If you could pick any EOL operating system to revive, what would it be? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:30:33 am
content: Had a curious thought and wanted to know what everybody here thought.So the constraints of this post is that the operating system has to be considered EOL, meaning end of any mainstream or extended support by the original manufacturer, not counting any third party support systems. This can mean a specific version of DOS, and old version of Windows, Linux, OS, OS/X, etc.This can also include operating systems like OS/2 that while under no support by it's developer (IBM), it does have support by Serenty Systems in the form of EComStation (you can choose OS/2 if you want, that's what I'm saying)My personal choice would be the last of the stock NT line, Windows 2000. For me it was a decent extension of the close competitor NT 4. It was my favourite operating system, and probably the last fully decent product Microsoft ever released. I can start complaining about Windows starting with the Win9x line and the mainstream NT line, but Win2K is honestly a great system and it would be cool to see security patching for it, PAE support on Professional, and the permission of more than 2 computing cores (in the professional version).EDIT: Thank you necroposters for reviving what might be actually my favourite topic I don't remember making. The question I suppose is, how would my decision change today?Back in 2016 I wanted Windows 2000 back because I enjoyed using it when it still was supported, and wasn't happy with the modern Windows options. As of today, that is no longer really a problem, since I run Linux full time anyways, and as such I am not really bothered by the lack of exciting Windows experience that I'm not having and do not want to have anyways.The issue is I'm not sure how I might change that. I've thought of a few smartalec answers like saying Android, because I used to love Android tablets, and they don't really do that a whole lot anymore, but that's not entirely true, and there's still Android phones, and and after using GNU on a tablet, I just want a nice GNU environment for a tablet.If Windows 2000 would still get revived, I'd be happy in that enough to play around with it. The other issue is that I now have a fairly okay PC compatible collection, so if I want to use an old operating system, I have real hardware to play with it on. I'd also like Windows XP back, since I do also have fond memories of that. I'd actually want a lot of the old HTPC software like Windows Media Center, and other stuff to be updated, revived, and made usable again. The oldish way of doing HTPC (where a TV card was pretty much the core, and forcing your complicated setup on your family members was mandatory), is quite attractive to me, and I enjoyed tinkering with it when we still had a TV signal that meant anything to us.(end edit)Would love to see everybody's opinions as the current line of operating systems are pretty crap these days and I am pretty sure almost everybody here can agree with me.Bonus points if your already using it on a regular basis.Scoresheet:Windows 2K: 21Windows XP: 27Windows 95: 2Windows 98: 1Windows Vista: 1OS/2: 5CP/M: 3OpenSolaris: 1 (illumos does exist I guess)AmigaOS: 3 (used to be semi-alive in 2016, but now I guess is long dead)IRIX: 2 (I'd actually love to see that too)MacOS 9: 1Xenix: 1FLEX: 1BASIC: 1iRMX: 2RSX-11: 3RT-11: 1TRSDOS: 1VAX/VMS: 2Concurrent CP/M: 1BeOS: 3SCO Unix: Why (1)AOS: 1NOS: 1MS-DOS: 2NetWare: 1TurboDOS: 1IBSYS: 1<Honorable Mentions>RISC OS: Still in development, as far as I knowGEOS: More of an operating environment than an operating system, though the distinction was rather basic.Windows 10: I wish it was dead too, mrpackethead.NOTE TO FUTURER ME: REPLY #218

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:38:33 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 24, 2016, 03:30:33 amI'm with you on this one. Absolutely rock solid. My second pick would probably have to be Windows 95 OSR2.5 (also known as Windows 95c).Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 24, 2016, 03:30:33 amI still have a Windows 2000 domain controller which I use to support my "vintage computer" collection. It has all sorts of old services running on it (including a TFTP server with Commodore 64 applications)

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:43:12 am
content: Windows XP3, I look after 40-50 stations. Excellent workhorses. IF I had an option, I'd splice bits of Win7 into it.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:43:45 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 24, 2016, 03:41:00 am7 grand a month plus however much for SAEE. I could tinker every single setting in a Linux environment for free!So I have to pay upwards of 7 grand monthly for a decent operating system that DOESN'T try to piss me off. Wow.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:45:32 am
content: Quote from: digsys on October 24, 2016, 03:43:12 amWinXP is not a BAD operating system, but it's just adding a whole load of uneeded rubbish, and once you get rid of all of that you just have Win2K

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:57:10 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 24, 2016, 03:53:48 amAlright, I thought there were things that SAEE allowed me to do that registry stuff can't do in normal windows.I still would rather stick with windows 7, the last useable windows operating system.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 04:04:35 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 24, 2016, 03:38:33 amMan if I could still use it, I would use Win2K. It is a masterpiece, and that last great Windows operating system. It can be compared well to Linux based systems, and was before they tried to dick you 5 ways to 1.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 05:35:26 am
content: I am joining the Win 2000 train.It simply did its job and did it reliably. On top of it all it could run without problems on PCs considered old back in its day. A old 133MHz CPU with 64MB of RAM could run it as snappy as ever.But looking at the current state of computing it would have to be Windows 7. It turned out to be just as reliable as Win2k. Sure its a bit of a resource hog compared to the previous OSes but even a cheap laptop tends to have 4GB of ram in it these days. But you do get all the modern things like better multi cpu support, practically unlimited ram size, better sleep mode handling, modern filesystems, RAM caching of files, fast indexed search, GPU rendered UI, automatic download of drivers etc... on top of it its hard to fault it for missing anything or forcing features on you..cough..8..cough 10.

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 05:38:09 am
content: Amiga OS!

author: stj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 06:02:09 am
content: Quote from: @rt on October 24, 2016, 05:38:09 amit's out there.http://aros.sourceforge.net/https://www.aeros-os.org/

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:01:40 am
content: Isn't that an independent replacement?The original Commodore sources for 3.1 were leaked at one stage.

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:07:26 am
content: IRIX!

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:16:09 am
content: Started with Win 3.11, then 95, 98, 98SE,XP, Vista and currently using 7 while the wife's using 8.1 and I've got a dual boot with 7 and 8.1 but it 8.1 leaves me cold.Getting a MS staff copy of 10 soon to try but I'm pretty hesitant after all the bad press I hear about it, my IT mate reckons it's OK if you turn all the behind the scenes stuff off.I think overall so far I'm with digsys, XP with some 7 features.

author: Kirr
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:16:38 am
content: Mac OS 9.It was a beauty unlike anything Apple made since those days.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:18:00 am
content: I had some vague but fond memory of Xenix running on a 286 PC being used as a terminal to a HP minicomputer when I first learned how to use one. I wish we can bring back Xenix for 8086/80286 and backport features from FreeBSD to bring it up to speed.

author: magetoo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:18:18 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 24, 2016, 03:30:33 amWindows is still being developed, so by that logic most of the answers in this thread don't count either, including your own pick.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:34:31 am
content: Quote from: magetoo on October 24, 2016, 08:18:18 amYou also have to take into consideration the fact that he just said AmigaOS.It's still being developed as it is. If he said something like AmigaOS Workbench 1 or to the likes, then that would be acceptable.Either way it's really only in good fun, just trying to keep it on track a bit.

author: magetoo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:55:10 am
content: You shouldn't disqualify it in the top post just because someone further down wasn't specific enough. Which one will people read first?Anyway, there's lots of interesting and odd systems that would be interesting to see brought back, it's hard to come up with one that's "worthy". I'll have to think about this...

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 08:59:58 am
content: AFAIK the original Commodore Amiga OS is not being developed for any original Amiga platform.There are things out there for PPC, and independent replacements that I’m aware of.Again, AFAIK Amiga OS 3.1 is the last real one.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:09:53 am
content: Risc OS. The only operating system I've ever actively enjoyed using, rather than being stuck with because it's what the applications I need to use require.

author: crispy_tofu
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:10:57 am
content: Voting for Windows XP because of the nostalgia factor

author: StuUK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:12:38 am
content: Quote from: george.b on October 24, 2016, 08:07:26 amRemember it well....

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:14:05 am
content: +1 for win2k

author: deephaven
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:14:33 am
content: FLEX09+++

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:17:09 am
content: I see argument for Win2k over XP. I used XP more than 2k so I don't know all the differences. I would vote for either.Tim

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:56:12 am
content: +1 for XP. You can gut it of most of the annoying stuff that got added after 2000, and its the last Windows version that a lot of legacy tools that directly access ports (e.g Parallel, Serial and ISA bus I/O cards) will run on. There's also its WinFLP variant when you want a really lightweight install.Also Win98SE for legacy stuff that wont run under Win32.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 10:06:59 am
content: Quote from: Ian.MAbsolutely agree. I have dozens and dozens of old and expensive machine interfaces / custom IO card and direct io utility programs. I started to try these outon win& once, long ago, and gave up. Not throwing away 10-20 yrs of work to keep up with yuppies :-) ymmv

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 11:28:48 am
content: I'd vote for Win2k because it is not bloated as XP but XP would be close because Windows XP supports more hardware and is slightly easier to manage. Windows XP is still my goto Windows for anything that doesn't run in Linux directly.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 11:45:14 am
content: Quote from: Ian.M on October 24, 2016, 09:56:12 amIt's just that once you gut it, you get windows 2000 and a load of wasted time. I just cut out the middle man and go straight for NT 5

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 12:20:01 pm
content: XP because I have two expensive programmers with parallel ports where the latest SW is depending on this OS.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 12:48:29 pm
content: Windows 2K was my "favorite" version in as much as it was rock solid and didn't require any particular maintenance or work to keep it like that. It just kind of worked and kept chugging along forever. Windows 10 is a better OS, though. It's just so full of garbage that it's hard to see it, but it's really better in just about every way. I wouldn't go back to 2000 from 7 or 10, even though I'm nostalgic for it.

author: Fortran
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:08:38 pm
content: Windows 2K all the way.It did what I told it to do, not whatever the hell it felt like.But for nostalgia, it's hard to beat Windows 95 with Microsoft BOB.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 03:31:07 pm
content: others : Basic in ROM. Power-up gives you a Basic interpreter. ( as in the original ibm -pc with basic in rom. if it did not find an operating system it would launch Basic. )why ?- because ALL operating systems suck. They all interfere with what i am trying to do.- because basic is the most productive and easiest language out there. F-you C with all your idiosyncrasies , semicolons and other cryptic gibberish !- No viruses . i'd like to see you infect a mask ROM ..- it's interpreted. so all source is always available (i don't understand why open source aficionado's don't jump on this ... )- you can stop a program mid-run , alter it , or the data it is working on and simply continue without having to restart or recompile- very lightweight. a good basic easily fits in 8 Kilobyte. a really good on could fit in 16k. an excellend one, including a windowing system, networking etc might fit in a few 100K....I/RMx. why ? one of a few hardware fault tolerant systems out there. I've seen systems with broken sdram keep on working ...

