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Comment by dagmx | Hacker News Reader

XP was likely the first memorable intro to windows for many developers in the home context. It was designed to be appealing to look at and a fresh coat of paint.

By comparison, you’d be hard pressed to find a non-enthusiast who really remembers the differences between 95/98/ME/2000 because they largely looked similar.

Unlike 2000, it was also aimed at home use. The prior home use system was ME which was also not very well received at the time. XP unified the business and home segments.

Add to that, the immense PR failure that was Vista, and a very long life for XP, it’s not surprising that it has the most fondness in people’s psyche.

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> 95/98/ME/2000 because they largely looked similar.

That was a feature, for me it was 95, 98, NT4, Windows 2000 then it all started falling apart and Linux and MacOSX because the more attractive alternatives.

For those who don't remember, we used to call the Windows XP UI the "Fisher Price" UI. It was the first dumbed down Windows UI.

I'd agree, the nostalgia for Windows XP is misplaced, when the version before that was the more attractive option. Overall the quality of Windows 2000 just felt like it was way above Windows XP. All the Windows UI inconsistencies started showing up in Windows XP.

In the "Windows XP 2024" video I think it's interesting that that the two worst features, the Windows XP UI and the online account activation, have both been preserved.

Windows 2000 wasn’t the version before Windows XP for most people though. It was Windows ME. Most people would not have experienced 2000.

Windows 2000 was the last of the separate business targeted operating systems.

Therefore I’d argue the nostalgia isn’t misplaced because most people under 45 just couldn’t have the nostalgia for 2000 to begin with.

XP unified the two lines into one OS with multiple SKUs instead of completely different kernels.

> Windows 2000 wasn’t the version before Windows XP for most people though.

That's probably a fair observation. Windows 2000 came out before Windows ME, so it you had just a slight interest in computers, you'd try it out and after that Windows 98 and even ME felt like a downgrade, so you'd stay on 2000. I remember getting an beta release of Windows 2000 in late December 1999 and that was basically it, every other version of Windows since then, even XP was a downgrade.

It’s not even the relative timing: 2000 couldn’t run many games because (being a descendant of the NT line) it didn’t support all the 9x graphics APIs. Very few home users had it. I tried running games on it back in the day, and some didn’t work.

XP was the first Windows that had BOTH support for all “home windows” APIs AND the multi-user NT kernel (windows 95/98/me didn’t truly have a concept of user ownership of files outside the context of network file shares, for example)

While I've heard that Win2k didn't run games well back in the day I never actually had any problems. DirectX worked fine. Perhaps the caveat pertained to DOS games where NTVDM is lacking compared to running more or less directly in DOS.

> 2000 couldn’t run many games because (being a descendant of the NT line) it didn’t support all the 9x graphics APIs.

I don't dispute that Microsoft used DirectX support to push XP sales, but I played at least Quake and Half-Life on NT4, and Unreal Tournament and StarCraft on W2k.

Yeah though that was also the period before wide spread internet use, and when operating systems cost significant money to upgrade to . 2000 was $319, or over $500 today. That’s more than the cost of a full console or even some PCs.

So you’d REALLY have to be into the OS scene to look it up, or care enough to buy it.

Sneakernet and your local friendly CD burner owner with a huge catalog were readily available here in NL. Internet made it a little easier, sure, but not much. At least for software.

No, for music Napster was really what showed what the internet could offer but CD burners couldn't.

My point around internet availability wasn’t around how you could download stuff but how you could find information.

At the time, the way operating systems were advertised was in trade/enthusiast publications or the occasional tech article within a news publication or campaigns within stores. There weren’t prompts in the OS to upgrade, and most people didn’t think about their OS beyond what came factory installed. Each of the above required people to go out of their way to even know new OS versions were out unless they were enthusiasts.

Windows releases, being not that frequent, would make the national news here, so everyone would know, if they had any interest.

> or care enough to buy it.

Yeaah, we didn't necessarily pay back then.

Fun fact, you can indeed run the Windows ME installer from within Windows 2000, and it will perform an "Upgrade".

