What y'all talking about? (mastodon.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by drq@mastodon.ml to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world

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What y'all talking about?

@linuxmemes

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[-] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 3 points 2 months ago

Not really

Windows 7 was pretty, it was customisable, it was stable. And microshaft had yet to start fucking about with ads everywhere and invasive "features". Peak windows right there.

XP was also pretty good for its time. At that point Linux and OSX had caught up and surpassed it in many ways, but it did what it had to without getting in the way.

95 was an innovator if anything, ahead of pretty much anything else on desktop at the time, even if it DID fart and die whenever someone looked at it funny.

It was always a proprietary creation by an anticompetitive tech megacorp, and therefore bad from THAT angle, but it didn't start being truly shite from a pure user experience angle until like. 8.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Win 7 was ok but remember, it still came with three control panels, a fucking registry and 8bit palette drwatson icon in system32 along with gigabytes of absolutely useless shit.

It was good for a windows, but it was still windows.

[-] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 1 points 2 months ago

Nothing wrong with the Registry

It's a different way of handling things compared to how Linux (and most unixes) does it with 18391823 text files

But it's a perfectly functional and sensible solution for storing system configurations.

[-] lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

The registery is much easier to break, much harder to debug and much harder to fix, UNIX config is more human-friendly, I'll never mess with the registery again

[-] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago

In theory having a database of configuration settings isn't a horrible idea.

But the execution was terrible.

[-] Lightfire228@pawb.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The technology behind the registry is fine (which is what I think @VinesNFluff meant)

But it's execution in Windows was ass

In theory, a configuration manager with DB-like abilities (to maintain relationships, schematic integrity, and to abstract the file storage details), isn't a bad idea

But the registry as it is today is pure pain

[+] westyvw@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[deleted]

[-] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Windows 95 was still just another dos program on top of a shell.

That's just straight up misinformation. Even 3.1 wasn't really like that anymore (though, it was closer). Windows 9x uses DOS as a bootloader, and retains the original DOS components for backwards compatibility, but loads into a fully 32-bit kernel with preemptive multitasking and many features DOS couldn't dream of touching. It is built atop the original 16-bit DOS, and inherits a lot of jank from that, which is why eventually they ditched it to use the developed-from-the-ground-up NT kernel everywhere instead (and broke compatibility with a lot of old hardware and software because of it, much to the chagrin of the users--)

Huh? Coming from an Amiga it really didn’t seem innovative. Or OS2 or BeOS (which ran circles around Win 95) or Macs.

OS/2 and Windows are siblings, with most of OS/2 being written by the same people within Microsoft. Windows NT is what happened when Microsoft decided to backstab IBM (again) to increase their profit margin (as I myself have said, Microsoft has always been bad from the 'evil megacorp' angle).

BeOS was, at the time, an operating system only for Be's own PowerPC based workstations (and workstation != desktop, especially in those days) -- Though there were talks to bring at least parts of it to desktop as the basis for MacOS Copland, that didn't go through (instead Apple vored NeXT and used its nutrients to make OSX). -- It didn't get a public, user-facing, desktop release that a mere mortal could buy until 1997 (on PPC Mac. 98 for the x86 PC version), which in mid-90s tech terms is like a geological epoch later. Are we also going to compare Doom 2 to Half Life and shit on Doom 2 for being behind HL?

MacOS at the time was still using Cooperative Multitasking (which is what Win 3.0 used, and is unreliable af because any crashed program takes out the entire OS with it) and wouldn't get true Preemptive Multitasking until OSX in '99.

The amiga did get Preemptive Multitasking to the desktop first (in '86, even. Commodore seriously didn't know what they had, or they would have ruled the roost), but preemptive multitasking wasn't the only feather in 9x's hat.

DirectX was so good at doing what it did (acting as a layer of abstraction between gamedevs and hardware, allowing them to just ask the library to draw and play stuff, and it would figure itself out with the hardware) that alternatives like SDL took another 3 years to exist and much longer to catch up -- And it was necessary, because the PC space, unlike the likes of the Mac or Amiga, was an industry standard rather than being controlled by one company, and users could have any combination of wacky third party video and soundcards, and DirectX just dealt with it.

And Plug-and-Play, while buggy as fuck to the point that it really only worked when it wanted, was something that hadn't been done before. Adding new hardware and the OS just figures that shit out, no reboot required? Unheard of.

Edit: BeOS in 97, not 98. Still retains the whole 'this was a geological epoch by 90s tech standards' comment though.

[-] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

No. Windows 7 was pretty good. Certainly a better desktop experience than Linux at the time (go on, roast me, I've got my flame proof undies on). Windows 10 started out pretty decent, until they ramped up the enshittification. I used Windows for over 30 years and never saw any reason to switch, although I've worked with Unix before Windows was even a thing. Only in the last couple of years did it really become unbearable. And I wouldn't even consider ever using Win11 on any personal machine.

[-] shuro@friends.deko.cloud 1 points 2 months ago

@Diplomjodler3 > I've worked with Unix before Windows was even a thing. Only in the last couple of years did it really become unbearable.

Same story. Using Linux at home for three or four years. I tried it before and it was just... not very good. And yes, it was Microsoft who gave me the final push with their innovations.

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

You are likely not old enough to remember windows 2000. It had the NT kernel and did nothing more than expected. It got out of your way so you could do work.

There have been some improvements over the years, but Microsoft's goals for windows changed after that, which is when enshitification started.

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

XP was like 2K, but with fancy plastic appearance and some unneeded things.

I have fond memories of reading Star Wars books in Notepad, in plain text (or RTF containing only text), in some font like Fixedsys, I think, black on white, at night. Ironically my eyesight didn't get much worse then.

XP was nice enough.

[-] lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

@drq @linuxmemes some noses work better than others

but calling windows shit is unfair. shit can still help plants grow. this is the kind of stuff you lock away in a mine forever and put a sign in front that says this is not a place of honor.

[-] shuro@friends.deko.cloud 0 points 2 months ago

Yeah, looks like this is what it will take because nothing else works (or everything else is much worse that no amount of enshitification offsets it).

[-] lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

@shuro security-wise, being the less popular one has its advantages.

[-] shuro@friends.deko.cloud 1 points 2 months ago

@lritter Yes, this works like that for everything in life.

However it is also the problem. Criminals go for popular things because they go after people using them. Lesser interest to make viruses and exploits goes together with lesser interest to make software, drivers, hardware... Heck, I remember days when a lot of popular websites didn't work too well with anything except Internet Explorer - and it was real security nightmare at the same time with very real zero click exploits.

this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025

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