Windows XP source code has leaked • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#411

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

i_am_proteus wrote: post #264

christophilus wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fischer-Price aesthetic That is the perfect description. It’s one of the ugliest UIs I’ve ever experienced.

XP also shipped with the 2000 skin and it was trivially easy to switch over.

It was easy to switch but there is a lot to be said for sane defaults. With each new iteration of Windows I'd find more and more insane defaults (for me at least). It started with file extensions being hidden by default. Then system files too. By the time XP was released I was finding that I had to spend an hour just configuring the system how I liked...and that was before I installed any software.

Users will sometimes reach a point where they say "If I'm having to spend this much time configuring new installs to function how I like, then I might as well install something else that already ships with the defaults I like". And this is why many power users started drifting away from Windows in the decade of 2000 to 2010.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#412

Post by beagle3 » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

Aachen wrote: post #402

beagle3 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA has a dual mandate - to improve security for the US government (and by extension, US businesses to an extent), and to peek into communications outside the US. They have been pretty negligent about the first (or even malicious about it - e.g. the dual drbg case), letting the second take over - but officially they still have the first mandate. In fact, DES was considerably strengthened in its day by the NSA rev…

> Every “conspiracy” I’ve heard about the NSA and friends turned out to be true And therefore every next thing anyone on the Internet concocted has to be true as well? I get what you're saying though, and I'm well aware of the dual mandate. But you haven't given me anymore reason to believe this particular one, and I find it strange because I've never heard of any company in any country having to give their software…

You are reading too much into cududa’s comment and mine, quite a bit of things neither of us said.

Cududa mentioned Microsoft let the NSA review it - that it was procedure, not that it was law. Furthermore, no one claimed that NSA recommendations or replacement DLLs had to be used by law - though that makes little difference. I mentioned that this would be in line with well known history of DES development. That’s basically all we said about it.

I have no idea what you are referring to with the Clipper chip. But RSA, NIST and others were definitely aware they were peddling NSA recommendations With the dual-drbg fiasco.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#413

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #358

hnlmorg wrote: post #240

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…

A few clicks and XP SP3 looks exactly like 2k, with a few useful features thrown in. A decent number of not-ancient floss software supports it as well. Not so with 2k. Add thousands of security patches and firewall, and the choice is clear.

> A few clicks and XP SP3 looks exactly like 2k, with a few useful features thrown in.

There wasn't much added to Windows XP over 2000 in the original release of XP (service pack 3 was released 6 years (!!!) after XP was originally launched. So it's not really fair comparing XP SP3 to Win 2k). I remember this era in computing vividly and it took a few service packs before XP really came into it's own. However you still paid the price running XP because it demanded double the hardware requirements to run when compared with Windows 2000. So sure, you could disable themes in XP but for many people sticking with Windows 2000 was more appealing because you had more preferable defaults out of the box plus less bloat / hardware overhead too.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#414

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

hestefisk wrote: post #275

hnlmorg wrote: post #240

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…

Agree, Windows XP was sluggish when it was released. Same applies to Win2K though when it first came out compared to WinNT 4.0. 2K was the first Windows to include a shadow effect under the mouse cursor. Oh the extra compute cycles it had to do to render that...

I do agree but don't forget that the difference between NT4 and 2000 was night a day. 2000 wasn't just a reskin of NT4, there were lots of compatibility and usability improvements too. The problem was most people simply couldn't run NT4 outside of an office environment because very few games would run on it, driver support was relatively limited, etc. Windows 2000 was the real bridge between NT office machines and home machines, not XP. Granted consumers wouldn't have seen it that way because most stores didn't sell 2000 on home machines (instead opting for the dumpster fire that was ME) but technology wise XP (original release -- pre-service packs) wasn't a huge advancement from 2000 where as 2000 from NT4 was.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#415

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

kwanbix wrote: post #406

stjohnswarts wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a system made with known linux compatible hardware you'll have zero problems. Just like a mac. Windows has the advantage that it gets first tier service and thus a greater chance with being stable with a broader swathe of hardware. OSX to me is much better than Windows because it doesn't get in your way. You want a new app download it and drop it in Applications. I don't know WTF windows does but some inst…

I have always used ThinkPads, which are among the best supported notebooks for Linux afaik. I totally agree that Windows has an "unfair" advantage here as manufacturers make sure that their hardware works in Windows while for Linux most of the time they don't even provide drivers. I have helped friends and family configure their MACs and honestly I never felt wow this does not gets in the way. Not all apps in MAC are…

That's not really a fair comparison though because most of those stages are just part of the download stage you glossed over in Windows (I really hate having to browse the web looking for software then having to manually download the thing after I've found what I want).

