5 ms·

I'd give Windows some credit - it is actually quite good and stable these days.

nirav72 3y ago
No denying that windows these days isn’t stable. Indeed it is. My biggest issue is all the third party crap I never asked for gets installed with it. Not to mention all the Microsoft services that I don’t want to use, but still manage to be there. Like OneDrive. Sure one can uninstall it. But then see the mess it leaves with the way files are saved in the documents directory. Even when setting up a Windows 11 VM , I usually have to spend an hour just removing stuff, disabling things and multiple reboots just to trim things down.
- xcv123 3y ago
  > I usually have to spend an hour just removing stuff, disabling things and multiple reboots just to trim things down. All of that is automated now. https://atlasos.net https://atlasos.net
  - nirav72 3y ago
    yeah, I've used plenty of community made tools to de-bloat windows. But that's not the point. We shouldn't have to do that. Especially when its a paid windows license, I shouldn't have to spend time dealing with Microsoft's effort at further squeezing out more revenue from their OS platform.
    - xcv123 3y ago
      It was even worse in the Win95/98 era. I remember reinstalling the entire network stack multiple times in one day just to get TCP/IP working. The operating system was an extremely broken piece of shit and wasted days of my life. Shoulda this. Shoulda that. This is just the reality of Microsoft that we have to accept, and it will never change. There are tools to deal with it. So I use the tools and move on with my life.
- petepete 3y ago
  If you set your language to 'English (World)' during the install, none of the crapware is installed. Or at least it wasn't last year when I installed W11 (I still occasionally need Affinity Photo and Capture One). Microsoft might have realised they're missing out on a few pennies and plugged the gap.
threeseed 3y ago
WSL still doesn't have the proper UNIX like experience of macOS. And there is no decent equivalent to homebrew.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean with Hyper-V why even WSL and just run VMs of whatever other OS'es you want? Tinkering with the OS these days is just so much different than it was in the past. Trying to dual boot Win/Linux back in the day was a interesting challenge that might leave your disk corrupt, now it's a question of why do that at all? Hacking smaller platforms like the pi that are cheap seems to get more attention than PCs these days.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    WSL gives you much better integration with the rest of the OS. These days it even covers GUI Linux apps.
  - switch007 3y ago
    Hyper-V lol. Use VMware Player/Workstation if you want to get any real work done
- torginus 3y ago
  Imo, it's much more of a proper Linux experience than MacOS. e.g. all the filesystems stuff is there like /proc, you don't have to deal with BSD/Linux differences, zsh/bash compat issues etc. macOS Unix compatibility is an oversold feature, and it's unlikely for anything made for Linux to work on it unless it's specifically ported. That being sad, a lot of the dev community own macs, so this support usually exists.
k12sosse 3y ago
Good is relative. Windows 2000 never reset your preferences on an update of the OS.
- MenhirMike 3y ago
  Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of Windows. Rock solid, and that was before they broke the search function (when it actually still actually searched in files rather than an incomplete index - thankfully, grepWin can be installed) or when they dumbed down the Control Panel.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    You're the only person I've ever seen who agrees with me on that. W2K was the perfect windows - more polished than NT4, less bullshit than XP.
    - MenhirMike 3y ago
      I really don't understand where the nostalgia for XP comes from. Well, actually I think I do because a lot of home users probably didn't use NT4 and 2k and went straight from 98/ME to XP. But I remember all the ridicule that XP got for being such a terrible bubblegum OS X imitation, with required activation, and a bunch of stability and driver issues that were eventually ironed out. XP after Service Pack 2 was also rock solid, and probably still the best choice for a retro gaming PC because it's got decent hardware and software support and the activation has been worked around. But yeah, I used every Windows version since 3.11 full-time, and 2k was perfection - literally can't think of any downside to it.
      - jwells89 3y ago
        I used both 2k and XP. 2k is pretty great, but fully patched XP is too. It’s totally subjective but as much as I loved 2k I’d give an edge to end-state XP mainly for its ability to be customized with third party .msstyle themes, of which there were many that were well made and good looking. Fully patched 7 is a bit better yet for me though, because its theming engine added support for full depth alpha which really opened up possibilities for theme designers. It was a massive disappointment when Windows 8 came along and gutted the engine, regressing it to being barely more capable than Windows 1.x with all the flat squares.
huytersd 3y ago
Yep, I don’t think I’ve had windows crash in atleast 2-3 years and I do a lot of strange, processor heavy things.