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:16:41 pm
content: I think all would like some parts of RSX-11M.The PDP-11 had many levels of vector interrupts.This carried over in to common use of many levels of priority for programs. I think there were 256 levels for programs.A system could be doing some real time tasks and still respond fast to users.From memory, Think there was a field in directory for start this program at this level.Test of One system with many users and real time tasks was to run Colossal Cave which tried to use all of system and see if it had an effect on other stuff. When correct you could play Colossal Cave with only the response speed changing.So when OS was swapping tasks this priority was used and system users had a field to change priority. A system under heavy load would slow somethings more then others. At light load made almost no difference.What also is needed today is easy to use cluster of computers.Think of Dave's videos automatically splitting job not just across local system's cores & gpu's but many systems.A web server that at high load spreads load across more computers in office.A compiler that can automatically use more computers for the compile.The change to pascal with modules compiler I used would not be a large change. A module was separate, you did not hack module with a text editor hack.With priority above other users might not even notice the use.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:17:39 pm
content: TRS-DOS 6/LDOS - an early example of a modular OS< in the days of 140K floppy drives this could be important. The OS was logically grouped into modules, and if there were features you didn't need, you could just delete the module and free up disk space.CP/M 2.2 was just nice to use.RSX-11/M from the PDP 11 series. I used that at my first job and it was simply amazing how 4K of RAM on a PDP11/23 could run 3 terminals, one with the usage monitor, one a DECWriter printing out the test results as the 11/23 also controlled a Coordinate Measurement Machine running my test programs, and a third terminal with me logged in writing additional FORTRAN programs for other tests.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:29:43 pm
content: I was going to be edgy and say GEOS for C64, but wouldn't you know it, it's already been revived:https://github.com/mist64/geos

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:39:33 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 24, 2016, 03:41:00 amCoincidentally a few days ago I did an Enterprise edition build to avoid this enforced update nonsense... it installed, but lost interest when I discovered I needed to maintain my own activation server, but life is too short to waste a load more hours on that for now.Microsoft really do know how to piss you off. I have no problem in keeping my OS patched, but I will do it when I want to, not when Microsoft want to thank you. I dread to think how people manage with Windows 10 on slow connections, 2GB or so of updates every month will be very painful.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:46:27 pm
content: Over the last decade or so, Microsoft has been in the business of taking things that work really well and making them unusable.Win2k and winxp are near perfect. Win7 isn't bad. But win8 and win10 are complete crap. Why the forced and unpredictable reboots for example?The same with office.....

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:48:34 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 24, 2016, 09:42:29 pmI think that only works for WiFi or did I misunderstand something? I have certainly considered disabling the WU service, and might yet still do that, but noting how intrusive their OS is I wouldn't be surprised if there's something in the kernel that re-enables it.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 09:55:33 pm
content: Oh, yes, Windows 2000 for me too. Simple marketing, no unnecessary chrome, the first NT to support removeable hardware. I could still happily run everything on 2000 were it still supported.XP is 2000 plus chrome, Windows 5.1 vs Windows 5.0.At about the time of XP the marketing wankers had taken over, remember when everythhing was called .NET? It so completely confused the customers, nobody could actually explain what .NET was, ISTR Windows 2003 was originally called Windows .NET, FFS why?

author: KeepItSimpleStupid
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 10:28:57 pm
content: I might say RX-11M, but my only experience was RT-11. RT-11 was more like DOS. Two of us wanted to write a major program under RSX (Reason: no experience), but it was turned down my management. It fit, but barely with no room to expand and the programmer had to do the overlays.One wanted to do it in C or Modula2 and not Fortran. There was one Assembly Language instruction: Move From Previous Instruction Space that we needed.Somehow, secretly, I wish DEC would have developed the software for the IBM PC just because their support was second to none.The DEC system 10 wasn't too bad. RSTS-11 wasn't bad either. Unix on a PDP-11 was also nice.

author: Jr460
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 10:30:52 pm
content: I think it is still supported, barely.....VMS, one of the 64bit versions if you want to get picky.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2016, 11:03:40 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on October 24, 2016, 09:09:53 amActually, last I checked riscOS was still being developed! There's even a recent version for the Raspberry Pi, available for download from the official RPi site.In fact, when the Pi first came out, riscOS was the second OS available for it (the first being Raspbian Wheezy Soft Float).

author: doobedoobedo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 12:03:41 am
content: SCO Unix

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 04:17:55 am
content: I notice not one person has said Windows Millennium Edition yet ;-)

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 04:47:27 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 25, 2016, 04:32:01 amIt's only use is that of being a quirk in computing history, and a fun toy to eff around with from time to time. It was a product that should never have been released.To be fair the same thing could be said about Vista, Windows 8, 8.1, and 10.

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 05:01:15 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 25, 2016, 04:17:55 amWorked for some computers, big fail or problem source for some.So big a fail that Microsoft dropped it.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 05:43:53 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 25, 2016, 04:17:55 amBurn it! Burn it with fire!I remember having it for a month and then giving up and downgrading cause nothing worked properly. From then on i started making informed decisions on what benefits a OS upgrade gives me before going for it. Hence i stayed on win2k well in to the XP era until things started becoming incompatible before switching to XP.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 06:57:30 am
content: Quote from: Berni on October 25, 2016, 05:43:53 amYep, same. It was unstable as hell and had nothing to do with my hardware (ran it on a Supermicro P6SBA motherboard and an Intel PIII-450 CPU). Went back to Windows 98se until XP came around.

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:21:05 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 25, 2016, 04:17:55 amAbout that one:As far as Windows goes, I was having this talk with a friend just the other day - if it hadn't been forcibly obsoleted, I reckon Windows 2000 would be a fine system to use today. It was my favorite one.First used it on a Pentium MMX with 48MB of RAM - it wasslow, but at least it was stable, unlike the Win9x crapola of which WinMe was part.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:31:50 am
content: Windows 2000 was the last of it's kind, as part of the NT line it was an operating system designed for power users who knew what they were doing and didn't want an unstable lump of rubbish that would crash if you did so much as peer beyond outlook.Win9x was the teething period of Windows after it's OTHER teething period. It went through a teething period in the NT era, and is now just stagnating with offensive policies and god awful legacy software support.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:41:58 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 25, 2016, 07:31:50 amWin95a was meh. You may as well just stuck with NT 4.0 Workstation or Windows for Workgroups 3.11.Win95b with the USB supplement installed was fairly stable, but the USB support was pretty clunky.Win95c was rock solid as long as you did a custom installation and unticked all the junk (those bloody CompuServe, AOL and Microsoft Network trials!!).It wasn't until Windows 98se came around that I updated.And the way things are going, if they don't drop this whole cloud bullshit, I won't be upgrading from Windows 7. I'll use it for as long as I can and then... who knows... it might be time to bite the bullet and go Linux.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:47:04 am
content: I hate the teletubby extras from win10 at opening, i do not want or need win news at startup. So if you could disable a lot of that garbage that would be a plus.The updates are necessary, people forget that when 2000 was an os there were no big security threads. Now youre computer is hacked and powned in seconds and 98% of windows users have no idea how to prevent this, and with an outdated os no-one even the super know it all can protect themselves unless jou disconnect from the net and create an airgap. So stop whining about the updates or creare an airgap for yourself.

author: blackbird
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:47:51 am
content: After working with many, sometimes exotic, OS's I have to decide between Risc-OS and AOS/VS.... The winner for me isRisc-OS.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:51:32 am
content: Quote from: blackbird on October 25, 2016, 07:47:51 amHah, I've been pretty friggin stagnant with operating systems. I've never used OS/2, RISC OS, Amiga anything, GEM anything (have used CP/M on my C128), I've never worked with any SGI workstations (wish I could tho.) and my strangest OS I've ever used must have been Damn Small Linux, which I attempted to install on an 80486 IBM PS/1, and failed instantly since I didn't have a math coprocessor.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:58:13 am
content: When Windows 2000 came out, I desperately wanted to use it. Unfortunately, driver support was *very* spotty. A lot of consumer hardware just didn't have drivers and/or supporting software available for it.I ended up with Windows 98SE with all the cruft pulled out. You could entirely remove IE all together (and by extension, the forced IE integration from the OS) using 98lite. Needed a copy of Windows 95 to replace parts of the shell; 95c worked best. It made it super fast and *very* stable.

author: setq
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:04:21 am
content: Windows 2000 for me. Was the last windows without the successive layers of smudged turd polish and crazy and no activation.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 02:53:15 pm
content: I want to set up a system and run Microsoft BOB on it.....

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 04:00:58 pm
content: For Windows, 2000 was the last Windows I'd use out of choice. I'd rather not use Windows at all if I could - burned by Microsoft incompetence one time too many.Desktop operating system of choice: OS X 10.6.8. Stable, easy to use, not loaded with features that force you to use Apple as the centre of your universe.Mainframe operating system of choice: Multics, somewhere around SR9, with TOPS-10 a not very close second. Anything from ICL or IBM goes to the end of the list. Multics had the best security design of any operating system I've ever used. Interestingly it was designed for use by a 'computer utility' in a world where it was thought that computers would be centralised and accessed remotely where people who might need to be protected from each other while using the same computing facilities. Cloud computing anybody?Minicomputer OS: Probably Primos, but most minicomputer OSes sucked rocks in some way or another and I used most of the big ones at some time.Unix flavoured server OS: Solaris 10. Rock solid stable, only ever rebooted when the power went out or you had to physically move a machine. Got very good performance out of the same hardware compared to other OSes.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 05:50:37 pm
content: What was the last version of Windows that did not require NTFS?That's probably what I'd go for. I'm guessing it was XP?

