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Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft

• PaulHoule 2y ago
  You can't say WDDM wasn't a step forward... Being able to crash your video drivers and reboot them without crashing and rebooting your whole machines made Windows a lot more stable.
  • bgirard 2y ago
    Peak doesn't mean that it's a monotonic decline without any steps forward.
  • tbyehl 2y ago
    One of the innovations in NT 4.0 was adding the ability for video drivers to crash the kernel. They went full circle.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  TBF XP and 7 are both decent. Everything went down after those, including the Ads, the update, etc. I didn't upgrade to 10 until I purchased a used Dell laptop (which includes 10 prof) a few years ago, and I never used 11 and hopefully never needs to use it.
  • Clubber 2y ago
    I believe XP was when Windows Activation started, so that's a pretty big negative for me. Other than that, XP, 7 and 10 were pretty good, although 10 introduced advertisements if I'm not mistaken.
    • milesvp 2y ago
      XP also inexplicably required at least twice the ram as 2000. when XP came out that was a significant cost, and I personally was able to salvage many laptops at the time by downgrading them from XP. Eventually XP became the default for me because ram got a lot cheaper and the service packs and driver support made it more viable. But then, tangentially, I started using ubuntu at work, in a sort of misguided belief it would make me a better sysadmin, and it was only a matter of time before I couldn’t stand windows at home as well. I thought win7 was pretty solid, though I didn’t upgrade until well after win8 was shipping. But lucky for me, proton finally got really good, and that allowed me to basically skip win10+. Now it’s only for the rare tool that I even boot into my windows partitions anymore. When I do, being bombarded by random attention grabbers is completely jarring and I want flee as fast as I can.
  • SirMaster 2y ago
    If you think 11 is bad, I bet 12 will be even worse. When 10 is unsupported and 12 is out, you will probably be reaching for 11 by then...
    • markus_zhang 2y ago
      I'm already moving into Linux for one of my laptops. If the drivers and desktop experiences are good enough (or bad enough in Windows) I might move 100% to Linux in a few years.
      • SirMaster 2y ago
        Fair enough! I am probably just projecting my own probable fate haha.
      • specproc 2y ago
        I made the jump a few years ago and the experience has been largely great. Lots of learning, which has been half the fun, and no goddamn ads in my start menu. Totally usable as a daily driver, provided you don't need Windows only software. The year of linux on the desktop was probably about 2020.
        • wing-_-nuts 2y ago
          Steam's proton has made gaming on linux astoundingly good. The only thing that still needs improvement is mod support, as mod managers, game downgraders, bin patchers, some more involved mods involve little utilities written for windows that are not easily runnable on linux. It is slowly improving though. The steam deck has moved things forward in leaps and bounds.
          • SirMaster 2y ago
            It seems like basically all the games I play aren't supported on this unfortunately and it feels like they never will be.
  • cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    I love 2000 and XP but 7 has a special spot for me because it’s a “modern” Windows (supporting proper alpha blending in its theme drawing and such) without the various problems that 8 and newer bring. I have an old laptop with it installed and booting it up is honestly refreshing. Its visual style is a little dated feeling but not that much.
    • vintagedave 2y ago
      I like it for the same reasons. I just wish it supported high DPI. It, and Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion era OSX, at high res would be peak desktop usability.
  • kevinpacheco 2y ago
    If you intend to stick with Windows for the long haul, you will have to upgrade eventually. I hung on to 7 for a while, but several apps stopped getting updates: iTunes, the Spotify desktop client, Google Chrome, and even Firefox dropped support. I was using iTunes to download podcasts, which after a while became impossible with some feeds because I would get an SSL error each time on that old version. For 10, the ESU period ends one year after 10/14/25 for consumers and three years for organizations. It's possible that apps will continue to receive updates during that time.
    • markus_zhang 2y ago
      Thanks, yeah, I figured. Maybe I can move to Linux in 5 years. I'm already using Linux for my dev laptop.
