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crustywindo.ws

107 pointsunleaded47 comments

This site made me realize the windows 1.x and windows 2.x (the ones from the early 80s!) logos look surprisingly modern!

Flat single-colored simple shape as is the trend today, with a light blue color that doesn't even exist in the standard EGA color palette.

As opposed to the much more colorful and busy icons that came after.

But then of course Windows 10 and Windows 11 are flat-single-colored simple shapes again since they are _actually_ released during today's logo design trends.

I would even say the flat XP logo looks more modern than Windows10 or 11.

Fashion is cyclical? Or is it just that these simpler icons were more adapted to the simpler video there existed at the time?

There are likely various factors at play.

Monochrome logos were expensive in past since colour printing (especially quality colour printing) was expensive. Apple was notorious for their colour logo, supposedly because they wanted to emphasize that they were offering colour personal computers. Ironically, they would introduce the black and white Macintosh a few years later.

At least with respect to user interfaces, many of the design elements were meant to emphasize the improved graphics capabilities. For example: the so-called "3-D" elements graphical elements of the mid-1990's, which were little more than shading to add the perception of depth, highlighted improved colour depth. I would imagine that something similar was at play when it came to product logos. So it's probably more of a case of more complex logos for more complex video.

Highlighting the improved graphics capabilities is meaningless these days, so there is little point in constraining themselves to colour logos, which gave an opportunity for simpler logos to return.

> At least with respect to user interfaces, many of the design elements were meant to emphasize the improved graphics capabilities.

And software capabilities. Compare Windows 2000 with Windows 10. But even the sultans loved eunucs so who am i here to speak. /s

I thought those were just placeholder images, but you are right those were the actual logos of Windows at the time. Beautiful serif typography to match too:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_logo_and_wor...

Is the typography really that beautiful? The kerning on "Windows" looks really off to me.

Looking through that list, Windows XP logo has the perfect balance of:

- Simple solid modern colors, no halo/vignette effect like the Vista/7 logos

- Multiple colors, not just one single boring blue color like the newer logos

- The S-curve lines are just soft enough, yet not overly complicated, but also not boring straight lines

The front page does not have the normal Windows XP logo. See Wikipedia for the unmodified one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_XP_logo_and_wordm...

Looking at the Windows 1.x logo and then the Windows 11 logo... wow, they really went full circle

> But then of course Windows 10 and Windows 11 are flat-single-colored simple shapes again since they are _actually_ released during today's logo design trends

Which were design trends when Windows 1.0 was released. Back then, the resources were limited, now they are infinite.

The Windows modding scene was probably most active in the mid 2000s when XP's theming feature made it easy to create custom "skins" for all the UI elements. It's worth noting that most if not all of these custom "distros" were likely made by people who had no formal education in CS, and did it mainly as a way to play around and explore and/or impress their friends; I remember visiting the forums where this stuff happened back then, and some of the creators (self-reportedly) were very young --- early teens. The majority were likely male, but there was definitely some female presence too. I suspect a lot of them also didn't go into CS or other computer-related fields when they grew older, but they definitely embodied the classic "hacker spirit".

The linked wiki mentions TeamOS[1], which is one of the contemporary communities that still perform Windows modding.

[1] https://crustywindo.ws/Category:Bootlegs_created_by_TeamOS

https://crustywindo.ws/File:XP_GanjaEdition_Boot.png

https://crustywindo.ws/File:XP_Ana_Muslem_-_Desktop.png

https://crustywindo.ws/File:Horse_XP_2013_Desktop.png

some really good stuff in here, horse xp is my favorite.

I am surprised they host the ISOs

https://crustywindo.ws/collection/

that seems illegal

cool website nonetheless

Any time I need a Windows install, I go for one of the custom builds. Not from crustywindo.ws, but there's a lot of Windows modding forums out there with varying "distros".

(It bears noting if you need to trust your OS, you shouldn't be using Windows at all)

That just sounds like, an easy way to get hacked, with extra steps.

Just download the official ISO.

Windows Update has fucked up my computer a lot more often than pirated software has.

Then use the LTSC editions which only receive security updates and don't come with any modern Windows crap

Good luck getting your hands on one of these legally

If you're a business you'll easily get it.

Sure, sure, let me go pop down to the county office and create a whole ass LLC and spend several hundred dollars so I can save an hour or three every year troubleshooting my windows install.

Brilliant. it's like saying to someone that has to get somewhere, "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step" while I'm over here passing you both in a bus.

I tried!

I really, really tried!

