Yeah, so, Windows XP didn't look like that.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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I just overwrote a Windows XP installation with Void Linux last weekend on an old netbook for a family member. But I felt very nostalgic when I booted a real XP system to see what was on it.
I totally changed my KDE themes to be XP-esque, sound themes and all, just to have the good parts I missed, but keep a usable OS haha.
M$ has done and continues to do a lot of terribad things, but XP wasn't one of them. Computers felt fun back then.
....Minus all the security issues. That's gotten better with time...
Edit: Oh yeah there's a subreddit of people modernizing XP and making new drivers for it and stuff LOL
Why is this the Windows 95 logo with the XP name photoshopped in?
It was made by an LLM running on Windows ME.
Cut AI some slack. /jj
But damn, people did hold onto Win XP SP3 because Vista was shit and 7, just like 10, had very rough starts.
And fuck 11. The first time a computer's OS had Intel Inside.
Intel inside
Now, with 10% communism.
More like corporate welfare. Windows 10 was touted as just going to be called Windows, no more versions persè as it would be just an agile rolling release.
Then Intel was like, "these peeps are using 24 year old computers and slapping SSDs in them... we need to do something to get people to buy computers, Micro$lop."
And they replied with Windows 11, which forced people to buy new Intel hardware, slapped a new UI that is buggy and gross, threw in copilot, and it takes a ton of registry edits to make the damn thing usable for me.
Anout to go back to BSD or just say, "fuck technology" and become an electrician.
I think Windows peaked with 7. The last time that you felt like the upgrade was worth it or at least not a step backwards.
They could have peaked with 10, but decided to make it spyware instead.
Even without the spyware aspect, 10's design is ugly and the UX has severe issues...
I'm almost at the point where if my company gets me a high-end subscription to an AI system, I'm just gonna backport all of the security updates to 7 and start rocking it again.
This is exactly right. I suffered through vista, loved the hell out of 7, and right as 8 came out, someone offered me an iMac for cheap. Started learning OS X and when 8 came out and I saw what was going on, I never went back.
Agree although I loved XP. 10 wasn't terrible in the end, and 11 is a shit show
Windows 11 is great, it's getting a lot of people to embrace Linux
This is true. And valve is great too, the two big camps for not trying Linux are gamers and those that use things like MS office and adobe products. But most people who use word and excel have no idea that likely 100% of what they do is easily possible in libreoffice
I converted their old PCs to Linux when my elderly parents' Windows 10 computers started to get ridiculous slow. They both learned Libreoffice Calc in 1.5 months. I did not teach them, they know more about how Calc works than I do now, lol.
I've trouble getting friends and family to move to Libreoffice. I've been using it for about a decade now but having tried Euro-Office (OnlyOffice fork), I think I finally get it. Libreoffice could really do with a visual upgrade
You know about artcraft? The new vibe coded adobe suite clone? Someone needs to claud MS office lol
Just Claude a Windows 97 at this point, for funsies. Lol
My big gripe with windows 10 is them putting half of settings in the Settings app but you still need to dig out the legacy control panel for stupid shit like audio device management that makes sense.
Ya and it gets even worse on windows 11. I still pull up settings menus with windows+r and the command lmao. For example instead of 45 clicks to change an IP address, I just type ncpa.cpl in the run box and hit enter. Way faster.
I recall in the early 2000s my web master mentor told me you should be able to get to any page on a site in 3 or 4 clicks...
Seems like a good standard for any UI design. 3 or 4 steps to get anywhere.
Its literally a dozen steps to get to some settings in windows.
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Yeah, I was going to say 7 as well.
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Aow awahoo, a-dunn
Like Ubuntu 8.04, canonical with their attempts to make an apple inspired walled garden have mucked it all up. I want Debian but better but not with too much extra. Ubuntu was this ultimate nexus of Linux for a moment but now it's gone. Now Fedora is the runner up.
Debian solved all past pain points, now they are legit better than Ubuntu LTS in most ways that matter & are equal in user friendliness.
I was a life long windows guy up until I switched to nobara linux in january this year. I've tried linux now and again in the past but WINE just didn't work well enough or it didn't support hardware I was using or I couldn't do something I wanted to do. Well Nobara installs all my Steam games perfect. Proton and WINE work flawless. All my games work. It supports all my hardware. I can customize everything exactly the way I want. It is IMO the first linux distro that is functionally better than Windows. I know that might piss off some lifelong linux users but it was the distro that made me switch.
Nah Linux is about freedom. When you distro hop enough you'll see the differences between the major distros are mainly subjective. Nobara had a specific goal and they've done a really good job of achieving it so I got nothing but respect for that team. People get persnickety but that's just people being lame. I'm not personally married to any distro. Right now rocking Fedora but may switch back to arch when I get another machine or feel like doing a fresh install.
Same deal for Zorin, not what I would personally run but I appreciate them. Then there's distros with a very specific use case like tails, puppy Linux, DSL, qubes, Nix, openWRT, and so on and they're great too. I have a puppy Linux and tails flashdrive.
People get persnickety but that's just people being lame.
Well said
Thanks. Been around the Linux block a few times. It's all the same kernel and user space for the most part. All anyone is really doing is make some choices about compiling the kernel, what packages they want to support and what package manager they want to use.
Same, I distro-hopped a bunch when I built this PC last year and landed on Fedora (funny enough, the one I tried right before was Nobara), and it's been more than good enough so far that I don't feel the need to switch. At this point, most of the time I kinda forget that I'm using Linux because things just work that smoothly. Definitely a huge leap from even ~5 years ago.
I have weirdly strong nostalgia for Windows 98 but I can't possibly explain why...
BOWEP
I still talk with folks about what an unmitigated security disaster it was prior to SP2.
I remember setting up a fresh XP install for a friend, and within seconds of plugging in the ethernet cable Internet Explorer started opening tons of flashing ad windows everywhere. Firewall wasn't on by default I guess? LOL
I also remember that system messenger exploit that could send spam as system "OK" prompts to any XP machine. That was wild.
Yeah the crazy thing is that most people were using ADSL connections directly from their computer, without a router.
Raw dogging the internet with no firewall, that was wild.
We still talk about you because some dumb internal applications that were created more than 2 decades ago and nobody dares to update are still running on them, creating awful cybersecurity weaknesses and dragging the entire network down with it.
Probably 10 years ago I encountered a pump on a job. It was huge. 2-3 stories tall. Probably cost millions.
There was a computer plugged into, an old beige tower case and a CRT monitor with RS232 serial cable between it and the pump.
This was the control system, it was connected to the network (airgapped LAN fortunately).
Was running NT4!
I have no idea why it was set up this way, PLCs were definitely the standard at the time and there were older PLCs than that on the site. No one who worked there was around when it was installed, it was just the way it was.
if it works, why spend the money to change it?
Why XP and not 2000?
Yeah, 2000 was everything good about xp without the bad.
Its the last version of windows I ran at home.
Sadly family and work require me to be familiar with what microsoft has released since then
NT and Windows 7...things just worked.
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XP was an unmitigated disaster at release it got better tho.
So it was a mitigated disaster.
Was there a release of Windows after Windows 3.0 that wasn't an unmitigated disaster upon release? I never actually installed Windows 2 or 1 so I don't know how bad they were.
Ahh yes, let's stack system edits to not be prioritized in memory then written to disk. What's that, a power outage? Well sucks to be you, reinstall.
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