No denying that windows these days isn’t stable. Indeed it is. My biggest issue is all the third party crap I never asked for gets installed with it. Not to mention all the Microsoft services that I don’t want to use, but still manage to be there. Like OneDrive. Sure one can uninstall it. But then see the mess it leaves with the way files are saved in the documents directory. Even when setting up a Windows 11 VM , I usually have to spend an hour just removing stuff, disabling things and multiple reboots just to trim things down.

xcv123 3y ago
> I usually have to spend an hour just removing stuff, disabling things and multiple reboots just to trim things down. All of that is automated now. https://atlasos.net https://atlasos.net
- nirav72 3y ago
  yeah, I've used plenty of community made tools to de-bloat windows. But that's not the point. We shouldn't have to do that. Especially when its a paid windows license, I shouldn't have to spend time dealing with Microsoft's effort at further squeezing out more revenue from their OS platform.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    It was even worse in the Win95/98 era. I remember reinstalling the entire network stack multiple times in one day just to get TCP/IP working. The operating system was an extremely broken piece of shit and wasted days of my life. Shoulda this. Shoulda that. This is just the reality of Microsoft that we have to accept, and it will never change. There are tools to deal with it. So I use the tools and move on with my life.
petepete 3y ago
If you set your language to 'English (World)' during the install, none of the crapware is installed. Or at least it wasn't last year when I installed W11 (I still occasionally need Affinity Photo and Capture One). Microsoft might have realised they're missing out on a few pennies and plugged the gap.

threeseed 3y ago

WSL still doesn't have the proper UNIX like experience of macOS. And there is no decent equivalent to homebrew.

pixl97 3y ago
I mean with Hyper-V why even WSL and just run VMs of whatever other OS'es you want? Tinkering with the OS these days is just so much different than it was in the past. Trying to dual boot Win/Linux back in the day was a interesting challenge that might leave your disk corrupt, now it's a question of why do that at all? Hacking smaller platforms like the pi that are cheap seems to get more attention than PCs these days.
- int_19h 3y ago
  WSL gives you much better integration with the rest of the OS. These days it even covers GUI Linux apps.
- switch007 3y ago
  Hyper-V lol. Use VMware Player/Workstation if you want to get any real work done
torginus 3y ago
Imo, it's much more of a proper Linux experience than MacOS. e.g. all the filesystems stuff is there like /proc, you don't have to deal with BSD/Linux differences, zsh/bash compat issues etc. macOS Unix compatibility is an oversold feature, and it's unlikely for anything made for Linux to work on it unless it's specifically ported. That being sad, a lot of the dev community own macs, so this support usually exists.

k12sosse 3y ago

Good is relative. Windows 2000 never reset your preferences on an update of the OS.

MenhirMike 3y ago
Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of Windows. Rock solid, and that was before they broke the search function (when it actually still actually searched in files rather than an incomplete index - thankfully, grepWin can be installed) or when they dumbed down the Control Panel.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  You're the only person I've ever seen who agrees with me on that. W2K was the perfect windows - more polished than NT4, less bullshit than XP.
  - MenhirMike 3y ago
    I really don't understand where the nostalgia for XP comes from. Well, actually I think I do because a lot of home users probably didn't use NT4 and 2k and went straight from 98/ME to XP. But I remember all the ridicule that XP got for being such a terrible bubblegum OS X imitation, with required activation, and a bunch of stability and driver issues that were eventually ironed out. XP after Service Pack 2 was also rock solid, and probably still the best choice for a retro gaming PC because it's got decent hardware and software support and the activation has been worked around. But yeah, I used every Windows version since 3.11 full-time, and 2k was perfection - literally can't think of any downside to it.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      I used both 2k and XP. 2k is pretty great, but fully patched XP is too. It’s totally subjective but as much as I loved 2k I’d give an edge to end-state XP mainly for its ability to be customized with third party .msstyle themes, of which there were many that were well made and good looking. Fully patched 7 is a bit better yet for me though, because its theming engine added support for full depth alpha which really opened up possibilities for theme designers. It was a massive disappointment when Windows 8 came along and gutted the engine, regressing it to being barely more capable than Windows 1.x with all the flat squares.

huytersd 3y ago

Yep, I don’t think I’ve had windows crash in atleast 2-3 years and I do a lot of strange, processor heavy things.