  • Melatonic 2y ago
    Windows 10 LTSC IOT has all the bloat and spyware stripped out and will get security updates for years. It's super lean. Will third party apps keep installing updates ? Hard to say. The adobe suite already refuses to install the latest version on any LTSC (for no reason other than they don't want to support it - it works great) so who knows. Suspect my next OS will be Windows 12 LTSC if I can hold out long enough - every other Windows version alway seems to be experimental crap going all the way back to ME (millennium edition)
    • jiggawatts 2y ago
      I tell customers that they should use LTSC for things like virtual desktops. You need stability, such as it not randomly deciding to install a 4 GB game like Minecraft for every user as a “critical update”. Microsoft joined a meeting and told the customer that they don’t agree with my recommendations because they want to make sure all users get the “latest experiences”. There’s your problem right there: pushing your own KPIs instead of what’s best for the customers.
  • Alupis 2y ago
    Come try out Fedora, or whatever flavor of Linux you want. It's surprisingly fantastic for almost all modern computing tasks. Yes, it's true, some software won't work, such as Adobe Photoshop, but most people aren't using software like that anyway. For gaming, I'd say we're close to 99% of games supporting Linux out of the box on Steam. The few left that still don't choose not to via kernel-level anti-cheat or forgetting to toggle a checkbox for Linux support (EasyAntiCheat and friends). The point is, it "Just Works" for darn near everything these days and is a very pleasant experience. Try it out!
    • supportengineer 2y ago
      The best Linux I have ever seen is Linux Mint. I tried it out because I needed to do something with firewire, but all of the other Linux kernels had dropped firewire, and it was the only one left that still supported it. I found it to be intuitive and friendly and everything just worked.
      • Alupis 2y ago
        Mint leans towards the "ultra-stable" side of Linux Distros. Fedora leans towards the "bleeding-edge". Both are great in their own ways. If you want the latest and greatest of everything, Fedora is a great pick. If you just want long-term stability, Mint is a great pick. With both, you can choose the Desktop Environment you prefer (I like KDE personally, but many like Gnome, MATE, Cinnamon, etc). That's not to say Fedora is unstable - it's just that it iterates fast to keep pace with packages as they release new versions. There's a new major Fedora release every year, for example. There really isn't a wrong choice here.
    • 1970-01-01 2y ago
      Eh, this is going to sound like a I'm a stick in the mud, but I've tried Linux about a dozen times now, and every time has eventually led to 'a Linux evening' that disenchants me from the fantasy and back to reality. It's fantastic as a server OS, however.
      • Alupis 2y ago
• 2809 2y ago
  2K 100% was the best Windows. The NT benefits with none of the XP downsides.
  • mixmastamyk 2y ago
    I preferred XP/2003 in classic UI mode. Lots of little improvements. If you could get winterm on it and recent Firefox it’d be quite usable. Perhaps ReactOS one day.
    • gjvc 2y ago
      and 64-bit (x86_64 not IA64), which no version Windows 2000 was AFAIK Windows 7 with classic UI is probably the most-recent decent version.
      • hylaride 2y ago
        There were pre-release 64 bit alpha versions of win2k, but otherwise you needed XP/2k3 for 64 bit. XP for amd64 was a bit of a shitshow with drivers (especially on consumer-grade computers), though. It wasn’t until vista that it ironically got better on that front, though people held out upgrading because of how terrible it was…
    • antod 2y ago
      yeah while 2K was their best ever single breakthrough improvement, it was a v1 and XP/2003 in classic mode was a more refined 2K eg more drivers and better plug and play, more graphics compatibility. And 2003 Active Directory had a number of quality of life improvements.
      • mixmastamyk 2y ago
        NT3.5 was perhaps the most stable version I ever used. NT4 brought the new UI, making NT5 aka 2k not the first version of the 95+ UI.
  • wing-_-nuts 2y ago
    Hard agree. The windows 2000 UI was peak UX and each step since has been a downgrade, (with a possible exception of windows 7)
• debian3 2y ago
  I don’t know why they always alternate a good with a bad release. Technically Windows 12 should be good.
  • _mlbt 2y ago
    People always say that, but it’s not really been completely true. < 3.1 Bad 3.1 Good 3.11 WfW Good NT 3.5 Okay 95 Good NT 4.0 Good 98 Good Me Bad 2000 Good XP Good Vista Bad 7 Good 8 Bad 8.1 Okay 10 Good 11 Bad There just really isn’t a pattern to it.