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 06:11:46 pm
content: For me it would be VAX/VMS v3.3 and RSX-11M 3.2.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 06:26:14 pm
content: I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 06:42:52 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on October 25, 2016, 06:26:14 pmYou might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:37:13 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on October 25, 2016, 05:50:37 pmOn windows, if you are not using NTFS and using FAT__ then you are risking a corrupt disk and should note that checkdsk can not fix all problems in a FAT__ directory.

author: doobedoobedo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 07:49:26 pm
content: BeOS. I remember getting BeOS icons for my Amiga.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:04:47 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 25, 2016, 06:42:52 pmNo, I think he's correct. There was an issue with the way driver models worked between 95/98/ME and NT/2000. So, drivers designed for 98 wouldn't work on 2000.I can't remember if the issue was with *all* drivers, or just USB ones. I know the reason I couldn't run 2000 was because my USB based (pre-WiFi) wireless dongle didn't have a driver for Windows 2000. It was an Intel brand wireless card, too! This would have been around March 2000.Video card drivers in 2000 also had serious performance penalties compared to their 98 counterparts; especially for high performance AGP cards. Once I realized that, I ended up losing interest and waited for XP to come out.I remember going to the Windows XP launch event in Norfolk, VA (they had them in cities across the country) and winning a free copy of XP Pro and Office in their raffle. (Little did they know I had already been running the (cracked) GM since August.)Edit: Ahh, so Windows 98 supports both WDM and VxD drivers, but Windows 2000 only supports WDM.At the time, a lot of consumer hardware used VxD drivers, because that allowed them to support Windows 95 as well. The highest performance video card drivers also used VxD as it allowed direct access to the hardware.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:14:00 pm
content: I've never seen a "corrupt" disk, nor have I ever had any disk problem that could be fixed just because of NTFS. Maybe I'm just lucky, but considering how many disks I've had just keel over and die, I doubt that's the case.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:38:27 pm
content: Quote from: timb on October 25, 2016, 08:04:47 pmI'm pretty sure version specific drivers are the same to this day. I think there are a handful of exceptions, but for the most part you need a winxp driver for winxp and a win7 driver for win7

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:47:02 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 25, 2016, 08:38:27 pmPretty much. It wasn't that the driver model in Windows 2000 was broken, it was just different. Sometimes you can get away with installing Windows 2000 drivers on a Windows XP machine.On a side note, I remember spending hours trying to get networking drivers working in DOS. They were a pain in the ass. Some decent NE2000 and compatible cards came with an install utility that worked and theMicrosoft Network Clientmade things easy if you had a supported card, but if not, you were stuck modifyingconfig.sysandautoexec.batfiles yourself. Of course you didn't have Plug and Play either, so you had to dick around with jumpers, IRQs and DMA settings. I don't miss that!

author: daybyter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 08:52:40 pm
content: Concurrent cp/m

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 09:13:11 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 25, 2016, 06:42:52 pmI ran NT4 and one day bought a new scanner. Plugged in the USB port and learned that the hard way. I spent an entire Sat backing up and installing windows 98 and all my software to the point it said the registry was full. No problem I thought I'll just go in computer properties and increase it like I did in NT4.Spent all day Sunday reinstalling NT4 after returning the scanner.I upgraded the W2k when it was still in beta. Had went 9 months and had to reboot so I could enable the IR port on my laptop. 2K was the last windows that actually worked without issues. I've had a few xp sytems after that (wife and kids) or work provided. They all will fail to resume 5% of the time, fail to recognize usb after too many uses, they all have the huge security hole thinly disguised as a web browser, they all constantly his swap all the time but have plenty of free ram.I know the OP said no Amiga because of AROS but its not the same. I'd revive the classic Amiga OS and the hardware with it. make it a 64 bit 680000 CPU.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 09:19:00 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 25, 2016, 08:38:27 pmNope. WDM drivers are mostly forward compatible. Meaning, you can install a Windows 2000 driver in XP, but not an XP driver in 2000. In fact, a lot of the older network card drivers that came with Windows XP came directly from Windows 2000!Now, Windows Vista did break some stuff with WDM drivers; as I recall it had to do with the implementation of UAC and the underlying security of the OS. Of course, what *didn't* Vista break? That said, most Vista drivers worked just fine in Windows 7 and some will even work in 8 and/or 10!On top of that, some VxD drivers from the Windows 3.1 era could be installed all the way up to Windows 98!Edit: That said, if a newer version of the driver exists for your specific OS it's generally always better to use it, as it can take advantage of newer WDM features. Though for specific niche hardware, or hardware that's no longer supported you don't always have a choice.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 09:21:53 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on October 25, 2016, 02:53:15 pm?Tim

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2016, 09:44:06 pm
content: Microsoft Bob isn't EOL, it was just renamed to iphone

author: KeepItSimpleStupid
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 03:15:37 am
content: I did like the video slightly after 6:50 mark where M$ decided to update the OS during the weather report.If Micro$oft make cars:http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw/microsoftjoke.htm

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 04:45:39 am
content: Quote from: rdl on October 25, 2016, 08:14:00 pmFrom a personal experience too long to relate, I came to the conclusion that Microsoft's NTFS driver code contains something buried in it that knows how to brick hard disks by issuing a bogus HDD flash firmware update command. And that it's part of some kind of 'detect non-kosher Windows installs' system, with the drive-bricking being one of the punishments it's able to dish out.Here's some interesting history of the development of NT/2000, by David N. Cutler, NT's chief architect.http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-storyWindows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story - Nov 30, 1998.Something I'll add to that, which I can't recall where I read: another reason NT worked so well, was that when Cutler was negotiating with MS/Gates to come onboard, he demanded a guarantee that MS/Gates would leave him the f*ck alone to get it done right, as opposed to forcing him to include all sorts of stupid Bill Gates bullshit in the OS.No BOGU(*) for Cutler.* - Bend Over and Grease Up. (Said when Gates was known to be approaching.) A term that was popular among MS employees for some time, until Gates declared its use would result in instant dismissal.

author: AG6QR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:38:18 am
content: For me, it would be CDC NOS/BE for a CYBER 170 series mainframe, simply because that's where I got my start in programming. That OS is well beyond EOL, much harder to resurrect than any version of Windows. The OS is fairly tightly coupled to the machine hardware architecture, and the architecture is quite bizarre if you're used to modern byte-addressable computers with 8-bit characters. It has a 60 bit word length, 18 bit address space, 6 bit characters (10 characters per word). Notice that 6 bits is not enough to hold all the upper and lower case letters, digits, and control codes, so the characters are upper case only, with a facility for encoding lower case using 12 bits per character. The machined was a Cray-designed supercomputer of its day, made to run FORTRAN programs fast.The filesystem was also a bit odd. It had no subdirectories. There were "local files" and "permanent files". Local files would disappear when you logged off, but programs interacted only with local files. You had to use the "SAVE" command to copy a local file to a permanent file before you logged off, if you wanted your work to persist. And you had to use the "GET" command to copy the permanent file(s) back to your local space the next time you logged on.That's just scratching the surface of the system's idiosyncrasies. I have a different perspective on computing because I started on that, and moved through IBM mainframe VM/CMS and TSO (which also have some idiosyncrasies of their own), and DEC VMS, before moving to Unix, and finally DOS, Windows, and Mac OS X. Modern computers and operating systems have largely converged so that they have a tree structured directory, ASCII (and/or Unicode) character set, 32 or 64 bit address space, 8-bit bytes, a hardware stack that makes recursion easy, etc. My kids will probably never know a computer without these features, and may have a hard time imagining how else things could be done. But there were once other ways of doing things...

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:40:01 am
content: For those thinking about BeOS: have a look athaiku OS

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 01:06:03 pm
content: Quote from: AG6QR on October 26, 2016, 06:38:18 amICL mainframes had a very similar 6 bit character arrangement. Right pain in the bum it was. Worse still, most line printers cost more if you wanted them to handle the full character set so the vast majority wereUPPER CASE ONLY WHICH MEANT READING ANY PRINTOUT GOT A BIT TIRING. ESPECIALLY AS YOU COULDN'T SPOT THE START OR END OF SENTENCES.QuoteAs best I can tell it was my personal favourite, Multics, that introduced a filesystem that looks like what you'd see nowadays. Prior to that filesystem structures were not merely different between OSes, they were wildly different. And moving files between disparate operating systems usually required the writing of specific conversion programs for both ends not "chuck it on a flash drive".QuoteWhat people nowadays may not realize was that at one time it was quite normal for systems to be so wildly incompatible with one another that it was quite normal to rewrite your application code if you merely moved up within a manufacturer's range of machines let alone when moving between machines from different manufacturers.

author: StuUK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 01:09:55 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on October 26, 2016, 01:06:03 pmRemember it well, my first job was Cobol on a ICL1900 on coding sheets, punched cards for JCL and the odd fire or two when the friction made the card reader too hot...

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 01:20:22 pm
content: QuoteNothing, I'm quiet happy with what's available today, much better than eol stuff.

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 02:37:45 pm
content: MS-DOS 6.2It used to chug away on the 386 boxes this poor teenager bodged together. DBLSPACE to compress the data on my tiny HDD, COMPLNK (or something) to transfer files over a parralel cable to another, Telix for BBSing, FastTracker for music making, and I could write a CONFIG.SYS with my eyes closed!

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 03:40:43 pm
content: Quote from: Delta on October 26, 2016, 02:37:45 pmMeh .. you missed the upmost important one, squeezing out the last free bytes tweaking out Quarterdeck QEMM386, and CONFIG.SYS alone aint enough, you forgot the AUTOEXEC.BAT.

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 04:22:55 pm
content: AUTOEXEC.BAT goes without saying!I also had a programme called 2MEG that could squeeze a full 2MB onto a standard 1.44MB 3.5" floppy! Not tried to read any of those disks for a while though...

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 05:46:29 pm
content: Remember how Win95 was distributed on those 1.76MB (or whatever it was) floppies?Tim

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:31:43 pm
content: windows 10

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:32:35 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 26, 2016, 05:46:29 pmIt was 1.44Mb. I threw out a huge stack of Windows, Netware and other OS floppies during a clearout a couple of years back.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:39:37 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 26, 2016, 05:46:29 pmI remember I would install DOS first, then use it to copy all the floppy disks to a folder on the hard drive. By doing that you could install Windows from the HDD and if you kept that folder it would look there whenever it needed something instead of telling you to insert disk number whatever.

author: Fortran
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 06:55:07 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on October 26, 2016, 06:32:35 pmOoh! NetWare was my favourite server around 1990-2000.It needed a 100MB DOS partition to boot what was basically Linux, I think. Never understood why.Maybe it wasn't Linux based back then?

author: vis1-0n
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 07:20:19 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on October 25, 2016, 08:14:00 pmHave a production bureau producing 200K new files a week. I have had folders disappear, but put it down to user error. It clicked 2 weeks ago when I was deleting the older folders when active files disappeared of the filesystem in Server 2008. It was freaking NTFS itself. Folders went missing in alphabetic order, the more I deleted from the specific folders more folders went missing in its root folder and in alphabetic order.Of course with my daily backups I ended losing 40% of the current production, undelete utilities helped a bit. NTFS aint bulletproof. Unless it was windows explorer at fault.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 07:22:13 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on October 26, 2016, 06:39:37 pmAlso worked for the CD version, which was a lovely holgrammed one as well. Boot from CD, format c:/s and then copy the cabinet files across with the setup.exe and then reboot, and cd to the directory and run setup, answer the 5 questions and let it go for it. Also later slipstreamed a bootable cd with the files and the required inf and files for the boards I mostly used, the video cards and the network drivers, so that it was even faster, and no need to actually install the FDD in the case, saving a few bucks on the build.Then when I had to build a batch, just clone the drive after doing this, or just run setup till the first reboot and clone it then, saved around an hour per unit, as I could have one built for the second, and then simply clone the drives while doing the hardware, then simply install drive, power on ( and the quick burn in that setup gave by accident) and enter key. Some were even quicker, used regedit to change the key on the cloned whole drive to match the key stuck on the case.Found a few of those disks recently clearing up, plus a never used copy of WinME, still in the wrapping.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 07:43:25 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on October 26, 2016, 06:32:35 pmSame here, tossed all mine floppies when I moved a few years ago as well as old PC's and parts. My original IBM XT with 10M HDD and working network card, my pair of NT4 domain controllers.Now if I ever get time to get my Amiga working again I'll have to buy floppies (again).

