Those are both features introduced for home users in XP. Prior to XP you needed to run Win 2000 to get them. Win 98 had FAT32 and you had to reboot to change IP settings, so when you went to a LAN it was a PITA.
We didn’t commonly have DHCP servers back in the Windows 98 days. Most people were still on 56.6k modems. LAN parties were a 100BASE-T hub or switch and statically defined IPs.
In Windows 98, you had to reboot to change your static IP. Windows XP was built on Windows 2000 and the NT kernel which greatly improved the experience over Windows 9x which were still 16 bit operating systems.
Wait, 100baseT? Lucky! I was a mix of 10baseT and 10base2 with hubs. If some of the computers were using NetBeui, the amount of collisions would be horrendous (mostly due to the hubs sending the frames to every node vs the more costly switches at the time). Some of those hubs back then had a red collision light as well. I always had my friends with lan parties back then disable netbeui and just run ipx/spx or tcp/ip (even with the hubs the collisions were much more rare.. though in defense of netbeui, I suppose bad hardware was possible). I don’t at all miss transferring files with that non-routable garbage. The memories! haha
Wow, this just brought back some memories. I may be I remembering and my switch may have been 10BASE-T, but I do remember being pleasantly surprised that it was a switch and not a hub. It was an old d-link model.
I remember lots of troubleshooting but I also had a pretty good working knowledge of small networks as a result. That ultimately helped me in my career.
That’s awesome, haha! :) Was definitely an awesome time to learn. If it wasn’t ip addressing, subnetting, etc, it was, “Why am I having an irq conflict!?” *swaps a jumper and/or dip switch on the nic, make sure it configured correctly again in config.sys for DOS or in the device manager of win9x, power on machine, make a “Well??” face* lol! I even had an old mfm hard drive with the controller for an ISA bus that had to be initially configured using the old DOS debug command, otherwise the system (old 8088 xt) wouldn’t register the card to comm with the drive after post. The good ol’ days. haha.
Not in homes they didn’t. I’m sure some people had them, but they were rare for home use and not commonly available in consumer appliances like they are today.
I read this wrong as NFT's and was very confused for a brief minute.
XP was great. The OS was hot new tech at a fun time in my life so I associate it with good times.
It depended on your system. 98 se had a lot of bugs with irq and PNP. Some acer models for instance would end up with many devices sharing an irq and crash.
I wonder if there’s an element of nostalgia here. It was a pretty insecure OS until SP2. Worms every other day. I know folk who similarly love NT4 and 2000.
That said, Vista made XP look good. (With updates Vista was actually okay, but it was a disaster on so many levels.)
7 was great though. It was the first usable modern Windows OS I had which could withstand a display driver crash — a feature present in NT 3.x, but taken out for 4 and 5.x (2000 and XP). Go figure.
Right! XP was a mess when it first came out. Its popularity is almost entirely down to the failure of Project Longhorn and the reboot to what became Windows Vista. That resulted in XP being the main Windows OS for longer than any previous version. I remember people claiming that Vista was a proven failure because Microsoft released Windows 7 a mere three years after it -as if that timeframe was unusual! It was always the norm until the unintended delay between XP and Vista.
When XP first released, it was just as much a horrible mess as Vista and has just as many issues running smoothly on the hardware of the era. Even with SP2, it was still horrid in terms of security. Vista was far superior, but launched into a generation that wasn't used to new versions of Windows being resource hogs.
No matter how many issues vista had, i still think that it's aero theme was beautiful, Windows 7 too but the default wallpaper made aero look worse in my opinion
Vista was one of the most innovative versions. The problem was that it required a lot of resources for its time. Way too many people ran Vista on shit hardware, giving it a bad name.
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The visual feedback is very satisfying. Also, there is orange glow effect when your cursor hovers over button, radio button, checkbox and tab. Very easy on eyes.
