Galaxy is already moving at a alarming slow pace, for which I expect is due to GOG not having enough people based on all the open positions. Expecting them to halt a year of development for two declining OS's is simply not realistic. Any company that did that would not be very a smart business.

That would be even worse. For one not everyone uses FireFox and two there are a lot of other features than a embedded GOG.com to consider here, such as the achievement system, rollback feature, overlay, and built in multiplayer framework which I don't see happening as an addon.

Vanish is an all-inclusive word, and so no I do not think it will vanish either. We are dealing more in numbers that reflect percentages of relevance than of extreme absolutes when it comes to people using XP. My claim is that in order for a company to continue to develop their software for XP there has to be a high enough percentage of their projected target userbase still using Windows XP to justify spending the resources on it, and that they have to also be able to justify the various other quality control, technical support resources as well. Every company will individually decide where these points are of course, and what the opportunity costs are to their bottom line of diverting resources into supporting Windows XP versus spending those resources on new product features/functionality that could be beneficial to a larger portion (or all) of the rest of their userbase. So there may end up being some companies that continue to provide support for some or all of their products on XP on a case by case basis, and others that choose not to because they can not justify the expense economically versus allocating those resources to other features or products that provide more value to their overall customer base or even draw in new customers.

So Windows XP wont vanish for a while, no but it will continue to become more and more irrelevant despite still being used by an ever shrinking group of people. The relevance will vary from product to product and company to company over time rather than hitting an all out time wall.

Yes, many people are taking the free upgrade path to Windows 10 for better or worse and I expect a high migration to it also due to this. Microsoft has been forcibly upgrading people's systems to Windows 10 without them even opting in to try to push that forward strongly, both by alleged accident as multitudes of news articles throughout the year have shown, and now they're doing it blatantly on purpose depending on how one has their Windows update settings configured. Either way though, in combination with the forced upgrades along with heavy marketing and freebie upgrade promotion they are indeed getting a lot of people to upgrade to Windows 10 whether they are doing so with glee or kicking and screaming for being upgraded without their knowledge or approval. So I agree that there are mass upgrades to Windows 10 happening and that that will probably continue for some time to come.

Just like some people cling to the end-of-life XP, I cling to Windows 7 64bit however (as many others do as well) and have no plans to upgrade to Windows 10 myself. My reasoning is somewhat different though, being that Windows 7 is officially supported by Microsoft up until 2020 which is 5 years away, so my primary concerns of getting security updates for my OS are in good standing until 2020 so there are no security threat based reasons to force an early upgrade to date so far, and there are no technological reasons to push the issue to date either.

WIndows XP is a different case because it is an end-of-life operating system no longer supported officially by the OS vendor which has known serious security flaws throughout the OS of which new ones are discovered monthly. Even if there are underhanded ways to patch some of these issues, the vast majority of people are unaware of this or how to do it, and even those cases are only the worst issues and not a complete solution. So while it is in everyone's best interest overall to upgrade their OS, that's ultimately something the individual has to decide for themselves.

Hehe, there's no need to sell me on what Windows XP did well enough as I used Windows XP for 12 years as I'm a technical power user. As such I know enough about the differences between XP and Windows 7 quite well, and like many I resisted moving to Windows 7 until the last possible second. What I was not willing to do however was continue to run an OS that was end-of-life and not receiving any more official security updates from the OS vendor. That's just not something I'm willing to do personally under normal circumstances. There are a few cases where I could theoretically take exception to this general rule, such as a non-networked computer used for a specific purpose in isolation where it is not subject to networked or physical security issues, but for the most part I just retire end-of-life operating systems and move on. I moved on to Windows 7 64bit and while I did so with great resistance and out of feeling of no other viable option, it took only a week to tweak it to look and feel like Windows XP and get a familiar setup running and get used to some of the various changes in Windows 7, most of which are for the better. All in all I'm quite happy with Windows 7 nowadays and consider it to be "the new Windows XP" for the most part.

In short though, I fully understand why people don't want to upgrade Windows XP as I was one of those people also, but just not one willing to avoid it and put myself at risk of serious security flaws in the unsupported OS after it went end-of-life. Having said that, I don't miss Windows XP in the slightest now and loathe the idea of even thinking to install or boot it up, and that's not even taking into account the security issues and unsupported status. :)

<continued below>

PAE is not a useful argument for any kind of usage of Windows XP however, and you almost certainly do not use Windows XP with PAE support either. Let me explain why.