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 09:39:42 pm
content: WOW, 6 bit characters what a luxury some of you had,model 28 teletype with five-bit Baudot.mini computers used as embedded processor, no boot roms, hot patching a running computer.Then there was the two computer as one thing. Was easer to use a second computer as expanded memory then to create expanded memory. What was left of second cpu became a little smarter io.Then some just were tubes or transistors.But think of what happens when you have a RSX11M with users doing some embedded work linked to an embedded PDP-11 & embedded z80Big cause of "corrupt" disk is a power failure.NTFS with it's transcription log can handle this better, With FAT your sol if disk was being written to when power fail happened.Bad programming can kill both.Most here are thinking of a OS for one user or an OS for many users on one CPU.I think the real future is an updated TurboDos where each user has a CPU linked to more CPUs in box with linked boxes.Today some have two or more screens to one PC, what if you had two or more screens to two or more PCs that acted as if it was one PC to user.An updated TurboDos+RSX11M clone.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 10:03:55 pm
content: Windows 2000 hands down.Enhance it under the hood to handle 64-bit, more ram, etc... to be up to today's standards, but keep the user experience exactly the same.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2016, 10:40:23 pm
content: I was waiting for someone to bring up beos. Had it prevailed over next, the world of computing would have been different today.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 01:53:09 am
content: Quote from: dannyf on October 26, 2016, 10:40:23 pmBeOS was mentioned in #85. As to the latter, I don't know but I suspect not. BeOS and NeXT innovated in different ways but neither brought anything truly new or remarkable to the mix, and both suffered from a lack of core simplicity and elegance that is, to my mind at least, the mark of a good operating system design.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 03:10:23 am
content: Quote from: C on October 26, 2016, 09:39:42 pmThis is partly why there'snoOS, past or present, that I'd like to see revived. Because *everything* is ASCII-based, even if kludge-extended with Unicode and UTF-8. And it's inadequate.One of my hobbies is sort-of information technology archeology, with emphasis on identifying points at which major conceptual mistakes were made. Especially when they became permanently bricked in, so we still suffer from them now.There are a LOT of mistakes and omissions in ASCII, and boy do we suffer. Just most people don't realize how badly, because there are horrible work-arounds for the worst of them, and we're used to these ways of doing things.So, I verrrry-slowly work on a replacement for ASCII. And some other OS-related stuff based on that rejig.Knowing what would be possible with some basic fixes to 'accepted crap', makes me very negative about existing OSs.QuoteSole cause of any kind of process-state/storage failure with present computing systems in power-fail situation, is the absence of some REALLY SIMPLE measures at the hardware and OS level. Having designed gambling machine systems that were absolutely immune to any data loss from users playing chopsticks with the mains power switch, I know it can be done at literally no extra cost. It's a design conceptual thing. No it isn't a UPS.The fact that PCs (and virtually all commercial computers) are not capable of weathering sudden power loss and restarting where they left off, is just pathetic. Unbelievably incompetent design. And it makes them useless for most real world control and state-critical applications.QuotePutting it another way, when early computers were expensive it was normal to have many users on one machine. Even with PCs/Windows this was assumed to be a common use case, hence the stupid multi-user pile-of-crap that is one of the reasons all MS Windows versions suck dogs balls. (Combinatorial complexity explosion, and endless security holes.)You're right that the future is opposite to this. It will be networks of computers owned by individuals. No 'multi-user' tangles. More like 'personal clouds', with extra hardware modules of all kinds hot-plugged to a live networked system as required. The present corporate-owned 'cloud' ideas are kind of resistance to the inevitable, and corporations trying own everything, as usual. They are going to fail.And there's no OS, past or present, that comes anywhere close to what's needed. Because ASCII is missing some critical concepts.By the way, for those interested in OS development:http://wiki.osdev.org

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 03:38:59 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 26, 2016, 07:51:16 pmLook into Ext2FSD. It's a file system translator for windows, you can use the EXT4 file system with writing and reading. It's a tad experimental, but I have never had an issue unless you intend to run windows programs from it.

author: Don Hills
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 08:05:52 am
content: Quote from: Cerebus on October 26, 2016, 06:32:35 pmSome versions of Windows (and OS/2 ad PC-DOS) did use "1.44MB" diskettes formatted to hold 1.68MB and 1.86MB respectively. The Windows version was called DMF and the IBM version XDF. There are Wikipedia pages for both formats.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 08:48:32 pm
content: Quote from: Don Hills on October 27, 2016, 08:05:52 amYep, DMF used 21 sectors per track. It made copying those disks a little more difficult because the data couldn't fit on a regular 1.44MB formatted floppy disk.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 09:10:02 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 27, 2016, 08:48:32 pm

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 09:44:03 pm
content: The ones on the right are backup copies? MS never used any brand name disks.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 09:49:27 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 27, 2016, 09:44:03 pmNot sure. Image is from Google.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 09:53:33 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on October 27, 2016, 09:49:27 pmI more want the synthesizer. Would go perfectly to replace my current soundfont setup which is very slow.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 11:31:02 pm
content: Yes, you could get Win95 on floppy, but it DID come on CD. I was a Win95 beta tester, until a few years ago I still had the various builds that got sent out. What made them interesting is they used different writable CDs for each one - the data layer reflected different colors. So on the beta forums we would talk about an issue with the yellow CD, or the blue CD. Then there was one, when we opened up the package to take the CD out, it had the distinct aroma of celery. And it wasn't just us, others commented on the same thing. I now kind of wish I had kept them, although what to do with them all would be the next question. I know some beta testers used the old beta build CDs to make CD clocks.Win95 on floppy was STILL less disks the Novell Netware 3.15 on floppy! Anyone remember that? I think it was up to about 40 floppies. And building a server only to have it fail to read on disk 38 was everyone's worst nightmare.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2016, 11:52:45 pm
content: Floppies give me an odd nostalgic feeling. I kept using them for longer than I probably should have. Everyone in college had USB sticks and I still had floppies.it's crazy how far we've come in storage tech though. You could fit several TB in something the size of a floppy now.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 12:33:28 am
content: Our local college forced people ti use zip drives. We at the computer store would then get all the complaints about the lost work. Just when you thought something couldn't be more unreliable than a floppy zip disks came along and proved you wrong.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 12:50:51 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 28, 2016, 12:33:28 amI hate when schools force you to use something. Happy mine doesn't but they push and sell the ti-83 like it's the best thing ever, while HP has cheaper and better calculators.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 02:25:49 am
content: Quote from: rrinker on October 27, 2016, 11:31:02 pmFascinating! Probably something like apiole,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apiolebut what they were using that for, in a CD-R, who knows! (Solvent? Byproduct of the resin or media? Ran out of colors so they resorted to smells?!)Tim

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 03:17:18 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 28, 2016, 02:25:49 am"John, I've just got the new Windows 98me CD through from Microsoft's PR people. It smells ... it smells of ... Oh GOD, hand me the waste basket. I think I'm going to..."

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 04:40:04 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 28, 2016, 12:50:51 amHahaha I remember those, I thought they were a really cool concept and wanted to look into them for backups, but then I heard about the horrible failure rate, then they kind of just vanished. USB sticks and portable hard drive/enclosures were starting to surface around that time too if I recall. I remember buying an enclosure for a 60GB drive, I felt so cool knowing I could carry 60GB of data with me! Now they make USB sticks that are bigger than that.

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 04:41:36 am
content: XP SP3 : Possibly the best Windows version ever, but 7 is great too. W2K was a game changer, so it also deserves a spot on my list. Everything else from MS is/was crap.For sentimental reasons, I also vote for CP/M.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 07:57:37 am
content: Quote from: AlxDroidDev on October 28, 2016, 04:41:36 amI actually have a CP/M system laying around... Sorta...It's the Commodore 128, with full VIC-II compatibility (NTSC only), and CGA (RGBi colour space) compatible graphics with a Z80, Bootable CP/M from disk, and I think full compatibility with CP/M programs of the time. Although I am not sure, I currently have it on my nightstand.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 11:01:04 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 28, 2016, 12:50:51 amDaughters school forces use of chromebooks. They don't care that you can juts run chrome on any laptop and do they same thing, we had to buy her a chromebook.When my wife started college they did that IBM thinkpad program. You 'rented' an IBM thinkpad for $600 a semester for four years and could then buy it for an additional $600 at the end. They didn't even have wireless, students had to carry around a cat 5 cable (wife didn't even know what a network cable was because we've had wireless ever since Cicso bought Aeronet). That overprices laptop sat in its bag on the couch and never moved as she used the laptop she already had for everything.At least they are not forcing ipads on us. My son kept coming home wanting to us to buy an ipad because his teacher was showing us all the great things it did. I kept having to show him the prices " here look, do you want us to buy one ipad for the whole family to take turns with or would you rather each of the four of us have our own tablet for the same price".

