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 The older versions just feel outdated.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.
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.
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.
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.
Add comment