5 ms·

> I have only tested this with Windows 98se. Win98SE the last windows i actually enjoyed using and believed it was an improvement over the its predecessor. No

by cies 5y ago

> I have only tested this with Windows 98se. Win98SE the last windows i actually enjoyed using and believed it was an improvement over the its predecessor. Nowadays im afraid to run modern windows without a VM and a firewall.

xav_authentique 5y ago
No love for Windows 2000? NT kernel with the classic Windows interface. It ran pretty well on Windows 98 machines and was extremely stable.
- dleslie 5y ago
  So long as you didn't play games. 2000 meant abandoning the vast majority of your PC game library, early on.
  - com2kid 5y ago
    You could hack around that and get DirectX working, I was doing all my gaming on Windows 2000 back in the day. Though I think I may have had a proper dos boot disk for some games, hard to remember, it was quite awhile back. :)
    - dleslie 5y ago
      You would've needed a DOS boot disk, yes; while Win98SE was fairly great for playing DOS games, 2000 was most certainly not.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    I ran Windows 2000 in high school and never had trouble running any of my games. That said, I didn't have any DOS games in my library, which I'm guessing is what you are referring to.
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  >It ran pretty well on Windows 98 machines I don't think so, for example requirements for RAM: Windows 98: 16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended) Windows 2000: 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum;
- znpy 5y ago
  Win 2000 Professional was my favorite windows ever. Fast and light as Windows 98 but more stable than Windows XP.
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  I tried once. Kinda liked it but it was heavy on my built-for-98-se machine and lacked some things a teenager wanted in a computer - like DirectX. But I've tried anyway. Then I got owned so hard by Nimda that it is still the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Windows 2000.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Win2K, good memories. Used it for Delphi and some C++ Builder development between 2000 and 2001; pretty solid, probably more than XP (at least until XPSP2) but needed some more horsepower to use it properly.
- yyyk 5y ago
  2000 and original XP are almost identical (IIRC one is NT 5.0 and the other is NT 5.1). IMHO, The reason hackers loved 2000 and not XP is because of the toy-like XP theme - which shows hackers can be shallow too.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
Windows 98 Second Edition is terrible in many ways. I could probably hit the comment limit listing them. Yet it remains my favourite operating system of all time, because everything else (yes, even precious Debian!) is just worse. Worse UI, worse memory use, worse hackability… In Windows 98 SE, there was a button next to “minimise” that would give every widget a tooltip explaining what it did and how to use it; most programs came with a built-in, GUI instruction manual. Nobody else does this! (The best help UI ever made, and Microsoft just dropped it…) Windows 98 SE included its own kernel-based virtual machine system, which it used for multi-tasking DOS and “sandboxing” DOS drivers. (They had a global lock and full privileges, though, so it's not really much of a sandbox.) Windows 98 came with Active Desktop: you could display bits of website on your desktop as widgets (e.g. a weather service). It also came with mshta.exe, for HTML Applications; HTAs were basically like Electron, but built into the OS, so you didn't have loads of insecure Chrome versions clogging up your RAM and hard drive. (It was Internet Explorer, but iirc Internet Explorer was actually good around about that time.) Yes, it was DOS-based. Yes, you could log in as the system user by clicking “cancel” on the “enter your username and password” box. It should be simple to beat that… so why hasn't anyone?
- jordemort 5y ago
  This might be the first time I’ve seen anyone remember Active Desktop fondly. I remember it being pretty much universally hated during its heyday.
  - stavros 5y ago
    I, for one, certainly universally hated it.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    I liked it as a gimmick, i made it scroll assembly code in green text over a "hacker" background. Lasted for a few days only since it was stealing all the CPU time, but it was neat during that time :-P.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  > Windows 98 came with Active Desktop: you could display bits of website on your desktop as widgets I never found Active Desktop all that useful. It was annoying because if you wanted a jpg desktop wallpaper, it would enable Active Desktop just for that. The problem was that it noticeably slowed the entire system. I would always convert to bmp and use that, taking a hit on disk space (and possibly RAM) instead of speed.
u801e 5y ago
I used Win 98 SE for a few years, but I subsequently switched to Windows 2000 which was far more stable. I used the same installation (installing updates and service packs via Windows update) from around 2002 through 2010 until a lightning strike took out the system board and the computer could not make it past the BIOS POST check.

