Yep, you know, if my grandpa had had three balls he would have been closer to a pinball.
Sorry, *nix and 9x are too different and still hard to compare anyway, it's just a minor analogy.
I just wanted to say that the separation between OS and GUI of 9x is a good design choice, but that's irrilevant since the underlying system itself is not well designed...
A single good design choice doesn't make 9x better than NT, specially if in real world situations I can't take any advantage from it...
And it's not a matter of vulnerabilities, DOS is outdated by all means...Unix is still the base of many OSes because its concepts are still good.
Oh well, I actually didn't intend to make the mistake of comparing those two different beasts, it's pointless and off-topic.

The thing is, it wasn't even really a design choice - it was something they got stuck with as a result of 9x being a giant hack.

They were always looking to sideline text-mode for GUI. Text-mode is an anachronism, and one that's increasingly unnecessary. All PCs for the last few decades have been VGA-capable.

I totally agree with you on your first statement, I was writing that from a "theoretical point of view".
DOS was an hack and 9x was an hack on top of another hack, ok.
I disagree on you saying text mode is an anachronism.
It just works and it's basically the best way to accomplish automation of complex user tasks...
That's not the point anyway.
Honestly I don't like the choice of an interface so tied in to the system like in NT; and that's not a "CLI vs. GUI" thing, i'm talking about design choices again (actual design choices this time ).
But there's no way text mode makes 9x better than NT, that's sure thing.

I know, it's that thread again. People don't want to get out the whitepapers and think pure opinion solves the OS war.

YOU MAKE THE LIGHTING DESK SAD!

What I like about DOS is that it's perfectly modular. I just need to change one line in CONFIG.SYS for it not to use COMMAND.COM and use a different shell instead, even a graphical one. And to use a different DOS kernel, I just have to replace MSDOS.SYS with my own. Now tell me if such is possible in Windows, be it 9x or NT. The last time I checked, in 9x, you can't change USER.EXE for example without having to change KRNL386.EXE, GDI.EXE, and a load of DLL's and that's just the beginning. In NT, it's even less modular.

And the fact only the HAL changes isn't really true. Imagine porting NT to DEC Alpha - everything still has to be recompiled, including the kernel itself which I'm sure uses a good portion of assembler code. Sure, it's a recompile rather than a rewrite, but even porting DOS would be accomplished by translating the assembler code to the one for the other architecture, changing stuff like drive handlers and so on to match the other architecture, then recompile everything.

The reason why DOS became so outdated, aging and obsolete was because Microsoft didn't keep developing it. After it got bundled together with Windows in 9x, it never really got any new features or fixes, apart from DriveSpace 3 support and FAT32 support. And if the AntiTrust documents are right, the bundling was done to make it impossible for any DOS apart from Microsoft's own from remaining in the market. AFAIK, it was proven by Caldera that you could easily run Windows 95 on top of a non-Microsoft DOS and so that as such the bundling was without a legitimate reason.
Now, had Microsoft not done the bundling (and the AARD trickery before, during Windows 3.x), DOS would have remained a competitive market for quite a long time, and would have likely been developed and improved on further.

As for software used on a general scale - believe me, quite a few businesses still use old software (even DOS software), mostly because it was software bought long ago that by now their entire system is entrenched around it so it can't be replaced without incurring a massive cost in time and money.
And it's not like Microsoft has really cared about what is used on a general scale ever since Ballmer took control. In Gates' era, Microsoft went out of their way to ensure backwards compatibility even with third party software and so on, while in the Ballmer era, backwards compatibility is slowly going bye bye. Classical Visual Basic has been phased out for no reason (they could have easily ported it .NET compatible like they ported it first from DOS to Win16, then from Win16 to Win32, and so on), and completely ignoring people's petitions for Microsoft not to phase it out. NTVDM is slowly going away (it's already inexistent in 64-bit versions which are slowly going towards becoming the only versions available), and so is support for 16-bit Windows applications. And once standard Windows Explorer desktop is finally completely phased out in favor of Metro, any old applications will stop working completely. I'm sure that in a few years, not even 32-bit Windows applications will work anymore.

Sure, you say, you can run an old OS in VMWare or use DOSBox, but remember, these solutions are by far more resource intensive than backwards compatibility in the OS itself. It's a bit funny that I have to use 90% of my dual-core CPU so I can play Wolfenstein 3D on Windows 7 x64, while even on Windows 7 x86 I could play with little if any CPU usage directly in NTVDM. I simply shouldn't be required to use resources on a modern game level to run a game from 1992 on a PC that has by far better characteristics than one from 1992.

But, I digress. To each their own I guess. I repeat, I don't dislike NT but I just dislike the way Microsoft have been thinking ever since Ballmer took control.

In my opinion it's mainly due to stability issues. 9x series got more BSODs which are annoying, esp. when installing drivers. A program which stops responding may also even cause a BSOD.

