10 ms·

I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it. I wo

I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it. I would gladly pay for Windows if it wasn't a hot pile of incomplete and disjointed consumer-focused noise. I have an i7 3770k box that I repurpose occassionally for random projects. It runs Linux really well, but Win10 is an absolute dog. I can't even imagine Windows 11? Overclocked, 16gb RAM, SSD's in RAID... it doesn't make sense.

whalesalad 5y ago
I would love to see the "internal wiki" at MS that explains how to do this yourself. I have to imagine that there are employees internally who feel this way too and run their own "lightened" OS.
- zeusk 5y ago
  There are multiple stripped out SKUs internally but none of them are "win2000" style. More like no shell (OneCoreUAP) or no compositor/desktop (OneCore).
- hyperionplays 5y ago
  Isnt that what windows embedded is? stripped out lightweight windows?
  - whalesalad 5y ago
    It's hard to say. MS changes the strategy all the time and there are so many SKUs it is hard to follow, at least for an outsider such as myself. I know there is a long-term release version that tends to recieve fewer updates and is considered more of an LTS/Stable release - but I think that there are also artificial limitations on this too as far as what it is capable of and how you can get a hold of it.
    - vladvasiliu 5y ago
      I haven't noticed any particular limitations, but my understanding is that it's not very straightforward to get by "official" means. At work, another team is in charge of point of sale and other similar devices running Windows IOT or whatever it's called now, and apparently licensing is completely different from the "regular" desktop and server installs.
  - zeusk 5y ago
    No it isn't, before around 2015 WinCE (Embedded) was a completely different codebase. Now, Windows is made up of "layers" - Onecore, OnecoreUAP, ClientCore etc. Desktop, Embedded, Server, Xbox are just one of these layers now.
doubled112 5y ago
I'd run (probably pay for) an 2K/XP style Windows 10 for sure. Just leave me WSL and Winget. Put the control panel back in one window. Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it. There are reasons I run Xfce on Linux desktops. Fast, has the features I need (which isn't much) and the features it has work reliably. I'm looking for a way to move and switch windows and launch programs. Everything else is just distraction.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it. You are not expected to. Most people believe the new features in proprietary operating systems are for them. Sure, a few of them are (although in the case of Windows 11 they might not be obvious). But today most of these are aimed at extracting value from the existing position - hence tons of adware on a fresh copy of your OS.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Windows Store is kind of useful, as it manages the installed software and keeps it updated, same as a *nix package manager. And that’s about it. It is completely infested with low quality apps, almost as bad as the Kindle App Store.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  The control panel situation is astounding. It's clear that there are a bunch of different silo'd teams in MS doing all this work, because I can't really think of why they would do this "transition" over years of half-baked lavaflow features. It seems like there are 2 or 3 places to access any given setting. Some of them have the same UI toolkit from 2000, and others look like an Xbox application. In Linux/BSD it always blows my mind that you can do "crazy" configuration changes like bring a LACP/LAGG interface online with essentially one command and zero downtime, while on Windows you will peck around 23 different UI's like a chicken in the sandbox only to break yourself.
Delk 5y ago
I'm curious as to how Windows 10 runs that poorly for you, or what to you counts as an "absolute dog". I've got a laptop that's only a CPU generation younger than yours, and Windows 10 for general use works okay for me. I don't see a great overall difference in performance when compared to Gnome on Linux. Do you use a lightweight desktop or something on Linux? (FWIW, I run Fedora for the majority of the time, and I've been using mostly Linux for nearly 20 years, at times exclusively, so this isn't Windows advocacy.)
- howdydoo 5y ago
  You're right that Windows 10 is "generally okay" on an old CPU, even for relatively heavy dev work. But I just upgraded from i7-3770k to i9-12900k and it made me realize how much time I spent _waiting_ for every little thing. I've been switching back and forth between the two as I migrate, and the old CPU definitely feels like a dog to me now. Aside: I was planning to switch to Linux too, but apparently this CPU/chipset is "too new" for Ubuntu to work, so I'm stuck on Windows for a few more months.
  - selfhifive 5y ago
    Running Windows 10 on anything other than an i7 and SSD setup is a nightmare.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    How can you switch back and forth? At you using a whole different computer, including motherboard, RAM, and disk? i7 to i9 isn't an age thing. The i9 costs almost double the i7 within a single release year. And the slowness in compiliation isn't a Windows thing, it's a heavy workload thing. Windows is slow because of IO, not CPU speed.
  - Delk 5y ago
    No doubt things are snappier on a present-day i9 than on an i7 from nearly a decade ago. It's also true that it's easy to get used to things and not see e.g. gradual degradation of performance with new and heavier software revisions. I was mostly interested in the perceived differences between Windows 10 and present-day mainstream Linux desktops because I don't generally feel a great difference between those.
vxNsr 5y ago
I have a hard time understanding what possessed them to create Windows 11. From my perspective it appears to be an OS designed by MBAs with no understanding of how software is designed or refactored. It very much feels like there was heavy handed too down instructions without any input taken from those building.
- johnsea 5y ago
  It's subjective. I like my Win 11 installation much better than 10. What I (still) miss though, is a tabbed Windows Explorer and some more polishing here and there. The Windows terminal and WSL2 work great. -- This said, my main computer runs Pop!_OS and Windows is only used when externally required.
- achandlerwhite 5y ago
  It’s because MacOS moved on to version 11 and now 12. Seriously.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    They even mentioned Windows 10 would be the last major version number. That was a master troll move by Apple...
- pedro2 5y ago
  Either a jan at Mac OS or they're going to start locking Full Hi-def content to Windows 11. It's easier to say "only works with Windows 11" than "requires TPM 2.0 computer". Also, maybe they want to support Android apps with DRM and wish to do it via TPM. Android apps support is only for Windows 11.
vladvasiliu 5y ago
That's weird, until recently I had a 3930k on which I occasionally ran Win 10. The computer had a SATA SSD (Samsung 840). It worked very well. It was occasional because I find Windows annoying for reasons other than performance. I've upgraded the CPU to a Xeon E5-2667 v2 (basically a 4th gen i7) to get PCIE 3 for my GPU. I've installed Windows 11 on it for my curiosity / gaming needs. It works very well, I'd say it's smoother / snappier than Win 10, but I'm wondering whether that's just some tweaked animation delays. It's undeniably better than on some 8th gen i5u + NVMe I have on a work laptop - which is officially supported!
NikolaNovak 5y ago
I 100% agree with first part. I don't follow / automatically agree on second part. I have three ThinkPads with i5-2520M that my family and I use daily with windows 10. Email browsing word excel etc. Some light games, lots of photo browsing and sorting and minimal editing via acdsee. If windows 10 is lagging in what is clearly a superior system from specs perspective, something doesn't work right. My first suspicion is ssds in raid as there's a myriday ways to get that wrong, but who knows?
- selfhifive 5y ago
  You don't notice the lag unless you've used a MacBook or Linux. If you ever upgrade to an i7 you will see a performance boost and your current system will feel slow. So running Linux on the same specs as Windows you'll see that Windows is slower and after a while as the bloat happens the slowness will become even more apparent.
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    I mean, yes... My main desktop and laptop are faster for big tasks. It's just that win10 on the 2nd generation mobile Intel is usable as opposed to a deal breaker. I don't yearn for xp from that perspective which never felt particularly snappy on anything. I feel we are at point of asking from windows to be something it is not.
    - selfhifive 5y ago
      That is true. Windows in the end will always be a mom and pop OS. But with increasing computer literacy I expect Microsoft's market share to dwindle. Btw what about your secondary memory is it SSD or traditional HDD?
      - NikolaNovak 5y ago
        In the thinkpads I added a sata ssd to replace original 320gb or 500gb spinners. Either crucial or Intel,nothing fancy. For one of them I replaced the DVD drive with secondary 2tb HDD for photos / movies... Ah ultra bay, how much we miss thee :). The 420s (slimmer version) is basically as lightweight laptop as I need, but has great keyboard and easy modularity of drives memory battery etc. What a time it was to be alive! My main laptop is ThinkPad t25 which is basically t470 with traditional keyboard layout. 512mb ssd. No room for secondary HDD. My main desktop is an aging beast - amd fx8350 and rx470 8gb. Bunch of ssd and HDD drives at any given point :). Speaking of storage, synology 918+ as Nas fwiw. Bunch of other computers around such as ThinkPad e545 and e580, plus an intel nuc around every tv. None of it fancy anymore, I have no time left for complex vlans or VMs or breakable OS's, but computers are my hammer so there's plenty around :-)
hbbio 5y ago
Kind of a trend... I don't think Apple realizes that as well. Photos? Tons of frameworks for scanning my photos and adding 3d custom emojis to Messages? They also lead the way for vulnerabilities like the latest NSO. What if we could just have a bare OS with all core frameworks and let users decide what to install. If nothing else for reducing the attack surface.
- genewitch 5y ago
  >>> bare OS >> Arch > but systemd Gentoo still "officially" supports openRC, if "systemd" is a pain point, as it is for me and several of my datacenter populating friends.
- coldpie 5y ago
  > What if we could just have a bare OS with all core frameworks and let users decide what to install. My friend, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux
  - least 5y ago
    There's a very vocal minority that would object to suggesting that Arch Linux is bare, especially since it comes packaged with systemd.
    - jagger27 5y ago
      If systemd is such a deal breaker, there's always Artix. https://artixlinux.org/ https://artixlinux.org/
      - least 5y ago
        I don't find it to be a deal breaker, just saying that systemd is at least controversial enough for such things to exist and that it might disqualify Arch from being a system that qualifies as one that is a "bare OS with all core frameworks" to some. It's incredibly subjective.
    - 5y ago
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
What you propose seems nice but is infeasible. Lightweight doesn't just mean getting rid of Paint3D and all this cruft installed by default. Today you have tons of APIs and services that need to be running, otherwise X breaks. The X could be your Bluetooth audio connection, and app that uses an obscure API call, a network service etc. So basically your lightweight alternative would be a broken, less powerful copy of Windows 10. So at that point it's just safer to use an older combination of OS and software that you know has been working fine.
- kaetemi 5y ago
  I think you'll find that Bluetooth audio already breaks, regardless.
collsni 5y ago
Disable spectre mitigations
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  And Windows Defender. It's notorious for slowing down damn near everything for the minimal gain of weak malware detection.
  - Narishma 5y ago
    I don't think you can disable it anymore in Windows 10. It just restarts after a few seconds.
    - fishtacos 5y ago
      You can't without group policy changes. It even has its own anti-tampering protection so it can't be disabled, Admin rights or not. However, it is doable - have been running it like this for a few years. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/234111/can39t-disable-windows-defender-by-using-group-pol.html https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/234111/ca...
      - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
        You can turn off the anti-tampering feature, though. And then use group policy etc to disable it. It worked/works for me.
lucb1e 5y ago
I want this for Android. If something like Android 2.x or 4.x would get a security update and I could run normal apps on it, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. Back then, the enhancement community was huge. Every Android version since then has seen fewer and fewer enhancements because they just keep getting broken over and over again by some new OS requirement. New versions require you to turn off permanent notifications for every application that needs to do anything in the background (signal, wire, email, etc.); I can no longer modify the status bar because the developer for that mod gave up after Android 8 and I can't find a new one; I can't slide over the notification bar to adjust brightness (useful when the screen is too dim to see the brightness slider); the concept of just returning an empty contacts list instead of breaking the app by denying a permission is gone; etc. Just look at the number of workarounds OsmAnd needs to apply and tell users about to keep track recording working, you can ctrl+f for nearly every android version and find remarks like "No good solution found for now. Current mitigation is we do not use AlarmManager wake-up, instead keep GPS always on": https://docs.osmand.net/en/main@latest/osmand/troubleshooting/track-recording-issues https://docs.osmand.net/en/main@latest/osmand/troubleshootin... (Of course, Google has no problem keeping location history for you. Only if you want to store it locally...) As a developer I will concede that many of the new APIs are so much nicer than the ones available for Android 4 so I do understand people drop support for it. Another thing is that battery drain of garbage apps is a real problem, but similar to the Win2k style OS proposal, this isn't meant for the mainstream. The mainstream can have their OS manage things for them, but as a power user that knows how to run 'htop' I'd really rather just manage my own device by myself.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  A Nexus 7 tablet with up to date CPU and storage plus a patched Android 4 would be an absolute winner.
  - smm11 5y ago
    I'd just like it if my S21 didn't delete any downloads over 25 gigs randomly, before I can move them off the phone.
- agumonkey 5y ago
jayp1418 5y ago
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity This OS has that look and feel of Windows 2000
- lambdaba 5y ago
  This looks great. It really is peak computer UI aesthetic, I know there are other contenders (Motif, BeOS), but I find this strikes a perfect balance.
gjvc 5y ago
I went to fire up Windows 2000 in a VM this past week. I had completely forgotten it was the last 32-bit version. If it were 64-bit, I expect there would be many still in service today.
- terinjokes 5y ago
  While there was a 64-bit edition of Windows XP (actually two: one for Itanium and one for AMD64), it was not very popular or well supported by drivers.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    It eventually did get nearly full driver support, the last pain point i had on WinXP x64 edition was ASIO4ALL, for years the author said, paraphrased, "I will never support 64 bit OS" - although it works fine on win7 x64 and up. The drivers that never worked correctly were industrial and "weird" things like radio programmers, stereoscopic headsets, and limited run PCI[e] cards and specialized USB peripherals, but most of those had issues with XP 32-bit as well, and never worked past XP, in general.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Windows 10 is the last 32-bit version https://www.engadget.com/windows-10-32-bit-oem-173055990.html https://www.engadget.com/windows-10-32-bit-oem-173055990.htm...
  - gjvc 5y ago
    oh. where can I get a 64 bit windows 2000?
    - Lammy 5y ago
      There isn't one for AMD64/"x64", only for Itanium and DEC Alpha, and the Alpha version was never truly released so there's only an RC2 build for that platform. https://web.archive.org/web/20100718055750/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGN/is_1999_August_26/ai_55572391/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100718055750/http://findarticl...
qalmakka 5y ago
A "modernized" - i.e. new icons, better colors and fonts - Windows 2000 UI would be awesome. One thing I really like of Mac OS is that after doing the big switch with Mac OS X, the UI has remained very similar and consistent, without too many paradigm shift. Windows went instead from having one of the best UIs ever designed (Windows 2000) to a fractal of inconsistency that has only worsened with every release since then. XP's design choices were... rather unique.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Honestly, Windows 2000's UI wasn't as great as people make it out to be. But what it was is consistent. Every program looked like it belonged on the system, except for some wacky video or audio players that consisted of text rendered on top of bitmaps. From the bootloader to the web browser, early Windows felt like it was all part of a single experience. Windows XP provided the same, except it was around for so long that the ecosystem around it tried harder and harder to mimick different operating systems. Win2k was right in the sweet spot. I'd love for Windows 11 to have a Win2k mode available. Keep the impressive kernel improvements, the virtualization based security, the WSL system, and just give me a UI that doesn't take a second to render the start menu. Even modern Windows explorer is quite usable (without the menu redesign), it's honestly just the shell and everything that you'd call an "app". The general public can take their candy story Fisher Price Windows if that's what they want, full of gaudy colours and fancy effects.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    The gaudy colors and fancy effects was Windows 7, IMO. I really enjoy Windows 7 though. It's fast, very little bloat, and modern enough that pretty much any Windows software works on it. Also, something about the Aero theme feels warm and cheerful to me. I can't replicate the feeling on Linux or Windows 10, and it saddens me.
    - jen20 5y ago
