Neat effort, but my one complaint is how much whitespace there is between and around various UI elements, especially in item lists such as in the Start menu and the sidebar of various configuration dialogs. Actual Windows XP hails from an era before visual designers all collectively decided that high information density was bad aesthetics.
Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
51–60 of 373 posts
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#52What makes Windows XP good relative to modern Windows is what it doesn't have (or doesn't have in comparable amounts): telemetry, advertising, multiple generations of differing UIs with their own styles, a huge installation footprint, online accounts and cloud services tie-ins, dark patterns to trick people into agreeing to the former, tons of bloatware, etc.
A Windows which is a descendant of Windows 8 but is themed like Windows XP is basically worthless and misses the point. It just fetishizes an aesthetic that is in fact only incidentally associated with a less user-hostile era.
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#53I can’t wait for proton to become even more mainstream. We need to put pressure on AAA titles to support Linux. Many anti cheats already do but it’s the games themselves that refuse to allow Linux. The faster I can dump windows the better because the only windows install I have is for a dedicated gaming machine.
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#54I watched the video but for me still too many slow UI animations.
Indeed. It's a video, they could have shown everything exactly as they like. Yet the decided that it should take a full two seconds from clicking the taskbar icon until Explorer is usable. Are people gaslit into thinking that this is okay or normal that they design their dream software like this? Explorer should (and does) open in an instant on a real system, no loading animations required.
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#55Ya know, I've never had a Linux box that had any of the problems listed about modern windows. Also all the advantages listed about Windows XP are also present in Linux... But I've never paid Microsoft for an OS that showed me ads against my will in my Start Menu, so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.
> "all the advantages listed about Windows XP are also present in Linux" You mean, are present in Linux TODAY . Installing Linux 22-years ago, when XP shipped, was hugely painful and only the most technical would attempt it. Windows XP marked the begin of an era when corporations replaced analog processes with digital. It sounds so foreign now, but in the late 90s - it was still common for corporations to send printe…
> Installing Linux 22-years ago, when XP shipped, was hugely painful and only the most technical would attempt it.
That’s still the case with Linux now. I did two recent Linux installs (different distros) and it’s still a nightmare of finding drivers, scripts, etc. to get everything setup. On one of my devices it still doesn’t recognise all the USB ports attached to the motherboard (but does recognise some), I just got tired of trying to discover why. It’s still often the case that BIOS changes are required, etc.
Linux is not accessible to the average non-technical user at all. The moment one thing goes wrong, they’re done.
Windows is going in the wrong direction for sure, but still when it comes to everything “just working”, it’s hard to beat.
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#56The "Fisher-Price'ing" [1] of the user interface isn't necessarily better in my view. It took the already big and colorful user interface elements and essentially made them bigger. When the video finally gets past the installer there isn't much that wasn't already a part of XP beyond the added, slow UI animations (which is definitely not an improvement, just look at most UI research and anecdotal griping on the web for the last 15 years).
Yearning for XP is something I can relate to. It feels like the last good UI version of Windows. The video is only a nostalgia trip though. Actual improvements on XP's UI would be:
- Removing the hierarchy and modes Microsoft kept piling on since 3.1. These are endemic in the shell. Both the Start menu and Windows Explorer are rife with them.
- Organizing the Control Panel such that it's thematically grouped. All settings involving the display (and thus graphics sub-system) are in a single place, all networking is controlled in one place, etc.
- Reducing the number and complexity of mouse interactions. Context menus should only be needed for the most exceptional cases. Right clicking to accomplish a task should be rare.
- Near elimination of dialogs. Users mostly dismiss them without reading anyway.
- Reduce, to the degree possible, the need to understand the file system, and its hierarchy, to find one's data and make basic use of the system. Watching people try to understand files and the file system hierarchy is pretty painful.
- Reduce the need to manage individual windows, and introduce a way to intelligently place windows across programs such that the user can juxtapose the applications they need to copy/paste between to get work done with minimal effort.
These are just what's top of mind, and I don't fault the creator of the video for making a tribute to XP. I'll add that a lot of these complaints apply to macOS, but often to a lesser degree. Perhaps I'm the old man yelling at the cloud here [2], but this stuff has been eating away at me for years and there doesn't seem to exist the will to address any of it.
[1] https://shop.mattel.com/pages/fisher-price [2] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#57Microsoft actually makes the version of Windows that people want, but it’s called LTSC and they really don’t want you to have it. No bloat, no ads, no forced or feature updates, optional security patches only, virtually nothing installed by default, and minimal telemetry.
It's only $110. How do they discourage people from using it?
Business only with a minimum of 5 licenses
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#58IMO I think with the changing dynamics of how people use their computers (most things now are web based whereas before it was always an app you installed on your computer) coupled with the maturity of the Linux desktop, most regular people could probably get away with using Linux these days. Still the biggest barrier to Linux adoption is just getting it setup on your machine.
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#59Microsoft actually makes the version of Windows that people want, but it’s called LTSC and they really don’t want you to have it. No bloat, no ads, no forced or feature updates, optional security patches only, virtually nothing installed by default, and minimal telemetry.
It's only $110. How do they discourage people from using it?
Link to where you can secure one of these licenses?
Re: Windows XP 2024 Edition is everything I want from a new OS
#60Microsoft actually makes the version of Windows that people want, but it’s called LTSC and they really don’t want you to have it. No bloat, no ads, no forced or feature updates, optional security patches only, virtually nothing installed by default, and minimal telemetry.
It used to be the OS I want. They cut the 10 years LT support to 5 years.
The IoT version (which is virtually the same as the non-IoT version) is supported for 10 years, currently until 2032.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise...