I thought 10 was a decent OS once debloated, used it for a while.
Back to Linux now though.
They know we liked Win7. They’ll never go back, they’ll just keep making it worse for us and more profitable for them.
That’s why I switched to Linux Mint a year ago. I feel sorry for people who can’t switch for whatever reason.
I did a switch last week and i feel like my life became just a little bit more bearable because THERE IS NO FUCKING BLOAT. Win11 actively makes you feel bad using a computer.
95 is the stick, ME is the stick up someone’s butt
Windows 95, ME, NT, and 2000 erasure.
And 3.11 for Workgroups.
nobody talks about 2000 bc 2000 was solid as fuck and there was nothing to complain about
It’s really incredible how Microsoft is trying to drive people away, by:
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Polluting what works.
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Never actually finishing revamps in progress.
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Pushing so much crap even normal users are conditioned to click Microsoft ‘features’ away as spam.
They don’t have to do anything! They could just freeze Windows 11 and gut development beyond security/api/hardware fixes, and rake in business “stuck on win32” dollars for eternity. But no, they are trying their absolute best to push folks to Android/iOS and open a window for stuff like the steam deck.
I bet we aren’t far from OEMs even getting sick of it, as shipping (admittedly, trashy self made) linux distros.
If they ever stop making updates, then Wine will catch up and you won’t actually need Windows anymore.
Yeah. But the barrier of installing linux makes that a kind of non-concern now, they can only change so much without breaking Win32.
It’d be hilarious if Windows shrinks and Wine/Proton become the de facto dev target on linux (which is honestly where things are headed now).
My god, imagine a world where all software is produced by OEMs.
They aren’t trying to drive people away, they just have learned there’s nothing they can do that will substantially scare people away. So time to pivot to trying to milk that captive userbase for all they are worth. People who are leaving are leaving for mobile class devices and they learned in Windows 8/Windows Phone 7 that they have no idea how to tap into that market segment anyway.
Yes, ‘enthusiasts’ are going Linux but they are a rounding error, hardly worth trying to capture compared to the revenue capture from the rest of the market. Particularly since the enthusiast market tends to be a bigger pain in terms of being picky users who complain and simultaneously unlikely to just say ‘yes I’d like that service you just popped up in the notifications for only $5/month’.
Yes, ‘enthusiasts’ are going Linux but they are a rounding error, hardly worth trying to capture compared to the revenue capture from the rest of the market.
Agreed, it’s a rounding error.
But it won’t be if OEMs get fed up and start shipping it as an option, like Valve is already doing.
Microsoft has already done some questionably ‘OEM hostile’ things like pushing the Surface line, shutting out some OEM bloatware in favor of thier own, pollute performance-sensitive devices like handhelds, and such, and it seems MS isn’t slowing down.
Yup, most people would just use Mint if it came on their laptop and not really think about it.
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I remember when we were a Unix shop (BSD & Linux) sharing space with guys writing code for some kind of printing software (for professional printing shops that did complex format conversions) that apparently absolutely had to be on Windows (because, unclear reasons, nobody would buy a non Windows printing management box, or something).
Anyway, they were writing for one of the early versions of NT, maybe 2000, not sure, and were pulling their hairs out the whole time we were with them.
A classic I remember was “the system will just decide that our driver (pretty much the only thing running) isn’t that important, and dump it’s priority to the shitter. Once it’s there, it’s dead in the water and we can’t get it active again without physical intervention. We’ve been talking to Microsoft for weeks to get around this.”
I suppose this has been more or less addressed by Microsoft nowadays, but, of course, this kind of thing hasn’t been an issue in unixland, like ever. Because it’s a system that fucking makes sense. And about the versions of Windows, I stopped using their stuff in the DOS days, so it’s not like I even have an opinion.
(and yes, they did have a couple very high end developers, on top of the regular grunts)
I actually really liked NT around 2000. I think it was NT 4.0? We used it for a typing class I took at the local college. That was just as an end user for one single program, but I remember liking it a lot.
Was CUPS around back then? I assume that was a trillion times easier to manage than whatever Microsoft had concocted.
Windows peaked at 7, I only moved to Windows 10 when Windows 7 lost support
That’s mostly due to your age. Older people say it peaked at XP, younger people are saying it peaked at 10. Truth is, they’re all kinda the same shit.
Is it though? From a privacy perspective I think Windows 10 quite clearly started introducing some shady surveillance practices which were absent in earlier versions. Of course, 11 took that waaay further, but 10 was a turning point imo.
