XP was the first consumer OS with the NT kernel which was far far more reliable than win32 in the previous ones. I remember people bragging that they could leave their computer running and it wouldn’t crash -and that seemed crazy. I used windows 2000 for many years as a stripped down XP, but not many people got it. I think the interface peaked around 95, but the kernel was terribly unreliable.
Comment on Did Microsoft do anything right in 2025? Wins, fails, and WTF moments
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 month agoXP was when everything went to shit. It was awful and all the enshittification began right there.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
My main focus (apart from zero security and horrible multi user) was all the anti consumer additions they put into it.
3abas@lemmy.world 1 month ago
98*/2000 was pure garbage. You could literally bypass the login screen on 98 because it had no real user account and tokens, just profiles for convenience. Driver support was awful, there was no memory protection so drivers constantly caused bsod. XP was the first time the consumer desktop got the NT foundation, meaning real user/session security, far better stability under load, and way fewer “one program crashed, so the OS is toast” moments.
XP had its problems too, it’s still Windows afterall and Windows was always garbage. But 98 was awful.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Yes 98 was terrible. 2000 wasn’t so bad.
But XP started the data harvesting, the lying to users, the forced applications, and so much more.
On top of even worse security than 2000 (also nt) had.
I could go on for days how bad it was.
Lee@retrolemmy.com 1 month ago
I think you’re mixing up ME and 2000. ME (consumer) came after 98 (consumer) and 2000 (business) was the NT (business) version. I ran 2000 for a few years. Huge step up from 98/ME in stability and less eye candy bloat than XP.
3abas@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, I’m not.
98, 98se, and ME are all 9x, pre NT.
Windows 2000 was NT, but it was server and business focused, so I left it out as most people did not run 2000 on their personal computers. XP was the first consumer targeting Windows with NT, and it was a huge step up in security and stability over 9x, despite how awful it was.
I’m not praising XP, I’m just refuting that 98 was great. It was hot garbage, and you could run a very secure and stable Linux distro back then, we stuck with windows back then because Wine wasn’t mature (Proton/bottles didn’t exist), the hardware wasn’t good enough for good emulation, and we needed binary compatibility because we wanted the windows exclusives. We never used Windows 98 because it was a good OS, we used it because it came with every computer you bought and all the software you wanted ran on it.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
You literally wrote 2000 in the first line.