      The effects were a Vista thing. The gaudy colours were an XP thing.
coldpie 5y ago
I don't use Windows, but have to touch it once or twice a year for various reasons. It's absolutely wild whenever I do. I go to launch Notepad and the Start menu decides to inform me about some mass murder situation or the latest horrible politics news or some natural disaster?! I just wanted to write down some text, not spiral into depression. Who asked for this?
- windexh8er 5y ago
  Sales and marketing did.
- no-s 5y ago
  haha I started using a Windows 10 laptop from work recently and had a similar experience. I asked IT why they didn’t suppress it in their controlled deploys and they said no one knows how to do that...thankfully it’s not my only computing platform, I’d go mad. Jeez at the beginning of the day I just want to write code with only the distraction of measuring my work against user requirements. shouldering aside Guilt tripping adware all day harshes my mellow, upsets my flow, makes me waste my energy daydreaming of revenge hacks (fantasies of course, I’m very mellow at heart, but with a wellspring of ideas definitely NotSafeForPublicAttribution).
  - jnieminen 5y ago
    There is a group policy to "turn off windows consumer experience". To edit local group policies win 10 pro is needed. It is also possible to change the register value. See the link for more info. https://www.prajwaldesai.com/turn-off-windows-10-microsoft-consumer-experiences/ https://www.prajwaldesai.com/turn-off-windows-10-microsoft-c...
- reaperducer 5y ago
  I don't use Windows, but have to touch it once or twice a year for various reasons. I'm in a similar situation. I have to fire up the company ThinkPad every other month or so. It's amazing to me what is permitted in an so-called "Enterprise" edition of Windows 10. The part I find most annoying is the way Windows 10 automatically connects to my wifi, even when the setting to not permit auto-connect is enabled. I didn't care when I was in the office, but now that I'm in a work-from-home situation, no, Windows, you don't get to connect to my LAN whenever you feel like it. After checking and re-checking the setting probably a dozen times, but it persisting in auto-connecting to my router, I had to ban the ThinkPad at the router level. Now on those occasions when I use the machine, I have to remember to un-ban it from my network for the duration of the task, then re-ban the machine. Microsoft (and my billion-dollar healthcare company) are working with a definition of "Enterprise" with which I was previously unfamiliar.
davidgerard 5y ago
The Windows Server version has none of the shit and runs everything fine, but costs accordingly.
- philistine 5y ago
  Can you game with it? Is Direct X running on it? Honestly, gamers, who so often lead the trends in destop PCs, have been asleep at the switch decrying all that cruft.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    With some effort, yes. I successfully ran Battlefield 3 on a GPU-enabled AWS instance with Steam streaming, so I'd assume it would run just as well on the bare-metal.
dragonwriter 5y ago
I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it.
- richardfey 5y ago
  They would also need to hire or reassign a bunch of teams to support it
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    I don't know how that got posted on its own, it was a quote from a comment I was quoting to respond negatively too.
    - MonkeyClub 5y ago
      Freudian lisp.
thrower123 5y ago
If they would just sell their LTSB/LTSC builds that are currently only available through MSDN and volume licensing deals... It's not perfect, but it is wildly better and more stable than the consumer-available versions.
newsclues 5y ago
I would pay retail for a modern version with long term support of win2kpro. I’ve never bought windows. Except one dell laptop prior to Linux editions.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it. I don't think you realize that, no, they couldn't.
alisonkisk 5y ago
Have you reinstalled windows from scratch, or are you running your 10 year old gunked up corrupted install?
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it." Then buy an MSDN subscription and use the enterprise or even server editions. You did say "any price" after all.
agumonkey 5y ago
funny how NT5 was such a massive achievement
thereddaikon 5y ago
They likely do realize it but don't care. For all the talk of Linux this or Mac that the truth is Windows still dominates the PC market. Microsoft doesn't need to make an OS that really appeals to businesses to get their business, so why bother?
ab_testing 5y ago
May be something is wrong with your setup . My daily machine is a Dell Inspiron with an I3 2120 and a 256GB SSD. It runs great on Windows 10.
schipplock 5y ago
> I have an i7 3770k box that I repurpose occassionally for random projects. It runs Linux really well, but Win10 is an absolute dog. I can't even imagine Windows 11? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min... I'm sorry, but your cpu isn't supported anymore :P.
saturn5k 5y ago
The closest you can get to this is modifying a Windows ISO with NTLite[1] and remove any unwanted bloatware. I've been doing this for the last couple of years on all my machines and I suggest you give it a try. [1] https://www.ntlite.com/tutorial-for-creating-and-testing-a-700mb-windows-10-iso/ https://www.ntlite.com/tutorial-for-creating-and-testing-a-7...
justin66 5y ago
> I have an i7 3770k box that I repurpose occassionally for random projects. It runs Linux really well, but Win10 is an absolute dog. I can't even imagine Windows 11? Overclocked, 16gb RAM, SSD's in RAID... it doesn't make sense. I've been using Windows 10 (previously Windows 7) on an i7-3770 for close to ten years (!). That shouldn't be a slow machine. The only way my system might have an advantage would be the GPU or the 32GB of RAM. Sad to think that big chunk of memory might actually be needed, but, might be worth a try? There are some things that are easy to get wrong in terms of motherboard setup (memory timings!) even if you're not overclocking. It seems farfetched that those would effect Windows a lot more than Linux, which you said is working fine, but again, it might be something to look at. Contrary to another commenter, I never noticed Spectre and Meltdown mitigations to cause a real problem, and I did some benchmarking because I was concerned about that.

