Windows 7 was peak. Everything after that has been getting worse and worse every iteration.
It may have been a little slow at times, but it just worked. It wasn’t constantly trying to advertise to you, trying to get you to download apps, trying to force AI onto you, trying to harvest your data, forcing you to use online services, it was just an operating system and a good one at that
Did it even have any online component? I can’t seem to remember. Right after installation it would present you with a desktop. No bs about setting up onedrive or anything.
Microsoft.com accounts made their debut in W8.
But even Vista already had some nasty features like IE Smartscreen which to this day is on by default and which sends every website URL you visit to Microsoft. Vista was also the first Windows version to include telemetry throughout the OS. However, in Vista and W7 you could still disable telemetry on normal editions of Windows.
From a privacy standpoint, the last good-by-default OS was XP. The only bigger issues iirc were the Media Player which downloaded album art and DRM licenses and Active Desktop which Microsoft tried to use to advertise to you. Oh, and (edit): Windows license activation was online for the first time and in some cases you had to reactivate after changing hardware.
That’s not true. Windows 10 is better than Windows 8. But windows 11 is so bad I’m switching to Linux when it’s time to update
Same here. I don’t understand people who tell me Windows 11 is alright. I use Windows 11 at work, and it’s everything I hated about 10 magnified, with fewer or no ways to fix it. Every time it has an update, it’s even worse.
The only reason I haven’t migrated to Linux on my main rig is I’ve got years of regedits investing into Windows 10, but when it loses support, I’m out. I’ve already installed Linux on my laptop and the mini PC we use for streaming.
So 11 is the new ME/Vista/8?
Just on schedule, we will know if it’s so bad that they need to change naming to something different on version 12.
Group policy settings are your friend…and Windows still messes with those too.
Windows XPsp1 was peak. No visual overhead, no surplus protection , nothing but plain interaction with a computer using only mouse
We’ll it was certainly better than me
Don’t be so hard on yourself! I’m sure you’re better than Windows XP! Even the best version of it!
That was the hearty chuckle that I needed after a very long day (and very long nap, so now I’m up in the wee hours kicking about on social media! Thanks for that!
Maybe in crazy but I preferred both ME and Vista over XP.
Vista’s only real problem was that it was resource intensive and people tried to put it on older hardware that could technically run it, but not well. Which understandably caused a bad experience for a lot of people. My experience was on a new laptop that was designed with Vista in mind, and it was fine.
ME allegedly had a bunch of stability issues. Maybe i was just too young to notice, but I don’t remember having problems with it as a kid. I was really disappointed when we “upgraded” to XP and lost most of the UI customization options. The rounded blue bars were so bland and boring.
WinME was a straight downgrade from Win98SE. I had to support a lot of peoples PCs privately at the time, and WinME was an unstable mess in comparison; the amount of undiagnosable bluescreens that just didn’t occur on Win98 on the same hardware was infuriating; and the performance was worse in every instance.
Separately from that, it drives me mad how warped the idea of “consent” is in Windows (and in tech in general). “Later” is not the opposite of “Yes” goddammit!
Imagine sexual consent was similarly warped: Hey Becky, you wanna have sex? You can only answer “Yes, right now!” or “Maybe later,” and I’ll keep asking you FOREVER. So, what will it be?
Windows does give off the vibes of the type of person who does that tbh. See: “I see you’ve been interacting with me in the ways you generally have to, have you considered interacting with me in these ways? Oh you know that competitor isn’t nearly as good as I am, look at all the ways I copied them”
I remember there was a folder for a Windows marketplace game that I spent a good couple of days trying to get rights to access so I could mod the single player game contained inside. But no, Microsoft had a folder on MY OWN computer locked down tougher than Fort Knox. That was Windows 10 iirc, I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten, I switched to Linux completely a couple years back.
I got write access once to that folder, but I never found a way to do it without breaking EVERYTHING connected to the Windows store lol Photos app - borked, fucking Calculator - borked, random settings panels - borked, Game Pass - borked
I was eventually able to put Humpty back together again without reinstalling windows, but it never was quite right until I did. It was not a pleasant experience lmfao
Yeah AppX is a different kind of application platform that was built to be secure. Breaking that security breaks functionality. What’s lame is that they don’t have mechanisms to allow you to change permissions at a granular level and then change them back to defaults. You have to hack it and deal with the consequences which is just bad design.
Appx is locked down tight on purpose. It’s built to be a more secure application platform than exe.
Not saying it’s right and you should have to deal, but that’s why.
Editing to say I also went Linux last year and I love it far too much to ever go back to Windows. Flatpaks are similar to AppX but at least you can customize the permissions for them. Still I find them to be a bit of a pain to use for some apps.
I just feel there is a glaring flaw in Appx, in that if you ever need to try and troubleshoot a piece of software or need to access the application folder in anyway for any reason, it’s effectively blackwalls it. Or at least, it’s not worth the amount of effort and compromise required to bypass it.
Flatpaks are way better than Snaps, but I feel AppImage’s do a much better job of modularizing executables and their libraries into an easy to run package. I just wish there was a decent piece of software for management of installation of them.
I use Pop_os on my main computer and recently have been getting back into NixOS and been working on writing a full configuration file for it.
I hear a lot about those distros around here. I recently settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed after having used Fedora and ZorinOS for a while. It’s so good, I haven’t thought about switching to anything else. Manjaro, Pop_os, and NixOS are on my list if that ever changes.
I like AppImage a lot and I wonder why that didn’t take off like Flatpak did. A timing issue, perhaps?