    • karmakaze 2y ago
      NT 3.51 Best These are also mixing two separate streams: Win3.x/9x/ME and NT+
    • NikkiA 2y ago
      The only 'bad' thing about Vista was it's change (and thus deprecation of many drivers) of driver model. Once tweaked and with good native drivers it was the first good 64bit windows - far more reliable than XP64. At least until 7 came out.
    • acheron 2y ago
      Windows 3.0 was good. 3.1 was a minor improvement.
      • Narishma 2y ago
        3.0 was ok but a bit rough around the edges and it crashed a lot. 3.1 was a substantial improvement in that regard. It also brought major features like TTF fonts, the registry, a usable file manager, audio and video support, and networking in the Workgroups version.
    • tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      >95 Good That's arguable, I thought it was poor at the time.
• gigel82 2y ago
  Nostalgically, yes, Windows 2000 was amazing. At the time of launch, on period hardware, it was the fastest and most lightweight OS released by Microsoft. And looking back, I always appreciate that I can look in Task Manager and immediately recognize all of the processes by name. Windows 7 (except for the last few updates that introduced telemetry and ads) comes in as a close second. But everything after is just bloated crapware.
  • _mlbt 2y ago
    The only bad things I remember about Windows 2000 are that some software written for Windows 3.x and 9x had compatibility issues and it took an eternity to boot up. It was go take a coffee break as soon as you turn your computer on for the day bad.
    • sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
      IIRC, Win2K would wait for most / all service startups to complete before showing the login prompt. XP and later would allow login to occur while many services were still starting up. It's a tradeoff. A Win2K system was pretty responsive when you log in after a reboot/startup, but you've got to wait for that experience. In the days of spinning disks and single core CPUs, you had to fight those still-starting services for resources, making the first several minutes of XP usage painful.
      • olyjohn 2y ago
        Win2k also had the smoothest mouse movements that I had ever seen. If you had a PS/2 Mouse, you could turn up the sample rate up to the max. Dragging windows looked incredible. Even my Mac to this day with a fancy brand new 4k display can't match it. My mouse still looks blurry as it moves across the screen.
      • keyringlight 2y ago
        I remember using the BootVis tool (IIRC was an early part of what would be the performance toolkit) to profile the startup process, and then you could it to optimize the location of data loaded from HDDs to reduce the seeking required. Also back when PATA was still in use depending on your motherboard I seem to remember making sure windows wouldn't try to autodetect link speed on unused attachments as that could take ages trying to find something that wasn't there.
• tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  I don't know whether Windows is for corporate desktops, enterprise servers, PC manufacturers, Azure, home users or advertisers. It certainly doesn't feel like it is the right product for me anymore.
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  I think I am not the only one who memorized this: FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
  • SirFatty 2y ago
    Raises hand: I always remembered the first series of numbers as f*ck GW (as in Bush).
    • Lammy 2y ago
      I always heard it as FuCK GateWay (the PC maker)
  • netsharc 2y ago
    That's XP though, not Windows 2000...
• dehrmann 2y ago
  It's a shame ReactOS never got mature enough to be a serious competitor. If it had modern app and hidpi support but was suck in a 2000-era UI and didn't have feature bloat, it could be a great daily driver.
  • snvzz 2y ago
    ReactOS is not dead though. They just made a release. And it has the 2000-era UI and the modern app support. It's just dragging on other things, such as SMP and 64bit. But development focus seems to actually be focused on precisely these two.
    • nubinetwork 2y ago
      Can it run Firefox yet? The last time I tried reactOS, it BSODed just trying to launch Firefox... and don't even try using Windows drivers on it, it'll either hardlock, BSOD immediately, or during startup, regardless of whether you're in safe mode or not...
      • snvzz 2y ago
        I have not tested it myself, but I hear that the latest release can run Firefox 52, whereas the previous one would, at most, run Firefox 48.
