4 ms·

Doesn't that apply to everyone's OS of choice though? Actually maybe it doesn't... But it's not very helpful unless you can be at least a little bit specific ab

Doesn't that apply to everyone's OS of choice though? Actually maybe it doesn't... But it's not very helpful unless you can be at least a little bit specific about why it makes you happy.

donatj 5y ago
> Doesn't that apply to everyone's OS of choice though? Do people have love deep in their hearts for Windows or even macOS 11? It's hard to explain these days, but back in the late 90s it was just so far ahead of everything else except maybe NeXT and NeXT was entirely out of reach for 99% of the world. The UI was ridiculously smooth and fast and everything worked together like a well oiled machine. - https://youtu.be/cjriSNgFHsM?t=350 https://youtu.be/cjriSNgFHsM?t=350 Here they play an mp3 and a video that continue to render while you move the windows around, on a 133mhz machine without it even putting up a sweat. Clearly that's nothing today but that was unheard of at the time. Beyond that it had amazing features you still don't see on operating systems today like the file system being an actual queryable database. Common metadata like ID3 tags from MP3's were entered into this and queryable. The standard email client stored emails as individual files and just queried the file system. I believe the address book did the same for people. The tabs of the individual windows stack together across apps! There were just so many little wonderful fit-and-finish things like that you don't get these days. - https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/GUI.html#stack-tile https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/GUI.html#stack-ti... I feel like most desktop OS's strive for parity with eachother. BeOS was trying to be better.
- com2kid 5y ago
  > Do people have love deep in their hearts for Windows Windows 2000, yes. Amazing OS, insanely fast, and lightweight. With only a handful of background running processes and a couple dozen services it was possible to know exactly what was running on your computer at any time. On at least one occasion I was able to detect malware on my machine by noticing unexpected background network traffic via the light on my network hub blinking when it shouldn't have been. Windows XP will go down in history as the OS that an entire generation is nostalgic for, but Windows 2000 was its fiddly, hard to setup, but rock solid once running, older brother.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    Win2K wasn't that hard to setup, and it got better when XP came out because driver support expanded. I've certainly had more difficulty setting up Linux today than I ever did Win2K in the past.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > I've certainly had more difficulty setting up Linux today What kind of difficulties?
    - com2kid 5y ago
      > Win2K wasn't that hard to setup, It was on AMD systems. :-D And getting gaming to work was a separate challenge. It wasn't terrible, but it did require knowledge of what chipset your motherboard was running and you had to know that certain magic patches were needed to the OS.
  - nix23 5y ago
    >Windows 2000, yes. Absolutely, i love W2k. No bling-bling no bloat, the last lean and honest windows....serenity-os devs think the same it looks ;) I used w2k until windowsXPsp2 was released, XP was a least for me bloody unstable before sp2.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > On at least one occasion I was able to detect malware on my machine by noticing unexpected background network traffic via the light on my network hub blinking when it shouldn't have been. That's golden. Would deserve a blogpost on its own.
    - com2kid 5y ago
      Back then it was pretty easy. If you weren't actively loading a webpage or playing a game, there wouldn't be any network traffic. This was back before the days of auto updates or telemetry! So basically if I was doing something locally, and I saw the lights blink on my hub, and my (tiny!) process list didn't have any obvious suspects, I knew something was up. Malware wasn't nearly as well hidden back then, so uncovering it wasn't all that hard.
karlshea 5y ago
I installed a version of BeOS on a Performa 6360 and everything about it felt like I was transported into the future.

Doesn't that apply to everyone's OS of choice though? Actually maybe it doesn't... But it's not very helpful unless you can be at least a little bit specific about why it makes you happy.

donatj 5y ago

> Doesn't that apply to everyone's OS of choice though? Do people have love deep in their hearts for Windows or even macOS 11? It's hard to explain these days, but back in the late 90s it was just so far ahead of everything else except maybe NeXT and NeXT was entirely out of reach for 99% of the world. The UI was ridiculously smooth and fast and everything worked together like a well oiled machine. - https://youtu.be/cjriSNgFHsM?t=350 https://youtu.be/cjriSNgFHsM?t=350 Here they play an mp3 and a video that continue to render while you move the windows around, on a 133mhz machine without it even putting up a sweat. Clearly that's nothing today but that was unheard of at the time. Beyond that it had amazing features you still don't see on operating systems today like the file system being an actual queryable database. Common metadata like ID3 tags from MP3's were entered into this and queryable. The standard email client stored emails as individual files and just queried the file system. I believe the address book did the same for people. The tabs of the individual windows stack together across apps! There were just so many little wonderful fit-and-finish things like that you don't get these days. - https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/GUI.html#stack-tile https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/GUI.html#stack-ti... I feel like most desktop OS's strive for parity with eachother. BeOS was trying to be better.

com2kid 5y ago
> Do people have love deep in their hearts for Windows Windows 2000, yes. Amazing OS, insanely fast, and lightweight. With only a handful of background running processes and a couple dozen services it was possible to know exactly what was running on your computer at any time. On at least one occasion I was able to detect malware on my machine by noticing unexpected background network traffic via the light on my network hub blinking when it shouldn't have been. Windows XP will go down in history as the OS that an entire generation is nostalgic for, but Windows 2000 was its fiddly, hard to setup, but rock solid once running, older brother.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Win2K wasn't that hard to setup, and it got better when XP came out because driver support expanded. I've certainly had more difficulty setting up Linux today than I ever did Win2K in the past.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > I've certainly had more difficulty setting up Linux today What kind of difficulties?
  - com2kid 5y ago
    > Win2K wasn't that hard to setup, It was on AMD systems. :-D And getting gaming to work was a separate challenge. It wasn't terrible, but it did require knowledge of what chipset your motherboard was running and you had to know that certain magic patches were needed to the OS.
- nix23 5y ago
  >Windows 2000, yes. Absolutely, i love W2k. No bling-bling no bloat, the last lean and honest windows....serenity-os devs think the same it looks ;) I used w2k until windowsXPsp2 was released, XP was a least for me bloody unstable before sp2.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > On at least one occasion I was able to detect malware on my machine by noticing unexpected background network traffic via the light on my network hub blinking when it shouldn't have been. That's golden. Would deserve a blogpost on its own.
  - com2kid 5y ago
    Back then it was pretty easy. If you weren't actively loading a webpage or playing a game, there wouldn't be any network traffic. This was back before the days of auto updates or telemetry! So basically if I was doing something locally, and I saw the lights blink on my hub, and my (tiny!) process list didn't have any obvious suspects, I knew something was up. Malware wasn't nearly as well hidden back then, so uncovering it wasn't all that hard.

karlshea 5y ago

I installed a version of BeOS on a Performa 6360 and everything about it felt like I was transported into the future.