whalesalad 5y ago

I would love to see the "internal wiki" at MS that explains how to do this yourself. I have to imagine that there are employees internally who feel this way too and run their own "lightened" OS.

zeusk 5y ago
There are multiple stripped out SKUs internally but none of them are "win2000" style. More like no shell (OneCoreUAP) or no compositor/desktop (OneCore).
hyperionplays 5y ago
Isnt that what windows embedded is? stripped out lightweight windows?
- whalesalad 5y ago
  It's hard to say. MS changes the strategy all the time and there are so many SKUs it is hard to follow, at least for an outsider such as myself. I know there is a long-term release version that tends to recieve fewer updates and is considered more of an LTS/Stable release - but I think that there are also artificial limitations on this too as far as what it is capable of and how you can get a hold of it.
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
    I haven't noticed any particular limitations, but my understanding is that it's not very straightforward to get by "official" means. At work, another team is in charge of point of sale and other similar devices running Windows IOT or whatever it's called now, and apparently licensing is completely different from the "regular" desktop and server installs.
- zeusk 5y ago
  No it isn't, before around 2015 WinCE (Embedded) was a completely different codebase. Now, Windows is made up of "layers" - Onecore, OnecoreUAP, ClientCore etc. Desktop, Embedded, Server, Xbox are just one of these layers now.

doubled112 5y ago

I'd run (probably pay for) an 2K/XP style Windows 10 for sure. Just leave me WSL and Winget. Put the control panel back in one window. Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it. There are reasons I run Xfce on Linux desktops. Fast, has the features I need (which isn't much) and the features it has work reliably. I'm looking for a way to move and switch windows and launch programs. Everything else is just distraction.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it. You are not expected to. Most people believe the new features in proprietary operating systems are for them. Sure, a few of them are (although in the case of Windows 11 they might not be obvious). But today most of these are aimed at extracting value from the existing position - hence tons of adware on a fresh copy of your OS.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Windows Store is kind of useful, as it manages the installed software and keeps it updated, same as a *nix package manager. And that’s about it. It is completely infested with low quality apps, almost as bad as the Kindle App Store.
whalesalad 5y ago
The control panel situation is astounding. It's clear that there are a bunch of different silo'd teams in MS doing all this work, because I can't really think of why they would do this "transition" over years of half-baked lavaflow features. It seems like there are 2 or 3 places to access any given setting. Some of them have the same UI toolkit from 2000, and others look like an Xbox application. In Linux/BSD it always blows my mind that you can do "crazy" configuration changes like bring a LACP/LAGG interface online with essentially one command and zero downtime, while on Windows you will peck around 23 different UI's like a chicken in the sandbox only to break yourself.

Delk 5y ago

I'm curious as to how Windows 10 runs that poorly for you, or what to you counts as an "absolute dog". I've got a laptop that's only a CPU generation younger than yours, and Windows 10 for general use works okay for me. I don't see a great overall difference in performance when compared to Gnome on Linux. Do you use a lightweight desktop or something on Linux? (FWIW, I run Fedora for the majority of the time, and I've been using mostly Linux for nearly 20 years, at times exclusively, so this isn't Windows advocacy.)

howdydoo 5y ago
You're right that Windows 10 is "generally okay" on an old CPU, even for relatively heavy dev work. But I just upgraded from i7-3770k to i9-12900k and it made me realize how much time I spent _waiting_ for every little thing. I've been switching back and forth between the two as I migrate, and the old CPU definitely feels like a dog to me now. Aside: I was planning to switch to Linux too, but apparently this CPU/chipset is "too new" for Ubuntu to work, so I'm stuck on Windows for a few more months.
- selfhifive 5y ago
  Running Windows 10 on anything other than an i7 and SSD setup is a nightmare.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  How can you switch back and forth? At you using a whole different computer, including motherboard, RAM, and disk? i7 to i9 isn't an age thing. The i9 costs almost double the i7 within a single release year. And the slowness in compiliation isn't a Windows thing, it's a heavy workload thing. Windows is slow because of IO, not CPU speed.
- Delk 5y ago
  No doubt things are snappier on a present-day i9 than on an i7 from nearly a decade ago. It's also true that it's easy to get used to things and not see e.g. gradual degradation of performance with new and heavier software revisions. I was mostly interested in the perceived differences between Windows 10 and present-day mainstream Linux desktops because I don't generally feel a great difference between those.

vxNsr 5y ago

I have a hard time understanding what possessed them to create Windows 11. From my perspective it appears to be an OS designed by MBAs with no understanding of how software is designed or refactored. It very much feels like there was heavy handed too down instructions without any input taken from those building.

johnsea 5y ago
It's subjective. I like my Win 11 installation much better than 10. What I (still) miss though, is a tabbed Windows Explorer and some more polishing here and there. The Windows terminal and WSL2 work great. -- This said, my main computer runs Pop!_OS and Windows is only used when externally required.
achandlerwhite 5y ago
It’s because MacOS moved on to version 11 and now 12. Seriously.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  They even mentioned Windows 10 would be the last major version number. That was a master troll move by Apple...
pedro2 5y ago
Either a jan at Mac OS or they're going to start locking Full Hi-def content to Windows 11. It's easier to say "only works with Windows 11" than "requires TPM 2.0 computer". Also, maybe they want to support Android apps with DRM and wish to do it via TPM. Android apps support is only for Windows 11.