Also Windows has no managed way to keep applications up to date. Which means you either have to manually repeat all those steps yourself or run background agents for every publisher to keep that software up to date. But by far the most annoying in Windows is software that doesn't check if it's up to date until you run it and then demands you update it there and then (great way to kill productivity). Yet those steps you've exampled is a one time pain and then all software is managed for you. Updates are easy.

I used to be a hardened Slackware user and was prepared to download and often compile my software manually. Then I discovered package managers in Linux and from that point onwards I lost any respect for an OS that didn't manage software for me. It's amazing that it's two decades from me discovering package managers, ten years since iOS App Store was announced, and yet people are still stuck on shitty first party solutions on Windows and macOS (thank god for homebrew et al).

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#416

Post by washadjeffmad » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #116

matthewmacleod wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia is, it seems, a hell of a drug.

I personally tried to use Windows XP (for my Windows systems, which is mostly VMs nowadays) for as long as I could. First, it was the first solid (in relative terms) consumer operating system from MS. Second, it was lightweight (in relative terms) in terms of UX and, somewhat consequently, engineering. With Windows Vista (but in particular, Windows 8), MS started to add complexity on every layer. Nowadays, I'm really…

Do people not recall that XP, even after SP3, was the OS of over a decade of botnets, ransomware, and worms that crippled the web? Even Vista and 7 were guilty if you were lax and disabled UAC.

All of the things people are complaining about here, like Microsoft becoming the de facto admin of of their Desktop Windows 10 products, are direct results of a period they manufactured.

All anyone who waxes nostalgic should do to test is install anything earlier than 10 on an internet facing computer and then wait. It's terrifying how fast they get compromised.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#417

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

kwanbix wrote: post #301

blablabla123 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

It could be a matter of experience. If you are more experienced with Linux, it could be easier than if you are more experienced with Windows. For me, Linux is easy to install, and it has been for a while, but then trying to customize it to do what I want, is much more complicated than Windows. For example, I want RAR support. There is no LinRAR, so I had to download a library and install it. It wasnt that bad, but in…

The issue there is you're trying to run Linux like it is Windows. If you do that then you're never going to have a good experience. For example if you're after Windows software on Linux or insist on downloading software rather than using the package manager then you clearly prefer the Windows-style workflow. Which is fine -- everyone has their own preferences. But if that is your preference then the issue isn't Linux doing things wrong, the issue is you just prefer Windows.

For what it's worth, I equivalent teething pains when using OS X for a while. It took me a few months before I finally learned to adopt Mac-isms and I still don't feel at home on it like I do on Linux and BSD (my preferred platforms). Windows, however, always felt somewhat alien to me (and not through a lack of experience, I used to be a Windows developer and have written some pretty low level software for the platform. But even with all of that experience I still couldn't see eye to eye with the OS).

By the way, there are Linux-native builds of WinRAR.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#418

Post by norswap » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #240

pizza234 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally tried to use Windows XP (for my Windows systems, which is mostly VMs nowadays) for as long as I could. First, it was the first solid (in relative terms) consumer operating system from MS. Second, it was lightweight (in relative terms) in terms of UX and, somewhat consequently, engineering. With Windows Vista (but in particular, Windows 8), MS started to add complexity on every layer. Nowadays, I'm really…

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…

This is also what I remember, but then I also remember that the specs of my first and last XP machines were miles apart. The first had 256MB or RAM...

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#419

Post by saagarjha » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

ksk wrote: post #336

saagarjha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemetrics are frequently inaccurate, sometimes to the point they paint a picture are interpreted in a a way that’s the opposite of reality. Windows telemetry in particular is not nice because it’s not really possible to turn off on the lower editions and it also does not seem to translate to benefits–especially as around the time of its inclusion word got out that Microsoft was cutting a large portion of their QA t…

What are you basing this on? Are you talking about Windows or just random telemetry?

The first statement was general, the second is specific to Windows.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#420

Post by sitkack » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #240

pizza234 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally tried to use Windows XP (for my Windows systems, which is mostly VMs nowadays) for as long as I could. First, it was the first solid (in relative terms) consumer operating system from MS. Second, it was lightweight (in relative terms) in terms of UX and, somewhat consequently, engineering. With Windows Vista (but in particular, Windows 8), MS started to add complexity on every layer. Nowadays, I'm really…

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…

Funny that, because Win2k was a glossy, less stable version of WinNT 4 that we had to move to, to get USB support. Had USB been backported to NT4, I never would have moved.