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Windows XP source code has leaked

gizmodo.com.au

281–290 of 485 posts

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is a resource hog and contains adware. macOS ... Is special. Some of the most notable changes in the last few years have been to try to restrict what an app can do.

So you're telling me that macOS is more performant than Windows 10? Have you used both? Do you not feel the delay in every mouse click you do in macOS that is so maddening after coming from Windows? Both the UI lag and general performance in macOS is just a sad story. My windows machine runs 24/7 for months without needing a restart. I am forced to restart macOS weekly, usually because of system issues.

MacOS is far better. This mouse click delay you're talking about, is in your head.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP, when it was first released, was a more resource hungry and uglier version of Windows 2000. Win 2000 was amazing when it was released. Games (albeit not DOS ones) worked well, it was stable and really your only other options were worse (Mac OS 9 was less stable than Win 98, ME was a dumpster fire, Linux wasn't quite ready for the desktop and BeOS was awesome but barely supported). Then when XP was released, it had…

Many games did not work so well on 2K, and XP brought some substantial improvements specifically in that department.

W2k had a w98 compatibily mode which could be enabled from the command prompt.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#283
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In early Windows XP days everybody said it was crap compared to Win2k. XP was the first one with product activation as well. And people called the Luna theme childish. Then Vista came along and people said XP was the good one.

Then Windows 7 came along and nobody said Vista was the good one.

7 was just rebranded vista. It was basically vista sp3. MS knew the vista name had been badly tarnished.

The are several reasons why vista churned so badly at startup was the indexing service and the service that was trying to load everything into memory. Turn those 2 off and vista worked as good as 7, I did this to dozens of computers and the owners were so happy. Several other background services needed about 1.5GB of memory just to get the system up and running. This was when 4GB of machine was considered 'huge'. By the time 7 came out they had fixed both of those services and a 'crappy' machine had 4GB. Dumping it on a box that 512MB of memory and it struggled badly (512-1024 was the sweet spot for XP). 8GB for Vista and up and for proper use of that, you need the 64bit ver.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP, when it was first released, was a more resource hungry and uglier version of Windows 2000. Win 2000 was amazing when it was released. Games (albeit not DOS ones) worked well, it was stable and really your only other options were worse (Mac OS 9 was less stable than Win 98, ME was a dumpster fire, Linux wasn't quite ready for the desktop and BeOS was awesome but barely supported). Then when XP was released, it had…

Yup. When saying "XP was great", people mean "XP SP2 and on" - for me, the move from W2k to WXP was "the same thing, now with Fischer-Price aesthetic!"

I say this as somebody who really enjoyed W2K, but the complaints about WinXP's default theme are very difficult to understand when:

- The classic theme was just a few clicks away

- Of all the problems with XP, I would not even list the "easily changed default theme" in the top.... 100 or so. I would not expect to see such sentiment on HN, of all places.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#285
post #8

https://twitter.com/RoninDey/status/1309275918943301636 https://anonfiles.com/Ffn8u2Yaoa/Microsoft_leaked_source_cod...

This is still illegal to obtain, right? I'm not sure if it's wise to post the link as it may encourage others to download it and might be against the ToS on hackernews.

I am not sure this is against the guidelines. I don't think it's illegal to post it, but then there are some illegal numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

However, the commenter might have just posted the magnet link, which is more to the point, and unlikely to disappear (torrent 2.0 notwithstanding), unlike some third-party website (which could also turn out to be an infection vector). It also shortens the trust chain.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3d8b16242b56a3aafb8da7b5fc83ef993ebcf35b&dn=Microsoft%20leaked%20source%20code%20archive_2020-09-24&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#286
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go months without needing to reboot windows, and have for over a decade. Typically if I need to reboot it’s due to an update or software that requires a reboot to install.

How? When I last used Windows it forced a reboot to do updates once a month. If I let it pick the time it was often a bad time.

I dont use Windows much, but you can go to services and disable Windows the update service and.. in the Wifi settings check a box that says you have a limited connection.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#287
post #25

Creator of the torrent posted on reddit about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/iz46du/the_windo...

The creator also included a bunch of wild conspiracy theory stuff in the torrent as well about Bill Gates and vaccinations etc which blows the torrent size out by a fair chunk.

It's actually quite interesting to watch, That James guy does a really good job with the research.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#288
post #140

Archive 40 GB Source code leaks 5 GB Conspiracy videos about Bill Gates 35 GB Just to put it in perspective... something the Gizmodo reporter miserably failed to do

Hmm, I had a look, the videos were more like 3 GB IIRC. There is a lot of stuff in that torrent, with the source to DOS, win2K, some Xbox stuff that's 5 GB itself, etc.

I did open a couple readmes, and the poster didn't appear that well-versed with tech, despite meaning well. It's an amateur job, but those tend to do the bulk of the work.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it was the first solid (in relative terms) consumer operating system from MS. I used Windows 3.1 for years and I never had to reinstall it for stability reasons. At some point I also switched to XP and after 2 years it wouldn't boot anymore because of a blue screen appearing before the graphical interface would show up. That made the decision easy for me to use Linux exclusively - which I had on dual boot al…

I admire what the community has achieve with Linux. I think is really great and I have used Linux in the past (Redhat, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Mint). However, I always wonder what makes your experience so different than mine. For me I can simple replace what you said and it will still be valid: To me Linux were really frustrating to use since random parts of the system (CD-ROM, Word, Games...) would stop working at ran…

For me the main difference between (early) Windows and Linux is, Windows is quick to setup and quick to break. Linux is hard to setup and hard to break - I cannot tell how much time I spent tweaking my Linux desktop. Also I could for instance use an old SCSI scanner on Linux much longer unlike Windows where they eventually stopped developing drivers for new Windows releases.

But now things are of course a bit different, especially when choosing well supported hardware. On the other hand driver support tends to be more stable and long-term oriented on Linux since they tend to be maintained centrally in the Linux kernel. I agree that macOS is a bit mediocre in some sense, but somehow it unites the worlds of Linux and Windows.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#290
post #112
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial equipment control computers mostly - the computer is part of the machine and cannot be upgraded. You see this quite a lot outside China too.

Honest question: Would using Linux have been a better idea then? An old unpatched Win XP has tons of vulnerabilities but so does an unpatched 20 year old Linux Kernel. Using Windows XP on those devices often gets very bad rep but is there a viable alternative for machines that are air gapped and technically won't be upgradable for several decades?

At that time using XP was a very viable thing to do. You would pretty much never do it now. Think about it from a business perspective. Something goes wrong in the OS. At that time you would have had to have linux guru on staff to take care of it. OR you could pay 30 bucks for a OEM embedded copy. If something went kinda bonkers you could call microsoft and they would fix it. Their support on things like that is pretty good. At that time getting that sort of support for linux would have been basically nonexistant. Today you could get that kind of support for linux. Back in 2000-2004 it would have been tough. At this point no company is going to re-write the firmware on a machine they sold 20+ years ago unless they happen to be still selling that exact same model and you are paying for some awesome support contract.
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