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 11:03:50 am
content: Quote from: AlxDroidDev on October 28, 2016, 04:41:36 amXP? Its was the downhill slide after 2000, 2000 was the best. 2000 IE was not integrated yet, XP was where it became the huge security/stability issue. Imagine XP without having to reboot every day, Imagine if XP was able to use available ram instead of sawpping, imagine if XP didn't need all kinds of malware protection. That was windows 2000.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 11:06:39 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 28, 2016, 04:40:04 amThey didn't just vanish here though, OSU kept pushing them for years. We would have students , RA's, professors, mothers, etc all come in complaining about their lost work wanting us to recover it, etc because we sold the faulty drive. It wasn't our fault , we only sold the products because they came in asking for it in the first place. if it was my choice I would never have ordered them in in the first place but they didn't want to loose the whole pc sale over not special ordering the iomega stuff.Hahaha I remember those, I thought they were a really cool concept and wanted to look into them for backups, but then I heard about the horrible failure rate, then they kind of just vanished. USB sticks and portable hard drive/enclosures were starting to surface around that time too if I recall. I remember buying an enclosure for a 60GB drive, I felt so cool knowing I could carry 60GB of data with me! Now they make USB sticks that are bigger than that.I remember the HP/Ti wars too. My college wasn't picky though so I has a 48SX

author: alank2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 12:18:48 pm
content: My gripe about MS is that they constantly change things that don't need to be changed. Ever try to find the version in Office these days? hint - the old reliable help about will not cut it. It seems they change things just to be trendy and stuff you knew you have to constantly relearn to stay on the MS trendy bandwagon. Add to that that they keep adding and adding and adding more complication and unnecessary features and code and libraries to do this and to do that and it is no wonder their OS's are extremely unwieldy, bloated, and insecure. Security is another thing that irritates me to no end. There is no reason that things have to be designed to be insecure with ports open for no good reason. Open the ports that need to be opened, for those bullet proof them. How many mechanisms does MS have for filesharing? It feels like 15!My answer, bring back DOS. I loved programming DOS. No crazy API that works differently in different versions of windows, no controls, no message loops.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 12:48:53 pm
content: Quote from: alank2 on October 28, 2016, 12:18:48 pmAs long as 640k is enough for you. Else there's EMS, XMS, HIMEM, EMM386, DOS4/GW, CWSDPMI, ... take your pick. And that's not even with multitasking yet!Tim

author: smithnerd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 01:42:47 pm
content: Can't promise stability yet, but an XP SP2 / 2003 revival is under way:https://www.reactos.org/Try a recent daily build in a VM - the ISO is <70MB. It is still raw, but getting towards being genuinely useful.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 01:57:34 pm
content: Quote from: smithnerd on October 28, 2016, 01:42:47 pmI would never use XP as an Operating system day to day. Ever.It was a painful operating system that broke if you just tried to use it. Don't forget if you ever had to reinstall it, you would be spending your ENTIRE weekend installing updates.But I have seen ReactOS, and I have to say it has the right idea, it's just not ready yet.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 04:39:15 pm
content: I just can't believe all these young kids that never used anything prior to XP and think its decent.I guess I should give XP a little credit, if it wasn't for it I might not have switched to Linux.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 05:06:35 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 28, 2016, 04:39:15 pmThere's almost a sick burn in that one.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 05:16:29 pm
content: XP isn't so bad. I've used most MS OSes except the server only stuff since DOS 2.11, including all DOS based versions of Windows from 2.0 upwards to ME, and NT family OSes from NT3.5 onwards. Sure, 2000 is nice and more stable than XP, but if it doesn't have drivers for the peripherals and cards you need all you can do is run it in a VM.With the XP based Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 still in extended support, reviving XP is still feasible - the sources haven't been lost and there isn't a major backlog of security holes that need patching - all it needs is for a big enough MS customer to throw enough money at the problem. e.g. if the US DOD wanted a cleaned up and secure version of XP badly enough, it could still happen.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 08:34:41 pm
content: Quote from: alank2 on October 28, 2016, 12:18:48 pmYeah I hate that about MS, and it seems all the other companies are doing the same. Google is getting really bad too, they change stuff like Youtube all the time and it's always for the worst.It would be like car manufacturers randomly changing where the steering wheel is, or trying to replace it with something else. It's a proven way, don't touch it.As for XP I did not mind it, it was a DISASTER when it first got released though, part of the issue was that it was simply too bloated for the hardware available at the time. It would ship on a machine that has like 265MB of ram and a single core processor. It would be slow out of the box. I don't know how many XP -> win2k conversions I did for people back then.95 was ok, I think... but I was very new to computers when I played with it. I did use win 3.11 for a bit too. I kinda miss that one. I should see what it takes to install that in a VM just for fun.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 08:36:00 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on October 28, 2016, 05:16:29 pmThe problem with XP is the sheer amount of bloat it has. It doesn't need most of the stuff it has. The advantage to Pre-XP versions of windows is that they didn't have all the pointless UI changes and uneeded features that piss away memory and CPU cycles. And XP is not secure by any stretch of the imagination. SO MANY VIRUSES are capable of killing an XP box it's not even funny, and if the DOD had any brains, they wouldn't even use Windows of any version and go for a highly specialized Unix/Linux based arrangement.Windows 2000 is a quick and simple operating system. You can install it on just about anything and it will run fine, and drivers have NEVER been an issue for me. You won't get modern graphics support (although who knows what's there) for obvious reasons, but that's not a fair mark against Win2K, and in it's lifetime it had perfectly fine driver support. It also had perfectly fine program support with acceptable Win9x support, decent DOS support, and the LEGIONS of NT supported programs. It's also NT so you get all the fancy workstation tools you don't get in Windows XP.Windows 2000 would be an operating system I would use on a daily basis, heck I would pay good money to use it too. It would be a return to grace for operating systems in general, and I would love to use it.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 08:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 28, 2016, 08:34:41 pmI have it running fine in DOSBox. Due to the emulation and not virtualization factor of DOSBox, it doesn't run that great, but for idle messing around it's fine. Virtualization works, but it can be too fast to run some stuff.I am currently working on building an 80486 VLB based (cringe going through the f**ing roof here) system for games and stuff, to get a proper old time experience (I am collector).

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 08:46:13 pm
content: Actually, one OS I wish had a better luck was BeOS. Too bad it was shut down, because it was promising and beautiful-looking. Although it was ended several years ago, people are trying to revive it withHaiku OS, but it just isn't the same.OTOH, one OS I am glad we don't see anymore is Symbian. Developing for Symbian was a huge PITA, even with J2ME.

author: AlxDroidDev
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 08:50:30 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 28, 2016, 08:36:00 pmActually, tweaking with XP was incredibly easy. Just edit a couple .INF files and you can remove any unwanted bloatware. I like OSes that can be tweaked. I, for one, only migrated from XP to Windows 7 after W7SP1 was released. Until then I had absolutely no need to leave XP. I am still on W7SP1.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 09:23:11 pm
content: The problem with XP was it didn't really remove stuff, it hid it but it was still there.My biggest issue was the lack of ability to change the swap.In winsows 2000 I ran vmware and had 4 guest OS's running at once by allocating just a bit of ram to each and setting the swap registry key so it would not swap until it ran out of ram. I 'upgraded' to xp and it started swapping as soon as I opened the first guest, I ended up using one of my techet cases to ask MS support why it wasn't doing what the reg key said. Turns out in a non-public kb article they documented that they dropped support for the ability to control when it would swap. I ended up with a linux host so I could control swap. So my nice high end workstation with XP and 16G of ram couldn't run virtual guests as well as my $300 eeepc running linux.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 10:57:06 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 28, 2016, 09:23:11 pmI use nLite to solve that problem. I've got a custom ISO of XP, with SP2 and *all* the updates fully integrated (there's a little command line app, which I forget the name of, that will automatically download all of the updates direct from MS for you; nLite will, if possible, install the update into the ISO, failing that it will simply add the update's installer to the ISO and run it silently at the last stage of the OS installation).My ISO also has pretty much all the bloat removed, including IE, Windows Media Player, language packs, trials, built-in apps, unneeded drivers, themes, etc. All but the essential services have been disabled as well.Install size is close to 600MB. It's *very* fast! nLite is pretty damn awesome!

author: daybyter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2016, 11:40:37 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 28, 2016, 07:57:37 amI work on something similar. C= cp/m module in a FPGA. So cp/m is definitely not read for me.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 12:03:36 am
content: Quote from: timb on October 28, 2016, 10:57:06 pmSeems like a lot of work just to make windows 2000

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 12:19:59 am
content: Quote from: timb on October 28, 2016, 10:57:06 pmThe thing is Windows 2000 still runs better and doesn't bog down as easily. And it's still a matter of you need to put in a lot of work and effort into really cleaning out XP, and just get an unstable and more prone to barfing version of Windows 2000. Windows 2000 had nothing wrong with it from the install. I could install it, update it, and boom I am done and done for good. No custom versions, no this no that, just get SP4, drivers, and whatever software I wanted.

author: Paul Moir
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 06:24:31 am
content: Quote from: alank2 on October 28, 2016, 12:18:48 pmWait, what? You mean the API you avoided using as much as you could except for maybe file access because it was so unbelievably slow or incapable? The one where you couldn't write a whole class of programs without using undocumented APIs?But Windows 2000/XP? Pshaw, such a bourgeois operating system. Yes, bring back DOS before it. Me, Coherent 3, with the book.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 06:42:38 am
content: For the DOS lovers, surely not? Hours and days pissed away fannying around with config.sys and autoexec.bat to get your network working at the same time as a SCSI adapter.There were so many kludges, particularly with breaking the 640KB barrier, XMS, EMS, EEMS. But then there were TSRs.Remember Software Carousel?!As a programmer, I much preferrd OS/2 to Windows, the API was much cleaner in OS/2, whereas Windows was and remains a seemingly randomly thrown together hotch potch of functions.DOS though, thanks, but no thanks!

