4 ms·

NT kernel with it's related stability, true-color interface, no XP "fisher price" UI. 2000 was probably the pinnacle of that era's design language. Ironically,

NT kernel with it's related stability, true-color interface, no XP "fisher price" UI. 2000 was probably the pinnacle of that era's design language. Ironically, XP made it more feasible to use 2000 day to day as drivers for XP worked on the earlier 2000.

derefr 3y ago
Re: XP UI — did you ever try Windows Server 2003?
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  Server 2003 was my daily driver on a laptop for a few years. Most XP software ran fine but it had none of the XP visual cruft. Until Windows 7 it was peak Windows for me.
  - deepspace 3y ago
    I ran that rare beast, Windows XP64. It was basically Server2003 x64 with the XP UI. Driver compatibility was terrible, as you might expect, but it could support a vast amount of memory (relative to XP). I used the base O/S only to run VMware Workstation, and then ran small instances of XP, each dedicated to a task like audio, video, etc, on top of that. Along with FreeBSD and various flavors of Linux. That was my daily driver until late 2010. Solid as a rock.
    - EvanAnderson 3y ago
      XP64 was an odd animal. I had a Customer who usd it to run Unigraphics CAD. The Dell Precision machines they had with factory-loaded XP64 were fine. Trying to get their random other machines to run it w/ working audio, video, and chipset drivers was a pain. I never ran it as a desktop OS myself. I installed plenty of the server version it was based on (W2K3 x64) but those boxes always had standard VGA drivers, no audio, and sometimes a RAID controller driver, but that was usually it.
    - bonton89 3y ago
      I adopted XP64 kind of late IIRC (after Vista introduction) so the driver situation seemed fine to me. I had a cheap USB 56K modem I had to replace but otherwise all my hardware worked.
    - sillywalk 3y ago
      Was that XP for x86-64 or XP for Itanium? I'd imagine both were pretty rare.
- genmud 3y ago
  IIRC you could actually run XP themes on 2k3 if you started the theme service. Under the hood they were almost the same exact same kernel (I think server / 5.2 had a slightly different IP stack and some server tweaks for task scheduling, shadow volumes and memory caching). Likewise if you wanted the non XP (Luna I think it was called?) styles you could just stop the theme service and it was effectively win2k style.
  - chungy 3y ago
    > Under the hood they were almost the same exact same kernel Literally the exact same kernel if you count XP x64 Edition. Even the exact same Windows Updates apply to both. :) But yeah, Windows XP (32-bit; NT 5.1) and Server 2003 (NT 5.2) were pretty close. The latter was pretty much "XP Server Edition", albeit some significant kernel changes were made, especially to improve network performance. It was the only time that the client and server versions of NT had diverged. Granted, the Windows Server team didn't feel like NT 6.0 was ready for the primetime when Vista launched, but instead of having two branches of the operating system again, Windows Server 2008 was launched identifying as "Service Pack 1" from the get-go, with Windows Vista's SP1 updating the OS to include all of the underlying improvements made for Server 2008. From that point forward, they were the same, including the same Windows Updates. It's also the point that Windows Vista got all of its technical flaws fixed. (Reputation flaws not withstanding, it wouldn't be until Windows Vista SP3 aka Windows 7, that the reputation would get reset...)
int_19h 3y ago
XP "fisher price" UI was trivial to disable in settings, giving you that same slate gray look of 98/2K, but with 24-bit color icons. This was actually possible to do all the way up to and including Win7, which even had the icon taskbar working in that "Windows Classic" theme. And it was very good design - pretty easy on the eyes and not distracting, but you could also tell which element is which easily at a glance (unlike these days, when everything is flat).
- abhiyerra 3y ago
  I know this sounds petty but the XP’s Classic’s task bar gray was ever slightly off from Windows 2000 and it drove me nuts. I think Windows 2000 was visually the best.
  - keyringlight 3y ago
    Once you were back to the 9x/2k style chrome, I'm fairly sure you also had access to the older style of color/size customization for it as well. On a minor tangent, I miss how well the high contrast theme used to display on windows itself and the majority of applications that were still made within that standard toolkit, using it now seems to lack polish and most applications are doing their own thing within their window.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    It was slightly warmer than 2K (which itself was noticeably warmer than 98). However, the nice thing about the Windows Classic theme is that you could change all of the colors arbitrarily, including the bezels.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  While you could disable the fisher price theme in XP (and Vista and 7), even in classic theme you still had the "plastic" icons.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    Yup, but this was all customizable. In fact it even included the old icons in the box - they were used if you ever set it to use 8-bit color mode - so you just needed to point the shell at the right DLLs in the registry (for which there were third-party utilities). It's so sad to look back and remember how insanely customizable desktop UI was back then, compared to what we have now. In Win11, you can't even have a vertical taskbar anymore.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
I always thought that the Windows XP color theme was vastly over hated. I thought it looked nice, but even if one didn't enjoy it, I cannot understand why people acted like it killed their dog.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It was grating. If XP had worked on release as well as it did three years later there would have been little complaining. But having that UI show up in 640 VGA because it couldn’t find drivers would make you angry, and you’d take it out on it.
- Narishma 3y ago
  I hated the blue and red default but was fine with the two other alternatives.

derefr 3y ago

Re: XP UI — did you ever try Windows Server 2003?

