I was thinking about the recent story about the DB looking for windows 3.1 administrator.
A classic issue I’ve soon working in heavy industry is that hardware last longer than windows version. So 10 years ago, you bought a component for the product you design or a full machine for your factory which only comes with a windows XP driver.
10 year latter, Windows XP is obsolete, upgrading to a more recent windows might be an option but would cost a shit load of money.
I have therefore the impression that Linux would offer more control to the professional user in term of product lifecycle and patch deployment. However, there is always that stupid HW which doesn’t have a Linux driver.
Yep, a place i was working in had a plotter that only had drivers for windows ME. not 98, not 2000. Only for windows ME. I gave up after 30 minutes of scouring the internets and left the piece alone. But it was mind boggling to me that they had a precious and fragile desktop that was the only thing that could talk to that plotter. That was around 2003-2004, VMs were not around much. I hope that the guy that worked there after me cloned the machine into an image.