I don’t think so, main reason is XP was still heavily backwards compatible to 95, 98, even DOS based software. Many control software for industry only support to XP, because jump to windows 7 was too heavy. If anything supports windows 7, it is really easy to port to windows 10. Main reason is the driver support, because win 7 having new driver architecture.
Windows 10 will be the next “forever stuck” OS, because end of Internet Explorer on it means that there are tens of thousands of industrial software that require IE, and cannot ever be ported to win 11.
Yup, same reason modern games all get ports but some old ones never will. Everything has the same architecture now so it’s easy to port an Xbone game to W10 and the new Xboxes.
Not as prevalent these days, but a lot of EMR/EHR was built on XP. Some of those companies went out of business and the clinics using the software never upgraded because they couldn’t get the data out into another system.
After XP, Windows focused on adding crap to their aid that use unnecessary resources for crap things. I remember the Aqua look on Vista that sucked the life out of computers. Let’s not talk about Windows Me. Then 8 was a weird interface that no one liked and also not compatible with older machines. So XP is the most stable Windows os that can run on older devices.
XP was a pretty good running OS with plenty of software and games. I held out till 10 was out for a bit and there were programs I wanted to run that required it.
XP still had the designed-by-engineers vibe. Since then, Microsoft got completely taken over by dipshits with marketing MBAs.
They now code Windows to impress executives and shareholders with how much they can harvest data and manipulate customers into using their stupid Store and so on. They stopped caring about the experiences of power users, or even casual users.
They don’t want the OS to work for us. They want us to work for them.
I know you said Linux, but for anyone else here wanting to still use what at its core is still Windows, but with tons of garbage and bloat removed… as long as you have a valid serial / key… I would recommend AtlasOS.
I did a clean install of it on my own old ancient desktop i7-2600K recently, and it actually still runs really well.
Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s a video talking about it. Also here’s the YouTube link if you prefer.
Britec09 from the video there is quite skeptical - sounds like he prefers ShutUp10. With Atlas, he worries about large security impacts for small FPS gains.
I second the recommendation of giving Linux Mint a shot. I didn’t use XP extensively but Mint is low hassle and gets out of your way.
I’m not sure it has quite the same feel, but closest I can think of that is also approachable coming from Windows. Obviously a lot of other distros also satisfy the “built by engineers” vibe.
I have a lot of respect for Linux and use it here and there, but I am by no means an expert on it. The best thing I’ve done with it so far is running a Pi Hole at home.
Unfortunately, my job involves using MS Windows. A lot. After I retire…soonish…I hope to take some time and learn Linux better.
For my day-to-day Windows misery, I find that ShutUp10 does a great job of toggling off the bullshit you don’t want running. And it’s easy to toggle things back on if you ever need to. It’s a free program you can download and run. I send them a little money every year out of gratitude, but donations are completely optional.
Some FUD mongers will tell you that ShutUp10 ‘breaks’ Windows. That’s simply not true. It puts all the Windows settings you can change yourself in one easy-to-find place. Things that are normally scattered all over the UX and the registry.
While you could mess some things up using it if you’re not careful, it’s very good about color coding and letting you know which toggles are best to turn off, which ones are a little questionable, and which ones you should leave turned on (unless you know what you’re doing and can take the risk). I have used it for years now, on multiple PCs, with zero problems. It doesn’t make Windows 10/11 GOOD but it makes them less horrible.
I think a lot of it has to do with age. I’m probably younger than the average Lemmy user, and for me Windows 10 is the sweet spot. The older versions just feel outdated. I think it depends on the first version we seriously used and learned on.
Vista was fine, apart from the performance. I had a fairly beefy machine for the time so I hardly noticed, but on lower spec machines it was an absolute dog.
Kinda felt like an unoptimised prerelease version of Windows 7
When I was working security for a hospital they wanted to send imagery from an MRI (or maybe CAT, I forget) upstairs to be interpreted without allowing any network traffic to be able to reach the host machine because it was running XP. I asked why, and they told me that in order to replace it the vendor was requiring a $7 million replacement of the whole MRI.
Same shit is starting to happen with cars. No way to get the new headunits without replacing the whole car. I know Porsche offers electronic upgrade kits, but I can’t think of any others that do.
As usual I think that sentiment was retroactive, certainly once Vista came out. At launch, people hated the Fisher-Price look of the Luna default UI. Like, a lot. The switch to the NT based kernel for the home version of Windows also caused a shitton of people’s hardware and peripherals not to work anymore because they needed new drivers and the manufacturers of said gadgets – if they were still in business – could not be arsed. Some of this could be alleviated by bullying that hardware’s Windows 2000 drivers into working with XP. Some of it could not.