PAE support was never intended for home desktop computer uses for general purpose computing. PAE is a hardware feature that provides an ugly hack to use 4 or more additional addressing lines to access more memory which was added to Intel x86 processors a long time ago before 64bit processors were available in the family. The feature was provided more or less for huge database vendors and scientific/engineering uses where massive amounts of data are processed and the memory limitations of 32bit x86 processors were insufficient. For all intents and purposes, PAE hardware support in the x86 family is very much like "extended memory" and "expanded memory" were in MSDOS, it is an ugly hack to provide access to more memory in the computer than would normally be able to be addressed, but like extended memory and expanded memory from the MSDOS days it does so in a manner that incurs and expensive performance cost to the operating system.

Most benchmarks I've seen are that PAE enabled memory access costs about 10% of system performance, which is a significant cost. Aside from that though, the memory that PAE provides access to is not available directly to the average computer program. It enables the operating system itself to access more memory so it can run more processes, but each process is still limited to approximately 3GB of address space itself. As such PAE not only does not provide more memory for a video game to run in and benefit from, but it actually slows down the system rather significantly and is of no benefit to gamers or general desktop computers.

As such, PAE was simply an ugly hack for enterprise business software where memory availability was more important than overall system performance for big-data operations. As soon as AMD64 class 64bit microprocessors became available, the entire industry strongly pushed customers to move over to 64bit computing which has up to a 30% CPU performance boost on CPU/RAM bound operations due to the larger register count in AMD64 long mode, and elimination of the high system overhead costs that 32bit PAE had on system performance while essentially removing the 3GB per-process memory bottleneck that 32bit operating systems are stuck with as well. Ever since the arrival of the 64bit AMD64 class CPUs and operating systems that support them, there is no really good reason ever to use a 32bit PAE enabled OS in business usage cases, and there has never been a good reason to use them in consumer grade hardware. Furthermore, any consumer grade hardware that is capable of booting a 32bit OS and using PAE to access more than 32GB of system RAM is almost certainly a 64bit capable computer with a 64bit CPU because very few if any 32-bit only motherboards have ever been produced in consumer computers. PAE-enabled 32-bit only computers were pretty much limited to custom made multi-processor servers by Dell/HP/IBM in the 2000-2005 era before AMD64 class CPUs pretty much replaced that outright.

Aside from that however, PAE enabled Windows XP is useless for another reason, and that is that when booting a PAE-enabled OS kernel all of the drivers in the system need to be PAE-compatible also in order for them to work properly. Unfortunately what Microsoft discovered is that there are a multitude of drivers out there that are not PAE compatible, which is not surprising considering how few computers ever existed that used PAE to begin with. Few hardware vendors ever were exposed to such hardware with which to develop and test their drivers against, and of the computers that would use this feature, most of them wouldn't have consumer grade hardware like video game controllers etc. attached to them. As a result of finding that PAE enabled systems caused instabilities with a lot of consumer grade hardware setups due to video drivers and various other consumer grade hardware drivers, Microsoft disabled access to memory above 4GB on their PAE for consumer grade OS SKUs to avoid compatibility problems. See the "Windows Client Memory Limits" paragraph here for a brief overview: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2008/07/21/pushing-the-limits-of-windows-physical-memory/
"

Even if the feature actually was truly available for Windows XP32bit and not disabled on client OSs as it is, it would be harmful to video gamers and not a benefit. In short, 32bit PAE is not just useless, it is less than useless.

<continued below>

You're making incorrect assumptions about what I use or have used. I have used Mozilla Firefox since it existed, Mozilla before that, and Netscape before that. At no time ever have I used Microsoft Internet explorer for any general purpose web browsing. My decision to leave Windows XP in the dust was a technical one based on end-of-life support of the OS by the OS vendor, in combination with monthly security holes being discovered that will never get security patches on an officially supported path.

Sure, there are lots of web browsers but that doesn't mean that all people using Windows XP are aware of these issues at all, nor that they're going out of their way to find a web browser that supports SNI or SHA256 or any other issue. There are many people still using XP and still using Internet Explorer or some other browser that will have problems due to relying on Windows provided technologies that will never get updated. This problem is not limited to web browsers however though, it affects any software that uses SSL through Microsoft's OS provided functionality. But it also affects non-microsoft software that no longer supports Windows XP and has similar issues also, and the problem will only continue to get worse. As it stands now there is a huge amount of pre-existing software out there that for example can only use SSLv2 and/or SSLv3 and does not have compatibility with TLS 1.0/1.1/1.2 at all. As it stands right now, SSLv2 and SSLv3 are considered no longer secure and vendors are disabling these protocols server-side in droves, and at the same time vendors of client side software are disabling SSLv2 and SSLv3 client side in droves.