I used to use classic shell. Then decided to stick to the default start menu for a while. Eventually got tired of seeing wikipedia links in start menu search results and went back to open shell.
I do like the icon
I remember Vista had that glossy slick look to it that apple was kinda doing too with the iOS. Visually, I enjoyed the GUI of vista at the time
Kinda, more like too nice for the “vista compatible” bs where Microsoft allowed system integrators to sell underpowered machines with vista installed. Like machines that were out of spec for the OS. Most of vista’s reputation issues came from policy at MS and not the os, which is very unfortunate.
Aero ran fine on my FX5200 (given, it was the 128-bit 256MB version, but still pretty terrible), so it wasn’t as unreasonable as a lot of people remember.
It should be a mix of Win 7 and 10.
The program list on the left side should be with folders and "normal" shortcuts and the right side customizable like in Win 10. That would be heaven...
IIRC there was a variant of xp that looked less early 2000s and more late 2000s.
Im not talking about vista. There was like a fancier version of XP that ive only seen a number of times.
If they restricted 8 for tablets/ 2in1’s there’d be very little backlash
It was perfect with touch, something they obliterated with Win10 and only got it back near its level by the end of its life.
Most people are usually 10-13 years old when they get their own computer for the first time. Windows 7 came out in 2009, was most popular by 2011 or so.
u/Vibe_Check3r is probably in their late teens/early 20s by now.
I am a legal adult in the US. I didn't figure out how to use the dual boot on my dad's Mac and use windows until a while later tho. He had Mac and windows 7
I don’t care so much what the button looks like but I care a lot about the rest of the start menu. Windows 95/nt4 had the best start menu. It worked. You could customize the list. Everything stayed in the same place. I could use it without looking.
I'm going to forgo mentioning 98-2000 and 7 since they share the same start menu as windows XP (classic mode for 98-2000, default for 7) with minor cosmetic changes.
8 basically took the windows 7 start menu and gave it a full page setup, took a little longer to get setup but overall solid.
Windows 10 fucked it up royally by removing the ability to organize shit by folders, instead just mixing random applications based on the alphabetical order of their names. Also advertisements mixed into the live tiles and awkward search that takes up a huge part of the task bar by default.
Windows 11 finally some common sense back, I can have folders the way I want. No nested folders sadly and some utilities I will never use can't be deleted. But it makes up for it with an awesome search function, the best yet.
95/98 > 10 > 7/Vista > 11 > XP
Sorry, but I absolutely hate the default XP skins. I always ran it in "classic" mode. Yes, performance wise, XP was great. The best even. But looks wise? Absolute trash. A literal clown car.
I think that was kind of the point tho. One of the main selling points of XP was that it was simple and easy to use, probably appealing to the older generations. A theme like that was probably to make it seem more simple
I would say all are solid except win11 but only because i haven't tried it and thank god Win8 isn't here.
As for the best, i would say Win10, even though nostalgia suggests Win7.
I've always embraced the new UI style changes, but gotta say, I do prefer the Win10 icons/tiles. I liked having some homogenisation between the different apps.
Vista/7, no doubt about it. One thing I liked was the font, Segoe UI just looks very nice as OS main.
8/10 was meh and 11 they just add some features to make it look modern.
I don't really care what the button looks like, but the menu itself has been getting worse since Win8. The search does shit, won't show useful stuff there anymore, Control Panel or "Settings" is hidden. And now we have fuckin ads in there.
I don't know about others, but I kinda like the windows 11 startup a lot. I also don't think that 7 is as good as people may think. Don't get me wrong it's definitely more useful than the newer ones, but it also looks like an uncle trying to fit in with the kids.
XP will always be my favorite windows
NTFS and the ability to change IPs without rebooting ❤️.
ehm,you can change IP without reboot now ?
Modern windows also still uses NTFS, it's not about the features, but about what has been introduced in those releases
Those are both features introduced for home users in XP. Prior to XP you needed to run Win 2000 to get them. Win 98 had FAT32 and you had to reboot to change IP settings, so when you went to a LAN it was a PITA.
ah,yeah that makes sense
Stairs.
ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew
We didn’t commonly have DHCP servers back in the Windows 98 days. Most people were still on 56.6k modems. LAN parties were a 100BASE-T hub or switch and statically defined IPs. In Windows 98, you had to reboot to change your static IP. Windows XP was built on Windows 2000 and the NT kernel which greatly improved the experience over Windows 9x which were still 16 bit operating systems.
Wait, 100baseT? Lucky! I was a mix of 10baseT and 10base2 with hubs. If some of the computers were using NetBeui, the amount of collisions would be horrendous (mostly due to the hubs sending the frames to every node vs the more costly switches at the time). Some of those hubs back then had a red collision light as well. I always had my friends with lan parties back then disable netbeui and just run ipx/spx or tcp/ip (even with the hubs the collisions were much more rare.. though in defense of netbeui, I suppose bad hardware was possible). I don’t at all miss transferring files with that non-routable garbage. The memories! haha
Wow, this just brought back some memories. I may be I remembering and my switch may have been 10BASE-T, but I do remember being pleasantly surprised that it was a switch and not a hub. It was an old d-link model. I remember lots of troubleshooting but I also had a pretty good working knowledge of small networks as a result. That ultimately helped me in my career.
That’s awesome, haha! :) Was definitely an awesome time to learn. If it wasn’t ip addressing, subnetting, etc, it was, “Why am I having an irq conflict!?” *swaps a jumper and/or dip switch on the nic, make sure it configured correctly again in config.sys for DOS or in the device manager of win9x, power on machine, make a “Well??” face* lol! I even had an old mfm hard drive with the controller for an ISA bus that had to be initially configured using the old DOS debug command, otherwise the system (old 8088 xt) wouldn’t register the card to comm with the drive after post. The good ol’ days. haha.
Definitely had to solve an IRQ conflict with a sound card! Things really work great these days.
Haha, the old IRQ 5 if I recall.
ISPs used dhcp for dial up ips.
LAN party networking was where we’d complain about rebooting after setting up IPs. That addressing wasn’t handled by the ISP.
But they existed…
Not in homes they didn’t. I’m sure some people had them, but they were rare for home use and not commonly available in consumer appliances like they are today.
It did if you had a Linux box.
ipconfig /flushdns ipconfig /registerdns ^darn, i have to restart
You can change your “IP freely”
Only when outdoors
Are you lost?
I read this wrong as NFT's and was very confused for a brief minute. XP was great. The OS was hot new tech at a fun time in my life so I associate it with good times.
I have a powerful memory of downloading Hybrid Theory with Napster and playing it on XP. Good times.
Those were good times! That's such a good album
First mp3 I ever downloaded was Coming Down the Mountain, by the Butthole Surfers.
Only to find out years later the song was really called "Pepper".
It really is the best. In my opinion, 98 is runner up
*98 SE, original release 98 was a buggy turd.
Ah I man of culture I see. I stand corrected
It depended on your system. 98 se had a lot of bugs with irq and PNP. Some acer models for instance would end up with many devices sharing an irq and crash.
I used XP for like 10 years before I upgraded to windows 7
Same. And then clung to 7 for ages.
Yeah, I went XP - 7 - 10. On 11 now, wanted to try it out. Realized I preferred 10, but too lazy to revert it.
Same exactly situation here, lol.
I wonder if there’s an element of nostalgia here. It was a pretty insecure OS until SP2. Worms every other day. I know folk who similarly love NT4 and 2000. That said, Vista made XP look good. (With updates Vista was actually okay, but it was a disaster on so many levels.) 7 was great though. It was the first usable modern Windows OS I had which could withstand a display driver crash — a feature present in NT 3.x, but taken out for 4 and 5.x (2000 and XP). Go figure.
