is NT 4.0 SP6 worthwhile for a notebook?

[MadRat]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Except that everyone, especially in NT, runs as local admin so the NTFS ACLs are pretty much worthless.

QFT

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

SO they do share code. I thought the code base was mostly different in the kernel.

In the kernel yes, but the majority of the code, by a huge margin, is in userspace. Think about it, why would they waste their time implementing things like an RPC server in the kernel if they didn't have to? There's no performance benefit, all it would do is make debugging the thing a hundred times harder.

I've never thought about this much, but it was always implied Win9x and WinNT were separate codebases. I don't recall previously reading that userland stuff was (largely) shared. Do you have any confirmation? MS likes to claim that they rewrite their operating systems from the ground up (see Windows 2000); no wonder the release cycles are so damn long. You aren't just assuming they're doing the logical thing, are you? 😉

(Having used it regularly) I never really liked NT4 that much; AFAIC it didn't really "fly" on high-end systems of the time, say PPros. That version of NTFS got fragmented so badly that whatever good performance it initially had degraded quite noticeably. And defrag tools of that era just were not very effective for that version of NTFS. Even NTFS 5.1 is hardly defrag-resistent like most other modern filesystems generally are.

 

[Nothinman]

I've never thought about this much, but it was always implied Win9x and WinNT were separate codebases. I don't recall previously reading that userland stuff was (largely) shared. Do you have any confirmation?

No, but I can't imagine that MS would waste that much time and effort reimplementing things for no reason.

MS likes to claim that they rewrite their operating systems from the ground up (see Windows 2000); no wonder the release cycles are so damn long.

I've never seen those claims, do you have any confirmation?

You aren't just assuming they're doing the logical thing, are you?

Yes, in this case especially. I may disagree with many of the design decisions they make, but they're not stupid.

(Having used it regularly) I never really liked NT4 that much; AFAIC it didn't really "fly" on high-end systems of the time, say PPros.

I had the opposite experience, I always thought NT4 was much better than Win9X on the hardware I had available.

 

[MadRat]

NT 4.0 performed better in a corporate environment for me than XP, but the latter defintely had the better tools and support available.

My XP setup reached a point where going back to my NT machine was like running a kludge. The XP machine had ease of use and the NT machine had to be massaged.

 

[Keitero]

My old Dell CPi notebook came with NT 4.0 Workstation. It was a PITA of an OS. Limited device drivers, no USB support, no DirectX beyond 6 I believe, no device manager. The list goes on. 98SE was a good OS, it was lightweight and it just works. Sure you get a BSOD from time to time, but if you don't do anything crazy, it won't bite back.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: saabman
Thanks drag for the links and information, very helpful.

For a system like yours it may even be to old to even boot off of a normal cdrom installer. DSL provides syslinux boot cdroms for just this purpose.

You are correct, I used a boot floppy to direct the boot to the CDROM for linux, but it does work , as that is how I installed FC4. The BIOS does have a boot from CDROM entry though.

How did you make a floppy direct the boot to the CDROM? I also have an old notebook that I want to boot to a CD, but it only has options to boot to floppy.

BTW, I would try Xubuntu, it's designed for older, slow systems.

 

[Nothinman]

98SE was a good OS, it was lightweight and it just works. Sure you get a BSOD from time to time, but if you don't do anything crazy, it won't bite back.

And you don't think expecting an OS to crash is a bad thing?

 

[htne]

Originally posted by: Brazen
How did you make a floppy direct the boot to the CDROM? I also have an old notebook that I want to boot to a CD, but it only has options to boot to floppy.

Do a search for "sbootmgr", it's really a neat tool.

 

[magomago]

After reading your initial post I was going to say DSL...but drag beat me to it 😉 If you just want web browsing it should do it well; although it will take a little bit to get used to the Fluxbox windows manager. And with a 50 meg install, you aren't even putting a dent in your 6 gigs.
If DSL doesn't tickle your fancy, you can try puppy linux. http://www.puppylinux.org They also have different "grades" that scale up to a version that will run with a machine with 256megs of ram. But they even have a version all the way to 30 megabytes 😉 From what I've seen in screenshots you might like it a little better because of its "Windows-isc" appearance that might be an easier transition

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: htne

Originally posted by: Brazen
How did you make a floppy direct the boot to the CDROM? I also have an old notebook that I want to boot to a CD, but it only has options to boot to floppy.

Do a search for "sbootmgr", it's really a neat tool.

Awesome, thanks. I've been looking for exactly this.

 

[saabman]

Used the option "toram" to run DSL linux on my old Hitachi notebook.

OS recognizes everything including the PCMCIA slots and any installed cards, it just doesn't have the driver's to install for the 3COM 10/100 (EL575) network card, ergo netwoking doesn't work at all (no internet browsing, sigh____).

I was so dissapointed, as the OS /desktop runs like a breeze on this notebook with 128MB of ram.

I haven't installed it to the hard disk yet, but when I do is the following possible?

1) Use the Frugal install scenario
2) Update with a Debian based apt (maybe get my 3COM PCMCIA card support)?

I'll have to do some more exploring.

Wondering if I can use the pcmcia modules here

These modules list driver support for the 3COM 575 card