The truth is that this type of technical discussion is light years above the average person's head. People just don't know about these things and ultimately should never have to but that's another discussion entirely. But despite not knowing about these things, these are real world software problems that affect everyone. I've only highlighted a small number of SSL related issues, but there are all kinds of other issues outside of SSL and web browsers that are similar in nature in terms of being obsolete which Windows XP is plagued with. There might be an option here or there for someone technically inclined to work around a given issue or two here and there, but again the average person out there is not aware of all this stuff and they will be affected by it going forward.

Google has announced they are no longer going to support Chrome on Windows XP come April 2016:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/10/google-will-stop-supporting-chrome-for-windows-xp-vista-and-older-versions-of-os-x-by-april-2016/

Opera uses the Chrome Blink engine for some time now and will most likely be doing the same as a result. Each browser vendor will drop XP like a hot potato when the number of their users drop below a certain threshhold that matters for them in the same way as any other software vendor. Google has decided April 2016 for Chrome, and other vendors may have other dates in mind or may yet have not made the decision, but mark my words that every software vendor out there will ditch XP in a heartbeat the second they perceive that XP support is no longer worth it due to too small of a number of users of that platform consuming too much engineering resources to continue supporting it among other factors. Even open source projects often ditch unsupported legacy operating systems for similar reasons over time. There wont be a mass-exodus day where all software suddenly stops supporting XP, it will be a trickle where every day/week/month some other project or product announces they're dropping XP support (or just silently does it).

So people can cling to XP if they want to, and can hop from application to application that still bothers to support it if they can find one and are technically capable of doing so or having someone do it for them, but that is only going to become more and more painful. Personally I really don't care if people keep using XP because it has no effect on me or my life if some other person I don't really even know keeps using XP, that's their personal choice. I'm just saying that their choice is going to become more and more difficult for them over time as less and less software supports XP, and in particular the web starts deploying technologies that either don't work on XP now already, or will no longer work at a point in the very near future, as well as other non-web software.

Aside from that though, if someone is hardcore using XP and doesn't want to give it up, then they're also possibly hardcore using IE or whatever they prefer and probably are of the same mindset that they don't want to give that up either. If someone is going to suggest "you can use <this other browser>" that they probably don't want to use, why extend the pain and hassle? How different is "use this other browser" from "use this other OS" really? :)

You're looking at this like companies out there actively get together in a board room and devise evil plans like "How can we fuck Windows XP users bigtime just for fun?" which is completely ridiculous though. Again, it has nothing to do with burning people and everything to do with the fact that supporting something is not free of cost. It costs money, manpower and other resources to support your products and services on an operating system and even then only if the operating system has the necessary technologies available or they can be added onto it in a viable manner. It's not whether it is possible to do it and therefore it should be done simply because it is technically possible, it is whether it is economically viable to do it. For example, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for any company or project to use up 25% of their engineering manpower and/or budget to support XP if they can measure that only 1% of their users use Windows XP. Or maybe it is 10% of their budget for 2% users, or 50% budget for 0.5% users. It will vary from software to software, company to company, but they all have a threshhold where it no longer makes justifiable economic sense.

Not sure why you're inferring that I have ever used Internet Explorer or making this about my own decisions for myself, this has nothing at all to do with me. My point all along is that companies will drop XP support when they no longer can make a justifiable business case (or commitment of resources for non-profit software projects etc.) and that the users of those systems will be left with less and less choices as the result of that.

I am not one of those users. Despite the fact that I use Firefox as my browser there were a multitude of reasons for me to stop using XP personally, and it was not because I was unaware of Firefox or Chrome or any other piece of software out there. It was a technical decision largely based on OS level security and lack of vendor support, with a number of other factors lumped on top of that. It never had anything to do with Internet Explorer.

That's orthagonal to the discussion about declining Windows XP use around the world and the simultaneous factor of software vendors and projects dropping support for XP as well though.

<continued below>

Bloody hell. I thought I was being a bit of an XP affectionardo when I skipped Vista. Shut the fuck up and get Windows 7 already.

