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This is exactly what I intend to do!  

I have heard that you use this setup and I believe you are right, in that it will be the best for what I will be using my system for too.

Although, I intend to have a dual boot too, of WIn98SE & Win2000+SP4.

What do you think? Any good?

What dual boot software would you recommend?

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That fix for K6-2 processors on Windows 95 is actually needed for anything faster than a K6-2. On Athlon, Duron you really need this fix to run Windows 95...

Windows NT has it's strenghts and it's drawbacks. For example, run programs (3D) in Windows 98 SE and in Windows XP. There will be some differences in perfromance, so Windows 98 is still worth in some cases, at least. 3DMark 2001 SE is one of these examples... WIndows XP has some better points at memory accessing than Windows 98 SE, but CPU load is much bigger.

Also from Win 2000 and XP, your OS consumes more to get you almost the same results... Sometimes this thing is important.

Windows XP = Windows eXPerience

Athlon XP = eXtra Performance

AMD used this naming convention to show that the chips are "designed for windows XP".  etc... it's just a "name" who cares anyway?

Win95 will throw a win protection error at you if you're trying to run it on an AMD K6-2 350 or higher CPU.  This also means all Athlons.  There is a patch.

Many earlier releases will also go t!ts up due to AGP and USB incompatibilities.  Win98/98SE is better but the Internet Explorer shell bogs it down horribly on lower end machines, and it's seriously unstable and buggy.  Remove this, and Internet Explorer with it, and replace it with the Win95 shell and do a few more optimisations such as installing in the first place in APM mode, limiting Vcache, configuring your IRQ routing table correctly, and disabling APIC when you install and you won't crash/reboot at all.

"Modern NT" is a poor excuse of a not so modern Workstation OS, that really hasn't been updated half as many times as it should have been.  Put it out there directly connected to the internet, instead of hiding behind a UNIX/Linux box on a secured LAN and it'll be wormed within minutes.  The myth about this OS's stability is now being seen for what it really is.  And now they're up to version NT5.x and it's still as sh!tty as ever.  Only a complete noob would run it as a server and anyone using it for gaming should consider Win9x.  Most people use NT5.x because it's "new", brightly coloured, looks pretty and has themes.  I don't spend much time messing about with my desktop or making it look aesthetically pleasing so this doesn't appeal to me.  When I install Win9x I never change any of the colours or other things from standard, instead I spend this time actually optimising and configuring the Operating System for good stable performance.  With a win9x OS that completes a shift-reboot in 5 seconds, boots from power up in 12 seconds approx, (would be alot faster without network for dhcp running) and simply doesn't crash, I'm not doing to badly on that count.

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also don't forget the very first version was called Windows NT 3.1 

Regarding OS'es the problem still remains quite unchanged: they are nowhere as fast as they could be, and you can't make them run as you "could make a lego house" (every piece could be added and extracted easily, only the base couldn't be).

Apart from that OS'es are far from being secure. If they were 99% secure, every time you would make a wrong change, the system would simply lock, and you would have to format your hard-drive. We know this is not the case. Security holes, if not too many, are needed sometimes.

Even Linux, although it's better than Windows in some aspects, it's still lacking a lot of good things. Given the last rumour that Linux could become a payed OS (even if it is a joke, it could happen somewhere in the future) things don't look so bright.

Also, there is still no Free Developer Programming Platform free language, designed from ground-up to suit year 2004-2010 period (not the old C, C++ designed in the 70's and 80's). This probably won't happend too soon, so here we go in the never-ending game: OS-Programs-CPU-Hardware, all being more or less obsolete (in design) compared to what would be needed today.

WHOA there!

Don't go all Evange-linux on our A$$ES!

Remember that although Andrei's statements are quite mis-informed (many of us agree with that!), there are a LOT of us in this forum who still use MS O.S.'s!

And I don't go around saying people who use Linux are loonies!

Linux is better and we all know it's a fact!

So CHILL already! 8)

Patience is correct in that distribution and support (installation and maintenance) can be charged for, the source code, which is freely distributed, cannot be charged for.  Refer to the GNU/GPL.

@paulpsomodias: I dual boot Win9x and Linux, I didn't call all Win32 users crazed, so you seem to have misinterpreted.  I was simply stating that anyone who categorically writes that security holes are necessary and that without such exploits a system would be unusable is quite honestly making alot of excuses for the Win32 platforms shortcomings.

I've spent the last few days over vnc disabling services and "optimising" a friends XP installation.  I had to remove Welchia-B and Ms Blaster in the process along with a host of adware, spyware etc.  XP had only been clean installed on the system for about 1 hour.  Personally I don't find this acceptable for a mainstream OS that costs far too much anyway.