Favorite Operating Systems of all time?

[Flojomojo]

Windows 8 stuck on an attractive but mostly useless home screen, abandoned in 10. It worked well in touch mode once you set it up, but few people bothered with it, and it was dumb and bad for desktop.

 

One thing I liked about Windows 8 is the low end tablet hardware that shipped with it. It was neat to get a fully functional portable windows desktop for $30, until the other compromises of that setup (mostly tiny onboard storage) limited any usefulness.

 

My experience with Windows 10 has been unremarkable. Stable and compatible. Others have had more trouble with it and will shout about better days of old. I doubt its anyones favorite but it is here to stay.

[zzip]

Windows 8 stuck on an attractive but mostly useless home screen, abandoned in 10. It worked well in touch mode once you set it up, but few people bothered with it, and it was dumb and bad for desktop.

 

One thing I liked about Windows 8 is the low end tablet hardware that shipped with it. It was neat to get a fully functional portable windows desktop for $30, until the other compromises of that setup (mostly tiny onboard storage) limited any usefulness.

 

My experience with Windows 10 has been unremarkable. Stable and compatible. Others have had more trouble with it and will shout about better days of old. I doubt its anyones favorite but it is here to stay.

 

Windows 8 had an interface designed for tablets, but it was awful for desktop systems. Microsoft always has this weird idea that everything must be unified, because consumers are "too stupid" to learn different environments on different devices (or something). Maybe that was true in the 90s when the average person was getting used to GUIs. But I don't think it's true of consumers today, we are used to different environments on our phones and desktops.

 

The bigger issue was Windows 8 radically altered the desktop metaphor we had gotten used to. We have some servers running Windows 2012, and it has that interface, and it is just awful. Why should our production servers have the same interface as an Xbox? Who thought that was a good idea?

 

Windows 10 doesn't completely get rid of it, it is still on the start menu, but at least there it can't hurt anybody

[landgraf]

While I agree that Windows 8(.1) is one of the ugliest looking Windowses ever I'm quite impressed by how stable it runs. It can even recover from drivers going bonkers when most of the earlier Windowses just would have thrown a bluescreen at you instead.

 

That said, XP is still my favorite Windows ever, and DOS my overall favourite.

 

I also liked OS/2, but gave it up rather quickly nonetheless as almost none of the third party software producers at the time seemed to care for it. But I remember the customer support being really competent and quick to hand out patches (on disk, via snailmail if neccessary!) when there were any problems.

[Compumater]

My top 3 would have to be:

 

1- Geos 2.0 for the C128. I had a great setup that included the 512K REU, and a 1581 floppy. That combo with Geos really rocked. It did everything a mac 128K did for a fraction of the price. I used mine up till 1994

 

2- Ms-dos 5.0 or 6.22 with the very useful Dosshell. Dos was a great way to poke around on sub 386 computers, but with dosshell you had the ability to use a mouse and do routine tasks much easier. I also found it much easier to keep track of my ever growing BBS file collections with the great menu system. Dos shell and a mouse made an original IBM XT feel like a 386-16 and I used mine all the way up to 2000!

 

3- Windows 98se It had its issues, and I would generally reinstall it every 15 months to keep things running snappy, but 98 changed the world. If they made a web browser that ran on it today, I'd still use it on my laptop. As it is win XP is getting really close to uselessness only because of a lack of support for modern browsers.

[eightbit]

The various Windows 10 updates have been messing with me lately. My fonts keep looking good and then like crap after an update...and then good again. It has happened over the last few months. Not sure what the M$ techs are playing around with but it is getting quite annoying.

 

I didn't mind Windows 8.1 at all after installing classic shell. Then it was a more modern Windows 7

 

Thankfully Win 7 is still actively used and they can't kill it yet. I know its days are numbered, but I will probably always remember it as the last "good" Microsoft operating system.

[carlsson]

My low-end laptop came preinstalled with Windows 8.0. While the computer is a bit low on spec with a flexible frequency Atom processor and a mere 4 GB RAM, it was pure pain to just open a web browser or a text editor. Updating it to 8.1 didn't do much difference. However once I got the free upgrade to 10, it became almost like a new computer, much more agile. Indeed I'm swearing about the constant updates that lags it down but once an update is done, it functions about as well as I once had expected it to.