You'd be wrong on both counts in that case, because I have never used Internet Explorer other than for website development compatibility testing. I'm not sure why you'd be concerned about why I've chosen to upgrade my OS though since while I have shared what my own actual reasons were for upgrading, I did so merely sharing personal reasons and not as an argument to try to convince anyone else why they should upgrade. My decisions had nothing to do with web browsers, SSL or other web related problems. I pointed out some of the web related problems that Windows XP users are or will be facing in the future merely as a real world example of problems that exist with Windows XP which many Windows XP users will encounter. That is true even if there are theoretical ways for individual to switch software applications or institute other workarounds.

I wasn't brainwashed into upgrading to Windows 7, and I didn't buy it either. A friend had a license for 3 computers and didn't need them all and was kind enough to give me one of them. Even as I installed Windows 7 I bitched to myself about it much like everyone here who uses XP with an iron grip is. You seem to be taking my information in the wrong way and trying to make this a personal thing with incorrect assumptions about who I am, what I know and how I use the computer. That is not only non-constructive, but your assumptions are completely incorrect. Please try to keep the discussion purely on non-emotional civil technical grounds and not make things personal or judgmental.

Some things just can not be easily worked around in Windows XP and that will continue to become more and more visible to remaining Windows XP users as time goes on. Again, I used some web related stuff as examples because the web is one of the most important things that everyone uses globally every day and relies heavily on being able to use. Right now as it stands, the majority of important websites online do continue to provide some level of support either directly or incidentally for Windows XP users accessing their site, and many will continue to do so for some time. At the same time though there are already websites online that may be difficult or impossible for some Windows XP users to access. Those users may possibly be able to install another web browser or some hack to work around it right now, or they may not depending on the specific site and reason for a given problem, but that will get worse over time. I mentioned only two of many issues that are going to be problematic for many users in the next couple years, but there are a number of other issues also, and they're not going to go away.

So what's going to ultimately happen is that as these issues become a problem over time, some users will potentially try to find other solutions and may in fact switch web browsers or other software to another app that allows them to be able to keep using XP on their system and use a given online service for example. Other users will end up throwing in the towel and biting the bullet and upgrading their OS, or buying a new computer or whatever instead. And others yet will probably do neither and end up cut off from some parts of the Internet and maybe they can live with that, or perhaps it causes problems. Everyone will choose their own solutions, but there will be problems people are faced with where they do have to decide upon something and most people probably wont be terribly happy about it as things that used to work stop working.

To be clear I am not telling people using XP to go upgrade right now. Rather, I believe that sooner or later they'll make the decision to do so for themselves when the pain continuing to use Windows XP becomes much greater for the individual person than the pain of them deciding to finally upgrade. If anything, I have more common with all of you still using XP than I have in difference, as I refused to upgrade to Vista, and 7 when they first came out for numerous reasons, most of which are the same reasons people are still using XP today. The only real difference between those using XP today still and myself are that I am a computer engineer with a strong background in computer security and it is one of my personal security choices to only use operating systems that are officially still supported by the OS vendor. I do this with all operating systems just as a matter of personal security principles. To be clear, I am not in any way dissing people who make other choices concerning that, it is simply an individual decision that everyone has to make with no decision being right or wrong other than what is right or wrong to the individual and their own needs.

<continued below>

It's not really a case of websites having an evil agenda to kill Windows XP. Rather, it is the case both with security technologies as well as other web based technologies that both exist now and which are up and coming which have or will have rather good support for current generation operating systems and have or may have less or no support for legacy operating systems and devices. In some cases there are workarounds for these problems, and in other cases there aren't. In some cases things still work, but may not work as best as they could, while in other cases things may no longer work. It's not really a cut and dried issue that is all or nothing, and it will vary from site to site as well.

One difficulty that any website operator has to contend with is what current technologies they can use on their sites and how that may affect compatibility with their target userbase and what those users are currently using to access their website. The decisions they make will vary from site to site of course and also on the purpose of the site. Many sites exist to make money through products and services and others make money from advertising and affiliate revenue streams or other sources. Most sites that exist on a for-profit basis will tend to be more careful about alienating any significant portion of their user base because if they did so they will simply lose the revenue those uses would generate. At the same time however, every OS/browser combination a website has to support costs money in engineering resources just like with other software, and depending on the website, dropping support for certain combinations of OS/browser might reduce engineering costs by a factor greater than the revenue produced by those same users. There is always a percentage or total number of users which are a threshold that can be measured for that on a site by site basis. Fortunately technologies like jquery and it's competitors help to mitigate this kind of engineering overhead greatly, and that works to the advantage of people on older systems, but there are still costs involved with supporting older systems nonetheless and some sites will end up starting to use newer technologies and dropping support for older stuff.