vladvasiliu 5y ago

That's weird, until recently I had a 3930k on which I occasionally ran Win 10. The computer had a SATA SSD (Samsung 840). It worked very well. It was occasional because I find Windows annoying for reasons other than performance. I've upgraded the CPU to a Xeon E5-2667 v2 (basically a 4th gen i7) to get PCIE 3 for my GPU. I've installed Windows 11 on it for my curiosity / gaming needs. It works very well, I'd say it's smoother / snappier than Win 10, but I'm wondering whether that's just some tweaked animation delays. It's undeniably better than on some 8th gen i5u + NVMe I have on a work laptop - which is officially supported!

NikolaNovak 5y ago

I 100% agree with first part. I don't follow / automatically agree on second part. I have three ThinkPads with i5-2520M that my family and I use daily with windows 10. Email browsing word excel etc. Some light games, lots of photo browsing and sorting and minimal editing via acdsee. If windows 10 is lagging in what is clearly a superior system from specs perspective, something doesn't work right. My first suspicion is ssds in raid as there's a myriday ways to get that wrong, but who knows?

selfhifive 5y ago
You don't notice the lag unless you've used a MacBook or Linux. If you ever upgrade to an i7 you will see a performance boost and your current system will feel slow. So running Linux on the same specs as Windows you'll see that Windows is slower and after a while as the bloat happens the slowness will become even more apparent.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I mean, yes... My main desktop and laptop are faster for big tasks. It's just that win10 on the 2nd generation mobile Intel is usable as opposed to a deal breaker. I don't yearn for xp from that perspective which never felt particularly snappy on anything. I feel we are at point of asking from windows to be something it is not.
  - selfhifive 5y ago
    That is true. Windows in the end will always be a mom and pop OS. But with increasing computer literacy I expect Microsoft's market share to dwindle. Btw what about your secondary memory is it SSD or traditional HDD?
    - NikolaNovak 5y ago
      In the thinkpads I added a sata ssd to replace original 320gb or 500gb spinners. Either crucial or Intel,nothing fancy. For one of them I replaced the DVD drive with secondary 2tb HDD for photos / movies... Ah ultra bay, how much we miss thee :). The 420s (slimmer version) is basically as lightweight laptop as I need, but has great keyboard and easy modularity of drives memory battery etc. What a time it was to be alive! My main laptop is ThinkPad t25 which is basically t470 with traditional keyboard layout. 512mb ssd. No room for secondary HDD. My main desktop is an aging beast - amd fx8350 and rx470 8gb. Bunch of ssd and HDD drives at any given point :). Speaking of storage, synology 918+ as Nas fwiw. Bunch of other computers around such as ThinkPad e545 and e580, plus an intel nuc around every tv. None of it fancy anymore, I have no time left for complex vlans or VMs or breakable OS's, but computers are my hammer so there's plenty around :-)

hbbio 5y ago

Kind of a trend... I don't think Apple realizes that as well. Photos? Tons of frameworks for scanning my photos and adding 3d custom emojis to Messages? They also lead the way for vulnerabilities like the latest NSO. What if we could just have a bare OS with all core frameworks and let users decide what to install. If nothing else for reducing the attack surface.

genewitch 5y ago
>>> bare OS >> Arch > but systemd Gentoo still "officially" supports openRC, if "systemd" is a pain point, as it is for me and several of my datacenter populating friends.
coldpie 5y ago
> What if we could just have a bare OS with all core frameworks and let users decide what to install. My friend, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux
- least 5y ago
  There's a very vocal minority that would object to suggesting that Arch Linux is bare, especially since it comes packaged with systemd.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    If systemd is such a deal breaker, there's always Artix. https://artixlinux.org/ https://artixlinux.org/
    - least 5y ago
      I don't find it to be a deal breaker, just saying that systemd is at least controversial enough for such things to exist and that it might disqualify Arch from being a system that qualifies as one that is a "bare OS with all core frameworks" to some. It's incredibly subjective.
  - 5y ago

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

What you propose seems nice but is infeasible. Lightweight doesn't just mean getting rid of Paint3D and all this cruft installed by default. Today you have tons of APIs and services that need to be running, otherwise X breaks. The X could be your Bluetooth audio connection, and app that uses an obscure API call, a network service etc. So basically your lightweight alternative would be a broken, less powerful copy of Windows 10. So at that point it's just safer to use an older combination of OS and software that you know has been working fine.

kaetemi 5y ago
I think you'll find that Bluetooth audio already breaks, regardless.

collsni 5y ago

Disable spectre mitigations

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
And Windows Defender. It's notorious for slowing down damn near everything for the minimal gain of weak malware detection.
- Narishma 5y ago
  I don't think you can disable it anymore in Windows 10. It just restarts after a few seconds.
  - fishtacos 5y ago
    You can't without group policy changes. It even has its own anti-tampering protection so it can't be disabled, Admin rights or not. However, it is doable - have been running it like this for a few years. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/234111/can39t-disable-windows-defender-by-using-group-pol.html https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/234111/ca...
    - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
      You can turn off the anti-tampering feature, though. And then use group policy etc to disable it. It worked/works for me.