 

However I understand upgrading from 7 to 10 was a nightmare. My father did, partly by mistake, and the number of programs, drivers and other parts of the system that didn't work anymore after the upgrade both had me and my older brother sitting several evenings and weekends in front of my father's computer trying to find solutions to fix. And that was a relatively recent, ~5 year old computer with the basic specs and no particular software installed. Well yes, MS Office starter pack or what it is called, which the upgrade to 10 promptly removed from the computer so for a while my father had no way to access those documents any longer.

 

Ergo my experiences are that Windows 7 -> Windows 10 = NO but Windows 8 -> Windows 10 = YES.

[Flojomojo]

While I agree that Windows 8(.1) is one of the ugliest looking Windowses ever I'm quite impressed by how stable it runs. It can even recover from drivers going bonkers when most of the earlier Windowses just would have thrown a bluescreen at you instead.

 

I think it looks nice, so much Helvetica, just like the phones, which I also think are pretty. But the schizo nature of Win8 the modern interface is literally slapped on the old WinNT style GUI in such a hamfisted way. Ah well, they tried something new, that counts for something. Some of the design style carried through to their O365 web apps. At least you can tell what company it came from.

 

It will be remembered as a what were they thinking? every-other-release-is-crap-until-they-fix-it, like the old Star Trek films.

[BydoEmpire]

My top 3 would have to be:

 

1- Geos 2.0 for the C128. I had a great setup that included the 512K REU, and a 1581 floppy. That combo with Geos really rocked. It did everything a mac 128K did for a fraction of the price. I used mine up till 1994

 

I always thought it would be cool to have a 128 with GOES in ROM that it boots directly into.

[carlsson]

Not exactly what you were asking about, but here is a discussion about putting the 16K GEOS 64 kernel onto a cartridge, like EasyFlash:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=60874

[JamesD]

Windows 8 sucked so bad they skipped 9 to separate thecurrent version from it further.

Edited September 20, 2017 by JamesD

[TheTIGuy]

DeletePost

Edited September 21, 2017 by TheTIGuy

[TheTIGuy]

I think it looks nice, so much Helvetica, just like the phones, which I also think are pretty. But the schizo nature of Win8 the modern interface is literally slapped on the old WinNT style GUI in such a hamfisted way. Ah well, they tried something new, that counts for something. Some of the design style carried through to their O365 web apps. At least you can tell what company it came from.

 

It will be remembered as a what were they thinking? every-other-release-is-crap-until-they-fix-it, like the old Star Trek films.

We ham radio operators resent this.

ALSO, Ha Ha Ha Ha. Its actually because lazy coders used "9" to identify windows 9X version that we don't have a windows "9".

[accousticguitar]

Windows 98--I used it for years without virus protection and had no problems at all. Then when I upgraded to 2000 I got a virus in about 2 weeks.

 

Linux--Ever since I switched to Linux I've had no virus worries.

 

DOS 6.0 is my favorite DOS since it has most of the features I liked to use. Later versions of DOS actually started taking away functionality.

[zzip]

Windows 98--I used it for years without virus protection and had no problems at all. Then when I upgraded to 2000 I got a virus in about 2 weeks.

 

Linux--Ever since I switched to Linux I've had no virus worries.

 

DOS 6.0 is my favorite DOS since it has most of the features I liked to use. Later versions of DOS actually started taking away functionality.

 

It's funny, back in the Windows 9x days, I used to download and install software like crazy to try things out, never got a virus.

 

These days, I'm terrified to download and install nearly anything on Windows, unless it from Steam or another controller store.

[Flojomojo]

We ham radio operators resent this.

 

[TheTIGuy]

*Sigh* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_operator

I have most of the skills needed to be a ham, but my parents can't afford the exam fee.

Edited September 21, 2017 by TheTIGuy

[TemplarXB]

1. Windows XP - I've used this the longest and knew it the best. I'd probably still use it if it was fully supported. I've used Windows since 3.1 and this has been my favorite version.

