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Windows XP source code has leaked

gizmodo.com.au

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Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#231

Post by ygra »

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…

For me that actually was Windows 2000. Never really saw a need to switch to XP, and instead switched to Vista and later 7, eventually.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#232

Post by Joeri »

ObscureScience wrote: post #90
cblconfederate wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the consensus is that windows 95, XP, 7 were the least troublesome versions. I still think 7 > 10

To me it's always been win2k, win 7, win 10, win 98. In tthat order. I've been using win2k rather than windows xp when I need legacy application support, though you might need to jump through some hoops for XP compatibility and drivers. Though I've been inpressed by how snappy windows 8 feels, especially the boot time which is the fastest of all versions.

8 was the first version that hibernates the kernel on shutdown so it can reload it from snapshot on boot. That’s why all windows versions since 8 boot so fast.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#233

Post by Joeri »

Flockster wrote: post #79
cblconfederate wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the consensus is that windows 95, XP, 7 were the least troublesome versions. I still think 7 > 10

And all forget that 8 even existed.

8 was great on the intended devices. I used it on an asus transformer tablet/laptop and it worked really well. W10 was a step down for that machine because they dialed back the tablet UI.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#234

Post by yodsanklai »

I'm surprised it hasn't leaked before. Microsoft used to give access to their OS source code as part of collaborations with academics (I don't know if they still do). I was surprised at how lax they were. It seems they didn't care that much.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#235

Post by alxlaz »

dx034 wrote: post #154
alxlaz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Microsoft also has a trust problem with updates. Back in Windows XP era, there was no question about whether you wanted to upgrade to SP2 or not -- you'd maybe wait for a few days/weeks to make sure no major bugs were in, but there was no need to force anything. Today, you might run an upgrade and reboot to find a more secure operating system -- or a full-screen Edge ad, with Edge being immediately aut…

But you experience the same when you login to GMail and it has a new interface or your Phone looks different in the morning because of iOS/Android updates. Users are so used to be annoyed that updates disrupt UX, Microsoft isn't an especially bad actor here. In the end, users tend to disable updates as a response which is bad for security and makes vendors force them to update. Maybe not "improving" UX with every rel…

A long time ago, I had a GEOS installation that used to reliably crash every Sunday at 12 PM.

Should mandatory reboots every Sunday at 12 PM be introduced in a future Windows update? I mean, someone else has done it before. If you do it every second Sunday it's even better, Microsoft wouldn't be an especially bad actor here.

The fact that other companies are even worse doesn't make this any better. For any program that has a bug, I guarantee there are thousand other programs with even worse bugs. Pointing fingers and returning EWONTFIX may fly for some FOSS projects, where maintainers can at least claim that if you want a fix in open-source software that you didn't pay for you should fix it yourself, but it's a pretty ridiculous stance if you have paying customers.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#236

Post by swiley »

fimdomeio wrote: post #43

Forgeting about legality for a moment, this is great. Windows XP is probably the greatest operating system if you factor usability and how many people it has reached. It was also from a time where people still did not expect proprietary operating systems to be actively working against you. So it's great that this source will not be forever lost.

If I'm going to play with a toy OS haiku is neater IMO.

Much more fun is writing your own.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#237

Post by justinclift »

x1unix wrote: post #152
saagarjha wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an .edu, is there a place that I can grab this?

WRK is available on GitHub for years: - https://github.com/9176324/WRK - https://github.com/ntkernel/wrk-v1.2 Strange that nobody noticed and sent strike to that repos

Interestingly, that ntkernel/wrk-v1.2 seems to be a public fork of the non-public "https://github.com/Trietptm-on-Security/wrk-v1.2" repo.

Might have been accidentally made public?

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#238

Post by ValentineC »

buran77 wrote: post #106
cblconfederate wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the consensus is that windows 95, XP, 7 were the least troublesome versions. I still think 7 > 10

The humorous but not wrong "consensus" was that you always had to skip a version. In this case 95 > not 98 > 98SE > not Me > XP (this was a bit of a departure because it was a successor to both the 9x and the NT lines) > not Vista > Win 7. And both XP and Win 7 were criticized at the beginning because they had to compete with very solid predecessors, and because they came with plenty of teething problems even if they…

For me, Windows 95 OSR2 (OEM service release 2) and 98 were more stable than stock 95. I remember having to obtain it via one of those "100 in 1" pirated CDs, because the OSRs weren't made available to the end users.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#239

Post by swiley »

It might be convenient to have a wine distribution with some of the higher level user space replaced with components windowsXP. I wonder if Visual studio and .net would run better.

This is something that the wine devs themselves shouldn't do for obvious reasons.

Re: Windows XP source code has leaked

#240

Post by hnlmorg »

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…

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 twice the minimum and recommended hardware spec than 2000, it had those stupid skins and it didn't offer anything functionally more beneficial over 2000 (aside faster boot time if you had hundreds of fonts installed).

Granted XP got better with SP2 or SP3, but it definitely wasn't the first solid nor even lightweight when it was originally released.

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