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 10:33:38 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 29, 2016, 12:19:59 amI don't think that's really true. A lot of people here looking at Win2k through rose colored glasses, if you ask me. Yes, it was a nice OS. Yes, it was stable. Yes, it was *fairly* secure (as far as Windows goes). But it wasn't by any means fast!(Remember how long it took to boot up on hardware of the day? It could take 5 minutes or more until you were at the desktop! XP fixed that by continuing to load services after the login prompt appeared, instead of loading all the services before showing a login screen like 2k did.)Anyway, my last post was aimed at those of you who want the Windows 2000 experience, with the added benefit of being able to run somewhat modern software. 2k stopped being supported as a target platform for the majority of software at least 10 years ago.But, with nLite, Windows XP and about an hour of free time, you can have yourself what amounts to Windows 2000 Version 2.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 11:11:54 am
content: XP SP3 was fairly robust, but the original version was horrid, full of bugs, crashes and with parts that did not work, or were buggy as all hell on certain hardware combinations. Only after a good number of updates, newer drivers and the roll up into the service packs did it become a solid system, and even now there are still places where the code is Win95 code basically there with no changes.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:05:18 pm
content: Quote from: timb on October 29, 2016, 10:33:38 amI had an AMD Athlon XP+ based computer that ran Windows 2000 (dual boot with 98) with era specific hardware (actually even worse, the largest drive I had was I think 40GB in size) and 512 MB of memory (98SE crashes when using more, so I didn't bother swapping it out on the casual occasion I wanted to use Windows 2000) and not counting the BIOS faffing about, it booted faster then my installation of Windows 7 does on an SSD, counting from first and second loading menu, login screen, and loading the desktop, it took about 10-15 seconds (And it had stuff on it, it wasn't a clean install) while my windows box can take 30+ seconds to get everything situated and working.Windows 2000 was fast to boot, fast to use, VERY stable, and didn't have the habit of sticking half your system memory up it's arse and never give it back until you restart.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:33:27 pm
content: Yeah, 2000 booted plenty fast for me as well. XP gave the login prompt sooner but then took a lot longer as it was still trying to start services while it was also trying to login so their plan backfired as it took even longer since everything was fighting for disk access.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:52:38 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 29, 2016, 05:33:27 pmThe thing is, XP had to be restarted about once a day, otherwise most of your system memory is allocated to nothing, half your CPU threads are leaking, and it takes ten minutes to open up a bloody internet browser.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 07:02:32 pm
content: * eugenenine thinks those that say XP even with SP3 was decent never used 2k. XP Sp3 still had more problems than 2k beta did.I didn't see anyone wanting to revive OS/2

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 07:15:42 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 29, 2016, 07:02:32 pmI personally never used OS/2 but there is an LGR Tech Tales episode on why nobody ever used it. It was too expensive, didn't come with any computers, and seemed to be a mostly useless upgrade.I have also heard stories of it's MS-DOS and Windows compatibility being not that great.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 07:48:40 pm
content: We had a couple customers at the PC shop wanting OS2. One tech spent a long time trying to get it to work on an actual IBM PC. Tech support with IBM couldn't even get help.I only mentioned it to try and get the thread back on topic somewhat.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 10:28:23 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFiveerrrrrrr yeah ... If you say so .. I've been running 30-40 sites for the last 8 yrs (SP3) and 50+ sites (SP1-2) 7 yrs before that. NEVER have a problem with speed /corruption / bloating etc etc Yes, there were teething issues with SP1-2, but nothing that couldn't be fixed, and I certainly don't recall ANY operating system thatI've used that didn't. Mebbe you had a bad disk :-)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 12:16:55 am
content: Quote from: timb on October 29, 2016, 10:33:38 amI don't know what sucks more: an OS which boots slowly or an OS which isn't ready when it is supposed to be ready. IIRC XP was unusable for the first few minutes anyway so the quick start was just beads and mirrors.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 01:40:31 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 29, 2016, 07:15:42 pmMy first job out of graduate school was radar work that had an OS/2 front end/system software. It definitely had it's quirks, and wasn't what I would call robust. I seem to recall there being one system wide message queue, so you could effectively hang the whole system (or anything that depends on a message queue) by one program simply not servicing the queue. I don't think that was much different than early Windows version, but certainly disappointing for something that was supposed to be more advanced.But it wasn't terrible for the time. It was primitive, and support for hardware was practically non-existent unless IBM sold it. I seem to recall the IDE I was using to be incredibly slow and annoying. It was so bad that all of us used Boxer (a text editor, still around today actually) and just used the IDE to compile. Maybe we used it command line...I don't remember anymore.Anyhow, no fond memories of that time.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 01:57:41 am
content: Quote from: digsys on October 29, 2016, 10:28:23 pmRunning web sites on XP?I've had several company provided XP machines as well as bought a few for my wife and kids and had to support family members, XP rarely goes more than a few days without needing rebooted.I finally convinced my parents to stop using IE and using firefox, now the malware cleanup is every 6 months instead of every month.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 02:20:52 am
content: I regularly ran XP for a week at a time, perhaps several weeks. Usually updates would come in by then, necessitating a reboot.Throughout the history of Windows, stability has largely been a matter of two things: shitty hardware (with equally shitty drivers), and shitty programs.Back in my Win98SE days, I seem to recall the most frequent offender was Acrobat Reader 6. If I was reading a lot of datasheets, I might need to reboot twice in one day! Most days, I shut down for the night anyway, which was fine as it started up fairly quickly (being on rather new hardware by then, compared to the OS). I don't remember if I ever went more than a week without a reboot.I have a stock IBM Pentium with Win95 on it, of course I barely use it, and not for many diverse programs, but I can't seem to attribute any problems to the hardware or drivers, that's not due to simple bitrot (a lot of programs do happen to be suffering from file system errors..).I've never had a problem with leaving WinXP or 7 running for weeks on end, with the random reset almost always being the fault of updates, bad programs (e.g., a game that captures the display, crashes, and the desktop doesn't return), or power failures.I'm not saying everyone should have this experience, because obviously, most haven't; but I want to remind those that haven't, that their cases are exceptional, and stable operation, with a good combination of hardware and drivers and programs, is perfectly possible.And by the way, all those billboards that BSoD'd? Process those through this filter for a moment. What do they have in common? Custom display hardware. What else do most companies have in common? Bad drivers. So, it should figure that the most  visible displays are also the least stable!Tim

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 02:48:10 am
content: Just out of interest, why are people running desktops 24/7? ("I went weeks without a reboot")

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 02:57:12 am
content: Quote from: Delta on October 30, 2016, 02:48:10 amBecause even though it would save power, nobody feels like turning on their computer in the morning.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 03:31:54 am
content: Quote from: digsys on October 29, 2016, 10:28:23 pmI agree. I still to this day run Windows XP on one of my home machines which I use almost daily. The last time it was rebooted was because I lost mains power during a storm. I would say it's almost as stable as Windows 2000 was. As with almost all versions of Windows (and I will even put WFW3.11 in this category), it's only as stable as your hardware allows it to be.If you pair Windows XP with decent hardware, you might go years without a reboot (updates aside). Have just one component which is a bit flakey and you'll have dramas. Back in the day (and I guess this still rings true to a point these days), this is the kind of skill which differentiated a good IT professional and an average one who didn't really understand the technology. I've said it before on this forum and in real life and I'll probably be saying it for another 30 years...Speed, Stability and Cheap -- Pick two.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 04:30:31 am
content: Exactly. I found the most stable systems overall generally involved using Intel Reference Motherboard Designs, name brand memory and high quality power supplies.In 2006, I had a Windows XP box with an uptime of just over 1.5 years! The only reason I had to take it down was to replace the batteries in the UPS.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 04:43:18 am
content: Quote from: timb on October 30, 2016, 04:30:31 amThing is I've never ONCE encountered a Windows 2000 box that bogged down, while I have seen dozens of XP machines useless within 24 hours of uptime.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 02:47:22 pm
content: Quote from: Delta on October 30, 2016, 02:48:10 amBefore updates came every week or two, I used to go many months without a reboot. I think I once had my Windows 2000 workstation up for nearly a year, and finally just shut it down over Christmas vacation. Main reason for me? Well, there's a bunch of engineers here. When do things typically break? During startup, because that's when you have the most stress on all of the components because of things like in-rush.It's probably different for things like flat panel TVs because they tend suffer from massive heat issues and keeping them on just cooks the components, but a well designed PC will run cool when it's idling.I also happen to have an SVN server running on my workstation, mostly used locally, but my laptop pulls from it too so it's convenient to just have it up and running all the time.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 03:22:25 pm
content: Same here, mine runs all the time as my data is synched to the backup server, my torrent shares are running, etc.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 04:19:43 pm
content: I keep mine running 24/7 because the extra power consumption doesn't bankrupt me, the PC is almost silent (so i can sleep with it running at night) and because statistically there's a lower risk of hardware failures (in particular hard drives) if they run 24/7 at a stabilized temperature compared to turning off and on the system a couple of times every day.My electricity bill is maybe 50$ a month, my PC does around 20-30$ of that damage. Basically the only other electric stuff is lightbulbs and the fridge and the cable modem and hd dvr from my isp... don't have TV, I watch on my computer (in the rare cases when I watch)Turning the PC off during the night would save me maybe 5-8$ a month. I just don't give a *$% for that little money.Currently using Windows 7, perfectly happy with it.Have used Windows 2000 for a very long time and it was very stable for me (hated the XP default theme and stuck with Windows 2000, I never had Windows XP on my personal computers, except in tiny virtual machines for software development/testing/debugging purposes). I think I used this OS in the Duron and Barton times.I then moved directly to running Windows 2003 R2 on my desktop computer and other than not being able to install some consumer software and less antivirus solutions available for free (as the OS was detected as server/workstation grade, they refused to install and suggested Pro/Workstation versions, expensive )... Have used this with computers with Intel D805 and Intel Q6600 and loved it. Super stable for me and nice.Moved to Windows 7 when i bought a license along with upgrading hardware to AMD FX-8320 and more modern motherboard with DDR3 support.I'd say Windows 2003 would be one of the OSes that would still be perfectly fine to use, maybe with some updated drivers for USB 3 and thunderbolt... Nowadays they force Windows 2008 or 2012 down your throat, at much higher monthly costs.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 04:32:53 pm
content: Quote from: mariush on October 30, 2016, 04:19:43 pmNow I do have to agree with you. Win 2003 (Normally a server OS) would in my mind fix a lot of the problems with Windows XP. If it is BETTER than Windows 2000? I can't say, but Server 2008 R2 has a lot less clutter compared to Windows 7.It also brings food for thought that the Windows 2000 line is still going on in the server line. I never noticed that.