• wolpoli 2y ago
  In the 90s, Windows was simple enough that I was able to read tech articles and understand a lot of what is going on inside, up to the point of Windows 2000, and to a certain extend, Windows XP. That completely changed with Vista/7 where I can no longer recognize the name of many processes that are running or understand what actions/situations make my computer lag. Nowasdays, even through I don't worry anymore as Windows 11 is happy as long as you give it a quadcore cpu, ram, and an SSD, sometimes I still wonder why it writes 40GB to the SSD everyday.
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  There are software and scripts to decrapify Windows 11. After uninstalling and stopping everything that's not needed and making start menu and the bar behave like in Windows 7, it's quite decent. This adds maybe 20 more minutes to install time but it's worth.
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    I don't think anyone doubts that you can do this. It's more that I refuse to pay for an OS which needs to be de-crapped in the first place. If Microsoft can't make something which prioritizes my needs above their corporate metrics, then they don't get my money.
    • Melatonic 2y ago
      LTSC is likely what you want then (needs to be purchased through a VAR but it's not hard to find a smaller one that will sell single copies)
      • abhiyerra 2y ago
        My company has access to these licenses to resell through our distributor Pax8. Contact me (profile) if interested.
      • glaucon 2y ago
        Can you just expand on the significance of LTSC for a personal user ? MS says it's for "Medical Devices, Kiosks ..." but I presume the reason the you mention it is that it's a version of Windows 10 that is expected to receive security updates for X years into the future ? Is it also de-crappified ? No games, requests for Microsoft accounts etc ?
  • psyclobe 2y ago
    Unfortunately all that crap eventually comes back. Microsoft likes to reset settings… I’m pretty sure I must’ve spent the majority of my youth setting the same explorer settings over and over and over again … And it never ends with any custom setup you do; given enough time it reverts.
• sitzkrieg 2y ago
  the point of an OS is to be out of the way, w2k was both the best and last windows to do so
  • keyringlight 2y ago
    The way I see it (and similarly with browsers now) is that the OS is a venue providing a stage for others to perform on, they provide the facilities so every act doesn't need to build their own venue. Most of the time people don't visit/use a venue for the sake of it.
• jmclnx 2y ago
  I only used Windows at work and I was very happy with NT, when XP came out I was able to go to Linux (RHEL) for my workstation at work. I never had Windows 2000, but lots of people said it worked great compared to the other Windows systems. But really for me, the best M/S setup was DOS with Desqview.
  • timbit42 2y ago
    I wish Desqview supported higher text modes than 80x25.
• hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
  The fact Windows 2000 was peak Microsoft and OS X 10.5 was peak Apple is proof that the golden age of software is way behind us, unfortunately.
  • TMWNN 2y ago
    I thought 10.6 Snow Leopard is peak OS X?
    • WillAdams 2y ago
      10.6.8 Still kicking myself for not getting an Axiotron Modbook running Snow Leopard.
      • justicz 2y ago
        God, I wanted one of those so badly!
        • WillAdams 2y ago
          Yeah, my current plan is to just get a Mac Mini and a Wacom Movink 13 (or ideally, some higher-resolution successor).
    • wruza 2y ago
      Imagine coming into the mac world with a 10.5 cd and upgrading to the current 10.6 and then watching it deteriorate through years into 10.10. Yeah that's me. Peeking at a glimpse of perfection only for it to flash and fade.
  • sylens 2y ago
    They really did offer a lot of features that really helped productivity. Snapping windows, jump lists, having libraries act as a virtual folder for many folders, etc.
    • ok_computer 2y ago
• justin66 2y ago
  It's the Register and therefore too worthless to get worked up about, but their naming a server version of Windows as peak anything is an indication that they probably just polled a few drunks at a bar.
• 1970-01-01 2y ago
  Are we just doing OSes or are we doing the entire conglomerate? #1 Windows 7 #2 DOS 5.0 #3 Office 2003 #4 Windows 95 Honorable mentions: IntelliMouse Optical and XBOX (2001)
  • msintellimsftw 2y ago
    [dead]
• yankcrime 2y ago
  A modern reimagining of Windows 2000's UI - professional, simple, uncluttered, focused, no cheapening of the whole experience with adverts in a thinly-veiled attempt to funnel you into Bing - with modern underpinnings and features such as WSL2 would have me running back towards Microsoft with open arms and cheque book in hand.
  • mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Not an obligation, but ReactOS exists and needs help: https://reactos.org/donate/ https://reactos.org/donate/ Surprisingly close. I recently tried its package manager and installed a recent Python! So better than the original XP-era Windows in some respects.
    • itsmartapuntocm 2y ago
      I’ve been watching ReactOS development for years and and progress is slow but steady. I’m excited for the point where it will be fully usable as a drop in replacement for old Windows software.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    There are Linux distros that meet your description (no need for WSL2 either!). I am guessing you're not running towards them with open arms and cheque book in hand ... or maybe you already ran to Linux and are just nostalgic about going back to Microsoft ... ?
    • p_ing 2y ago
      While DEs often emulate the look of macOS or Windows, they always get the feel wrong. You can put a global menu bar, Dock, etc into KDE, but ultimately it still acts like KDE and nothing like macOS.
      • skydhash 2y ago
        It's not like macOS or Windows is the pinnacle of UI. I'm on Fedora Silverblue, and it's so relaxing to not deal with the usual ['Yes', 'Not Now'] prompt on notifications. Or have your computer became suddenly unresponsive because of random scans you can't disable.
• 1970-01-01 2y ago
  If MS stripped *ALL* ads and bloatware (telemetry for calc??) out of Win 11 and restored the traditional UI of start menu + desktop, it would be fairly good overall. Certainly within their top 5. They really are close to peak yet again but cannot realize they are striving to make it worse.
  • Spooky23 2y ago
    11 is mostly a solution looking for a problem. I don’t do windows day to day anymore, but the folks I work with who do aren’t excited anymore.
    • drewcoo 2y ago
      "A computer on every desktop and Windows on every computer" was the company's goal. Ever since they claimed success on that one (glossing over the ubiquity of Linux everywhere else) they've been sorta directionless.
• jmward01 2y ago
  I'm just surprised that it feels like very little deep innovation in the OS world has happened since windows 2k. 3.11 brought networking in. 95 brought true multitasking to the masses and 2k brought multi-processing/multi-user (yes, NT3.1 had it, but 2k is where most normal users jumped in). And, yes, I know these things existed in other OSes out there but I think of these as the mass market kick offs for them. In general I just don't see anything but evolutionary improvements (and back-sliding) in the OS world beyond this time. I had really hoped that true cloud OSes would have become the norm by now (I really want my whole house connected as a seamless collection of stuff) or other major advances like killing filesystems (I think of these as backdoor undocumented APIs). Have we really figured out what an OS is supposed to be or are we just stuck in a rut? [edit] 3.1 should have been windows for worgkroups 3.11
  • jmward01 2y ago
    Looks like there is some negative feelings towards this comment. So if we aren't in a rut, what are the big revolutionary OS advancements that have happened since this time?
    • Lammy 2y ago
      This is a forum populated almost entirely by people whose day-to-day existence depends upon building the new stuff that sucks :) (mine too!)
    • p_ing 2y ago
      Virtualization. FDE. Hot patching. Io Ring (io_uring), etc.
      • charcircuit 2y ago
        Windows 2k already had an io_uring equivalent. That's more of an example of Linux being out of date due to being based off UNIX.
        • p_ing 2y ago
• turtlebits 2y ago
  This brings back a lot of nostalgia and I wholeheartedly agree. Back then I ran Windows 2000 server beta 2 on a dual proc system with P2-300s. It was rock solid.
• zamadatix 2y ago
  For folks that pick Windows 2000 Server, why not Server 2003? Is it just because by then NT had XP out as the "Windows for Home Users" and people didn't use Server 2003 as much or were there changes about it folks hated for some reason? To me it always seemed to bring so many more features/capabilities without trashing the classic UI.
  • Spooky23 2y ago
    Remember that it also introduced Active Directory. I helped build out a global enterprise network that was consistent and supported the same way, with like a quarter million users and tbh, it pretty much worked flawlessly. Of course that innocence was lost with Welchia and other issues, but Windows 2000 made the year 1999 feel like ancient history in 2001.
    • zamadatix 2y ago
      Sure, Windows 2000 was definitely great in a lot of ways, but Server 2003/R2 either extended on all of those (e.g. greatly improving AD and its management) or added on it's own big firsts such as x64 support - all without really introducing any of the types of downfall people hate the more modern versions for.