Another reason, perhaps, is the NTFS disk format. Since it has advantages than FAT32 and Windows 9x doesn't support NTFS, 9x were dropped.

Maybe not.
Opinions don't solve anything (and in fact they don't matter), but in the end they have to emerge on discussion.
And I like to read / share opinions, specially those about this stuff, as I can't figure out myself why people still like 9x so much.

Mmm, Battler, I agree on a lot of things on your post, just I don't think DOS had any chance to survive.
MS needed an high-end OS, with high-end/modern features, hence made perfect sense to design a new one instead of keep hacking on an old base.
Once they had that new high-end OS, making it available for consumers also made sense, as in fact it outperformed 9x.
You may not like NT, but I really can't see chances for DOS and 9x...they couldn't go that far in my opinion, and even if they could, it was simpler to go on NT.
And backward compatibility it's important, sure, but you can't slow down innovation just for it.

Yes ,compatibility got axed in WP7 series because the managment changed.

You see if you test early Chicago builds that they have a lot of 16-bit code inside.
MS developed it quickly to counter OS/2 2.0 like win 3.11 that broke OS/2 compatibility again.
Then you find out why 9x is a big mess and why Unix-like OS were preferred by technical guys.

You don't seem to get modular particularly. With DOS, you can swap things around easy not because it is "modular", but because the technical limitations of the executable format mean that everything has to be self-contained at the DOS level. There is simply no way for a DOS (MZ) Executable to utilise code in another file. That alone means it *isn't* modular, because strictly speaking, DOS is more a number of executables working independently, rather than a true system.

It's well documented that the only assembly in NT is the bootloader and certain memory management functions. Obviously it will have to be recompiled, but that's hardly a big deal.

I am eagerly awaiting the day WoW64 becomes optional. It is on Server Core already, it looks like it might in the complete Server 8, maybe we'll finally get lucky on the client Windows 9. There are reasons backwards compatibility is dropped and should be dropped. First, every generation you go back gets more and more expensive to support, as developers who work with that generation's technology become rarer, as hardware differences become greater and harder to mask. The second is performance - older code can not be reoptimised to take advantage of modern developments. This could be the rise of multicore processing, the introduction of accelerating some tasks on the GPU, and so on. These tasks might not just make it much faster, but also open up new functionality that wasn't possible before. The third, and certainly the most important for a business, is security. There is no way on earth a DOS application can ever be secure. It is simply not possible with the limitations and inherent insecurity in DOS, and by extension, 9x. No-one could seriously recommend using 9x or any part of the system in a world where security is increasingly important. I personally believe that even XP is simply too old and outdated to recommend using from a security viewpoint.

You're doing virtualisation wrong.

my point is numerous people don't look at the whitepapers and say things without researching
Feel free to share opinions on it but I mean people usually go I LIKE 9X BECAUSE ITS COOL THIS MEANS ITS THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD.

First, I think we should at least try to respect each other's efforts and opinions, even if we don't completely agree with them.

Second, as Battler has said, numerous businesses still use DOS and non-NT-based versions of Windows (even Windows 3.x), including (from what I heard on this forum about two years ago, anyway) the Canadian government, where their systems (or at least many of them, anyway) apparently still run DOS. It is indeed due to compatibility issues, since some older software may not run quite as well on the newer systems.

Third, although I understand what Battler thinks, from what I see, the bundling of MS-DOS and Windows had nothing to do with competition (at least not directly) with other DOS variants, but rather with the fact that many people preferred to have the two formerly seperate products as a single package, rather than have to purchase them seperately. Also, the AARD detection code, from what I see, wasn't really a competition issue either, but rather an issue relating to the fact that as far as Microsoft was concerned, MS-DOS and Windows were designed to be run together, and that they were trying to make sure that people were running the two products in the same way as Microsoft itself had intended, although as many people already know, this decision was later dropped (apparently, Microsoft decided that the other DOS variants were not enough different to cause any problems after all), and the code itself was disabled.

Microsoft does indeed care about backwards compatibility to this day (I don't see how Steve Ballmer being the new CEO really changes anything), as is evidenced by even as recently as Windows 8. Legacy devices are, as far as I know, still supported, NTVDM is still contained within the 32-bit copies of Windows 8, and it wasn't even that long ago that Microsoft's Windows Update page still worked on Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.0. Also note that the Microsoft FTP is, as far as I know, still in operation (although I have yet to check to see whether this is the case or not), and that in itself has a lot of resources for the older versions of Windows.

Also, virtualization and even emulation with either Virtual PC or DOSBox shouldn't really create trouble performance-wise on a modern system. Even if your system configuration isn't really all that new, you should still be able to run most older software just fine within those environments, or at least one of them anyway.

Myself, I have worked with both, older technology and newer technology (both hardware and software), and this is what I have seen. I don't think that backwards compatibility should be intentionally dropped either, yet at the same time, I also don't think that it should interfere with any further updates.