by cies 5y ago

xav_authentique 5y ago

No love for Windows 2000? NT kernel with the classic Windows interface. It ran pretty well on Windows 98 machines and was extremely stable.

dleslie 5y ago
So long as you didn't play games. 2000 meant abandoning the vast majority of your PC game library, early on.
- com2kid 5y ago
  You could hack around that and get DirectX working, I was doing all my gaming on Windows 2000 back in the day. Though I think I may have had a proper dos boot disk for some games, hard to remember, it was quite awhile back. :)
  - dleslie 5y ago
    You would've needed a DOS boot disk, yes; while Win98SE was fairly great for playing DOS games, 2000 was most certainly not.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  I ran Windows 2000 in high school and never had trouble running any of my games. That said, I didn't have any DOS games in my library, which I'm guessing is what you are referring to.
garaetjjte 5y ago
>It ran pretty well on Windows 98 machines I don't think so, for example requirements for RAM: Windows 98: 16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended) Windows 2000: 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum;
znpy 5y ago
Win 2000 Professional was my favorite windows ever. Fast and light as Windows 98 but more stable than Windows XP.
ulzeraj 5y ago
I tried once. Kinda liked it but it was heavy on my built-for-98-se machine and lacked some things a teenager wanted in a computer - like DirectX. But I've tried anyway. Then I got owned so hard by Nimda that it is still the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Windows 2000.
squarefoot 5y ago
Win2K, good memories. Used it for Delphi and some C++ Builder development between 2000 and 2001; pretty solid, probably more than XP (at least until XPSP2) but needed some more horsepower to use it properly.
yyyk 5y ago
2000 and original XP are almost identical (IIRC one is NT 5.0 and the other is NT 5.1). IMHO, The reason hackers loved 2000 and not XP is because of the toy-like XP theme - which shows hackers can be shallow too.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

Windows 98 Second Edition is terrible in many ways. I could probably hit the comment limit listing them. Yet it remains my favourite operating system of all time, because everything else (yes, even precious Debian!) is just worse. Worse UI, worse memory use, worse hackability… In Windows 98 SE, there was a button next to “minimise” that would give every widget a tooltip explaining what it did and how to use it; most programs came with a built-in, GUI instruction manual. Nobody else does this! (The best help UI ever made, and Microsoft just dropped it…) Windows 98 SE included its own kernel-based virtual machine system, which it used for multi-tasking DOS and “sandboxing” DOS drivers. (They had a global lock and full privileges, though, so it's not really much of a sandbox.) Windows 98 came with Active Desktop: you could display bits of website on your desktop as widgets (e.g. a weather service). It also came with mshta.exe, for HTML Applications; HTAs were basically like Electron, but built into the OS, so you didn't have loads of insecure Chrome versions clogging up your RAM and hard drive. (It was Internet Explorer, but iirc Internet Explorer was actually good around about that time.) Yes, it was DOS-based. Yes, you could log in as the system user by clicking “cancel” on the “enter your username and password” box. It should be simple to beat that… so why hasn't anyone?

jordemort 5y ago
This might be the first time I’ve seen anyone remember Active Desktop fondly. I remember it being pretty much universally hated during its heyday.
- stavros 5y ago
  I, for one, certainly universally hated it.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  I liked it as a gimmick, i made it scroll assembly code in green text over a "hacker" background. Lasted for a few days only since it was stealing all the CPU time, but it was neat during that time :-P.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
> Windows 98 came with Active Desktop: you could display bits of website on your desktop as widgets I never found Active Desktop all that useful. It was annoying because if you wanted a jpg desktop wallpaper, it would enable Active Desktop just for that. The problem was that it noticeably slowed the entire system. I would always convert to bmp and use that, taking a hit on disk space (and possibly RAM) instead of speed.

u801e 5y ago

I used Win 98 SE for a few years, but I subsequently switched to Windows 2000 which was far more stable. I used the same installation (installing updates and service packs via Windows update) from around 2002 through 2010 until a lightning strike took out the system board and the computer could not make it past the BIOS POST check.