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Obtaining Windows OS ISO's

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KynloStephen66515:
I would question who set the requirement to use Win9x. You've got all sorts of licensing problems there since it is deprecated by Microsoft. Even if you *wanted* to BUY licenses, I'm not sure you could. Someone at Microsoft might donate licenses to a charity, though then *they* have problems since they are donating licenses for a deprecated product that they no longer maintain, so would have you sign some disclaimer that you know security issues may exist (and they do!).
-db90h (March 06, 2012, 01:40 AM)
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I set the requirement to install 9x on some machines purely because of the specs of some, being very low.  The machines we had where simply donated to us, so we had no control over any of the hardware.

These machines have now all (the ones that worked anyway) found good homes :)

Carol Haynes:
As I'm sure you know, ReactOS (Windows rewrite by a third-party group) has finally grown quite mature and is a suitable FREE replacement for Windows that is fully compatible with the Windows XP kernel. That means all drivers and such will work. Well, you know - http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html . Users likely wouldn't tell the difference between it and native Windows to be honest.
-db90h (March 06, 2012, 01:40 AM)
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Tried ReactOS in VMWare - good starting point but it is pretty hit and miss what works - it can't install some things it has in its own repository!

I'd guess if/when it gets to a useful stage of development it will be good enough for Microsoft to lock them up in courts for decades!

KynloStephen66515:
I'd guess if/when it gets to a useful stage of development it will be good enough for Microsoft to lock them up in courts for decades!
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Or, if they are turning into a bad apple (Excuse the pun), steal all good ideas, patent them, then sue the original company  :P

Krishean:
I would recommend against ReactOS, it is still alpha stage, and even some of the OS features don't work properly (such as configuring the taskbar/start menu/file explorer.) It's a nice idea/experiment, but still has a way to go before it is ready for regular users to use without getting frustrated with it.

On the slower machines, is Windows a requirement or could you use linux instead? Something that does not have all too much for system requirements such as Xubuntu, Mint LXDE, or Lubuntu, or even something lighter like Tiny Core? Using Win9x seems like a bad idea because it opens the users to so many security risks, and no way to update or patch them.

KynloStephen66515:
I would recommend against ReactOS, it is still alpha stage, and even some of the OS features don't work properly (such as configuring the taskbar/start menu/file explorer.) It's a nice idea/experiment, but still has a way to go before it is ready for regular users to use without getting frustrated with it.

On the slower machines, is Windows a requirement or could you use linux instead? Something that does not have all too much for system requirements such as Xubuntu, Mint LXDE, or Lubuntu, or even something lighter like Tiny Core? Using Win9x seems like a bad idea because it opens the users to so many security risks, and no way to update or patch them.
-Krishean (March 17, 2012, 01:52 PM)
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Windows wasn't a 'requirement per-se but when you know the end user is 99% likely not to know much about computing, its pretty much the only logical approach.  Any decent linux distro that would be useful for that, would not run on the systems they would be installed on (Few machines where 256 RAM, 1Ghz CPU lol)

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