers to give them hell just like you did me.

MrCopilot

A Moment of Silence for Netscape

Quietly over the Holidays a short Blog entry was written at Netscape's Blog. This one little post can be viewed as the end of a chapter in the short history of the internet.

RIP Netscape. I offer this prolonged moment of Whitespace in memoriam.


..
















..
Farewell old friend, your offspring will never forget your sacrifices.

Giving ordinary people the ability to create a web page, view pages created by others, and instantly contact people across vast distances, in one application, was simply brilliant, and we will remember you.

AOL/Netscape is ending product support (meaning no security updates) on its Netscape Navigator software effective Feb 1, 2008. For current users, AOL has recommended switching to Firefox.
With my dying breath I stab at thee.

http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/firefox/

If you like the integration that the Netscape suite offered, SeaMonkey is the open source equivalent.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

I will miss seeing you in my server logs.

This piece moved me so much I felt it necessary to write up an article for the uninformed.

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MrCopilot