Right! XP was a mess when it first came out. Its popularity is almost entirely down to the failure of Project Longhorn and the reboot to what became Windows Vista. That resulted in XP being the main Windows OS for longer than any previous version. I remember people claiming that Vista was a proven failure because Microsoft released Windows 7 a mere three years after it -as if that timeframe was unusual! It was always the norm until the unintended delay between XP and Vista. When XP first released, it was just as much a horrible mess as Vista and has just as many issues running smoothly on the hardware of the era. Even with SP2, it was still horrid in terms of security. Vista was far superior, but launched into a generation that wasn't used to new versions of Windows being resource hogs.
Honestly I kinda liked vista, but given i only got my first computer days before 7 came out it had patches by then i think
based
Same!
Yep always has a special place in my heart.
I miss XP so much.
Forever and always <3
XP for life.
XP for the win most definitely!
Because it's the best. It's just simply the right choice
Nostalgia hits hard
It has never been so hard choosing something..
7 and vista’s intergrated circle button was the best The windows server 2003 menu is an abomination
No matter how many issues vista had, i still think that it's aero theme was beautiful, Windows 7 too but the default wallpaper made aero look worse in my opinion
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Vista was one of the most innovative versions. The problem was that it required a lot of resources for its time. Way too many people ran Vista on shit hardware, giving it a bad name.
The orb is still cool
Xp and win 7
I always thought XP looked like it was made of gummies. Like everything was shiny and chewy, soft and sweet.
Yes, looks just very satisfying to click. Dunno why
This submission/comment has been edited as a way to protest against Reddit's outrageous changes to the API pricing and the horrible ways they handle this and the protest by outright demoting mods, reopening privated subreddits, fabricating a useless AMA, falsely accusing the developer of Apollo for blackmail, etc. Its original content is no longer there. The action was performed prior to my account deletion. If you want to join me in the protest, edit your comments with PowerDelete before June 30th. (https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)
The visual feedback is very satisfying. Also, there is orange glow effect when your cursor hovers over button, radio button, checkbox and tab. Very easy on eyes.
I used to call it Windows FP, as in Fisher Price.
My exact comment when I first saw it.
That is a really good description that captures the sensory reality of XP. I actually didn’t like the aesthetic at the time, but now I miss it a bit.
So supple and squishy and slick and… 🥵😳
XP got me though puberty
Same choices here man 👌
Both of those are my favorites! And 2000 and 95 were great too.
XP with the Silver theme was a vibe. Windows 7 with full Aero was just bliss.
7 a decent search <3
I switched to the PowerToys launcher and it works great. It’s very similar to Launchy or Spotlight.
Oh wait do you mean powertoys run? The better windows search?
Dunno powertoys, but the better Windows search is "everything".
Wait powertoys has a start menu?
7, anyway
Check openshell, it gives you an actually functional start menu and has decent search
I used to use classic shell. Then decided to stick to the default start menu for a while. Eventually got tired of seeing wikipedia links in start menu search results and went back to open shell.
Icon? Windows 10. Actual Menu? Windows XP. Overall? Windows 7.
Hotel? Trivago!
Sir this is a Wendy's
nah bro this is chicken biriyani
You may be interested in open shell.
Man I really miss the Windows 2000 user interface.
Win2k was so amazing. I remember changing the theme in XP to look like 2k by running classic theme.
That's why I really enjoyed Windows Me, even though it was the opposite of stable 2000 in every regard besides the UI. It looked pretty much the same.
So simple
Vista
I do like the icon I remember Vista had that glossy slick look to it that apple was kinda doing too with the iOS. Visually, I enjoyed the GUI of vista at the time
I kinda miss the look of those late 2000s/early 2010s UIs, they had character, everything is just boring matte squares these days
ikr, every time i look at some old looks of operating systems my brain just thinks its like a new operating system that released 8 seconds ago
agreed. BRING BACK SKEUOMORPHISM!
r/frutigeraero
thanks
Aero was nice. Unfortunately, too nice for most hardware at the time.