lucb1e 5y ago

I want this for Android. If something like Android 2.x or 4.x would get a security update and I could run normal apps on it, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. Back then, the enhancement community was huge. Every Android version since then has seen fewer and fewer enhancements because they just keep getting broken over and over again by some new OS requirement. New versions require you to turn off permanent notifications for every application that needs to do anything in the background (signal, wire, email, etc.); I can no longer modify the status bar because the developer for that mod gave up after Android 8 and I can't find a new one; I can't slide over the notification bar to adjust brightness (useful when the screen is too dim to see the brightness slider); the concept of just returning an empty contacts list instead of breaking the app by denying a permission is gone; etc. Just look at the number of workarounds OsmAnd needs to apply and tell users about to keep track recording working, you can ctrl+f for nearly every android version and find remarks like "No good solution found for now. Current mitigation is we do not use AlarmManager wake-up, instead keep GPS always on": https://docs.osmand.net/en/main@latest/osmand/troubleshooting/track-recording-issues https://docs.osmand.net/en/main@latest/osmand/troubleshootin... (Of course, Google has no problem keeping location history for you. Only if you want to store it locally...) As a developer I will concede that many of the new APIs are so much nicer than the ones available for Android 4 so I do understand people drop support for it. Another thing is that battery drain of garbage apps is a real problem, but similar to the Win2k style OS proposal, this isn't meant for the mainstream. The mainstream can have their OS manage things for them, but as a power user that knows how to run 'htop' I'd really rather just manage my own device by myself.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
A Nexus 7 tablet with up to date CPU and storage plus a patched Android 4 would be an absolute winner.
- smm11 5y ago
  I'd just like it if my S21 didn't delete any downloads over 25 gigs randomly, before I can move them off the phone.
agumonkey 5y ago

jayp1418 5y ago

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity This OS has that look and feel of Windows 2000

lambdaba 5y ago
This looks great. It really is peak computer UI aesthetic, I know there are other contenders (Motif, BeOS), but I find this strikes a perfect balance.

gjvc 5y ago

I went to fire up Windows 2000 in a VM this past week. I had completely forgotten it was the last 32-bit version. If it were 64-bit, I expect there would be many still in service today.

terinjokes 5y ago
While there was a 64-bit edition of Windows XP (actually two: one for Itanium and one for AMD64), it was not very popular or well supported by drivers.
- genewitch 5y ago
  It eventually did get nearly full driver support, the last pain point i had on WinXP x64 edition was ASIO4ALL, for years the author said, paraphrased, "I will never support 64 bit OS" - although it works fine on win7 x64 and up. The drivers that never worked correctly were industrial and "weird" things like radio programmers, stereoscopic headsets, and limited run PCI[e] cards and specialized USB peripherals, but most of those had issues with XP 32-bit as well, and never worked past XP, in general.
Lammy 5y ago
Windows 10 is the last 32-bit version https://www.engadget.com/windows-10-32-bit-oem-173055990.html https://www.engadget.com/windows-10-32-bit-oem-173055990.htm...
- gjvc 5y ago
  oh. where can I get a 64 bit windows 2000?
  - Lammy 5y ago
    There isn't one for AMD64/"x64", only for Itanium and DEC Alpha, and the Alpha version was never truly released so there's only an RC2 build for that platform. https://web.archive.org/web/20100718055750/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGN/is_1999_August_26/ai_55572391/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100718055750/http://findarticl...

qalmakka 5y ago

A "modernized" - i.e. new icons, better colors and fonts - Windows 2000 UI would be awesome. One thing I really like of Mac OS is that after doing the big switch with Mac OS X, the UI has remained very similar and consistent, without too many paradigm shift. Windows went instead from having one of the best UIs ever designed (Windows 2000) to a fractal of inconsistency that has only worsened with every release since then. XP's design choices were... rather unique.

jeroenhd 5y ago
Honestly, Windows 2000's UI wasn't as great as people make it out to be. But what it was is consistent. Every program looked like it belonged on the system, except for some wacky video or audio players that consisted of text rendered on top of bitmaps. From the bootloader to the web browser, early Windows felt like it was all part of a single experience. Windows XP provided the same, except it was around for so long that the ecosystem around it tried harder and harder to mimick different operating systems. Win2k was right in the sweet spot. I'd love for Windows 11 to have a Win2k mode available. Keep the impressive kernel improvements, the virtualization based security, the WSL system, and just give me a UI that doesn't take a second to render the start menu. Even modern Windows explorer is quite usable (without the menu redesign), it's honestly just the shell and everything that you'd call an "app". The general public can take their candy story Fisher Price Windows if that's what they want, full of gaudy colours and fancy effects.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  The gaudy colors and fancy effects was Windows 7, IMO. I really enjoy Windows 7 though. It's fast, very little bloat, and modern enough that pretty much any Windows software works on it. Also, something about the Aero theme feels warm and cheerful to me. I can't replicate the feeling on Linux or Windows 10, and it saddens me.
  - jen20 5y ago
    The effects were a Vista thing. The gaudy colours were an XP thing.

coldpie 5y ago

I don't use Windows, but have to touch it once or twice a year for various reasons. It's absolutely wild whenever I do. I go to launch Notepad and the Start menu decides to inform me about some mass murder situation or the latest horrible politics news or some natural disaster?! I just wanted to write down some text, not spiral into depression. Who asked for this?