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 06:27:05 pm
content: I (genuinely) don't mean to sound like I'm moralising, but it tickles me to read on one thread on here people complaining that enough isn't being done to tackle climate change, and then on another thread people stating (sometimes even boasting) about all the computers and IT equipment they have chugging away 24/7 in their house!PS. I run a Raspberry Pi as my home server, with my torrent client etc on there.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 06:47:15 pm
content: Quote from: Delta on October 30, 2016, 06:27:05 pmRasPis are neat little boards, I don't use them much because I haven't found a use for them that a Windows machine I already have can't do better.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 07:01:50 pm
content: Quote from: Delta on October 30, 2016, 06:27:05 pmIf I feel like saving the environment, I can always go out with a slingshot and blow up a couple of those sodium 250-400w public lightning bulbs. In the 2-3 days they're gonna be out we'd basically save more power than my computer uses in a month idling.Be real dude, home users are not the big power wasters... I'm not changing the world by saving 10 kWh a month.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 09:54:22 pm
content: Most of mine are Pi's, not because I believe in climate change but they take up less space also. I have 4 Pi's and a beaglebone in a mini rack that takes up less space than a mini tower pc and uses less power as well as lets me re-use old cell phone chargers.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 03:04:46 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 30, 2016, 09:54:22 pmMy system for home network is strange as I share it with other people.There is a fibre modem in the basement that transmits data I think over regular coax, then that goes into a main DIR-655 router. That is then fed to a set of computers in one room used by other people, and then it is fed downstairs to a switch that puts it into a 2.4Ghz N access point, and another DIR-655 router. Now the thing is everything up to the second DIR-655 uses manual IP assignment, not by my own intentions, again someone else did that. My personal network starts at the second DIR-655 that has a DHCP server running on it, and that serves my own personal network bubble.For servers I have a 1U IBM 325 and a 4U IBM 235, both from around 2003-2004 ish, and for their time pretty top of the range, the 235 costing around 5000-10000 USD new (Now worth more to ship than to buy). Those servers either do web hosting (I game, so gaming servers, VoIP stuff) or the 235 hosts files off it's Ultra-320 array.Both servers are currently offline as I don't have a cable for them and they are too old to have USB 2 so I can't use a dongle until I find a USB 2 card I may or may not have. For actual media I run two Samba shares, not joking, off two EXT4 partitions on a windows 7 system. It's a strange setup, but it works pretty well, and I have never had a major problem with it. The rest of the systems are android based or a windows media center computer I have to access recorded shows and movies and stuff.Apologies to anybody that finds this post pointless, just wanted to post it.

author: george.b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 06:16:26 am
content: Quote from: mariush on October 30, 2016, 07:01:50 pmOne word: billboards. While those are still around, I will systematically scoff at any attempts of trying to make me save more energy than I think is adequate.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 06:49:51 am
content: Quote from: george.b on October 31, 2016, 06:16:26 amIt's honestly amazing that changing all the sodium bulbs to LED on an American street (And heck, maybe add motion activation for a bonus) could seriously power houses off the saved current. However this has not only been covered in another thread (There was one a while back) it's a bit off topic.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 01:01:09 pm
content: Back on topic, back in the day I used OS/2 as well as Windows 3.1. The big advantage of OS/2 was that is was pre-emptive multitasking, like NT, 2000, XP, and all Windows since. Once we actually had a high speed link to the outside world, with OS/2 I could download a large file and continue to work in a Word document, or some other application. The exact same machine, booted to DOS/Windows 3.1, if I switched away from the file transfer window I would get errors and the transfer would eventually abort once the errors accumulated past a threshold.That took me back to college - I has an 8Mhz 8088 system (upgraded with NEC V20) and I ran QuarterDeck's DesqView on it. Also a pre-emptive multitasking shell. This allowed me to run my BBS on the machine at the full rate our networking system allowed (19.2K - only for on-campus users - this was a time when having a 2400 baud modem at home was a big deal) and still use it run PSPICE simulations or type papers.I think the time when programmers could truly write tight code are almost completely gone, except for a few diehards. Efficiency today is measured by how quickly you can get a finished product out, not by how little resources it consumes or how fast it runs. We have layer upon layer insulating you from the processor, in part because there are just way too many specialized opcodes, at least in the Intel world. It was starting back in 8 bit days - the Z80 added a load and increment instruction which in previous processors was 2 opcodes or more. However, all else being identical, particularly clock speed, in some processors it was faster to perform the function with the multiple opcodes compared to the otherwise identical code on the Z80 using the special instruction. It carries on today with 32 bit micros being used for such simple, non-speed dependent operations where a basic 8 bit micro would easily do the job. But they are "obsolute' and 'old tech' How obsolete REALLY is a device that can easily do the job?

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 05:11:40 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on October 31, 2016, 01:01:09 pmBack to what you said about companies only want to push out a product as fast as possible? That's no more true than with games on the PC. I am a gamer, and I do think that video games are one of the primary reasons people get powerful computers, but it doesn't matter what computer you have if the company is going to shove unoptimized crap on your table that won't run even on the most powerful of hardware.I can still stand by my choice for windows 2000 even after all of the discussion here. It was simply an operating system that worked and worked well. Even XP, a decent compeditor, still had the issues of having half it's resources disappearing into some strange abyss that can only be rescued by restarting, rendering many installs useless after a day or so. Sometimes it got so bad you even had to reinstall windows XP, and getting through updates was a herculean task. Windows 7 takes some of those elements to heart, not like XP where it goes through the sternum, but it is currently the most usable windows experience to date. Windows 10 is too much like an Apple operating system, in that you now have a "Store" where you need to buy proprietary apps, even though we have backlogs of apps from 198X to now, you now have Cortana, a feature nobody asked for, and I bet nobody even uses. The update scheme is terrible, and it SPIES on you. You never had that sorta shit with 2K. Maybe it's a bygone part of older times, but I don't see why Microsoft has failed to make a simple operating system that doesn't have all the stupid features we don't want, maintains decent backwards compatibility, and actually LOOKS like it wasn't made with a set of MDA characters.Failing Windows 2000, Windows NT 4 is a good system, surprise surprise, I can almost completely say the entire NT line was the best contiguous line of windows systems to date, with the 8-10 line currently taking the cake for worst of all time. Windows 8 wasn't even a desktop operating system, it was a crappy touch interface strapped to a platform that NOBODY used touch on. They exist, but when was the last time you saw someone else using a touchscreen monitor for windows? There is no reason to use one on a desktop platform because it's useless. It works on mobile devices because having a load of buttons on them and no easy way to interact with this up close device doesn't work well.Apologies for the, I tend to do that from time to time.

author: Delta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 05:59:13 pm
content: I'd love to see Windows Vista revived. Slick, efficient, highly optimised, stable, excellent driver support, just a pleasure to use. IMO the best MS operating system to date.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 06:04:29 pm
content: Quote from: Delta on October 31, 2016, 05:59:13 pmI'm not sure if you're joking or not...

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 31, 2016, 06:26:03 pm
content: someone forgot their sarcasm emoticon

author: Stefan Payne
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2017, 02:14:44 am
content: Witch Ancient OS I'd like to revive?Not sure, probably OS/2 Warp.Quote from: TwoOfFive on October 24, 2016, 03:45:32 amI disagreeBut well, it depends if you are talking about Windows XP offline and Windows XP online.Offline it was OKish, had some strange descicions for that Microsoft was bashed (default Color Scheme).Online it is a whole different Story. It's pretty bad and insecure.With Vista most of those things were fixed and M$ tried hard to make it as secure as possible. That was just not on the radar at the time Windows XP was developed...

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2017, 10:57:54 pm
content: Quote from: Stefan Payne on August 01, 2017, 02:14:44 amOffline it still has the USB, suspend/resume, etc issues.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2017, 06:56:45 pm
content: I was doing some reorganizing today and look what I found.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 02, 2017, 11:55:47 pm
content: I still look after 30+ XPs, odd that they have rarely given trouble over 15 yrs or so. No USB problems (that weren't easily fixable), no malicious attacks. odd :-)The ONLY USB "bug" is where there are too many instances of drivers being loaded across several ports. You suddenly find a device won't work in a port.Fix - enable "show hidden devices" delete ALL non-highlighted USB entries. DONE. IF you happen to delete something useful, no problem, the driver is still there,and it will be instantly reloaded when needed. No disks required. I try to tell users to use the same port for any USB device they use, but people forget. No biggie.Oh, and I still get similar USB problems on later Win versions.We have windows 2000 on several machines / test equipment (and even way back to DOS / Win311). ymmv

author: AF6LJ
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 03, 2017, 12:00:02 am
content: I thought you said Operating system....Where is OS/2 in the list?That would be my choice. OS/2

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2017, 12:40:04 am
content: Quote from: digsys on August 02, 2017, 11:55:47 pmYea that was part of the USB issues. If you plugged in USB devices in every day it would create duplicates then you had to delete them. eventually you have to delete them and reboot, then it gets worse and you have to delete the USB root hub and reboot.Resume is the other issue, suspend a windows box and hope it actually resumes without issues. Sometimes it would hang, sometimes BSOD. W2k worked fine. with both usb and resume.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2017, 04:56:39 pm
content: iRMXwhy ? because its robustness is very impressive ( and you can run other operating systems on top of it )We had a machine in the waferfab that was controlled by an iRMX computer ( simple 386 box ) it had a GUI. every element of the gui was a program in itself. a batch file started the programs and told them where they had to display on the screen. if an element crashed it was restarted automatically and reconnected to its backend.One day there was a popup status bar that said something along the lines of : Parity error in segment 0x02000:000 : BAD ram. the following processes have restarted at different location.Essentially the kernel had detected a parity error due to a bad memory chip. it had restarted the processes that lived there but at a different memory location and had marked that memory segment as 'bad'. The machine kept on running perfectly fine. a few weeks later we had a scheduled maintenance , we shut down the pc , replaced the ram , and the machine did a selftest. report stated the memory was fixed and that was the end of it.I don't know if this is true or not but i was told that the way iRMX works is : it essentially creates a virtual disk in ram. when a program is loaded it is is allocated a chunk of 'disk space'. it can't step out of those bounds. two 'files' exist per program. one containing the code, one containing the data.if anything goes wrong the os can simple create a new drive, load the program from real drive, and move the 'data' file. the process then reconnects. there is a background process that syncs nonvolatile data to the real drive.this makes the system extremely fault tolerant. the kernel of the iRMX is burned in a rom. (back in the day it sat in the same rom as the bios. so you boot directly from rom. so the kernel could not get corrupted either ( unless the rom got corrupted ). there was no copying to ram before running.

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2017, 07:24:19 pm
content: XP was my favorite OS, but maybe because I never really used W2k. I got cobbled up in W98SE and once had ME.I have a copy of W2k. If you make me blow half a weekend I'm gonna come find you.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2017, 01:09:03 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on August 04, 2017, 04:56:39 pmWow, sounds like a pain to program in, though!If it had caught on, I'd imagine tools would've adapted to simplify that -- much the way that everything from Java and C# to Python and various scripting languages have adopted one-liner window frame interfaces, layouts and event-driven interfaces; despite the mess that Windows and Linux are.It also sounds like the kernel (does that count as a microkernel?) might be /too/ simple, in that, if a program were accidentally given access to system calls, it could go and do whatever it wants anyway, with the kernel operations being little more than wrapper functions for very powerful instructions. But, I don't know, obviously a brief description doesn't cover enough to say anything about that -- and I'm hardly an expert on OS programming besides...Tim

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:14:22 am
content: Quote from: alank2 on October 28, 2016, 12:18:48 pmI really did not like programming in DOS. No multitasking, no memory management. It barely qualified as an OS. Anyone happy with DOS for programming could easily be happy with many of the IDEs currently available. Of course when I tried doing DOS programming I was already spoiled by mainframe programming.

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:20:00 am
content: Quote from: Howardlong on October 29, 2016, 06:42:38 amOS/2 was developed by the organization with much experience developing operating systems and compilers and big computers and many other things. Windows was developed by a company with developing how many operating systems?