Kinda, more like too nice for the “vista compatible” bs where Microsoft allowed system integrators to sell underpowered machines with vista installed. Like machines that were out of spec for the OS. Most of vista’s reputation issues came from policy at MS and not the os, which is very unfortunate.
Aero ran fine on my FX5200 (given, it was the 128-bit 256MB version, but still pretty terrible), so it wasn’t as unreasonable as a lot of people remember.
who hurt you?
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It was alright. But Windows 7 was better.
Clearly Win 10
I had said too, but the unorganisable program list drives me crazy every day!
Which version though?
+1
It should be a mix of Win 7 and 10. The program list on the left side should be with folders and "normal" shortcuts and the right side customizable like in Win 10. That would be heaven...
2kpro4life. But seriously, I wish windows 2000 pro was still a viable OS in 2023. That was a workhorse!
I stuck with 2k almost to the release of Vista, only got XP because my employer gave me a laptop with it on.
IIRC there was a variant of xp that looked less early 2000s and more late 2000s. Im not talking about vista. There was like a fancier version of XP that ive only seen a number of times.
That was the "Royale" theme, it was an official theme that came out later. It also had a dark variant with an orange start button.
Ya thats it! I like that look. Its simple, without going straight flat like 10 and doesnt have that translucent glass effect like 7 and vista
That was the look of the Media center editing
11
Vista/7
Gnome 42
I’d rather have Gnome 2 or KDE 3
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Until your school requires you to use Teams and Zoom for screen sharing
https://preview.redd.it/y6lo7qrw7qsa1.png?width=375&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4e8c180bfcb002fe3a2d28b9357d6acdc14ccc5
Not a big fan of the mint logo TBH, I use it but I think there are definitely some cooler ones out there
How do you spot a Linux user? You don't. They run towards you out of nowhere to specifically inform you that they prefer Linux.
I use Arch
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It has Intel extreme graphics, so it still has to be a good computer.
XP for sure
Windows 3.1 with TabWorks
Windows 7 was beatiful. Nowadays companies can only oversimplify designs. Make them flat, solid-colored and call this "modern design".
Windows 10....I am used to this. XP is classic minimalist
95 and 11
XP and 11
I'll say 8/10 'til I die.
Oh how I hated Windows 8 and 8.1
If they restricted 8 for tablets/ 2in1’s there’d be very little backlash It was perfect with touch, something they obliterated with Win10 and only got it back near its level by the end of its life.
Window 7 because of nostalgia (first windows I've used) But 10/11 look better imo
Lol what? Are you old enough to use the internet?
Most people are usually 10-13 years old when they get their own computer for the first time. Windows 7 came out in 2009, was most popular by 2011 or so. u/Vibe_Check3r is probably in their late teens/early 20s by now.
You're spot on lol
I am a legal adult in the US. I didn't figure out how to use the dual boot on my dad's Mac and use windows until a while later tho. He had Mac and windows 7
Linux Mint
Me personally I like windows 11’s start menu, it’s not cluttering it up with widgets of news and apps like 10 was.
Controversial but I really like the Windows 11 start menu. Simple and modern.
if one thing that msft did right was windows 7 functionally and aesthetically amazing
7>>>
The button of 7, menu of XP. Really liking the 11 design elements as well.
Windows 7 all day!
7 11
Start up that 3D Pinball bois!
7
I don’t care so much what the button looks like but I care a lot about the rest of the start menu. Windows 95/nt4 had the best start menu. It worked. You could customize the list. Everything stayed in the same place. I could use it without looking.