This is old news but a few years ago for example, Google dropped support for old IE versions on many of their web properties and people who were stuck using those older versions of IE were forced to either deal with web pages that were partly or entirely broken and partly or entirely non-functional, or upgrade IE or switch to another browser, much like you yourself are suggesting people can do. Indeed, everyone had other options at that time, they could upgrade to IE8 or IE9, or they could use Firefox or Chrome or Opera or some other browser that worked. In that particular case though it was more of an issue with browser support than OS support, but the same thing is true for OS support too, and if and when software applications or websites use technologies that are not supported in older operating systems or devices, just like your suggestion that people change their web browser to keep accessing the site, sites will recommend people change their browser if possible, or upgrade their operating system if that's the only easy way to have it work.

Again, some people may be able to find solutions to some of these problems and stay on XP if they desire, but many people do not have that ability and they just use "the car stereo that came with the car" so to speak, and eventually when there are no more analog radio broadcasts they'll be forced to either buy a digital radio or buy a new car. :) Ok, not the best (and certainly not literal) analogy, but it gets the idea across. :)

Ultimately though, I'm certainly not telling anyone what they should do. Why would I afterall as it has no effect on me personally what other people do, that's none of my business really. I think everyone should do whatever they think is the most comfortable thing for themselves based on their own needs and their own assessment of risk, and if that works out well for them then problem solved. If it doesn't work out, then there are always other options to consider such as switching software applications, switching web browsers, switching websites, chat programs or other stuff even including *gasp* switching operating systems. :)

I'd kind of be a heathen at this point if I didn't also mention that one of the various multitudes of Linux distributions out there are also another free option that people have as an option if they were to end up deciding they wanted to get away from Windows XP but did not want to touch any of the newer versions of Windows.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft by any stretch of the imagination and not a fan of Windows either for that matter. I use it for certain reasons because I have no other options that I consider viable for certain computing needs, and I don't want to upgrade it unnecessarily either and will resist doing so like anyone else up until at least some major issue is a problem for me that I can not properly resolve to my satisfaction without upgrading or switching systems. So I have a lot more in common with people using Windows XP who do not want to get rid of it any time soon than not. Nobody will find me singing praises of Microsoft over the newer versions of Windows and all versions of Windows are painful in my eyes, just varying degrees of pain. I just choose to use the version that I've come to perceive as the least painful to myself personally for my own needs at a given instant in time, but everyone has different needs and has to determine what works best for themselves. We all eventually reach that "ah shit, the only way to do XYZ in a manner that truly works for me now is to change the OS" point in time. I personally do it with a lot of kicking and screaming and I suspect most other people here still using XP to the same so I don't fault anyone for that in the least. But everyone isn't going to suddenly switch all at the same time either, some will do it sooner and others later. I just did it sooner because of both what I said earlier concerning personal security needs, but also because I built a brand new PC in 2013 of which some of the hardware had no Windows XP driver support. That along with other factors made it a done deal. If it's any consolation, I have my old Windows XP PC still here although it's disconnected from the network and hasn't been powered on in two years. :)

Anyhow, best wishes to everyone in finding solutions to any software problems they have on XP, and if I see someone having an issue and am aware of a potential solution I'll be more than happy to offer some suggestions.

Rather have GOG support Windows 3.1 for Galaxy, MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Sometimes what doesn't work doesn't mean switching gears is wasted time. I'm sure whatever progress they have accomplished and obstacles within the year trying to tweak the Chromium Embedded Framework to work with Gog Galaxy is not thrown out the door. Edison experimented with tons of elements to figure out the right one. He never looked on these as failures but gathering information on what didn't work.

Firefox is open source just as Linux has their fan base of open source support. This is why Firefox has worked on 98SE, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, MAC OS, Linux, Apple iOS, and Android. Full desktop and mobile support and I don't see this ending.

Google has their own agenda and originally Google Chrome was made to be used on their Google ChromeBooks. One day they may decide to stop working on it and quit entirely and they came on the Browser scene much later than Firefox which is based off of Netscape Navigator code so there is a long line of compatibility and experience.

Google usually does a lot of data mining on their users so whatever backdoors or information they gather about you because you are using their software I think is wrong. If you don't value your privacy then you probably won't have any issues with this.

There are just too many benefits to use Mozilla's source code instead of Google's.

Aside from the mass support Firefox's open source community already has the influx of mobile users will play a huge part in GOG Galaxy's adoption besides just desktop users alone.

