26 ms·

"again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. Get a VM of Windows 9x/2k/XP to experience what "good Micro

"again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. Get a VM of Windows 9x/2k/XP to experience what "good Microsoft" was like.

ako 1y ago
Windows NT
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Windows NT Windows NT what ? Microsoft was always the same.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    Windows 2000 was generally a good operating system.
    - tonyedgecombe 1y ago
      It was also the last operating system from Microsoft that didn't require activation. It was full of vulnerabilities though. I used to take a laptop with some specialist software to clients and in the end I started running it in a VM so I didn't have to deal with my machine becoming infected from my clients dodgy networks.
  - ako 1y ago
    Windows NT -> Experience what a good microsoft OS was. Especially around NT 3.1, NT 3.5 their goal seemed mostly to have a good competing OS.
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      Sure, if you ignore all the anticompetitive bullshit they pulled to blackmail high street stores into removing BeOS, DrDOS, Linux and others from their shelves. And the stunts they pulled to kill other IMs. Or how they crippled the web for a decade due to killing competing browsers, building Windows lock-ins into IE (eg ActiveX controls), fragmenting Java, and then leaving IE to die themselves. Or how they lied about Windows 98 requiring IE4. Or how they didn’t give a crap about OS security until halfway through the life of XP. Leaving literally millions of people vulnerable to a plethora of different forms of attacks from malware to direct hacking on open Telnet ports. Or how they tried to land grab IRC with their comic book GUI. Which, in fairness, was a novel app. But unfortunately it was another embrace, extend, extinguish play. Or how they tried to kill ODF with their own faux-open document format: OOXML Or their constant stream of FUD messaging about Linux being “communism”. Yeah, MS were really noble in their goals to create a good OS. /s It’s a pity they couldn’t even manage to do that well given every iteration of Windows has been bloated, buggy, and years behind the competition in terms of performance and capabilities. Windows was never a good OS. In fact I’d go further and say Microsoft have never release a good OS. Even their versions of BASIC sucked compared to the competition. Microsoft have always been good at negotiating with businesses. It’s why Azure is used in governments, why Windows is the “business platform”, and why 9x beat the competition in the 90s despite being consistently the worst in class for basically every metric you could think of. Windows didn’t succeed because it was good. Microsoft succeeded because Bill Gates was ruthless!
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        They are very good at talking to businesses but even more important was their installed base. As they used to say "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". They won because they were first mover, not because they were the best because they weren't and they aren't. This is why they are so hell bent on copilot everywhere. They want to build an installed base again so they can milk it. But they're hardly the best. In fact what they are selling as copilot isn't even anything they made. It's just Chatgpt. Another interesting parallel with edge by the way which is of course just chrome.
        hnlmorg 1y ago
        They weren’t the first movers. They just managed to get IBM to sign with them after BASIC proved not to be IBMs long term version and CP/M struck out from any disk OS talks (though stories differ about exactly how that interaction went) Microsoft didn’t even have an OS when they made that deal with IBM. Hence why I said they’re good at negotiating with businesses. Being first to market is actually less important than people think it is. It’s just history tends to remember the victors so everyone assumes they were first to market.
    - f1shy 1y ago
      NT was Stable what was really missing in the MS world at that time. But a "good" OS? Other than stable I expect to be able to administer HW, fine grained permissions, and lots of out-of-the-box functionality. Compared with a GNU/Linux of the time, I have never hesitated in going for Linux (or FreeBSD at the time).
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      What do you mean 'was'? Isn't the current Windows still Windows NT?
BatteryMountain 1y ago
The other day I installed Windows 7 on a VM for fun.. it was not fun at all. I got weird wave of nostalgic sadness, like being teleported back in time, I felt/remembered how things were back in ~2010, the culture, my university life, how things were with an ex gf, ALL of it. The OS is engrained in my mind and it was gorgeous seeing those aero effects and hearing the startup sounds again. It is so simple and easy. It felt good so see & use it again. With Windows 11, although I mostly like the UI (rounded corners on a high dpi tablet also with rounded screen is amazing), it feels absolutely gross, in the corporate soulless sense. It feels mentally heavy top operate. I constantly had to battle it to get it to work the way I want it. These days all my devices are running Fedora with KDE, which is just the best. You basically set it up once the way you like it, and it won't change by itself for months. It is a buttery smooth experience and have had zero need to go back to Windows yet. If anyone want the same level one-ness with your computer like back in Windows XP & Windows 7 days, give KDE a try. Fedora is pretty simple distro to get used to if you want a good starting point.
- baq 1y ago
  > and it won't change by itself for months That’s… not a good sell at all Promise me a decade and I’ll bite. (Joke’s on me, I’ll need to get out of this windows shithole asap)
  - fsflover 1y ago
    If you want years, just choose Debian.
    - jstanley 1y ago
      In my experience the problem with Debian is that sooner or later you're bound to want to use something that is only 5 years old and therefore not included yet, so you end up having to install it from source or something else, but something doesn't quite work right so you have to hack it one way or another, and over time all this cruft adds up and you end up with a broken system caused precisely because the base distro refused to change fast enough.
hnlmorg 1y ago
> "again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. As someone who lived through Microsoft’s actions in the 90s, I really don’t agree with your sentiment there. There’s a reason many of us old greybeards still refuse to use anything MS even 30 years later.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  The abomination that was IE6 - it poisoned the internet at the time with developers designing specifically for it and its random bullshit bugs. The number of admin tools (e.g. SAN interface) that specifically required IE6 to run ActiveX or some monstrosity.
  - mosura 1y ago
    This is the kind of opinion you can only hold if you never had to develop for Netscape.

