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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#91

Post by libria »

This is such an "ok boomer" thread, but what can we take away from it? What lesson can we take from this to repeat the success with today's tech?

IMO the key was drivers:

> While the press criticized some of Windows 2000’s driver support at launch, the OS actually supported far more hardware configurations than Windows NT 4.0.

I ran NT 4 as a desktop and it was quite the chore with a mix of hacks and repurposing other drivers for similar hardware.

This reminds me of the Linux desktop experience now. With comprehensive driver support and an intuitive UX, Linux can be dominant as a desktop alternative to Win/Mac.

The litmus test is if Mom and Dad can manage it themselves, it's attained equal status to the above.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#92

Post by nix23 »

SteveNuts wrote: post #40
pwned1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t use 200 much, but I feel this way about windows Xp. It just worked. It seemed super stable and not bloated.

Really? My experience was driver nightmares and having to reinstall the OS every 6 months with XP. It wasn't til 7 that most of that went away.

Yes Win2000 was perfect from the start, xp really was a nightmare until sp2 and got really stable when sp3 came. But W2k is still my favorite windows version.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#93

Post by hyperman1 »

erichurkman wrote: post #76
octorian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still rather baffled about how people look back fondly on XP, it looked like a toy for toddlers I think a big part of this is a combination of two factors: First, most non-tech people never ran Win2k. They went straight from 98/ME to XP. Second, no one remembers WinXP before SP2. (You know, when it was a complete trainwreck.) FWIW, when I was doing software development in the latter days of XP, I found that I a…

Windows XP even before SP2 was a _delight_ compared to the true train wreck that shipped on consumer PCs before it: Windows "Mistake Edition" Me.

Windows Me was a strange beast. On some (most?) PCs it was an absolute disaster up to corrupting hard disks, on others it was a solid step up from win98. But you could never say beforehand how it was going to behave, even on 2 identical PCs. I never understood what triggered its abysmall behaviour.

Oh well, who cares now, it lies in its well deserved grave, I guess.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#94

Post by vzidex »

sergeykish wrote: post #45
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that they got rid of it in windows 8 and later. >the classic theme was a lot leaner on system resources maybe , but it probably also made things run slower because it forces everything to be done in software rather than hardware. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130327-00/?p=48... >Starting in Windows Vista, a lot of visual effects were offloaded to the graphics card. Consequently, the impact on…

Windows 10 is full of distractions, one time I thought my display was broken - transparency on title bar. And animations just add latency. Disable transparency and windows animations (Settings > Display > Show transparency on Windows, Show animations in windows). Also disable "Fade or slide menus into view". Much better experience and not much to offload.

I just went through my settings on my work machine and:

* Disabled transparency

* Disabled animations

* Disabled scroll-bars being auto-hidden

Unfortunately, I couldn't find "Fade or slide menus into view", but the rest of the settings are night and day! Thank you.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#96

Post by nix23 »

MisterTea wrote: post #90

People tend to forget this was during a period when computers were computers and actual work was done on them. Now they're over powered terminals.

But you need lots of power to run a browser nowadays.

Love the expression 'over powered terminals' that's sooo true!

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#98

Post by ur-whale »

Not that Win2K was that amazing (the Win32 API was then and still is today really full of inconsistencies, always favoring quantity over quality), but it certainly was the best Windows I've worked with.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#99

Post by sjm-lbm »

erichurkman wrote: post #76
octorian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still rather baffled about how people look back fondly on XP, it looked like a toy for toddlers I think a big part of this is a combination of two factors: First, most non-tech people never ran Win2k. They went straight from 98/ME to XP. Second, no one remembers WinXP before SP2. (You know, when it was a complete trainwreck.) FWIW, when I was doing software development in the latter days of XP, I found that I a…

Windows XP even before SP2 was a _delight_ compared to the true train wreck that shipped on consumer PCs before it: Windows "Mistake Edition" Me.

It was also preferred (by most people, at least) to Windows Vista, the product that usually shipped on PCs after it.

It was an almost undeniable local maximum in Windows releases from the consumer side, which does make some of the fond memories make sense.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#100

Post by badRNG »

time0ut wrote: post #37
qubex wrote: post #13

The memories this brings back! I turned 18 midway through 1999 and since I was deeply interested in multiprocessor OSes (chiefly, BeOS) I asked for (and was lucky enough to get) a dual PIII-450 system as an 18th birthday/high-school graduation gift. I dual booted BeOS 5.5 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 98SE would work, but it didn’t have support for SMP, so one of the processors would be deactivated. On the other hand,…

It might be nostalgia talking, but those years felt like the end of a golden age. I went to university at 17 in 2001 with a Dell notebook and a self built Duron (IIRC) tower. Instead of partying, I used my new found freedom (and decent internet connection) to try every OS and piece of software I could get my hands on (though I never stumbled across BeOS). I spent the most time with Windows 2000 Server on the notebook…

It certainly feels like we currently live in a golden age of open source software and open access for tinkering.

Linux desktops/laptops finally seem to work out of the box (as opposed to hunting for a WiFi driver to sneakernet over, or reinstalling the OS yet again due to some unidentifiable issue), gaming is finally viable on Linux, Microsoft has multiple compelling open source offerings like PowerShell (for Linux!), .NET core, and VSCode (regardless of my latent skepticism from the EEE era.)

For the past 5 years, I've used Linux exclusively for my main driver (dev, gaming, tinkering, etc.,) something I simply wouldn't have had the patience to do even a decade ago due to the lack of maturity of these systems on the desktop. Browsing distrowatch and just installing whatever interests you feels more viable than it ever has been. This year, I am using Pop!_OS primarily, which just works out of the box. It includes a built-in, robust tiling manager, and I have access to incredible free, open source IDEs and text editors that feel more powerful than what I paid for in the past. It's a good time to be a "techie" in the world.

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