Why Windows XP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Robert Cochran <address@hidden>
> Cc: Robert Cochran <address@hidden>,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2016 21:16:00 -0700
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Why what? why Windows or why XP?
> 
> Why XP mostly. I can understand why people may prefer or be forced to
> use Windows (even though that's something I personally try hard to
> avoid), but I'd figure anyone that could have moved on from XP would
> have by now. Especially because, as I mentioned, XP is no longer
> receiving any updates or security fixes of any sort, making XP users
> relatively more vulnerable (although I acknowledge that the knowledgeable
> can take measures to reduce the risk).
> 
> If you're still using XP, there's obviously a reason of some sort, by
> choice or otherwise.

Basically, I had no reasons to upgrade a well-configured and stable
system.  I had a few reasons not to upgrade, one of them being that XP
is the last version that supports DOS emulation well, so I can still
build and debug the MSDOS port of Emacs.  Later Windows versions have
broken DOS emulations, and the 64-bit versions simply don't have it.

XP is rock-solid, it runs here for months on end without restarting.
And with the regular updates gone, there are no more reasons to
restart it, except rarely, when the antivirus software asks for that.

The importance of security fixes is greatly exaggerated, IMO, for a
system that sits behind 2 routers, each blocking arbitrary access
attempts from outside, and with MUA being Emacs that never does
anything stupid with attachments, unless I am stupid enough to
instruct it (which I'm not).

> I hadn't realized that some people on the Emacs lists were still
> using XP, otherwise I would have responded differently. Please don't
> take what I've already said in a negative or derogatory way.

No offense taken, and I don't think your response could have been
taken as such.

More to the point, we are trying not to break support for old versions
of Windows deliberately.  That could still happen inadvertently,
because we don't have any users on those systems, but we try not to
make changes we know will not work there.  That is why Emacs can still
run on Windows 9X, last time I checked.  The reason is that there are
still a lot of such old installations in many developing countries, so
we try not to prevent them from using Emacs.