The Need of Windows

Posted on December 7, 2003

Since I’ve started using CuteNews for updating, I need to set it up to show a “category” with each update/post, because this one’s not Pokemon related in any way.

I’m very close to being able to remove Windows 98 from my computer entirely. For those that don’t know, I use KDE on Linux (Red Hat Linux distribution). This means that I have at least the stability of Windows XP (some will argue that Linux is more stable and some will argue that XP is more stable, but I haven’t used XP enough to say.) I do know that KDE and programs in it run faster on my computer in Linux than on “newer, faster” computers that I’ve used that were running XP. A lot faster. For me, in Linux, Mozilla Firebird opens from scratch in less than two seconds. Internet Explorer, already running, takes at least that long just to open a new window in Windows 98 on the same computer. The Opera browser in Linux takes no more than 5 seconds, if I have a lot of other programs running. I never have to worry about viruses or adware or unlawful pop-ups while I’m working on a project.

One might wonder why I even bother to have Windows 98 installed on my computer anymore. I’ve lost a lot of files and work to viruses and to Windows 98 crashing and corrupting a partition. There were three things that kept me using Windows 98 now and then: Macromedia Flash MX, Internet Explorer, and my USB scanner.

There’s a program called WINE for Linux. It’s sort of a “Windows emulator”, but really it’s more like a layer that sits between a Windows program and Linux. It does the translations needed for Linux to understand how to run the Windows program. And a more recent version of WINE allows me to run Macromedia Flash MX. I haven’t tested how well it runs Flash, but chances are I won’t need to use Windows 98 for this. That’s one down, two to go. It would be nice if Macromedia Fireworks MX worked under WINE, but I’m sure it will within a year.

For me to say that IE kept me using Windows will cause friends of mine to laugh. I don’t use Internet Explorer, myself. I use Mozilla Firebird, a much smaller and faster browser, which also has much higher web standards support and is highly customizable. I needed IE to test web site layouts on, to see how much IE botches up the CSS layouts. And because IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 all display different problems differently, it was quite neat to find out that I could use all three on Windows at the same time, rather than the previous belief that only one could be installed at a time. Unforutnately, that didn’t work for me in Windows 98.

Today I worked with WINE a little and got all three versions of IE working in Linux the way they should have, but didn’t, work for me in Windows 98. Looks like I don’t need Windows 98 for IE anymore. That’s two down, and one to go. Oh, for anyone that wants, they can see a screenshot of the four Internet Explorers in Linux.

The only thing that’s left keeping Windows 98 on my computer is my unsupported scanner. But I hardly ever scan anything, so I’m not in Windows often. As soon as the scanner can be used in Linux, however, it’s bye-bye Windows 98.