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:27:10 am
content: Quote from: Ampera on October 29, 2016, 07:15:42 pmThat is an extremely important point. As far as I know, all computers sold to the consumers have Windows. Consumers do not have a choice. I think the world would change drastically if consumers were allowed to choose the operating system.Quote from: Ampera on October 29, 2016, 07:15:42 pmThe majority of improvements in Windows 3.1 (from 3.0) were fixes IBM found when they created Windows emulation in OS/2. If there were incompatibility problems then they were highly likely caused by Microsoft's reluctance.

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:28:41 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 29, 2016, 07:48:40 pmI had no problem getting it to work. I remember using the Microsoft C compiler under OS/2.

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:31:32 am
content: Quote from: Ampera on October 30, 2016, 02:57:12 amNo, not nobody.

author: Sam Hobbs
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 06:39:39 am
content: Quote from: AF6LJ on August 03, 2017, 12:00:02 amMe too. I did not see it counted in the initial post; was that supposed to be updated? Well probably too late now.I apologize for the multiple replies. If there is a way to multi-quote then I missed seeing that. At least you know I at least glanced at all the replies, even the off-topic ones.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 07:13:24 am
content: Six posts in a row, wow new record.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 08:50:38 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 02, 2019, 07:13:24 amWhile this forum supports it, some forum software (like Comsenz Discuz commonly seen in Chinese websites) lacked multiquotes, requiring each post have no more than one quote. Replying to multiple people required multiple posts in sequence with those software, and it can take time for people to get used to multiquote on this forum if they have never used it before.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 09:13:15 am
content: Soon we can add Windows 7 to the poll!

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 09:15:29 am
content: It would be nice if the forum software would disable quoting posts older than lets say a year.Replying to posts from 2016 is

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 09:16:13 am
content: I have never used "multiquote". What is it?I have no problem with people posting several replies in a row. It is the ping-pong bunfights I dislike.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 09:18:17 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 02, 2019, 09:15:29 amIs there no-one who can useproperly?What is wrong with replying to an old post? It hardly ever happens.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 09:23:12 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 02, 2019, 09:16:13 amWhile typing a post in the underlying post list there's Insert Quote for which you use again and agian for the previous posts to insert them one by one to answer each.Let's add just yours like that:Quote from: wilfred on August 02, 2019, 09:18:17 am

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 10:29:09 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 02, 2019, 09:18:17 amMy translation says that flogging a dead horse is an useless activity that will render no result.Perhaps in Australia it has a different meaning.Replying to posts that are over three years old is IME useless in that sence that the OP has forgotten all about it and perhaps not even looks at it anymore.If your hobby is writing letters putting them in a bottle and posting them in the ocean you might experience it differently.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 11:09:10 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 02, 2019, 10:29:09 amThat's part of it. But there is also the element of continuing to do something that might once have been useful or productive long past the time you should stop ie. because the horse has died.An example would be endlessly pressing a point in an argument long after everyone has lost interest.Posting once in a long inactive thread isn't quite the same thing. It has to do with the effort required. I'll grant you the difference is subtle.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 11:16:25 am
content: Since I am not native english and our expression with similarity is:Carrying buckets of water to the sea"you might get that I did not get the second meaning, besides I don't like horses being flogged

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2019, 11:32:33 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 02, 2019, 10:29:09 amHAH SUCK IT, I'M STILL HERE!*hardbass intensifies*I must admit when I saw this, I wasn't consciously aware that the thing even existed, but I do now remember making it. I will update the master count to include everything everyone posted, because I have nothing better to do with my life.

author: @rt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2019, 07:50:26 am
content: Amiga OS, starting from 3.1.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2019, 06:02:48 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on August 02, 2019, 11:09:10 amIn my book, discussing the benefits of Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP (in 2019!) does qualify.On the other hand, if we revisit this topic yet again in a few years, it might actually qualify for the "Vintage Computing" Section...

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2019, 07:30:29 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 02, 2019, 10:29:09 amDon't assume then that each reply is solely directed at the OP, some posts might provide information valuable for other readers in the future, or they might just attempt to correct someone who was wrong on the Internet.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2019, 02:28:30 am
content: I think it's fine if a post like this gets necrobumped, it's not some useless thread about a problem nobody cares about, a love for Vintage Computing can definitely be most exhibited by how one remembers the operating systems of the past.That being said, I remember making this in General Chat, so I think someone must have moved itlooks at dave

author: Bruce Abbott
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 08:52:20 am
content: Quote from: Sam Hobbs on August 02, 2019, 06:27:10 amThey do have other choices - macOS or Linux. But even though Linux is free most still choose Windows, and not just because it comes with the machine. If it didn't they would ask for it.Why? Because everyone knows that only Windows is fully Windows compatible. Use any other OS and sooner or later you will have a problem that can only be fixed by using Windows. Who wants the hassle? Nobody. The only people willing to put up with it are a few geeks, and diehards like me who refuse to touch Windows 10.The reason people don't have a 'choice' is not that PC manufacturers deny them one - it's because they don'twanta choice. They just want something that works the same way everyone else's does - and who can blame them?

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 09:25:06 am
content: That's a strange chart. Where is it from?I assume that it's meant to show the OS distributions on newly sold computers (rather than installed base) -- but even then, I struggle to believe the Windows "dip" in October 2018...Beyond that, the main message in the chart seems to be a significant increase in "unknown" operating systems?

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 03:35:18 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 09, 2019, 09:25:06 amEveryone's started using FreeBSD all of a sudden!

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 06:28:03 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 09, 2019, 09:25:06 amReplaced with a sudden an unexpected increase of "others" OS.What the hell could be this mystery OS that attempted to take over the world?

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 10:27:14 pm
content: Funny how such "dip" also shows in adifferent chart. Maybe they are using the same data...As with anything,here's another sourcewith different numbers...

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2019, 07:02:36 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on August 10, 2019, 10:27:14 pmAhh, that gives a clue as to what is actually being measured. Statcounter analyzes data based on web traffic (browsers identifying themselves and the OS they run on when visiting a website). So the data are indeed meant to describe the distribution in operating systems in the installed base, not in monthly sales of new computers.That makes the one-month dip in Windows prevalence totally implausible, of course. Must be a glitch in their data. Maybe a massive web-crawling campaign during that month (search engine, malware network, ...?) which caused lots of "unidentified OS" visits?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2019, 03:46:21 pm
content: Well, I don't use Windows 10, but didn't they release a major update in october 2018 and wasn't this update a bit of a fuck-up for many users? (I seem to remember something like that... maybe this was another update after all...)So that could explain a sudden increase in web searches for alternatives, that only lasted for a couple weeks or so. Plausible.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2019, 04:31:42 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on August 11, 2019, 03:46:21 pmThese stats aren't about web searches about an OS, it's about the proportion of user agents for an OS being reported to a website that these people can get statistics from.It's very likely that dip is just within the margin of error, that's the thing about statistics, sometimes an alteration is significant and sometimes it's not, it has to do with how you get your data, and there are a whole load of reasons why that dip could have shown up.Even the exact means of gathering this information is flawed, as it likely relies on the user agents reported to sites by web browsers, which could have been sent, gathered, and/or interpreted inaccurately. Example being if I visit a website on Midori FreeBSD, most sites report my user agent as stating I'm running FreeBSD, except for Google, which states it's Linux. If I use Chromium it's even worse, because most sites (including google) report my user agent being for /both/ Linux and FreeBSD (presumably so if a web developer doesn't think to include FreeBSD as compatibility option, it can see Linux and know that what's been designed for Linux will probably end up working on FreeBSD).The point being, trying to take this dip to actually mean something doesn't mean anything. It could have been a commonly used mobile browser that just happened to have an update that made the user string appear mistakenly as a desktop browser (Andorid is Linux after all!) for a desktop operating system.

author: intabits
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 08:45:13 am
content: Quote from: Ampera on October 24, 2016, 03:30:33 amSince there's been plenty of non-Windows responses, here's one that I personally revived:IBSYSAlmost certainly the oldest OS mentioned here, And at one time, almost certainly the most widely used OS in the world.

author: emece67
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 10:49:08 am
content: .

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 01:47:46 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on August 09, 2019, 09:25:06 amUpdated chart found on statista.com, source behind a paywall, and I've used up my viewing quota on that site (they want near $600USD to continue - Bonkers!).I assume this to present the entire OS market on a desktop market share scale. You'd think that represents Android but somehow iOS has a large enough share of that market that it should present.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 02:17:43 pm
content: Interesting how Alphabet lately has been pushing their Chromebooks on TV advertisements here where I live, targetting students and self employed professionals. The timing is quite certain to match users dissatistifed with Windows 7 being ejected from MS updating roadmaps.They are at error margin on the statistics and I think they are quite ok for what they do - surf the web with the occasional document editing. However, a drop on the internet connection and you are left with a brick.I have one that a friend gave to us back in 2015 - quite the powerful machine, with excellent performance and still perfectly usable. However,theydecided it was time to call it quits and the other day a pop up balloon informed me this would the last update done to this particular machine - either buy a new one or risk surfing the "evil interwebs" without protection. No surprises here coming from the soup letter company, turning perfectly good hardware into bricks1- I really hope this does not happen to mine.

author: cgroen
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 02:28:01 pm
content: That one is easy, OS/2 and CPM, brings back memories from when there where real programmers around

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 02:49:52 pm
content: Quote from: metrologist on October 01, 2019, 01:47:46 pmThat chart certainly does not make a strong case for the $600 they request...

author: dnwheeler
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 08:30:55 pm
content: It's funny seeing people list Windows NT or Windows 2000, since they are just different versions of the same OS (as is Windows 10).Windows 2000 is just the marketing name for Windows NT 5.0, Windows XP is Windows NT 5.1, etc. up to Windows 10, which is Windows NT 10.0. The entire list is here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NTandhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2019, 07:23:15 pm
content: Same but different, it's not like they made some minor UI tweaks and slapped a new name on it. There are incremental differences in each one moving forward.I mean, 3.1, 95, 98, and ME are all just shells on DOS, when you get down to it.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2019, 10:54:17 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on October 02, 2019, 07:23:15 pmNot really. Windows 1 and 2, yeah. But 3.1, not so much already. And 95? It was a full 32-bit kernel with a preemptive scheduler. How DOS would that be... sure there was some legacy stuff in corners, but it was nothing like a simple shell on top of DOS.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2019, 06:13:45 pm
content: WfW 3.11 was the first one that had the 32 bit disk access mode which bypassed DOS for disk IO. 95 expanded on this but still allowed the use of 16 bit DOS and Windows drivers as the 32 bit kernal files still had hooks to a 16 bit mode. Contemporary NT 4.0 was fully based on the NT kernal, completely different.