They won't sell it to peasants like me. They refuse to even give a quote. Businesses only, and even then you must be a big business. Small/Medium need not apply.

The company I work for uses a really hacky way to "break" windows updates instead. Then "authorises" specific packages. I thought it was a group policy, but whatever this is a giant mess.

(Windows10 Pro)

While I've seen similar sites occasionally get taken down in the past, I think ultimately Microsoft would rather you pirate Windows than use Linux.

Amusingly enough, there's also https://crustywindo.ws/collection/Linux/

There is Windows CE one!

And if I came to site like back in the day I would definitely grab some wallpapers.

https://crustywindo.ws/Manley_Evangelista%27s_Windows_CE_Boo...

https://crustywindo.ws/Whistler_Build_2531#/media/File:Whist...

"Windows CE is optimized for devices that have minimal memory; a Windows CE kernel may run with one megabyte of memory." (from Wikipedia)

Ah, those were the days.

Had an iPAQ, it was pretty terrible software wise.

Are any of these releases based on leaked source code? Or have they simple repackaged existing builds?

https://linuxreviews.org/42.9_GB_Of_Microsoft_Source_Code_Le...

repacks

OpenNT was based on the leak. https://crustywindo.ws/OpenNT_4.5

If I remember correctly, the majority of that leak was tens of GB of weird Bill Gates conspiracy videos, and the actual source was a fraction of the size (few GB?)

Site/project creator here. It's nice to see my creation garner interest.

In all honesty, the project mostly serves as documentation and archival of Windows/Linux bootlegs (that is to say, relative popularity is kind of a side thing for me, though it's still nice. Having a reverse ego and limiting the project seems like a very bad move to make for an archival project IMO), as feeble file sharing websites have taken many links to them completely down.

As of the 2 years the project's been around, there's already at least a dozen bootlegs inside of the archive which, if we didn't have them, would not be on the clearnet (I'm sure there's probably at least one person hoarding at least a few which aren't public anymore, but I'm not counting that).

Gold Windows XP 2016 was truly a thing of beauty.

https://crustywindo.ws/Gold_Windows_XP_2016#/media/File:XP_G...

What kind of sorcery is this? I mean what's a bootleg in terms of software (as opposite to a concert bootleg?)

Usually means pirated and resold software

Hannah Montana Linux, but for Windows.

https://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html

I just realized - the logos of Windows 3.x through 7 look more like flags than they look like windows. I wonder what the reasoning was behind that? I'm sure it has been documented/analyzed somewhere.

Mildly interesting: no Windows bootlegs from Oceania. I have a hard time believing that the enterprising people of Australia haven't created something, at least out of national pride...

Even though I have (like a lot of other folks) become anti-Windows recently, this is amusing, for nostalgic & other reasons.

Perhaps that is where Windows fits best -- in the history museum.

People have become anti-Windows recently?

I don’t think there ever was a time when hackers liked this product.

1.0? Useless.

2.0? Ugly.

3.0? Weak compared to OS/2.

NT 3.5? Too slow.

95? Too crashy.

NT 4.0? Too fat.

98? Too much IE.

XP? Too popular.

Vista? Everything wrong.

7? Too little change.

8? Too much change.

10? Too much cloud.

11? Too recent; I can’t remember

Funnily, the one you don't list is Windows 2000, and in my memory that actually was reasonably hacker-liked. It didn't have the problems of the contemporaries - wasn't too fat (about the same as NT 4, but hardware had advanced) or too crashy or too much IE (or MSN.) I used 2000 as my daily driver for several years, even for gaming, up until around 2007 when compatibility with newer software and hardware dwindled.

2000 was great, I used it too. I admit to leaving it out because I couldn’t instantly think of a contemporary criticism!

It was a time when the Mac wasn’t even an option (OS 9 sucked, X was a barely working beta) and Linux was frustratingly unfinished. Windows 2000 really was a great OS for the hardware of the time.

2000? Too good

I actually skipped winXP entirely because my main computer was an old thinkpad with win2000, xp would have just slowed it down and filled up more of the screen with UI candy. When I eventually got a new laptop it had vista which was fine for me (this was several months after its release, so the teething issues were basically fixed)

Windows 2000? The one which f'ck'ed up ^W^W embraced&extended Kerberos? Yeah, sure we liked that.

Vista was truly an abomination though

I only ran a Vista machine for a few weeks while the 7 upgrade DVD came in the mail.

It was already SP2, and the machine was fairly powerful (quad core CPU, 8GB RAM). It honestly worked pretty well.

I still think it's one of the best looking Windows ever.

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