Which XP Service Pack did you use on the P4?

I ran XP non Service Packed for the longest time because the Service Packs added more disk space usage and even slowed down the system which I hated. This is why I stuck with Windows 2000 Professional for as long as I could. Now were you using Windows 2000 because it was using the 95 / 98 Quick Launch Windows Classic Mode? If so this is exactly what I do in XP. I don't use XP in it's eye candy interface and disable all animations and have a black background no wallpaper.

Why run XP on modern hardware that supports it? Because it's like running a Volvo station wagon with a souped up engine a la Paul Newman's gift to Letterman. Or in my case a Quad core Ivy Bridge is like throwing a Ferrari Testarossa engine in it. The OS runs super fast and responsive and super smooth. Probably similar to how Windows 2000 and XP compared back then but 10 times the effect.

http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/david-letterman-i-like-kettlecorn


You don't have to slipstream anything. This is optional for people who don't have access to a USB floppy drive. And you only do this if you want to use AHCI instead of IDE Mode. Most newer operating systems just include the support which is the same as slipstreaming the driver ahead of time. That's why each generation of Windows gets larger and larger because they are constantly preloading all the manufacturer drivers into the OS ahead of time so you don't have to hunt for them unless you want the most up to date one from the manufacturer. If you want to easily install XP without slipstreaming then look under your BIOS SATA configuration and change it from AHCI to IDE Compatibility mode and XP will install without the dreaded 7B BSOD message.

Maybe you can detail what your ACPI issues were on XP?
I have no issues going into sleep mode and most of the ACPI features are controlled in the BIOS settings.
One feature I missed that XP had when using Vista is when you close your lid you can make it do nothing or ask what action you like to take instead of shutting down or going into sleep mode.

What kind of issues did you have with multicore processors on XP? Maybe you can elaborate. When I'm using programs it doesn't use just one core it uses all four cores. You could theoretically get a Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition and get octocores on XP on a 2011. If you want to go Server you can push it and buy two of these and get 36 total cores shown in XP:

http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2699-v3-45M-Cache-2_30-GHz


Like I said in previous messages other than ones written to you. Windows 2000 Professional was the first stable operating system that I had used. It's compact installation size and speed was another reason I preferred it. I refrained from going to XP as long as I could because the specs of my P4 were not up to par yet and XP felt sluggish when I upgraded it for a test from Window 98SE. Eventually I got access to Windows 2000 Professional and loved its stability and the ability to open up over a dozen browser tabs without crashing like it did in Windows 98SE. However over time too many programs required XP or XP with Service Packs that Windows 2000 could no longer run the programs I needed. This included the newest version of Internet Explorer at the time. Otherwise I would still be using Windows 2000 Professional. Windows 2000 Professional would be good for gaming assuming the games you are playing don't require XP or XP with Service Packs before you can install. The biggest problem is the lack of drivers geared toward Windows 2000 whereas XP drivers are ubiquitous. In fact Windows 2000 vs XP frame rates were higher on 2000 in a lot gaming benchmarks.

Now I've heard people create some sort of updates to Windows 2000 that could make it think it is actually XP running to bypass these installation issues but I haven't tested that version.


Maybe you can give some examples of programs you were running that had issues on XP and I will give it a shot.


As for GPT I usually stick with 2TB external hard drives. There are also 4TB external hard drives that work on XP just fine and I own one.

As for your issue with GPT working on XP.

https://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/gpt-loader/

You should be able to install a 10TB internal GPT hard drive under XP if you need a lot of space. Can you do that on Windows 2000 yet?

Why do you need GPT first of all in your situation? MBR although dated still works with all operating systems and allows booting of any OS. GPT has restrictions on which OS are bootable.

Again I'm not using XP for nostalgia purposes but common day tasks like browsing and applications and maybe gaming should I have the time. For nostalgia purposes I'd use a P4 passive CPU cooler, Passive PSU, and Passive Graphics card to play True DOS games in their natural native OS not DOSBOX which also doesn't have exact 1:1 syntax replication. When you run DOS games in Windows there is a lot of CPU overload for the emulation. Running a DOS games that required a 486 33 MHz in DOS might require a P4 3.06 GHz in DOSBOX to run about the same speed.

XP has the best user interface of the Windows versions in Windows Classic Mode which is really Windows 95 / 98 with Quick launch that came with the IE 4.0 update. If you want to test out an annoying issue with Vista and beyond it is the constant file refresh list issue. If you rename a file in a directory and there are thousands of files it will refresh the entire list which could take a minute before you can see the file list. This issue doesn't occur in XP and is instantaneous with a quick F5.