windexh8er 5y ago
Sales and marketing did.
no-s 5y ago
haha I started using a Windows 10 laptop from work recently and had a similar experience. I asked IT why they didn’t suppress it in their controlled deploys and they said no one knows how to do that...thankfully it’s not my only computing platform, I’d go mad. Jeez at the beginning of the day I just want to write code with only the distraction of measuring my work against user requirements. shouldering aside Guilt tripping adware all day harshes my mellow, upsets my flow, makes me waste my energy daydreaming of revenge hacks (fantasies of course, I’m very mellow at heart, but with a wellspring of ideas definitely NotSafeForPublicAttribution).
- jnieminen 5y ago
  There is a group policy to "turn off windows consumer experience". To edit local group policies win 10 pro is needed. It is also possible to change the register value. See the link for more info. https://www.prajwaldesai.com/turn-off-windows-10-microsoft-consumer-experiences/ https://www.prajwaldesai.com/turn-off-windows-10-microsoft-c...
reaperducer 5y ago
I don't use Windows, but have to touch it once or twice a year for various reasons. I'm in a similar situation. I have to fire up the company ThinkPad every other month or so. It's amazing to me what is permitted in an so-called "Enterprise" edition of Windows 10. The part I find most annoying is the way Windows 10 automatically connects to my wifi, even when the setting to not permit auto-connect is enabled. I didn't care when I was in the office, but now that I'm in a work-from-home situation, no, Windows, you don't get to connect to my LAN whenever you feel like it. After checking and re-checking the setting probably a dozen times, but it persisting in auto-connecting to my router, I had to ban the ThinkPad at the router level. Now on those occasions when I use the machine, I have to remember to un-ban it from my network for the duration of the task, then re-ban the machine. Microsoft (and my billion-dollar healthcare company) are working with a definition of "Enterprise" with which I was previously unfamiliar.

davidgerard 5y ago

The Windows Server version has none of the shit and runs everything fine, but costs accordingly.

philistine 5y ago
Can you game with it? Is Direct X running on it? Honestly, gamers, who so often lead the trends in destop PCs, have been asleep at the switch decrying all that cruft.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  With some effort, yes. I successfully ran Battlefield 3 on a GPU-enabled AWS instance with Steam streaming, so I'd assume it would run just as well on the bare-metal.

dragonwriter 5y ago

I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it.

richardfey 5y ago
They would also need to hire or reassign a bunch of teams to support it
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  I don't know how that got posted on its own, it was a quote from a comment I was quoting to respond negatively too.
  - MonkeyClub 5y ago
    Freudian lisp.

thrower123 5y ago

If they would just sell their LTSB/LTSC builds that are currently only available through MSDN and volume licensing deals... It's not perfect, but it is wildly better and more stable than the consumer-available versions.

newsclues 5y ago

I would pay retail for a modern version with long term support of win2kpro. I’ve never bought windows. Except one dell laptop prior to Linux editions.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it. I don't think you realize that, no, they couldn't.

alisonkisk 5y ago

Have you reinstalled windows from scratch, or are you running your 10 year old gunked up corrupted install?

ThrowawayR2 5y ago

> "I don't think Microsoft realizes that if they re-introduced a lightweight Win2k style OS for professionals they could charge any price they wanted for it." Then buy an MSDN subscription and use the enterprise or even server editions. You did say "any price" after all.

agumonkey 5y ago

funny how NT5 was such a massive achievement

thereddaikon 5y ago

They likely do realize it but don't care. For all the talk of Linux this or Mac that the truth is Windows still dominates the PC market. Microsoft doesn't need to make an OS that really appeals to businesses to get their business, so why bother?

ab_testing 5y ago

May be something is wrong with your setup . My daily machine is a Dell Inspiron with an I3 2120 and a 256GB SSD. It runs great on Windows 10.

schipplock 5y ago

> I have an i7 3770k box that I repurpose occassionally for random projects. It runs Linux really well, but Win10 is an absolute dog. I can't even imagine Windows 11? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min... I'm sorry, but your cpu isn't supported anymore :P.

saturn5k 5y ago

The closest you can get to this is modifying a Windows ISO with NTLite[1] and remove any unwanted bloatware. I've been doing this for the last couple of years on all my machines and I suggest you give it a try. [1] https://www.ntlite.com/tutorial-for-creating-and-testing-a-700mb-windows-10-iso/ https://www.ntlite.com/tutorial-for-creating-and-testing-a-7...

justin66 5y ago

> I have an i7 3770k box that I repurpose occassionally for random projects. It runs Linux really well, but Win10 is an absolute dog. I can't even imagine Windows 11? Overclocked, 16gb RAM, SSD's in RAID... it doesn't make sense. I've been using Windows 10 (previously Windows 7) on an i7-3770 for close to ten years (!). That shouldn't be a slow machine. The only way my system might have an advantage would be the GPU or the 32GB of RAM. Sad to think that big chunk of memory might actually be needed, but, might be worth a try? There are some things that are easy to get wrong in terms of motherboard setup (memory timings!) even if you're not overclocking. It seems farfetched that those would effect Windows a lot more than Linux, which you said is working fine, but again, it might be something to look at. Contrary to another commenter, I never noticed Spectre and Meltdown mitigations to cause a real problem, and I did some benchmarking because I was concerned about that.