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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

What do people use XP for these days? I found it frustrating to use when it was new because of how often the system would lock up even on decent hardware (although being able to draw pictures with the frozen windows was sometimes fun). When 7 came out, I found that it usually ran better and froze less than XP even on XP era computers, although you'd have to upgrade your RAM.

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"What do people use XP for these days?"

Hacking.

I currently have DX12 operating on XP-x64 (basically consumer 64-bit Win Server 2k3) with some minor hardware recognition issues. I have many modern games running this way. Many of them run much faster under XP than under their officially-supported OS (Win10+) which is an absolute shame.

That's interesting, how did you get that to work? I imagine you'd also need to somehow get device drivers for a newer graphics card to run (as well as for newer hardware in general if you don't want to be CPU bottlenecked). It seems like a lot of really cool work. Have you posted about this anywhere?

"That's interesting, how did you get that to work?"

Lots of registry modifications and .ini file modifications, and a huge chunk of help from someone who is currently making modern browsers and various modern software bits work under Windows98.

"I imagine you'd also need to somehow get device drivers for a newer graphics card to run"

That part is a bit more trivial thanks to unified driver architectures for GPUs. Not much more trivial, but a little.

"as well as for newer hardware in general if you don't want to be CPU bottlenecked"

CPU is the primary issue I'm having, indeed. Chipset drivers are the second biggest issue.

"Have you posted about this anywhere?"

And have Microslop banging on my door with lawyers because I show how modern versions of AI-slop-coded Windows are actually slower than older versions coded by actual humans? I'm good on that one boss.

> And have Microslop banging on my door with lawyers because I show how modern versions of AI-slop-coded Windows are actually slower than older versions coded by actual humans? I'm good on that one boss.

I highly doubt they care about anything people do with old versions of Windows. The full XP and Server 2003 source code has been on Microsoft owned Github for years now.

I remember noting how many of my games ran worse back in 2009 when migrating to windows 7. Most people discredited it as nvidia drivers being worse due to the new vista driver model (wdm or whatever), but I was never convinced.

I assume most people who use XP (which by default means non-hobbyists) are using it to run some software that was made to run only on it and the people who made said software never bothered to update the software for another OS. Something like a software application to manage prices in some family-run grocery store or warehouse in a former socialist country or what have you. The people using XP don't know they're even using an old OS, and they're oftentimes not very technical people (to say the least). They're using it because it's their job and they don't care particularly about it. It's usually not connected to the internet

Recently I went to the dentist, and while they weren't using XP, they were using Windows 7 to run some in-house software (I assume) to check my insurance

Yes, im from a former socialist country

I've seen some recent examples of XP in the wild, they pop-up occasionally in old ATMs, bus route displays, small stores running a PoS, etc. Not a recommended configuration of course but still happens nevertheless.

For me I enjoy it as a fun/hobby OS. I can install all my favorite tools and games and boot it up whenever. It's also fun to see what modern work can still be done on old OSs. Recent versions of PuTTY work so I can in theory sit on my XP box and drive LLM agents with Winamp playing in the background, chat on MSN with Escargot, etc.

> I found it frustrating to use when it was new because of how often the system would lock up even on decent hardware

Kids those days. Windows "release version" was actually a beta version. NT 4 needed 6 SPs to become stable, Win2k needed 4 SPs and XP needed 2 SPs.

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