EvanAnderson 3y ago
Server 2003 was my daily driver on a laptop for a few years. Most XP software ran fine but it had none of the XP visual cruft. Until Windows 7 it was peak Windows for me.
- deepspace 3y ago
  I ran that rare beast, Windows XP64. It was basically Server2003 x64 with the XP UI. Driver compatibility was terrible, as you might expect, but it could support a vast amount of memory (relative to XP). I used the base O/S only to run VMware Workstation, and then ran small instances of XP, each dedicated to a task like audio, video, etc, on top of that. Along with FreeBSD and various flavors of Linux. That was my daily driver until late 2010. Solid as a rock.
  - EvanAnderson 3y ago
    XP64 was an odd animal. I had a Customer who usd it to run Unigraphics CAD. The Dell Precision machines they had with factory-loaded XP64 were fine. Trying to get their random other machines to run it w/ working audio, video, and chipset drivers was a pain. I never ran it as a desktop OS myself. I installed plenty of the server version it was based on (W2K3 x64) but those boxes always had standard VGA drivers, no audio, and sometimes a RAID controller driver, but that was usually it.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    I adopted XP64 kind of late IIRC (after Vista introduction) so the driver situation seemed fine to me. I had a cheap USB 56K modem I had to replace but otherwise all my hardware worked.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    Was that XP for x86-64 or XP for Itanium? I'd imagine both were pretty rare.
genmud 3y ago
IIRC you could actually run XP themes on 2k3 if you started the theme service. Under the hood they were almost the same exact same kernel (I think server / 5.2 had a slightly different IP stack and some server tweaks for task scheduling, shadow volumes and memory caching). Likewise if you wanted the non XP (Luna I think it was called?) styles you could just stop the theme service and it was effectively win2k style.
- chungy 3y ago
  > Under the hood they were almost the same exact same kernel Literally the exact same kernel if you count XP x64 Edition. Even the exact same Windows Updates apply to both. :) But yeah, Windows XP (32-bit; NT 5.1) and Server 2003 (NT 5.2) were pretty close. The latter was pretty much "XP Server Edition", albeit some significant kernel changes were made, especially to improve network performance. It was the only time that the client and server versions of NT had diverged. Granted, the Windows Server team didn't feel like NT 6.0 was ready for the primetime when Vista launched, but instead of having two branches of the operating system again, Windows Server 2008 was launched identifying as "Service Pack 1" from the get-go, with Windows Vista's SP1 updating the OS to include all of the underlying improvements made for Server 2008. From that point forward, they were the same, including the same Windows Updates. It's also the point that Windows Vista got all of its technical flaws fixed. (Reputation flaws not withstanding, it wouldn't be until Windows Vista SP3 aka Windows 7, that the reputation would get reset...)

int_19h 3y ago

XP "fisher price" UI was trivial to disable in settings, giving you that same slate gray look of 98/2K, but with 24-bit color icons. This was actually possible to do all the way up to and including Win7, which even had the icon taskbar working in that "Windows Classic" theme. And it was very good design - pretty easy on the eyes and not distracting, but you could also tell which element is which easily at a glance (unlike these days, when everything is flat).

abhiyerra 3y ago
I know this sounds petty but the XP’s Classic’s task bar gray was ever slightly off from Windows 2000 and it drove me nuts. I think Windows 2000 was visually the best.
- keyringlight 3y ago
  Once you were back to the 9x/2k style chrome, I'm fairly sure you also had access to the older style of color/size customization for it as well. On a minor tangent, I miss how well the high contrast theme used to display on windows itself and the majority of applications that were still made within that standard toolkit, using it now seems to lack polish and most applications are doing their own thing within their window.
- int_19h 3y ago
  It was slightly warmer than 2K (which itself was noticeably warmer than 98). However, the nice thing about the Windows Classic theme is that you could change all of the colors arbitrarily, including the bezels.
badsectoracula 3y ago
While you could disable the fisher price theme in XP (and Vista and 7), even in classic theme you still had the "plastic" icons.
- int_19h 3y ago
  Yup, but this was all customizable. In fact it even included the old icons in the box - they were used if you ever set it to use 8-bit color mode - so you just needed to point the shell at the right DLLs in the registry (for which there were third-party utilities). It's so sad to look back and remember how insanely customizable desktop UI was back then, compared to what we have now. In Win11, you can't even have a vertical taskbar anymore.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

I always thought that the Windows XP color theme was vastly over hated. I thought it looked nice, but even if one didn't enjoy it, I cannot understand why people acted like it killed their dog.

bombcar 3y ago
It was grating. If XP had worked on release as well as it did three years later there would have been little complaining. But having that UI show up in 640 VGA because it couldn’t find drivers would make you angry, and you’d take it out on it.
Narishma 3y ago
I hated the blue and red default but was fine with the two other alternatives.