"again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. Get a VM of Windows 9x/2k/XP to experience what "good Microsoft" was like.

ako 1y ago

Windows NT

hulitu 1y ago
> Windows NT Windows NT what ? Microsoft was always the same.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  Windows 2000 was generally a good operating system.
  - tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    It was also the last operating system from Microsoft that didn't require activation. It was full of vulnerabilities though. I used to take a laptop with some specialist software to clients and in the end I started running it in a VM so I didn't have to deal with my machine becoming infected from my clients dodgy networks.
- ako 1y ago
  Windows NT -> Experience what a good microsoft OS was. Especially around NT 3.1, NT 3.5 their goal seemed mostly to have a good competing OS.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Sure, if you ignore all the anticompetitive bullshit they pulled to blackmail high street stores into removing BeOS, DrDOS, Linux and others from their shelves. And the stunts they pulled to kill other IMs. Or how they crippled the web for a decade due to killing competing browsers, building Windows lock-ins into IE (eg ActiveX controls), fragmenting Java, and then leaving IE to die themselves. Or how they lied about Windows 98 requiring IE4. Or how they didn’t give a crap about OS security until halfway through the life of XP. Leaving literally millions of people vulnerable to a plethora of different forms of attacks from malware to direct hacking on open Telnet ports. Or how they tried to land grab IRC with their comic book GUI. Which, in fairness, was a novel app. But unfortunately it was another embrace, extend, extinguish play. Or how they tried to kill ODF with their own faux-open document format: OOXML Or their constant stream of FUD messaging about Linux being “communism”. Yeah, MS were really noble in their goals to create a good OS. /s It’s a pity they couldn’t even manage to do that well given every iteration of Windows has been bloated, buggy, and years behind the competition in terms of performance and capabilities. Windows was never a good OS. In fact I’d go further and say Microsoft have never release a good OS. Even their versions of BASIC sucked compared to the competition. Microsoft have always been good at negotiating with businesses. It’s why Azure is used in governments, why Windows is the “business platform”, and why 9x beat the competition in the 90s despite being consistently the worst in class for basically every metric you could think of. Windows didn’t succeed because it was good. Microsoft succeeded because Bill Gates was ruthless!
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      They are very good at talking to businesses but even more important was their installed base. As they used to say "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". They won because they were first mover, not because they were the best because they weren't and they aren't. This is why they are so hell bent on copilot everywhere. They want to build an installed base again so they can milk it. But they're hardly the best. In fact what they are selling as copilot isn't even anything they made. It's just Chatgpt. Another interesting parallel with edge by the way which is of course just chrome.
      - hnlmorg 1y ago
        They weren’t the first movers. They just managed to get IBM to sign with them after BASIC proved not to be IBMs long term version and CP/M struck out from any disk OS talks (though stories differ about exactly how that interaction went) Microsoft didn’t even have an OS when they made that deal with IBM. Hence why I said they’re good at negotiating with businesses. Being first to market is actually less important than people think it is. It’s just history tends to remember the victors so everyone assumes they were first to market.
  - f1shy 1y ago
    NT was Stable what was really missing in the MS world at that time. But a "good" OS? Other than stable I expect to be able to administer HW, fine grained permissions, and lots of out-of-the-box functionality. Compared with a GNU/Linux of the time, I have never hesitated in going for Linux (or FreeBSD at the time).
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    What do you mean 'was'? Isn't the current Windows still Windows NT?

BatteryMountain 1y ago

The other day I installed Windows 7 on a VM for fun.. it was not fun at all. I got weird wave of nostalgic sadness, like being teleported back in time, I felt/remembered how things were back in ~2010, the culture, my university life, how things were with an ex gf, ALL of it. The OS is engrained in my mind and it was gorgeous seeing those aero effects and hearing the startup sounds again. It is so simple and easy. It felt good so see & use it again. With Windows 11, although I mostly like the UI (rounded corners on a high dpi tablet also with rounded screen is amazing), it feels absolutely gross, in the corporate soulless sense. It feels mentally heavy top operate. I constantly had to battle it to get it to work the way I want it. These days all my devices are running Fedora with KDE, which is just the best. You basically set it up once the way you like it, and it won't change by itself for months. It is a buttery smooth experience and have had zero need to go back to Windows yet. If anyone want the same level one-ness with your computer like back in Windows XP & Windows 7 days, give KDE a try. Fedora is pretty simple distro to get used to if you want a good starting point.

baq 1y ago
> and it won't change by itself for months That’s… not a good sell at all Promise me a decade and I’ll bite. (Joke’s on me, I’ll need to get out of this windows shithole asap)
- fsflover 1y ago
  If you want years, just choose Debian.
  - jstanley 1y ago
    In my experience the problem with Debian is that sooner or later you're bound to want to use something that is only 5 years old and therefore not included yet, so you end up having to install it from source or something else, but something doesn't quite work right so you have to hack it one way or another, and over time all this cruft adds up and you end up with a broken system caused precisely because the base distro refused to change fast enough.

hnlmorg 1y ago

> "again"? What they did in the past seems absolutely neighbourly compared to what they're doing now. As someone who lived through Microsoft’s actions in the 90s, I really don’t agree with your sentiment there. There’s a reason many of us old greybeards still refuse to use anything MS even 30 years later.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
The abomination that was IE6 - it poisoned the internet at the time with developers designing specifically for it and its random bullshit bugs. The number of admin tools (e.g. SAN interface) that specifically required IE6 to run ActiveX or some monstrosity.
- mosura 1y ago
  This is the kind of opinion you can only hold if you never had to develop for Netscape.