Win98se support from open source: Fire Fox 2 and Open Office

[angels355]

Hi Guys,


Someone asked on another forum whether 98se could run OpenOffice.org , and how far back you have to go to make it run on it. I just installed the latest version, 2.4 , and it works great! 98Se 450 mhz AMD K6-3, 256 mb ram, ATI Rage IIc.


I haven't looked into what Linux programs I can use for these old computers, possibly Xubuntu will work on them, but don't know yet, will have to experiment. For Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.04 or 7.10, or the latest knoppix, these won't run so far on the old hardware, I might try the low graphics mode to see if that helps, but so far they don't work. For me so far in my Linux studies, Linux starts working at a minimum of 850 mhz for a full Linux OS. But haven't fully checked things out.


A big problem with Win 98se is that 98/se/me have been dropped from support, so even though IE6 is still supported, it is not supported any more when running on 98/se/me. But I found a solution, Fire Fox 2 runs great on my low power 98se computers, and there are security etc updates for it! It's amazing to have tabbed browsing on an old 98se computer! MS had to drop support for 98/se/me as can only be expected, but the opensource community came to our rescue with a fully supported cutting edge browser.


For word processing etc, I've got 2 Word 97's which I use, a new unopened Word 2000, and Office 97, and Ubuntu/Kubuntu plus Openoffice.org which works great. I checked into the system requirements for the latest new Openoffice.org version 2.4, and guess what, 98/se/me are supported. So one of the latest cutting edge office suites, with updates, works on my old 98se/me computers! There were a couple of guys who asked on the Openoffice.org website forum what is the newest Openoffice version that will run on 98se, the responders thought the much older ones worked on it like an early version of version 2, or even one of the most rudimentary version 1's would be the only ones that could work on it, which would certainly be the case if the computer were extremely weak. However, on my 450 mhz 98se computer, I can tell you, the newest latest version of Openoffice 2.4 runs great on my computer(s).


Wow, what a break, I and other 98/se/me users I'm sure felt a little abandoned by MS and others, but here to come to our rescue is the OPENSOURCE community!!


98/se/me are very useful as they will also run flight sims from fs9 and earlier. But for strictly an office computer or Internet, Linux is great, and free. I just haven't gotten one of these set up yet for Linux plus dialup. Linux will work immediately with broadband and an ethernet connection (providing it will run on the hardware), but getting dialup going takes a little more effort, which I'm not familiar with yet.


So far AVG is still supporting the free version 7.5 which will run on 98/se/me, and Spybot 1.5.2 has actually expanded it's support back all the way to Win95! But if AVG stops supporting AVG 7.5 then that could be a problem for 98/se/me, as AVG 8 is only for Win NT 5/6 (win2000, XP, and Vista). There is however several opensource antivirus programs, so opensource may come to our rescue again!


Opensource seems so, academic, altruistic and high minded, straightforward, without all the turns, bends, and tricks up the sleeves of over-commercialized software.


Heehaw opensource!


BTW, this was all typed on OpenOffice.org version 2.4 Writer. Try it, it's awesome!

[xxmikexx]

angels355,

While I myself recently bought a Win98SE machine for test purposes, I don't know that anybody except some hard-core gamers and you care about Win98 anymore. However ...

Around the turn of the century I took out a developer/consultant's Enterprise Edition subscription to essentially all of Microsoft's software products as they stood in the 2000/2001 time frame.

This subscription entitles me to install as many copies of <whatever> as I want on consulting clients' machines. Included in this privilege are Win98 and Win98SE. So in principle, if people were to ship me their computers, paying the freight in both directions and paying me some consulting fee for my time, I could install any of the Win9X systems on them. (And/or WinNT and/or Win2000 and/or WinME).

Also covered are all of the Office 2000 products. I would not be allowed to make+sell backup disks for any of the products, but if people were to purchase Acronis they could make their own backups of their base systems -- or they could pay me to do it for them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What should be done with this information? I have no idea.

[angels355]

I still get a great deal of use out of my old hardware, which runs much better on 98se than would w/ xp, and it's awesome that the opensource community, and Spybot support these old OS's. I come from a background in typing believe it or not, among many other endeavors. I've been a very fast typist since Jr High, in which I progressed from manual typewriters, to IBM's, to one with some memory which I found very useful, so from the standpoint of typing and other office documents, it's awesome that openoffice still supports 98se.

I'm so accustomed to seeing 98/se/me dropped from support, despite what a great os it is, that it is astonishing to me that cutting edge software like Fire Fox 2, OpenOffice, and Spybot still support these.

Linux is cutting edge but it won't run fs9, however 98/se/me will. I just don't like being pressured to have to buy buy buy, products that cost an arm and a leg. Opensource and Linux finally allows me to outsource to my benefit like every other big corporation has been doing to drastically save money.

Any way, what I'm saying is that Spybot, and the opensource community breaths new life into 98/se/me.