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Comment by OsrsNeedsf2P | Hacker News Reader

There's a surprisingly large Windows XP community; everything from security patches to browsers[0] to third party Discord clients[1].

[0] https://www.mypal-browser.org/ [1] https://github.com/DiscordMessenger/dm

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What I don't understand is... why? I understand keeping alive software for the sake of hardware compatibility, but browsing the web and running Discord? Is it all really just to save a few hundred dollars over... 24 years?

Familiarity, I suppose.

I'm not a part of the Windows XP community, but I've gotten close. I love that I can make it look just like Windows 2000 and that I know where all the little knobs and dials are. I can get a Windows XP installation configured to be exactly as I want it to be very quickly and I know it won't suddenly change on me.

Perhaps because the level of respect that Windows has for its users has dropped with each successive version?

Not to mention bloat: I have a keyboard with a dedicated calculator button. On a machine with Core i5 something or other and SSD it takes about 2 seconds for the calculator to appear the first time I push that button. On the Core 2 Duo machine that preceded it, running XP from spinning rust, the calculator would appear instantly - certainly before I can release the button.

But also WinXP was the OS a lot of people used during their formative years - don't underestimate the power of nostalgia.

Also, for some people the very fact that Microsoft don't want you to would be reason enough!

Personally if I were into preserving old Windows versions I'd be putting my effort into Win2k SP4, since it's the last version that doesn't need activating. (I did have to activate a Vista install recently - just a VM used to keep alive some legacy software whose own activation servers are but a distant memory. It's still possible, but you can't do it over the phone any more, and I couldn't find any way to do it without registering a Microsoft account.)

Win2003 Enterprise does NOT need activation either. It runs smooth offline.

There are tools out there (like UMSKT) that can activate MS software from that era fully offline too. They cracked the cryptography used by the activation system and reimplemented the tool used for phone activation, so you can “activate by phone” using UMSKT instead of calling MS.

But you do NOT need to.. Read about Volume Licencing. You just enter the KEY and vioala....

It's fun and interesting. most people don't actually daily drive it

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with money and plenty to do with the same reasons as people who preserve Commodore 64s, Amigas and DOS and Win9x PCs.

The high point is a toss up between XP and 7 for me, but imo Windows UX peaked then (although the 98 visual style is peak for nostalgia) and has either stayed the same or gotten worse ever since. Personally I just switched to using Linux full time as soon as gaming compatibility became basically the same as Windows but I totally understand why you'd want to maintain the ability to use older Windows versions.

Wait till everything you do is exfiltrated by copilot…

It may be more savings than that, if you count all the hours wasted with fixing things that broke in a newer version or finding workarounds that will never be as efficient.

A lot of medical devices still run XP as well unfortunately, because of old proprietary software for expensive equipment that doesn't receive updates anymore.

Why not? I strongly prefer Linux, but if somebody wants to use Windows, why not use XP? It was definitely a better user experience.

I stopped using Windows at work as Win7 was rolling out but got another job using it again as Win11 started rolling out. Having missed out on the slow decline, it's very obvious to me how much better the older Windows were. The new ones have a dumpster fire UI with built-in advertising that shoves Microsoft web crap and AI down your throat at every chance.

Why not? XP was formative for many people who are in the profession now.

For me, it's knowing what I know now, what could I've done back 25 (wow!) years ago. It's a fun exercise.

In my case I have an old Thinkpad that is chugging on reliably into its third decade soon, that ran XP when it left the factory. Newer linuxes don't work too well (accelerated graphics components such as mesa have accelerated beyond the hardware's capabilities) and the BSDs are a little spartan (very little software for i386 now for understandable reasons).

So I'm thinking of putting an XP install back on the thing with my licenced MS Office 2000 and a few other bits and pieces of software just for retro fun, and a reminder about how things were 20 years or so ago to avoid the rose tinted glasses effect.

Well, I can give you millions of reasons in the form of industrial hardware that’s running Windows XP and will continue to run for another 10 years at least.

It is actually incredibly fast and already does basically everything you want from an operating system I guess.

Another browser alternative is Supermium[0] it's an up to date Chromium based browser that also works great in Windows XP.

[0] https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/

My browsers[1] still target XP and developing in Win7.

[1] https://msfn.org/board/topic/185966-my-browser-builds-part-5...

There's a Windows 9x community too, although maybe not as large.

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