• andromaton 2y ago
  It felt solid.
• Animats 2y ago
  Agreed. Windows Server 2000 through Windows 7 were peak Microsoft operating system. By Windows 2000 Server, they finally had the architecture right, and had flushed out most of the 16 bit legacy. The big win with Windows 7 was that they finally figured out how to make it stop crashing. There were two big fixes. First, the Static Driver Verifier. This verified that kernel drivers couldn't crash the rest of the kernel. First large scale application of proof of correctness technology. Drivers could still fail, but not overwrite other parts of the kernel. This put a huge dent into driver-induced crashes. Second was a dump classifier. Early machine learning. When the system crashed, a dump was sent to Microsoft. The classifier tried to bring similar dumps together, so one developer got a big collection of similar crashes. When you have hundreds of dumps of the same bug, locating the bug gets much easier. Between both of those, the Blue Screen of Death mostly disappeared.
  • ryao 2y ago
    Drivers can crash the rest of the kernel in Windows 7. People playing games during the Windows 7 days should remember plenty of blue screens citing either graphics drivers (mainly for ATI/AMD graphics) or their kernel anticheat software. Second, a “proof of correctness” has never been made for any kernel. Even the seL4 guys do not call their proof a proof of correctness.
    • tyree731 2y ago
      Not the operating system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_Verifier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_Verifier
      • ZeroWidthJoiner 2y ago
        Driver Verifier is a tool that developers can choose to use for testing and debugging purposes. It's not used on production machines and it does nothing to prevent a badly written driver from crashing the kernel.
        • Animats 2y ago
• supportengineer 2y ago
  Windows 7 was my all-time favorite. I remember you could not use it straight out of the box, there was a whole bunch of UI tweaks that I would make right away. After that, it was perfect.
• ryao 2y ago
  Microsoft never should have dropped Xenix to invent its own OS.
  • drewcoo 2y ago
    Microsoft bought Dave Cutler so that he could reinvent his OS (VMS), which became the NT line.
  • p_ing 2y ago
    Why would anyone pay for Yet Another UNIX? Plus Dave Cutler hated UNIX.
    • ryao 2y ago
      Well, Xenix was extremely popular since it was the cheapest option on x86. That said, I doubt Bill Gates would have hired Dave Cutler had he stuck to Xenix.
  • RiverCrochet 2y ago
    One cool thing Microsoft did with Windows NT was the whole local security model and a filesystem that supported them (NTFS), which was definitely richer than UNIX. I don't really know if other UNIXes at the time had anything more than the 16-bit uid and gid and mode bits on everything the filesystem. I wonder how it would have looked if Microsoft kept Xenix as the base and added ACLs on top of it, for example.
• bcoates 2y ago
  For me it's windows 7, if nothing else for being the first and last major Windows where Universal Search worked well. The Windows 8.x line gets some credit for having the strongest pen interface integration, which regressed significantly in the 10 line, but the overall shell in Windows 8 was rough, and a lot of features were broken in the rushed out and mostly failed attempt to Appify windows and redesign much of the UI at the same time.
• Dwedit 2y ago
  You wouldn't want to connect a fresh installation of Windows 2000 to the internet today. "Net Send" and default-on Administrative Shares are some brain-dead design decisions that made sense on a trusted LAN, but not the Internet.
• dfedbeef 2y ago
  People just like the Windows they used when they were younger. It's the same with movies, cars, whatever.
  • card_zero 2y ago
    Governments, diseases, weather.
• synack 2y ago
  The desktop UX was good, but nearly every network service on Windows 2000 had a critical vulnerability at some point. The Code Red worm (MS01-033) comes to mind as particularly impactful. This was the golden age of stack smashing.
• graycat 2y ago
  Okay, mostly use Windows 7 Professional (with 100+ "updates") for general purpose and software development but for such usage and/or a Web server what to get now? Windows 2xxx?