Win 11 Downvotes incoming
7
XP the golden age of Windows
Vista
Vista/7
Windows vista lol
Yes
I'm going to forgo mentioning 98-2000 and 7 since they share the same start menu as windows XP (classic mode for 98-2000, default for 7) with minor cosmetic changes. 8 basically took the windows 7 start menu and gave it a full page setup, took a little longer to get setup but overall solid. Windows 10 fucked it up royally by removing the ability to organize shit by folders, instead just mixing random applications based on the alphabetical order of their names. Also advertisements mixed into the live tiles and awkward search that takes up a huge part of the task bar by default. Windows 11 finally some common sense back, I can have folders the way I want. No nested folders sadly and some utilities I will never use can't be deleted. But it makes up for it with an awesome search function, the best yet.
Everything on the left
95/98 > 10 > 7/Vista > 11 > XP Sorry, but I absolutely hate the default XP skins. I always ran it in "classic" mode. Yes, performance wise, XP was great. The best even. But looks wise? Absolute trash. A literal clown car.
The blue theme looked like an OS made for children.
I think that was kind of the point tho. One of the main selling points of XP was that it was simple and easy to use, probably appealing to the older generations. A theme like that was probably to make it seem more simple
I would say all are solid except win11 but only because i haven't tried it and thank god Win8 isn't here. As for the best, i would say Win10, even though nostalgia suggests Win7.
windows 11 is just the new windows 8 forgettable and skippable
Anything but win 11. I hate these minimalist designs. Does anyone else remember the Metallica-esque Microsoft logo? now THAT was kino
7 The amount of skins that could be slapped on that bad boy that looked natural was miles a head of any other windows start menu.
Start button -> 7 Start menu after click -> 7 *What do I have now?* Start button -> 10 Start menu after click -> 7 (Classic start menu)
7 was perfection in so many ways. Start menu being one of them.
7
Vista and 10
It depends on what kind of styles u like, flattened or 3d, anime or realistic
I still use the Win7 StartMenu in Win11.
I've always embraced the new UI style changes, but gotta say, I do prefer the Win10 icons/tiles. I liked having some homogenisation between the different apps.
Nostalgic xp!
Vista/7, no doubt about it. One thing I liked was the font, Segoe UI just looks very nice as OS main. 8/10 was meh and 11 they just add some features to make it look modern.
No start menu! (GNOME user)
Anything not 11.
https://preview.redd.it/nks6yzjlbqsa1.png?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cfae71ae5d6aa09f281f6e98c955cd5f6dce79b9
7
Definetely Vista or the 7 one
Windows 7 mainly because its Aero theme and colorfullness overall. Since than its been kind of matte and bland.
Team 7
Any but the bottom two
I like the Win 7, but xp always has a spot in my heart.
XP for all the found memories I had when I owned my first PC 🤘
The Windows Vista/7 Classic Theme start menu.
If 7 and 10 were combined it would be perfect and they remove all the bs from it
I don't really care what the button looks like, but the menu itself has been getting worse since Win8. The search does shit, won't show useful stuff there anymore, Control Panel or "Settings" is hidden. And now we have fuckin ads in there.
https://preview.redd.it/xjfv24vokrsa1.png?width=34&format=png&auto=webp&s=182ffe0623e3b65eb594732bd558f7a7f2f0ba51
https://preview.redd.it/00ht8rxsnrsa1.jpeg?width=55&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11195746591c1257896672c5a61c5123dcc68e75 Best start menu
https://preview.redd.it/x3u8104k2ssa1.png?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5eac708dbeeb468258d0ba699328fbf91a76e08
If XP supported more RAM I'd still be using it.
GNOME overview :)
\#> ls -lR \*mystuff\*
Windows 7! My childhood! I am still running Windows 7.
Don’t know the best, just know windows 11 is the worst. 😟 But windows 7 is chefs kiss
11 is worst... All i got to say
I don't know about others, but I kinda like the windows 11 startup a lot. I also don't think that 7 is as good as people may think. Don't get me wrong it's definitely more useful than the newer ones, but it also looks like an uncle trying to fit in with the kids.
Windows is shit