Agreed. If Windows 2000 could run 64 but applications, I would find a way to keep using it.

I was 15 doing local tech support and network admin for small businesses. Windows ME was a pile of memory leaking trash, constant BSODs, reboots multiple times a day, it was an unbelievably hostile OS with piss poor performance. 98se was so much better than ME it's a joke. 2000 was what I ran personally until XP stopped sucking (which if memory serves was with service pack 2.)

Being from that era of IE 5.5 and 6 I still don't understand how a person could ever trust Micro$oft, or use their tooling with anything but reluctance, their corporate culture hasn't changed a bit as far as I can tell. The poster child for mundane corporatist evil.

They’ve invested a lot in making people forget and improve their image. GitHub, VSCode, WSL, typescript… I feel old remembering a time when Microsoft was openly evil (“Linux is cancer”) and I’m not even 40. I think the new generation only knows the “nice” MS, Xbox, etc. Not the underhanded greedy corp even though they’re still trying to shove a subpar browser and OS down our throats. It’s just less obvious nowadays.

As I recall, W2K also got very usable on desktops with SP4 (I recall Sound blaster, game support issues in W2K).

XP wasn't really dumbed down, just more colorful. You could turn off the colorful theming if you wanted to.

Meanwhile, Windows 2000 predates consumer Wifi, so there's no UI in the operating system for connecting to networks.

Weird, I still remember the much older Windows 3.11 for Workgroups already having some networking support (using ethernet 10 Mbps or so I guess). Or... was "for workgroups" a misnomer?

You're correct, it worked on wired networks just fine. I think they're specifically talking wifi.

> we used to call the Windows XP UI the "Fisher Price" UI.

I've always called it Windows Duplo. :)

> It was the first dumbed down Windows UI.

Only if you ignore Windows ME.

UI/UX-wise, Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows to date. The UI was largely unified, W2k widgets were an incremental improvement in look AND FUNCTIONALITY over NT. Keyboard navigation was lightyears ahead of any version prior or post.

Windows 2000 was nothing like Windows 95/98/Me.

2000 isn't remembered as much as XP because it was never marketed to end-users but as an upgrade to NT4 and a workstation os. Home computers at the time came pre-installed with Windows Me, that was barely usable. When XP came out, it was so much better than Me that people loved it fondly, but in fact it was mostly Windows 2000 with a shitty Telletubbies theme.

I’m making two distinct but related points:

1. Windows 2000 was visually like the 9x series. XP introduced a whole new and very memorable look, subjective opinions aside. Even if you used Windows 2000 in your workplace, it was visually non-distinct from the Windows 98 you’d have at home.

2. Windows 2000 was for business use. Windows XP unified the segments.

That's true, windows ME was as terrible as Windows 2000 was great.

The story goes that they wanted to launch with Windows 2000 Home just like they did with XP, but ran into some issues and decided at the last minute to ship a pimped up version of Windows 98. That was absolutely terrible.

> and decided at the last minute to ship a pimped up version of Windows 98

That's more or less false. Releasing 2000 for home usage was planned, but it was realized early on that there's not enough time for that. It's not possible to develop on a short notice, ME contained some notable improvements (mostly ports from 2000).

Windows 2000 looked quite distinct ( at the time ). It looked quite “professional”.

Plus, for those of us who were kids at the time, the fisher price ui was actually pretty nice.

> XP was likely the first memorable intro to windows for many developers in the home context.

(emphasis mine)

IIRC, there were two separate lineages of Windows. There was the "home" lineage which went 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, and the "business" lineage which went NT 3.1, NT 4, 2000, XP; for those using Windows in the home context, it's likely they jumped from 9x to XP (possibly with a stop at ME in between, but IIRC Windows ME was somewhat disliked).

Exactly. You posted coincidentally just as I edited my post to add that distinction as well, because I saw other comments missing that path distinction. (Just in case anyone later thinks you’re just reiterating my comment)

Most people under 45 wouldn’t have experienced 2000 for that reason.

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