this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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[–] Blue_Morpho 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That list mixes NT kernel OS's with Win95 OS's to support a bad hypothesis.

The NT line is:

NT 3.1, NT 3.51, NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, 7,8, 10.

NT 4, 2000, and XP were all great. Vista was good on good hardware. 7 was good. 8 was bad, 10 good, 11 bad.

If you take the 95 path it's 95 good, 98 good, Me bad.

The only pattern is 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good, 11 bad.

[–] QuarterSwede 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anyone who says NT was ever bad is out of their mind. That was the thing that saved Windows since 95’s kernel wasn’t modern. Anything that crashed took the entire system down. Yeah, that was fun times kiddos.

[–] Blue_Morpho 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well 11 is NT as was 8. Although it's only problem was the UI.

[–] QuarterSwede 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anything past 98 was/is NT. My point is NT’s kernel is actually quite good, it’s the rest that people complain about.

[–] Blue_Morpho 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Me came after 98 and wasn't NT. There was also 98 SE.

But I agree with you.

[–] QuarterSwede 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t count ME, that was basically 98SE as a hot garbage patch. I’ll concede on 98SE, that was the best of that kernel and I do have found memories of it in the good old Unreal (not engine) days.

Also realize that I HATE Windows. Too much legacy that no one allows them to dump and then complains that it’s got a bad UI. Personally, my favorite is 11. I’m a macOS/*nix lover but I’m forced to use 11 at work. I appreciate Microsoft unifying the UI into something that doesn’t look and work like a decade old system. But then it still has problems like system search being abysmal, the registry still getting clogged with garbage, wake from sleep being 10 seconds or more long (even on high end equipment). It’s just, ancient at this point. There’s no good reason our personal devices give a much better experience these days.

[–] Blue_Morpho 2 points 2 months ago

If Me is a 98 patch then 8 is a patch too.

11 is bad primarily because of privacy. There are also problems like Control Panel and Settings are still separate with overlapping controls. You never know where to look. It's been 12 years of confusion.

There are also minor annoyances like the start bar can't be moved to the sides. They coded that into Windows 95 in a few months decades ago but can't add it after 3 years now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Windows 98 sucked. Windows 98SE was... well I won't say good, but it was ok.

Vista was good on good hardware

That's a hell of a caveat for an OS meant to be run on consumer hardware. You might get away with that kind of caveat if MS only offered in on good hardware and people went and put it on non-recommended hardware on their own accord. But that's not the case, Vista sucked when running on hardware that met MS's specs, so it sucked.

So the real pattern is Win 3.0 sucked, 3.1 ok, 95 sucked, 95B ok, 98 sucked, 98SE ok. Windows Me? OMG let's just move everyone over to NT and never talk about this again!

2000 was good. XP wasn't great but improved after awhile. Vista sucked. Windows 7 was peak windows, it was downhill from here. 8 sucked, 10 was ok, and 11 is shaping up to be complete dogshit.

So it's not precisely every other release is bad, but close enough to see a pattern. I guess you could say 2000-> XP doesn't follow the pattern, but Me->XP does. And since 2000 and previous NT versions were meant for servers, not home PCs, while XP was meant for home PCs. It would make more sense to look at the pattern of releases for PC releases rather than mixing in server releases.

When MS has an OS that works decently they tend to try to cram in a bunch of shit into the next release which causes problems. Then they either remove the shit (or at least make it work better) for the release after that so they have something that works ok again. Then it's back to adding a bunch of shit into the next one.

[–] Blue_Morpho 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Win95 did not suck. 3.1 was trash compared to 95. 95 has a real desktop UI, tcpip built in and a 32 bit preemptive kernel.

98 was great. It wasn't any more buggy than 95.

You ignored NT 4.

[–] Asidonhopo 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

People used 3.1 and 3.1.1 for years even though it was running on top of MSDOS but show me someone who used 3.0? Or 1.x, 2.x? Unheard of. Version 3 started off with some problems that needed a more or less immediate large update.

[–] Blue_Morpho 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes people used 3.1. I used 3.1. Windows 2.1 was very popular because of Excel and Word. The Windows/386 version of 2.1 gave 32bit preemptive multitasking to DOS. It was a big enough hit that MS gave up on OS/2 which was 286 only.

But Win95 was on a whole new level. That's why I said Win3.1 was trash compared to Win 95.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm speaking from experience in using theses OSes, not from a list of features they had. I didn't use NT 4 personally (and that's way outside the scope of personal computer OSes), so I didn't talk about it.

[–] Blue_Morpho 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

So you continued to run 3.1 after Win95 came out? I listed the features because it's why it was so much better for me and everyone.

Trumpet was amazing because it worked, not because it was reliable. Win95 was far more stable than 3.1 because the tcpip stack, along with much of the OS was preemptively multitasked.

The desktop UI feature was far more usable than Win3.1 progman. You needed to install Norton or Symantec Desktop to get an equivalent experience.

If you claim that the desktop UI doesn't matter because it's a feature, then Windows 8 becomes a great version. Because it's only problem was the UI. It's speed and stability was better than 7.

If NT is out of scope because it's not consumer then you can't have Windows 2000 in your list. Consumer NT kernel OS's started with XP.