Yes, I know that this was a long post, but I thought that I would just help to further explain what's going on here.

My opinion: Every Operating System has its pros and cons. Whether it's stability, compatibility, and security, It's hard to compare an older product with a newer product, if the newer is advanced in some way.

yeah, it's like comparing Windows 1.01 with Windows 7.

Comparing Windows 1.01 with Windows 7...? (no offence to anyone, including TheCollector1988)

You must remember that the two have very different kernels. Windows 1.0 was the starting point for the original high level kernel (after Interface Manager 0.9, that is), and was basically a high level operating system that used DOS as a low level operating system.

Windows 1.0 used the old .DRV driver file format that was to some extent used even as recently as Windows 9x), and was still rather simple.

Windows 7, on the other hand, uses the NT kernel, which is the low level operating system in this case. The drivers that is uses are almost completely different from those used by Windows 1.0, and as such, the two in that regard are almost completely different.

There are dramatic code differences between Windows 1.0 and Windows 7, because the two use two very different foundations.

I know, that's why I said that it's impossible to compare Windows 1.01 with Windows 7

I have no idea what is going on but that was a waste of a perfectly good essay on this thread...

Someone asked why people still like Windows 9x so much.
I'll try to give my two cents worth, hopefully without it devolving into a flame war. This is all strictly my opinion, if someone doesn't like it, fine.

First of all, I agree with the premise of Battler's comments about the command line. I believe the command line interface should ALWAYS be present and ALWAYS be "master" of the graphical interface. And it is most definitely NOT an "anachronism."

Now, I certainly DO NOT want to go around typing commands in the command line all day, no one does. Graphical interfaces are great. That's not the point. The point is that this is the best way to solve problems and automate tasks from an administrative standpoint. I once watched a computer tech have to spend 4 hours removing a malware executable from an XP machine that I could have removed from 9x in 4 minutes with DOS. A command line that, when issued a DELETE command, responds "This file is being used by Windows" is utterly USELESS.

I believe in user control over the operating system, not operating system control over the user. I don't want an operating system that continuously asks me "Are you sure you want to do this?" or tells me that "Access is denied" or asks me to log in every time I boot my machine. It's my machine, I understand and accept the risks, and I expect it to do what I want it to do, not behave as if I am ignorant.

Also, I despise the constant "upgrade/update" merry go round that amounts to nothing more than laziness and a desire for a higher profit margin. There is no sense whatsoever in releasing a new version of Windows every 2 or 3 years. They should last 10 years at least. Of course, society as a whole supports this idiocy, with people ready to buy a new computer at the slightest sign of a problem, most of which could be solved my regular maintenance an an occasional format & reinstall.


Someone said that Windows 9x is "insecure." If NT is so secure, how come an XP machine can get a virus simply by being connected to the Internet? Never even OPENED Internet Explorer once. Just connected it to the Internet and it got a virus, something to do with the System Message service. NT being a more multi-user and network-oriented OS, it has a much broader potential attack surface than 9x ever even thought about having. There's something to be said for "security through obscurity" - how much of today's malware would even know what to do on a 9x system?

Now, I hear everyone complaining about 9x crashes and BSOD's. I've been running Windows 9x since 1997, and yes, I have seen a FEW crashes. In the past 7 or 8 years, I could probably count the number of crashes in a year on ONE HAND. If you're getting that many crashes with Windows 9x, IMO, you either have hardware problems, bad drivers, or don't know what you're doing.

About the only thing I can think of would be LAN attacks. Someone gets a virus on one computer and it spreads across the LAN looking for other computers to infect. I have actually had this happen before back when all of our home computers were still running -- guess what -- 9x.

XP also has lots of security holes in it, just perfect for any badware to embed itself in. That's what you get for running a 10 year old OS.

Virus makers also knew just how insecure 9x was back in the day. A simple "delete *.*" (maybe with a switch or two, I forget now) command was all it took to totally wreck all your programs, data and Windows installation back in 9x.

As I recall, Win 9x had a lot of security problems on LANs. For example, there was an attack such that, if you had file sharing enabled on the Win 9x machine, someone could log on without having to know the password for your system. Back in the day, this exploit/attack was implemented in an executable that wasn't hard to find/download. Here's the security bulletin about it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms00-072

That's why WinPE/WinRE exists. An alternative environment in which you're not hamstrung by the issues of operating on a live system. All without the joke of using an anachronistic interface. The text-mode nature doesn't make DOS useful for the task you describe - the fact it is a secondary environment does. And in this case, DOS is of less use because it still shares some parts with the live system - WinPE/WinRE does not.

9x doesn't even HAVE a concept of security... Why is this even an argument?!

Hmmm, autoexec.bat vs http://pastebin.com/Qug98iSy

Ahem... NT still has autoexec.bat

Yeah it has.

Notice how only NTVDM uses it and it's an obvious joke if I'm quoting hello.c as well.
Have a nice day.