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> 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 runnin

> 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.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    I fondly remember that period indeed. But reading your comment i realized it's been a while since i could tell whether my computer having network activity was suspicious or not, and i'm guessing a lot of younger people don't even realize that could be a thing. > Malware wasn't nearly as well hidden back then, so uncovering it wasn't all that hard. Yeah catpicture.jpg.exe was definitely easier to identify than modern viruses are.

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.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  I fondly remember that period indeed. But reading your comment i realized it's been a while since i could tell whether my computer having network activity was suspicious or not, and i'm guessing a lot of younger people don't even realize that could be a thing. > Malware wasn't nearly as well hidden back then, so uncovering it wasn't all that hard. Yeah catpicture.jpg.exe was definitely easier to identify than modern viruses are.