• breadwinner 2y ago
  Here are my gripes with the modern Windows experience: - Runs Windows update and reboots without my permission - Keeps trying to make me switch to Bing - Keeps trying to make me use Microsoft Account vs. local account - Does a crappy job of reopening windows on reboot. Miserable copy of macOS. - Fan spinning on my laptop with no easy way to figure out what process is consuming CPU - Flat UI - No built-in way to view markdown files - No tool to graphically show where my diskspace went; allowing me to find and delete large files - Printers keep getting disconnected; it is easier to print from iPhone thanks to bonjour - No dictionary app (macOS has it) - Can't airdrop to iPhone (3rd party apps can do it) - No screenshot tool that allows you to type text (in addition to circling and highlighting and arrows) - No command-line zip / unzip - No instant search (macOS has had it for how many years now?)
  • esprehn 2y ago
    Command line zip/unzip is available in PowerShell: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.archive/?view=powershell-7.5 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof... Markdown rendering is also available: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/show-markdown?view=powershell-7.5 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof... I agree with a bunch of your criticism, but modern PowerShell is pretty decent and has a lot of tools.
    • breadwinner 2y ago
      Markdown should have a UI viewer
      • joseda-hg 2y ago
        IIRC You can use the Explorer Preview pane to render basic markdown
    • joseda-hg 2y ago
      Adding to this If you're willing to go third party Everything can give you instant search, and with a PowerToys plugin you can integrate it into PowerToys Run, which gives you an Alfred Style search bar WizTree works for visual inspection of Storage Screenshots apps, Markdown Viewers, are common enough, won't comment further on those On the printer disconnections: I've had some weird experiences, recently, a technician showed to me that, using the default windows update driver, my work printer regularly disconnected, but using the manufacturers driver, the setup has so far worked without a problem
• atlgator 2y ago
  Microsoft stopped being the innovator. Now they duplicate or appropriate the innovations of others.
• jayd16 2y ago
  For all I know, windows server 2025 is amazing, but have you priced it out? There's no way to justify it. I actually like Windows despite their aversion to committing to a UI redesign but do I really need to pay $1100 (per core!?) for the hope (but not the promise) of no ads?
• stego-tech 2y ago
  As someone who built an IT career on Microsoft’s entire suite, only to recently (past six years or so) migrate wholesale to macOS (endpoint) and Linux (server), I can definitely say MS’ best days are behind it. 2000 was rock solid, Server 2003 had some growing pains (mainly the transition to x64 and multi-core processors), and 2008 fully embraced the long march into irrelevance even as it tried to shake up the hypervisor space. Now the company is so obsessed with arbitrary and unnecessary feature creep and telemetry-as-surveillance that I’m loathe to recommend it when I don’t have to. Honest to god, if an IdP like Okta made an Active Directory replacement that ran via container instead of a full-fat VM or appliance template, I’d gladly toss ADDS out the window with all its stupid CALs. Basic directory functionality in 2025 shouldn’t require a bloated ADDS/LDAPS virtual machine to run, especially with the move to cloud providers for identity. If you make it easier to do identity without ADDS, you remove Microsof’s major trojan horse into the enterprise - and M365’s as well.
  • p_ing 2y ago
    If Okta made an AD replacement, they’d charge for each extra attribute beyond fullName, firstName, surName, and drink. Identity Admins don’t let Identity Admins buy into Okta.
    • stego-tech 2y ago
      You’re not wrong, but depending ln the org size those charges are still cheaper than Windows Server + CALs. Ideally though, it’d be like Okta in that its core directory is in the cloud, but also like ADDS/LDAP in that local servers/objects can join to a domain via local containers posing as domain controllers. Yes, I know modern device management and cloud-based IdP means the need for a directory is decreasing by the day, but Enterprises still want it for ease of user and computer management via a centralized database of sorts. Having someone, anyone offer me a leaner way of achieving this without a crusty LDAP deployment or expensive Windows Server + CALs, would be hugely appreciated.
      • p_ing 2y ago
        Okta was going to charge us $6/user/month just for MFA. So I migrated my company to Azure AD with free MFA. We still had AD DS in the mix, but endpoint management was moving to cloud w/ Autopilot + Intune. An on-prem AD DS is going to be difficult to move away from. From a management cost perspective, it is still cheaper than every other LDAP + Kerb + endpoint policy solution out there. And since a CAL is provided with every copy of Windows Enterprise, thinking about CALs for clients is a non-issue.
• dangus 2y ago
  The glasses are rose-tinted. There were a number of little bits missing from Windows 2000 that were helpful to have in XP, and you could change the theme to make it look just like Windows 2000. And I really don't know how Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 doesn't win this battle.
  • voidspark 2y ago
    Context. We upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. That was a major upgrade. First stable NT platform that we could use for everything, including games.
    • nubinetwork 2y ago
      To be fair, driver support sucked ass for NT3/4, and I don't think 4 even had DirectX support...
• boxedemp 2y ago
  Hard agree. 2000 was capable and never felt bloated.
• Borg3 2y ago
  As someone who still runs Win2003 R2 (32bit) on my desktop I can confirm. It was peak MS. System is very stable, UI (classic) is great. It is quick, snappy and good looking. For basic POSIX I have cygwin. For other stuff I use VMs. I have all tools needed to handle some mainmentance (compilers, DDK, docs, ...). But there is problem.. HW.. The pool of old HW is shrinking, and one day I will not be able to run it anymore.. I guess I will move to Linux. There are few nice and lightweight distros...
• deafpolygon 2y ago
  Didn't expect to see this-but after Windows 95/98, I went to Windows 2000 for a long time, didn't switch to Windows until 10/11. After Win2k, I went to Linux because I wasn't a fan of XP/7. (I know this is an unpopular take.
• asjo 2y ago
  That's kinda mean. Surely Windows ME was peak Microsoft.
• nubinetwork 2y ago
  Let's be real, Windows Server hasn't changed much since W2K... they may have slapped the 7/Vista UI onto it, but at its core, nothing has changed. It still operates just fine for AD, DHCP, DNS, SMB, etc etc... the only thing they could drop without the majority freaking out is IIS.
  • kasabali 2y ago
    They 've then slapped Windows 8 UI into it, after that, Windows 10 UI, and lastly they've slapped the Windows 11 UI. The reason should be obvious.
• dep_b 2y ago
  I’ve been running Windows 2000 Pro as my main machine from I think the second beta until it was completely dropped from support. It ran all of my games, stable as hell, quite light with none of the bullshit added later, none of the graphical bullshit added by XP but still classic Chicago. The only thing that could make it better were the UI rendering engine introduced with Vista and its enhanced driver and security model.
• pmdr 2y ago
  I see a vast majority of comments here agreeing that UIs were significantly better and faster twenty years ago or more. Assuming HN is representative for the software community, how is it that slow, inferior and dumbed-down interfaces have prevailed in the end? And this hasn't been happening just to popular consumer products.
  • Gud 2y ago
    The answer is, HN is not representative. There will be a much, much higher prevalence of computer enthusiasts on this board, not just people looking for a paycheck
    • pmdr 2y ago
      That makes sense.
  • pasc1878 2y ago
    Webification and phones. You make more money selling software for phones and it is cheaper to use one stack to build all so you build things for the web first.
• danielktdoranie 2y ago
  Windows ME was peak Microsoft, buggy, glitchy, a haven for viruses. It was pure crap and that defined best what Microsoft was and is: cancer
  • rexpop 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • danielktdoranie 2y ago
      it sure does
      • rexpop 2y ago
        [flagged]
• bblb 2y ago
  I started my Windows Server career around 2003R2, so can't comment on the peakness of 2K. 2008R2 snowballed it's own "revolution" when it introduced PowerShell 2.0, which was pivotal for many future things to come. Out of the more modern ones, 2012R2 was "peak". I would guess we will still see 2012R2 installations well into the future. Still running bits and pieces of critical infra, even if it has been EOLed long ago, but that's the way of the Server I guess. Can't wait for the 5000+ uptime day screenshots of ancient 2012R2's. My guess is the next "long LTS" will be Win2025. Just because it's introducing the NTLMv2 deprecation path and working solutions to replace it.
• lostinline 2y ago
  [dead]
• fithisux 2y ago
  This is what we need, a better kernel, better Win32 API and less Microsoft. The rest we can install with package managers and develop ourselves. And WSL2 is good only for Podman and Rancher.