By matsuzine -
Today I did something interesting. Well, interesting for a geek like me. I have an old toshiba laptop that my brother gave me a few years ago. I love it dearly, but it is nearly obsolete. It runs Windows 2000, which I've been really happy with but hits end-of-life this July. I've tried to get various Linux distros running, and with some success -- but a recent problem with overheating seems to be plaguing some laptop models in Linux. It's also had Open Solaris ( can't get the wifi working...), Windows XP ( too sluggish ), and FreeBSD ( you say what, now? ). I'm back to Windows 2000...

I decided to use Windows Updates Downloader to get all the W2K updates and used groovy to script up a nice automated updater. Not knowing what will happen when EOL happens this summer, now I have all the installation packages that I need to bring the system back up to speed in less than an hour. I realize that it will no longer be receiving security patches, but since I use it almost exclusively for writing code ( runs Eclipse wonderfully ) I think I can get a few more productive years out of it.

I've got to say one more thing: I think it is funny that I can't install .net 3.5 on Windows 2000, but I can get most of the 3.5 features in the latest mono release and it works just fine. Hmmm...


Update: Ok, so there is a bug in the latest mono release that prevents it to working on W2K. Oh, well -- I've always got java!

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