Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

The memories this brings back!

I turned 18 midway through 1999 and since I was deeply interested in multiprocessor OSes (chiefly, BeOS) I asked for (and was lucky enough to get) a dual PIII-450 system as an 18th birthday/high-school graduation gift.

I dual booted BeOS 5.5 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 98SE would work, but it didn’t have support for SMP, so one of the processors would be deactivated. On the other hand, it NT 4.0 didn’t support USB, and I had several USB peripherals (my very first digital camera, a Canon IXUS, and a flatbed scanner).

That’s why in June 1999 I joined the Windows 2000 beta programme. It was amazing to have the full power of the dual processors, the “interesting” new GUI, and USB support all rolled into one system. I remember being quite smitten with Windows from just about then until a couple of years after the release of XP (the fabled “XP SP2” being when I jumped ship and switched to Mac OS X 10.2).

Anyway, yes, Windows 2000 (or “Win 2k” as it was affectionately known in those millennial years) was a true monument, a watershed, a massive accomplishment when compared technically to its immediate predecessor Windows NT 4.0 (SP6a) and an immense effort bring the NT line to “functional parity” with the Windows 9x line. I was stunned that it was replaced so soon by Windows XP (and also, stunned that XP endured for so long thereafter, but that’s another story).

It might be nostalgia talking, but those years felt like the end of a golden age.

I went to university at 17 in 2001 with a Dell notebook and a self built Duron (IIRC) tower. Instead of partying, I used my new found freedom (and decent internet connection) to try every OS and piece of software I could get my hands on (though I never stumbled across BeOS). I spent the most time with Windows 2000 Server on the notebook (as a "client") and Redhat on the tower (as a "server").

It was a different time then. Lot's of free time, huge explosion in open source software, basically no network security or limitations.

It certainly feels like we currently live in a golden age of open source software and open access for tinkering.

Linux desktops/laptops finally seem to work out of the box (as opposed to hunting for a WiFi driver to sneakernet over, or reinstalling the OS yet again due to some unidentifiable issue), gaming is finally viable on Linux, Microsoft has multiple compelling open source offerings like PowerShell (for Linux!), .NET core, and VSCode (regardless of my latent skepticism from the EEE era.)

For the past 5 years, I've used Linux exclusively for my main driver (dev, gaming, tinkering, etc.,) something I simply wouldn't have had the patience to do even a decade ago due to the lack of maturity of these systems on the desktop. Browsing distrowatch and just installing whatever interests you feels more viable than it ever has been. This year, I am using Pop!_OS primarily, which just works out of the box. It includes a built-in, robust tiling manager, and I have access to incredible free, open source IDEs and text editors that feel more powerful than what I paid for in the past. It's a good time to be a "techie" in the world.

I spent a long time with Lubuntu as my go to. Things have certainly come a long way, but I was more than willing to put in the time tinkering to get things working.

The past couple years, I've been using Windows 10 with WSL2 for personal stuff. It is ok, but I think I'll go back to some Linux flavor once the mood strikes me.

All that said, I've been using OS X for work for a decade and it has gone down hill in the most depressing way...

As far as the golden age of open source? Some of my friends agree with you. Some think it ended as open source came to be dominated by big corporations. I actually think it is yet to come as the whole of humanity gains access and becomes involved. I guess time will tell.

I could (and almost did) write nearly this exact comment myself, right down to turning 18 in mid 1999 and getting the same graduation present!

Windows 2000 is still the only version of Windows I truly enjoyed using. Just seeing the screenshots brought me back to using my beige tower in my dorm room with Winamp, Half Life, and Napster shortcuts on my desktop.

Well, despite the "fisher-price" UI, XP did build upon 2000 in many good ways - much better 9x compatibility, newer DirectX, lots of small UI improvements, and then SP3's firewall which finally made Windows somewhat safe to use, despite the continual security war and dangerous IE 6.

XP stuck around because Vista simply wasn't compelling. A technical failure by MS, released too early, for no good reason; it never had the things we were promised like the database filesystem, and offered really no reason for a normal consumer to want to upgrade. So around it stuck, just like 7 did while 8 floundered.

Things are different with 10, the Eternal Windows, and so who knows what will happen next in regards to this tick-tock cadence of OS progress?

It was so easy to ditch the Fisher-Price UI and pick the Classic UI in WinXP. I really can't imagine holding that UI against WinXP!

But Vista was not a technical failure but more a commercial failure. I am not an expert but I am pretty sure massive chunks of the OS were updated in Vista that took years to debug and smooth out to what is now Windows 10. You are also correct that XP was technically more advanced than 2000 but I am not sure of the specifics. All I remember is pro audio applications and audio device drive drivers ran much better in Windows XP sp2.

1. Driver issues plagued Vista.

2. Xp capable systems weren't powerful enough to run the new generation of operating systems.

Vista was the scapegoat to force hardware upgrade.

Samething happened with windows 8 forcing upgrade to touch screen.

"massive chunks of the OS were updated in Vista that took years to debug and smooth out to what is now Windows 10"

This is key, and also shows why, at least at release, the technical failures of Vista were what drove its commercial failure.

Part of it was the jump in specs - the infamous Intel chipsets that were Windows Vista certified, but couldn't run Aero, and in general the huge boost in requirements from XP.

Part of it was changes with in the OS, such as protecting the Program Files folder(s), and Vista's Shadow Copy system, which wrecked havoc with programs that stored user-modifiable configuration files (and more) in their install directory. Yes, Microsoft had been recommending against that for awhile, but it still broke a lot.

But as much of it was ecosystem readiness due to changes to changes to the driver model. There was some support for XP drivers, but it was still painful. I used Vista without service packs. It was bad, bad enough that I switched back to XP. Let's just say there's a reason that I didn't buy another nVIDIA graphics card for another decade.

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