As for the last comment if you're really worried about a beginner using XP that probably won't happen. Most would just pop in a Windows 10 or Linux Mint OS disc and install since it would pretty much have all the drivers they need to get going. So it's doubtful any person who decided to use XP would be misguided as it would take some computer expertise to find all the proper drivers and install them. And if you're really concerned for any newbies who want to give XP another shot I wouldn't recommend them do it on anything post Ivy Bridge because Haswell and later they made it harder to use XP. However if you're worried about someone installing XP and being vulnerable they could just use Linux WineHQ and run XP inside Linux giving them better protection.

https://www.winehq.org/

I agree each company will weigh the pros and cons of expending time and resources to program a driver for hardware or software but ultimately it depends on their target market. How hard is it to create a driver for XP versus Windows 10? I would think because so much information and driver support that has been written for XP that perhaps they don't have to rebuild the wheel and just do minor adjustments whereas Windows 10 would be a completely new monster they have to understand which would probably take more time to develop and work out the bugs. I'm just speculating but what are your thoughts? Obviously if this is a mobile market software developer they aren't going to waste time making an XP, Linux, or MAC version but might consider Windows 10 and skip Windows 7 since hopefully Microsoft's gamble on converting Windows 7 users to Windows 10 is a success and most desktop OS users have migrated predominately to it.


It's really hard to say when or if XP will completely vanish even assuming 1 million users still on it in 5 years. But what number to you would be considered an insignificant amount of people using an OS?


For a time people thought Windows 7 would completely squash XP out of the picture once it came out but if you really think about why most switched to Windows 7 it is because Microsoft officially dropped support for XP. That is where the migration of XP users began to show up significantly. If Microsoft were to officially announce XP will get SP4 and extended support till 2020 and XP Ultimate 128-bit is coming out in 2020 trust me people would stick with XP SP4 than upgrade to Windows 8 or later and wait till XP Ultimate 128-bit with DirectX 15.0 came out before upgrading from XP 32-bit. And those already on Windows 7 or later would upgrade to XP Ultimate 128-bit just for the DirectX 15.0 support if they were gamers.

The only thing I will say is gamers are usually the first adopters of a new OS so if Windows 7, 8, and 10 did not have DirectX 10 or later but kept stagnant with DirectX 9.0c no one would jump on board to use it. If anything the people that might use a 64-bit Windows OS would be for servers or people requiring the use of massive amounts of memory above 64GB for their needs.

Not everyone uses Firefox but Firefox is easily downloaded as a standalone installer. Using GOG Galaxy is the same as downloading another program. Anyhow I was only suggesting a Firefox addon since this would help make it easier to code instead of coding a whole new browser for GOG but using the same browser and adding GOG tweaks. Firefox source code already supports almost every major desktop operating system:
98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, MAC OS X, Linux, Apple iOS, and Android.

That strawpoll you linked is funny but Starcraft 2 would most likely be played on a DirectX 10.0 or newer OS since when it came out most gamers were playing newer games or games requiring DX 10 or later. Given the small sample size and not everyone is going to take a poll it's hard to determine how accurately it reflects the actual numbers. However if Blizzard would release Starcraft 1 OS usage stats this would be more interesting as that game is probably the most popular of their games and you could probably see a timeline of peak OS usage breakdown and the amount of users playing that game since 1998.

I haven't figured out the quoting within quote system without causing it to error and not post so I'll have to post my answers and separate them and hopefully you can figure it out.

Perhaps I misunderstood his original proposal for saved games but if you understand what I said in the last message then we are clear on our thoughts.

I understand what you are saying about gaming on two machines locally but again any saved games files would be stored on GOG's servers temporarily or permanently would still affect GOG's already high traffic and as more users become part of GOG Galaxy this would increase. I'd rather have less lag playing on GOG Galaxy if this means not having people storing saved games files onto their servers or using the bandwidth to download and upload their saved games which could be better used for my downloading of game files.

Actually an example of a saved game in DOS let's say King's Quest 3.

Directory
KQ3

you make a subdirectory called
SAVES

You'd copy KQ3\SAVES and you'd have all the saves.

As for some other Windows game like Crysis maybe you can use that Windows variable technique to copy your saved game files.

But whether or not ALL Windows games follows this technique I can't say that's 100%.