More like a critical computer running at the heart of a billion dollar company running software written in a long forgotten language against apis that no longer exist.
Yeah, I have a w3.1 machine and I play with it regularly, but it really lacks as a daily driver. On the other hand, my w98 machine can do basically everything I need for work, except web browsing. It’s fascinating how little have operating systems progressed in the last 25 years, user-facing wise.
I collect vintage and iconic computers as a hobby, and the only reason i bought a win98 machine was so I could play DOS games on the real hardware. But otherwise yeah, it can do most things youd use a modern computer for very well other than it shouldnt connect to the internet.
I’ve been looking for advice. I’ve been wondering if it was worthwhile to upgrade from 10 to 11. I heard 11 had ads and even more bloatware, a disgusting UI, and just general worse. But i was wondering if those are fixed/avoidable. I was thinking of upgrading before it gets too late, or idk…
Install Windows 11 using UK English and you’re basically dodging 99% of the complaints people have, I support 5 computers with W11, no issues with any of them and no adverts bothering me.
Linux is not much different depending on what you do, all I recommend is stay away from distrobutions that use snap packages and the like. Linux Mint is a common recommendation.
If you don’t mind not being able to run games with anticheat other than easy anticheat you’re good, people recommend “Nobara” as a gaming distribution but I always think tailored distros are a bit silly as something like Mint can do all of it anyways.
There’s not much you can’t do on Linux nowadays anymore thanks to Proton.
i think it’s better.
the only downside is minor visual bugs with the taskbar, and the edge causing issues if uninstalled (may cause update loop or permanently break all pdf files unless you set another handler and previewer beforehand)
explorer got little bit slow ever since the tabs got added but it’s definitely not unusable, and I’d rather take 1 second hit to the loading time than an explorer without tabs
It’s totally fine to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, it’s basically the same thing. Overall it’s better in some regards (like better HDR support, direct storage is coming and so on) and a bit worse in others (I do hate the new right click menu). No ads though and barely any difference to Windows 10 as far as I noticed in over a year of using it.
Windows 10 already had all that stuff, telemetry, a link to Candy Crush in the start menu, it’s the same shit. Windows 11 didn’t get worse in that regard at all.
So just do a fresh installation of Windows 11 (don’t upgrade Windows versions, it’s a mess in the background) and have fun.
Windows 11 is miserable. You are now required to add Microsoft accounts at the OS level. Tons of bloatware, embedded ads in start menu, heavy user tracking. Shitty AI implementation pushed on all apps including notepad. And all of the windows 10+ elements are built in the windows 8 base image so all of the settings are nested on top of the new settings UI, on top of control panel.
local accounts still work, even on home edition
ads in the start menu work the same way as they do in windows 10 (pinned tiles that download actual apps from the store, you just need to unpin 'em)
I still don’t have any of the ai stuff, and pretty sure they should be controllable with a simple group policy
Local accounts only work with a really convoluted method during install, involving physically disconnecting your Ethernet cable and running a command in the OOBE.
you don’t need to do anything convoluted or remove your internet connection, you just need to run a single command before doing anything (which will cause your oc to reboot and the offline option to unlock)
it worked for me even with an internet connection, but you probably should still disconnect the internet while installing windows, you’ll get less bloatware
Not from what I can tell. While upgrading will not detrimental from what I’ve heard (since you can upgrade a local account), there’s a lot which I personally don’t like about with Windows 11 which will make me want to not upgrade. If you have no intention of moving away from the Windows, it may be best to upgrade while MS is offering it.
Otherwise, if you are willing to take the plunge Linux is the better option if you are looking for an OS which has no ads, no adware bloat, and a UI to your liking. Mint or Zorin are a Good Windows like starting point if you are looking to get started.
Ive used MS my whole life. So im just stubborn to move to linux. But really i think just have to put in the effort and i’ll be happier in the long run.
They way I see it is this. I look at my computer as a tool and ask is it working for me right now? What software do I need for it to work? Is that software Windows only, if so can I move to an alternative software that cross platform?
Your computer is a tool that lets you do things. If some software, even the OS is holding you back take a look at what is holding you, and see if its worth the negative of staying to keep that software.
For me that answer was Yes Windows is holding me back, but for years I was shackled by Professional Software, games and Legacy apps which kept me to the platform.
Steam with proton fixed the games issue
Swapping myself to different cross platform software helped with my Professional software.
Legacy was managed with a cheap $20 thrift store laptop with Windows xp installed.
Imam now free to move away from windows, I chose Linux since I idealize a “do it all” pc, but Mac OS is also a viable alternative.
