Hacker News Reader

Comment by webwanderings | Hacker News Reader

I don't really have a clunker, so I upgraded the memory to 3Gigs and my XP is using the least minimum services and startup EXEs, hence I am really happy with the host OS to run my browser which is what I use all the time anyway.

The bare bone XP with least minimum running services is as good as Windows 7. But if only people could see.

View on HN

It's really not. You seem to be hiding behind the browser, thinking that as long as you have a secure browser, your OS is secure as well. This isn't the case. Windows XP is a major nightmare, especially if "minimum services" doesn't include an active firewall, AV, anti-spyware, and anti-rootkit tool. If you're running XP without all of that (as well as occasional one-off, offline scans with a different AV tool), you're asking for trouble.

Windows XP is seriously bad news when it comes to being online, with any browser.

I think you've been drinking kool-Aid, or you don't know how keep the running OS secured with the least minimum requirements (assuming you are talking about a home PC which is mainly used for leisure and sometime typical banking needs).

You can very well (still) run Microsoft's security software which has virus scan. You can occasionally run (still) freely available good spyware scanners. The firewall that came with the XP does its job.

The point I am making, which seem to be lost on everyone here, is that, if you upgrade your relatively decent hardware with enough RAM, and if you remove all the crappy services and EXEs from the startup, you can have a reasonable experience with older OSs and there is no need to go buy new PCs every other year from Walmarts.

But Microsoft is in the business of selling OSs and they knew what they were doing by removing IE9 from XP and they also know what they sell with every new updates of Office (go back to Office97 or 2003 and you can still use the basic function as same as today's Office).

So when it comes to the browsers in today's time, it really does look pathetic with very few choices on hand. You have a corporation owned Chrome which wants to know when did you pee in the morning and what did you eat last night and where. Then you have a decently run Firefox but that is the only choice right now and it is troubling that it is the only choice right now.

No. YOU don't know what running an OS secured with least minimum requirements are until you are running a linux server with all ports blocks from the command line. Then at that point you can use lynx to browse the web if you want the most secure, minimal web browser. Older versions of IE, especially on windows XP are nothing but security flaws.

So when you want to get off of your high horse, feel free to update your OS and install a modern browser. The browser market absolutely does not look pathetic as there are at least a hundred browsers that you can try if you put in any effort. Until then, you actually don't have a valid opinion on this matter.

You are not following my initial lament. I mentioned Walmart. Does it give you any clue? The people who buy Microsoft's "upgrades" does not have the word Lynx in their consciousness to begin with.

People here bring out strawman at every opportunity (or they feel gratified clicking a downvote arrow - big deal!).

I have nothing against Firefox and I use it daily. But people on the Internet are better off adopting the diversity of browsers and the one which is providing more innovative and evolutionary services, should be adopted. The ones which are status-quo (Chrome is really a bazaar of products being sold) and the ones trying to maintain their race (Firefox: we-want-to-be-the-only-nice-guys), should get enough pressures to compete. But obviously I can only speak for myself.

It sounds more like you're bringing out the strawman when you start talking about the average person who buys a computer at Wal Mart. We're not talking about them. We're talking about you. There's a plethora of competitive browsers in the market. You just happen to be using an OS that is not competitive in the market anymore.

The only developers who still see a return from going out of their way to support Windows XP are malware authors.

Last I checked, almost all applications I have on my XP is being supported by software developers (given that I don't have many). From the perspective of Office, all open-source alternatives to MS are supporting XP. Firefox is still supporting XP. Chrome and Opera does as well. So are you suggesting that they are breaking the security model by supporting XP. Why would they? I have yet to see any disclaimer from any of them that says that I should use their software on AS IS basis.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/legal/eula/firefox.html

"THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS""

There's also SRWare Iron, which is Chrome stripped of all Google "spyware."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron

I wouldn't trust Iron. I read that it wasn't made with an eye towards privacy, but towards self-promotion: http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.ht... I can't find the feature-by-feature takedown I read, but it looked really counter-productive.

just use chromium, it is too (but without 'controversy' the sibling post mentions)

As I mention quite often here on HN, I'm an information security professional. I'm not talking out of my ass, I'm talking from direct, first-hand experience. No one is saying you should buy a new computer, you can upgrade an OS on the same hardware. Use Windows 7, use Ubuntu, use Unix if you want to. Just please don't use Windows XP.

For my own sanity, I'm just going to assume you're 13 years old.

As I said, I think XP is a fine OS for most people, but you don't use it in a vacuum (obviously, since you're posting here). Support for XP at the OS, application and driver level is only going to get worse. And this will become a bigger and bigger problem.

Also, Windows 7 is actually just a better OS. In my experience the kernel is more stable and the memory management is better.

Well, I don't disagree. With every passage of time, things expire and new things evolve. But you can already imagine that by the time people like myself get to using the Windows 7, the Microsoft, along with the whole cabal of browser makers and websites, would want me to upgrade to Windows 13, and by then, there will be security professionals not talking from their ass trying to convince that Windows 7 is a security nightmare.

It might be "as good as" if you're just using it to run a browser. But in my experience Win7 has been snappier to use than XP on the same machine, software vendors are starting to stop supporting XP, the UI is more pleasant (subjective), and the 64-bit support is much better. Just a few things.

I wonder if you'll have problems with SNI as IPv4 exhaustion runs out. XP can't - ever - access SNI-protected SSL sites.

XP has IPv6 support.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com