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There have been very few advancements in OS design for Windows that have really improved since Windows 2000. USB support. WiFi manager. Firewall. SATA support.

There have been very few advancements in OS design for Windows that have really improved since Windows 2000. USB support. WiFi manager. Firewall. SATA support. 64-bit. Native TRIM support. Native antivirus. And some things like desktop search have just gotten significantly less usable over time. Win2k still very much feels like a nearly feature complete OS. It's got one of my favorite features: it shuts up and gets out of the way.

Gud 2y ago
Indeed. Windows 2000 was a great OS.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  the best.
mystified5016 2y ago
> it shuts up and gets out of the way God, yes. It's exactly this. Windows 10 is always in my way, bothering me, nagging me. When it isn't being actively hostile, it's still in the way because so much just doesn't work. And it just keeps getting worse over time, it's really astounding.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  The start menu search rarely works. I have been using the app constantly. It has come up in search many times previously. Then, nothing. I have to drill down through the file system to start mutherfucking Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code. This bug has been present since after Windows 7, which was definitely my favorite Windows version. It was done.
  - timlatim 2y ago
    I have to use Windows at work, and one thing that hugely improves the experience is the "Everything" search tool [1]. It searches across all files you have in something like a second or two, and when you type it narrows down suggestions as you'd expect instead of randomly bringing up something completely unrelated. I even use it to launch programs I don't have pinned to the taskbar (it will find both .exes and .lnk shortcuts with readable names). Compared to that, search in the start menu (or Windows Explorer for that matter) is so comically bad it makes me weep. Before I knew about Everything, I could maybe believe there is something about NTFS or Windows security or whatever that makes it impossible to do fast quality search across the filesystem in modern Windows. But no, it's clearly possible, and it's such a shame that Microsoft is incapable of doing that in its own OS. [1] https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
    - jerf 2y ago
      Windows search is so bad that you can type "NOTE" and it'll be seconds, on a freaking supercomputer, before "Notepad" appears. This is insane. The list of applications on my computer is in the very low hundreds total, and the number of users with literally hundreds of thousands or millions of apps is very, very low. It can and should be in the search bar's RAM at all times and a linear search should be orders of magnitude below my human perception speed to say nothing of better algorithms. So, OK, sure, the alpha version couldn't do that, and the beta version couldn't do that, and by golly, launching apps quickly didn't make the release list... sure. But why hasn't this obvious optimization ever risen to the top of the feature list in the last several years? The obvious answer is that nobody in Microsoft is empowered to care about the experience as a whole anymore, and it shows. The slightly less obvious answer is that I bet Microsoft management has simply written off Windows now. It's not Cloud enough and too hard to make services- and subscription-based even if they put their best efforts in. I think they're going to discover that it was more foundational to their business than they realized.
- skydhash 2y ago
  The only way I'd use Windows is for work or a specific purpose like gaming. AKA I turn the computer on, launch a few software and stayed in those until I shut it down. I wouldn't bear with it for personal computing. macOS is heading the same way (minus the ads, plus the phone-like interface). Linux may be rough, but I can do whatever I want with it.
tomrod 2y ago
I used it almost 25 years ago! I couldn't do anything with WinME and so switched over. I miss the days of performant OS. Even my lovely Fedora+KDE is getting more feature bloat than I can manage.
- fsflover 2y ago
  Try xfce.
usefulcat 2y ago
One of the things I remember most about win2k was how remarkably easy to install it was compared to previous OSes (NT 3/4, win9[58]).

Gud 2y ago

Indeed. Windows 2000 was a great OS.

BoredPositron 2y ago
the best.

mystified5016 2y ago

> it shuts up and gets out of the way God, yes. It's exactly this. Windows 10 is always in my way, bothering me, nagging me. When it isn't being actively hostile, it's still in the way because so much just doesn't work. And it just keeps getting worse over time, it's really astounding.

datavirtue 2y ago
The start menu search rarely works. I have been using the app constantly. It has come up in search many times previously. Then, nothing. I have to drill down through the file system to start mutherfucking Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code. This bug has been present since after Windows 7, which was definitely my favorite Windows version. It was done.
- timlatim 2y ago
  I have to use Windows at work, and one thing that hugely improves the experience is the "Everything" search tool [1]. It searches across all files you have in something like a second or two, and when you type it narrows down suggestions as you'd expect instead of randomly bringing up something completely unrelated. I even use it to launch programs I don't have pinned to the taskbar (it will find both .exes and .lnk shortcuts with readable names). Compared to that, search in the start menu (or Windows Explorer for that matter) is so comically bad it makes me weep. Before I knew about Everything, I could maybe believe there is something about NTFS or Windows security or whatever that makes it impossible to do fast quality search across the filesystem in modern Windows. But no, it's clearly possible, and it's such a shame that Microsoft is incapable of doing that in its own OS. [1] https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
  - jerf 2y ago
    Windows search is so bad that you can type "NOTE" and it'll be seconds, on a freaking supercomputer, before "Notepad" appears. This is insane. The list of applications on my computer is in the very low hundreds total, and the number of users with literally hundreds of thousands or millions of apps is very, very low. It can and should be in the search bar's RAM at all times and a linear search should be orders of magnitude below my human perception speed to say nothing of better algorithms. So, OK, sure, the alpha version couldn't do that, and the beta version couldn't do that, and by golly, launching apps quickly didn't make the release list... sure. But why hasn't this obvious optimization ever risen to the top of the feature list in the last several years? The obvious answer is that nobody in Microsoft is empowered to care about the experience as a whole anymore, and it shows. The slightly less obvious answer is that I bet Microsoft management has simply written off Windows now. It's not Cloud enough and too hard to make services- and subscription-based even if they put their best efforts in. I think they're going to discover that it was more foundational to their business than they realized.
skydhash 2y ago
The only way I'd use Windows is for work or a specific purpose like gaming. AKA I turn the computer on, launch a few software and stayed in those until I shut it down. I wouldn't bear with it for personal computing. macOS is heading the same way (minus the ads, plus the phone-like interface). Linux may be rough, but I can do whatever I want with it.

tomrod 2y ago

I used it almost 25 years ago! I couldn't do anything with WinME and so switched over. I miss the days of performant OS. Even my lovely Fedora+KDE is getting more feature bloat than I can manage.

fsflover 2y ago
Try xfce.

usefulcat 2y ago

One of the things I remember most about win2k was how remarkably easy to install it was compared to previous OSes (NT 3/4, win9[58]).