I only noticed certain Windows games did use the location you spoke of but older ones seemed to not follow this rule and stored it in a subdirectory of where the Program Files game directory was installed.

Yes they could enforce a file saved game size quota if they wanted. But I am only pointing out a potential flaw that they would have to plug if someone where to use that to burden GOG's servers and use it as file storage. Then you'd have to figure out what's a typical saved game file size for each game unless you want to enforce a global file saved size limit which might be easier to implement but then people can still take advantage of this and use it upload files under this size limit by just renaming the file to a saved game file format. And yes newer games would have larger saved game file sizes.

We have no idea what the account numbers breakdown is on Battle.Net, Origin, Uplay, and other online services so we can only speculate. And the Steam statistics I think those might be user responses to questionnaires and not detected by the Steam servers? So if a user had a Dual or Multi OS boot I wonder if that was asked and how they would answer. Or what if they had multiple systems at home with different OSs on each would they only get to place one vote? It's hard to say if the results are somehow skewed and relying on just one online gaming service poll doesn't really give you an exact numbers on GOG since GOG's games are older than what are on Steam and I would expect the numbers to be similar.

I would say SC1 and SC2 are probably the lowest graphical requirements of a game compared to something like outdated Crysis 1 Maximum.

Accounts doesn't mean actual online players so it would be more interesting if Steam could detect OS and game the user was playing and for what duration. But like I said I would expect most of these gamers are playing high def games requiring DX 11 or higher and the results of Windows 7 64bit at the top proves it is pointing in that direction.

Blizzard has been around longer but unless Blizzard releases actual statistics we don't know how many active players there are in a timeline and if it has peaked or still growing or in a decline. The best polls might be ones that are paid because people who are going to create an account and are paying monthly you could say are legitimate active users whereas free play accounts you have no idea if its one user making multiple accounts for different purposes. The same applies to Steam. I'm sure some might even make a secondary Steam account for multiplayer purposes or one with a bad record and one with a good record.

As for Linux it's been around a long time in fact Unix which is what Linux is based on has been around longer than DOS so yes longevity does not equate popularity or dominance. LP vinyls are still around despite CDs, DVD-Audio, SA-CD, and Blu-ray Audio. There are even some hard core Betamax users out there who still despise VHS and never adopted the inferior format.

First off what programs are you using that entirely use memory above 4GB?

Most people probably don't need to use PAE however from what I read the use of 64GB is broken down into 4GB chunks. So you probably have 16 isolated memory environments with the 3GB application limit in each.

As far as any penalties yes there are slight penalties due to double buffering but the fact that XP runs on less resources and probably faster that the 10% penalty than running on Vista and 7 in comparison without the penalty.

Unless you know of a game that works on XP, Vista, and 7 I could do some tests to compare frame rates to determine performance deficits. I think Crysis 1 Maximum might fit that criteria but if you have another game in mind I could see if I could test that as well.

As for your comment regarding PAE compliant drivers I haven't downloaded or used any other drivers than the ones supplied from the manufacturer so this is not the case that I have to actively seek out PAE compliant drivers.

However, what I would be really interested is in a 32-bit browser that takes advantage of PAE's extended memory.
This would be useful to me as I have usually hundreds of tabs open in my browsers which consume more and more memory as web pages seem to have more and more content. I haven't used any 64-bit browsers yet to test if it has the same limitation as 32-bit browsers.

As for games there probably won't be any games that can use this region however I think PAE might help to isolate each game with its own 4GB segment rather than share it.

Personally I haven't played more than one game at a time and I doubt most people do and maybe this is where Vista or W7 64-bit might shine?

The optimal use in my opinion is a large Ramdrive storing the entire game and running it off the Ramdrive. This would eliminate any performance deficit caused by storage access times and rely purely on the OS.
XP Mate maybe if you have read what I said earlier I have a MultiOS Boot set up.

XP / Vista / Windows 7

So Blooming hell I already have it Syndicate governor! So now you can shut the fuck up. Best of British. Cheers :).

I'm just going to answer this, since I do consider the rest as going over the same things again.

To quote someone, you use (quote_#)text(/quote), using square brackets [] instead of parentheses (), and you replace # with the quoted post's number. So to quote post 85's last sentence, you'd use
(quote_85)The fact that something is around longer doesn't mean it has more users, as any Linux user will tell you. (/quote) which would come out like this
Each quote tag needs its ending tag as well, and you can't have more than 2 nested quotes.
You can also use the quote tag without a number, and it comes out like this: