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This is a silly question. You can't compare an OS from 22 years ago to an OS from today. Even if there was a simple definition of "worse", in this context, which there isn't, they're from completely different worlds designed for different uses on different hardware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux makes an explicit effort to not break userspace. I had a weird experience where I had to use a device stuck on a 2.6.x kernel, and I was able to run a modern distribution on top of it. Similarly, running old userlands on new kernels works just as well. The issue with backwards compatibility isn't with the kernel, but ensuring that whatever you want to run is compatible with the surrounding userland environment.…
While you are technically correct, that turns it into a bit of an apples to oranges comparison with Windows because most of what we consider to be the Windows operating system would in the Linux world live in userspace. Which means that when we're comparing the user's experience of an average Linux distribution with Windows it's definitely fair to say that Linux doesn't prioritize backwards compatibility.
Second, until Wayland, X11 also created crazy backwards compatibility. You can take run X apps that are decades old.
Where backwards compatibility is poor is in the desktop libraries like those in the GNOME and KDE ecosystems.
Even there though, the old libraries still work. You can keep them around if you want.
There are actually a lot of factors here, although if I had to sum it up in one, it would be "the hardware can support it." But more seriously: 1. There are a lot of security mitigations in modern Windows that add sometimes substantial runtime overhead, but offer significant protection. Writing an exploit for modern Windows is hard compared to XP SP1 and below. 2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation…
2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation and transparency and lots of good stuff. Strong disagree. Borderless icons floating in a sea of flatness is not "more sophisticated" by any means than the fully-customisable UI which was common in the XP era, and the huge amount of "skinning" that was also very popular. Transparent/translucent effects became common with Vista and that was run on the GPU, which w…
I think this is a big reason why we have lots of poorly performing JavaScript based software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation and transparency and lots of good stuff. Strong disagree. Borderless icons floating in a sea of flatness is not "more sophisticated" by any means than the fully-customisable UI which was common in the XP era, and the huge amount of "skinning" that was also very popular. Transparent/translucent effects became common with Vista and that was run on the GPU, which w…
I assume Windows 11 handles high DPI monitors a lot better than Windows XP, which must add some complexity to graphics rendering.
Raw power that we have now in our PCs and laptops are enormous and some better high DPI handling cannot justify why everything nowadays is so sluggish an laggy.
Fresh install makes sure there is no vendor spyware, like Lenovo superfish.
Then I disable internet stuff. Cloud, cortana, menu start search should not search internet for answers, etc, etc.
After that computer should be much faster.
I presume recall feature will also consume high volumes of energy and pc time.
They focus on a lot of extra set of tools like the former classic shell that has been forked to make it more maintainable, or the former windows internals tools and their integrations. They also backport a lot of drivers (and there's HUGE bundles of drivers available) to make it run on modern Ryzen hardware.
Ironically, a lot of hackers and ransomware operators use Win7 because it has a much smaller attack surface than the crap that is now Windows 11. Well, that is if they're not using Linux these days anyways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming you can go through the dependency hell, because you can't use old packages on a new distro - so in most cases you have to compile by source... I've tried to run XMMS and suffered a lot.
This should be a nonissue if you use chroot.
Distrobox[1] automates the process of installing popular distros released in the past decade or so in containers.
For games in particular, Proton[2] (a game-specific Wine fork) or one of the Steam container runtimes[3] (for native Linux games) might also be worth a try.
For a non-Steam game:
1. Install and run the Linux Steam client (Steam account required).
2. Add the game to the Steam library: "Add a Game" → "Add a Non-Steam Game…", choose game executable.
3. Right click on the game, choose "Properties" → "Compatibility" → "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool", and choose a version of Proton or container runtime (the most recent non-experimental version is probably a sane default).
4. Make sure the selected Proton or container runtime version is installed. These should be available for installation from the Steam library by default. If you can't find them, click the dropdown above the search box in the Steam library, make sure "Tools" is checked, and make sure the "Show only ready to play games" option ("play" arrow in a circle icon to the right of the same dropdown) is disabled.
5. Launch the game from the Steam library.
[1] https://distrobox.it/compatibility/#containers-distros
[2] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
[3] https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/b...
There are actually a lot of factors here, although if I had to sum it up in one, it would be "the hardware can support it." But more seriously: 1. There are a lot of security mitigations in modern Windows that add sometimes substantial runtime overhead, but offer significant protection. Writing an exploit for modern Windows is hard compared to XP SP1 and below. 2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation…
There are a ton more "features" in the OS Including things you like quite a bit, such as WiFi support, thread scheduling, and suspend modes that are worth a damn. XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked, how the battery didn't last more than an hour, and so on. Also worth remembering everyone always has a browser open today. In the XP days, you were running Firef…
Windows 10 LTSC is about the same impact as Vista (2006). XP ran pretty good on a PIII 500MHz / 512MB if you kept an eye on startup bloat via msconfig.exe / autoruns.exe XP still had major flaws security wise until SP3 came out. The solution was to keep the flaws and try to code around it without touching the foundation. It's gotten worse because more crap on the PC to capture you as a consumer. That's why they don't…
I also love OpenBSD as a desktop, unfortunately I need battery life and Windows is better optimized in that respect.