I just built a desktop for Windows 11, unfortunately I need a Windows desktop in the house even though Debian is my main OS. Last desktop was 13 years old and just wasn’t working for my needs anymore. Default 11 install is horribly bloated but I actually like the desktop environment now. Here’s some stuff I did:
Customized USB image to bypass Microsoft account with easily found steps if you Google. Used Chris Titus Tech’s tool to remove a bunch of shit, install apps, disable telemetry, configure windows update to security only. Used “Reclaim windows” script from github and customized for my purposes. After that I confirmed if all the shit was gone and did a remove-appxpackage for anything left, like widgets etc.
So I have a bare bones install, no Microsoft account, no Microsoft store, no “apps,” no default associations to builtin tools, and a bunch of common foss utilities and all my favorite windows-dependent apps working. Can’t believe it took the amount of effort it did but I like it now, given what my expectations were it definitely exceeded them.
Yeah pretty much, most linux distros are at a usable state by default and you spend productive effort learning how to manage it, it’s probably easier than Windows at the end of the day especially for general use. I’m a heavy user of Ableton Live with plugins and using Windows is the only way to run it on your own hardware. Also becomes my gaming machine, but everything else is Debian.
Newest versions of windows 11 make it incredibly hard to find the screen that shows all your network adapters. It is now easier to use device manager to disable and reenable an adapter.
How do I know? Because all the shit tier screens and tools that offer to help you with a network issue didn’t work. ONLY reenabling the NIC did.
You can also just search “network” and the screen they want is either the first or second result. I rarely ever go into any kinds of settings menus anymore, i just search on the start menu.
Because windows 11 is an updated version of windows 19 and windows 10 is an updated version of windows 7/8.1.
Each one of them has had holdovers of previous versions of windows. And each one has tried to bring in a new standard to bring them all together but they’ve always moved on to the next standard before finishing it. Windows 11 has actually came the closest but we’re not there yet and because it’s actively replaced old methods of doing things in this process it feels more fractured than before because we’re not used to looking in the new places for them.
I feel like making important changes was easiest with XP. It feels like they’re trying to obscure administrative functions behind layers of abstraction.
It’s definitely looking like a possibility. I do my work on Linux machines but only use win for games. If I can play my main community games it might be time to make the switch for good
Learn the ways of the run prompt: ncpa.cpl launches you right to the classic network adapter control panel screen. I have to get in there so often that I’ve taught myself plenty of those little shortcuts because MS can’t leave shit where it was.
…And it all has to be there for legacy compatibility, because some Fortune 500 company somewhere has some rickety piece of shit in-house “enterprise” software that relies on some obscure aspect or another of a past Windows version.
I am sort of partial to those rickity old systems that force them to keep legacy software compatibility.
I can still load up and use a program that was written 20 years ago for windows XP.
It also gives third parties like classic shell or startallback the ability to restore all the functionality that the newest start menu disaster tries to push.
Did you use cmd with elevated admin privileges? Try right click cmd and run as admin if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Windoze stopped running cmd with elevated privileges sometime around Win7. From a security perspective it makes a lot of sense to do that as default, even though it can be a bit of a pain for home users that expect to have admin for everything they do.
Possibly. There is an embedded version of XP that’s meant to be run on kiosks, control panels, thin clients, and such. Its support was finally ended in 2016, but I’m sure there are still machines around someplace still working that have it baked-in. Probably in ROM in some cases.
To be fair, whomever decided to use an apostrophe to indicate possession AND abbreviation clearly didn’t think through all the possible conflicts before going ahead and making it a thing. Should have made a separate symbol for one of them.
Yes, thousands of years of established language development is wrong … not the individual who is unable to learn what millions of others have been able to.
Yes, thousands of years of established language development is wrong
Yes, it is. Island has an ‘s’ in it as a stylistic choice to Latinize a word that has no Latin root. Literally is now defined as “not literally” which is absurd. That’s established language development.
If people keep using “it’s” as possessive then it will become possessive, and nothing will be lost.
Language sticklers are an interesting phenomenon to me. Language has always evolved with its users. The only rule is that we understand each other when we use it, and that rule allows massive flexibility. Watching it evolve in real-time is more fun than trying to police someone for using an apostrophe.
Language sticklers are an interesting phenomenon to me
It’s weird if you think about it. They’re basically saying “English was exactly correct at an arbitrary moment in time that I chose.” Anything different before that (such as ‘iland’) is wrong, but any new changes are an abomination.
That’s totally not fair. Some things are more wrong than others. And the “everything is correct even” language people are just as insufferable as the “there is exactly one correct usage” people.
Using it’s instead of its is not slang, or an evolving use or alternative spelling. It’s simply wrong.
What’s up with Armenia and terrible PC’s tho? I have honestly fished better equipment from literal trash cans than what’s offered in most the PC stores over there. Is there like some ill-concieved embargo on electronics in place?
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