95, 98, xp, and 7 were all great; each improved on the last. But 7 was the true peak. 10 was pretty good and unfortunately was the turning point into enshitification.
95/98 was another operating system, though. Windows
98ME (forgot about that one) was the last OS in the original Windows series– that Windows that was basically just a graphic shell for DOS.IIRC, XP was the 5th version of Microsoft’s fork of OS/2. OS/2 was rebranded as Microsoft NT in its 3^rd version due to the success of the brand Windows and the failure of OS/2 despite OS/2 having been the superior OS.
Do not make me find the pic of The Dude.
I might be slowly turning into Jeff Bridges.
Edit: missed the joke. My opinions about windows are grounded in my own experience, obviously. I’m the ‘wait for the first SP’ person historically. 10 was the first time I was not excited to install a new operating system. Everything was behind shitty UI that took away simple functionality. Funny enough I’d go back to it over 11 lol.
I think it’s a hard case to make that 7 wasn’t objectively better than XP.
Windows 10 did roll back some of the more egregious stuff from Windows 8, but still was sort of committed, sort of not. You had a platform with multiple personalities, multiple right click context menus, multiple ‘control panel’ with a new one being emphasized, but not actually completed, so it’s an awkward mix of the platform they had suceeded with and a platform they wished it could be (combined with telemetry). Forced microsoft accounts and using the desktop as a platform to promote products and services…
Yeah I think a fair argument can be made that WIndows 7 was the ultimate execution of the general vision that started with Windows NT, and what came after was something else that also happened to have bits of that original product hanging on.
I’m not too terribly excited by any Windows in particular, but I can recognize something categorically different they wanted to do starting with 8 that remains partially executed to this day, starts to emphasize Microsoft’s interests at the expense of the users, and a direction that no one really asked for.
Exactly this. 7 was absolutely the peak of Windows. Everything after was enshittification, and everything prior was still less user-friendly and rough around the edges.
And anyone arguing XP was peak should try installing XP and try connecting to wifi. Talk about a mess. XP was only a marginal upgrade over 98/2000, but with some glossy paint. 7 was the first time Windows felt modern.
Oh how I wish we could just go back to W7 :(
I agree. This is why I think literally all software should be FLOSS. People should be able to use a platform as long as they like on their own hardware.
As a programmer, my world changed when Windows 95 came out, what with being 32-bit and having an extremely powerful (if difficult-to-use at first) low-level audio API, since I mainly wrote software synthesis and music composition apps. I have not given two fucks for anything that has happened since 95. Quite amazingly, that audio API has remained in existence, unchanged, all the way until today. 30 years of not having to change what I’m doing at all has been absolutely amazing. That shit even worked, without modification, for Windows CE (Compact Edition) and Windows Mobile, so I was able to make versions of my software synthesizer that ran on shitty smartphones from 2005. It worked on Windows Phone as well, albeit it quite uselessly.
That is super interesting! I could read your comments on the windows audio API all day! Do you have a development blog? I’d also love to read more about this audio API.
In a way you can. Install ZorinOS or Linux Mint. Add WINE, and you can set wine to “emulate” an version of Windows. I was using it to run some old engineering program and WinAmp
Nah, best (or more accurately: least crappy) Windows version was Windows 2000. Everything got bloated and too consumery after that.
Windows peaked at DOS. It was small, inoffensive, and easily killed.
There were four versions that were useful for their time. Accurate.
Windows 12+…
But Windows
1011 is going to be the last version of Windows!What if Microsoft makes a Windows 12 mobile platform? And since Google is now pushing Android into close source, Microsoft suddenly becomes a big player in around 2028 for mobile phones.
I miss windows millennium, which would be a hammer made of a turd.
Where the fuck is Windows 2000 Advanced Server? The shiniest turd of them all
Excuse me say what? 2000 was a huge leap forward for reliability, uptime and Active Directory, blew the doors off every version before it, home and commercial.
Was it still Windows? I did say shiniest.
Win ME is the 98 image but the rock is on the smaller branch
Why skip 95 and put a blank in for 9. Windows 95/98 are the reason why there is no windows 9. Far too many lazy programmers make software and drivers that abbreviated to windows9 because there were two versions. Still nice try, I guess.
Because the omission is notable and funny, even if they had their reasons
I’ve noticed a trend that as I understand more, some things become more funny but most things become less funny. I think it’s because counterintuitiveness is funny but when understanding increases, the exposed complexity becomes more intuitive.
What about Windows ME? - the best version of classic windows.
It’s just a bottle of whiskey
“Peak” performance
And it doesn’t show on the pictures, but it was always made of rubber.