2. Windows 7 - Currently using this and I like it almost as much as XP.

3 OSX - since 2011 (I had no familiarity with Mac before I got a MacBook Pro in 2011), and the OS has grown on me. I really like the terminal command line.

[eightbit]

If Microsoft were smart they would make a "light" version of Windows 10 for less powerful machines. Strip the eye candy, the store, useless extras and sell a cut down version of 10 for a quarter of the price and I would buy it. Fact of the matter is (at least for what I use a computer for) that I can use XP for just about everything I do but I can't use XP on more modern hardware due to lack of drivers and lack of security due to it being discontinued. If drivers existed for modern hardware for XP x64 and it were still getting updates I would be running it now.

[Keatah]

It's a shame modern hardware has to be burdened with windows10.

 

All I need is a program launcher and some file system utilities and hardware drivers. Everything else can be handled by programs/applications of my choosing. Pretty much like what XP does.

Edited September 22, 2017 by Keatah

[carlsson]

We're bordering on getting off-topic as this thread is in Classic Computing, but my personal belief is that with XP has been out for 15+ years, the majority of security holes should have been identified by now. Thus I don't find it radically more insecure now than before Microsoft quit issuing security updates, and I think for something really major that affects anything from 2000/XP and upwards to the latest versions, they'd send out an extra patch anyway. Also as the ratio of XP users is in decline, hackers who want maximum effect will aim to break into later operating systems. Frankly I find that web browsers are the weakest points with varying fly-by attacks thanks to Javascript and other components, and if the browser + antivirus software are unable to block such attacks, the underlying operating system might not matter that much.

 

Regarding Windows 10, I strongly thought Microsoft would issue a free, light version for personal use to quench any desktop threat that e.g. Linux might be. I'm not sure that is a threat to Microsoft though, in particular as some OEM license of 10 tends to be included when you buy a brand new computer. Just yesterday I was notified that nowadays you can use the core programs of the MS Office suite for free through their web services. I don't know for how long this has been going on, but it seems like a countermeasure to Google Drive/Docs, offering free cloud based (*) storage and the word processor, spreadsheet etc for personal use.

 

(*) There is no such thing as the cloud. It is just somebody else's computer(s) you're storing your files on.

[Keatah]

The cloud is some fat woman's idealistic cutesy-wootsey portrayal of connecting two computers. It's all a creation in your head.

 

"Security" is a scare word engineered and groomed to make you get new stuff.

Edited September 22, 2017 by Keatah

[JamesD]

It's a shame modern hardware has to be burdened with windows10.

 

All I need is a program launcher and some file system utilities and hardware drivers. Everything else can be handled by programs/applications of my choosing. Pretty much like what XP does.

I had to spend 30+ minutes just trying to extract Cortana from my machine. Microsoft seems to think they have a better use for my RAM than I do.

Every release of Windows has added more and more baggage like this and it uses more an more RAM and makes it harder to police spyware.

One of the things I like about OS/2 was it did what I needed, didn't have a huge memory footprint, it was stable, and with minor additions it would do what I need to this day.

Frankly, I've hated the registry from the day it was created.

 

Linux has also turned into bloatware, but at least with that I can enable or disable features without having to fight the OS.

When Microsoft wants to push things on people, they try to make it difficult to get rid of.

[VectorGamer]

Has anyone run ArcaOS 5?

[Flojomojo]

Arca sounds neat, but their limited hardware support kills any interest I might have.

 

Thought this retrospective of Snow Leopard was interesting.

 

 

[TheTIGuy]

If Microsoft were smart they would make a "light" version of Windows 10 for less powerful machines. Strip the eye candy, the store, useless extras and sell a cut down version of 10 for a quarter of the price and I would buy it. Fact of the matter is (at least for what I use a computer for) that I can use XP for just about everything I do but I can't use XP on more modern hardware due to lack of drivers and lack of security due to it being discontinued. If drivers existed for modern hardware for XP x64 and it were still getting updates I would be running it now.

So XP with modern drivers and better WI-FI support?