R.I.P. XP
Posted: 8th of April, 2014 @ 00:57 UTC
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Once again, sorry for not having a post in such a long time, the next blog I have will cover a great number of this but I thought I'd do a small bit to XP on its last day.
So I'm trying to find my old Windows XP Home Edition case, complete with its big blue (or was it green?) folder like case. I mean it's cool to look at these sort of things once in a while, but it's very different today...
At the time I'm writing this, XP is still in the last hours of its life. For the final Tuesday patch is about to hit, forever ending XP support for a good number of its users. There are some weird deals made by the UK government to keep XP alive on their end for another year, and then there is the Embedded System edition which is going to early 2016 in terms of extended support. Regardless, XP is pretty much about to die for majority of people using it.
What does this mean? Well a couple things:
For one, you won't get any more security fixes on your OS, which can potentially leave you vulnerable. This doesn't mean you ARE going to get attacked and lose everything, it just means there is a greater chance of it happening.
Another thing to point out is the lack of support from other companies. Despite that DirectX 11 could run on XP easily, and tons of other games and applications could do the same, that doesn't mean they will, and they certainly won't consider it now.
This will probably lead to community based support, people will extend the life of XP on their own in small groups doing patches and so forth to keep it alive in a sense, which will probably be very interesting to see (just look up Windows 2000, though to be fair they had access to bits of the Source Code).
People are also seeing this as a possible chance for people to jump to Linux, while I really hope this is true, I can't exactly say that will happen. There's no guarantee that a bunch of people will automatically switch to Linux now that XP is dead in a mainstream sense. I guess I can keep my fingers crossed.
Whatever the troubles businesses, users, even governments will face, I can say that if XP still works for you and you're willing to go through a few more risks and custom patches, then do what you please, and good luck to you.
I guess this is also an ode to an OS I used for many years, eight years in fact. An OS I made my first levels in DOOM on, an OS I discovered a number of sites and movements that formed my childhood and life, an OS of memories, both good and bad. While I may prefer Linux, nothing can keep you away from nostalgia and I must admit, I will miss XP. So goodbye XP, you were pretty memorable and reliable, so reliable a good chuck of computers are still using you!
Now excuse me, I have to find that damn XP case!
That's it for this blog post. Be sure to check out Bloodbath Softworks and Dethklan Games!
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