BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-19, 15:12:

Running raw naked XP pre SP1 is fine as long as you keep it airgapped from critical infrastructure, about 3 miles away from the nearest powerlines with a solar panel and inverter should do. 🤣

Even windows 7 is making me nervous these days... yes, firewalls are a thing, but with retro machines, it feels like putting a 2 million sea wall around your beach house, then drilling it full of holes so you can still enjoy the view.

That's why I avoid XP, Vista, 7, 8 - they to me are still at this point where they are still at risk because there are a lot of bits and pieces that may still be compatible with modern malware. Also, I don't see a point in using those at all because a lot of the stuff that runs on XP for me still runs on Windows 10 or even on Wine in Linux Mint, so I just don't see a point in having anything newer than a Pentium system in my collection for that reason. I can even run the ORiginal Sims using Lutris in Linux Mint....so what's the point?

Now, when it comes to pre 1998 - I'm perfectly fine with having that stuff on my network, because there's no reason a person could or would want to attack those systems, let alone know how to do it effectively enough to do any real damage, and because of various changes, including the disabling of SMB 1.0 in most modern O/Ses, getting into a modern machine from one of the old ones would be very hard, even moreso since the modern machines are Mac and Linux, and the old machines mostly run Free DOS with batch enabled/disabled drivers and TCP/IP networking - it's like playing Whack-A-Mole.....on in this case Whack-A-486. And reloading? About 30 minutes at most + a couple hours to reload all the software over FTPSRV/Filezilla.

XP hit a sweet spot - it was the last fully backwards compatible OS. It was modern enough to have NTFS and support for external drives, and yet it would still run 3.1 apps.

At the time it came out it seemed horribly bloated, but compared to more recent versions of windows it seems positively friendly

I would still be using XP for gaming, if I had a suitable rig for it, with the all-mighty full-sized PCI slots. All the refurb machines around here are newer, with PCIe only or older SFF low-profile machines that can't use vintage soundcards.

I still hate Luna.

leileilol wrote on 2021-08-22, 23:41:

I still hate Luna.

I prefer the Zune theme for Windows XP as Luna looks like a toy. At least there is the classic theme that feels closer to Windows 2000 except the icons.

ncmark wrote on 2021-08-21, 12:06:

XP hit a sweet spot - it was the last fully backwards compatible OS. It was modern enough to have NTFS and support for external drives, and yet it would still run 3.1 apps.

At the time it came out it seemed horribly bloated, but compared to more recent versions of windows it seems positively friendly

Agree a bit bloated but can run a variety of old things ! Have one XP machine still running that is used for lots of old 16 bit app stuff specifically for this forum and some other techy places.
The 32bit version is the very best Windows OS ever designed IMHO.

I don't actually love XP - never loved it, in fact I hated it for it's toy-like UI theme, so every time I had to use XP, I have reverted it back to Classic 9x theme. After that, XP was "tolerable".

Anything after XP is unusable for me. I can't even stay on Windows 10 without swearing about how things don't work the way I want on it. Windows 9x and below simplicity makes it so much better.

you can't blame them for wanting something contemporary and visually fresh, considering the last 3 releases looked pretty much the same. how you can complain about this when you even mention that you change to classic theme is beyond me. they literally give you the option to use it the way you like.

the color green? on MY start bar? UNUSABLE!!

Before Luna, they've had watercolor which was well visually acceptable and fresh while not being alienating. Many of the early post-XP customizations were about restoring that Oct 2000 Whistler Beta 1 look. Luna's had complaints since Beta 2 was originally previewed to insiders. They've had plenty of time to try and address the problems...

Personally, I always feel like the default theme is about 5% faster so just get used to it 🤣

Zune theme is nice.

I always feel like the default theme is about 5% faster

But is it 20% cooler?

minus 100% cooler, minus 5% faster.

Classic 9x theme: 100% cooler and 20% faster...

Yeah... I can confirm that HATE is the word to sum up what I think of XP...

Bruninho wrote on 2021-08-23, 15:34:

Classic 9x theme: 100% cooler and 20% faster...

I hope we're both thinking of the Win 2000/Me theme with the sandy colour scheme. 😉

The gray taskbar (concrete look) in Windows 95/98 made me depressive for a while (years ago), so I made it white.
- seriously, I'm not trolling. 🙁 I guess I was too much a sensitive person, whatsoever .

In fact, I deleted/moved the ctl3d.dll files in Windows 3.1x before, so it would not show the new 3d elements of Win95 and continued to look 2D with the white/blue scheme.

That's why I have a soft spot for Windows 2.x and OS/2 version 1.x-3.x, also, I think.

The Luna theme of Win XP also was "2D" again.
For some reason, though, I liked the green/silver theme, also.
But the Royale/Bliss theme and the Embedded theme were even prettier, IMHO. 😀

Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:28:

I hope we're both thinking of the Win 2000/Me theme with the sandy colour scheme. 😉

The gray taskbar (concrete look) in Windows 95/98 made me depressive for a while (years ago), so I made it white.
- seriously, I'm not trolling. 🙁 I guess I was too much a sensitive person, whatsoever .

Unfortunately I am talking about the 95/98 colour scheme =P

I am, well... very minimalist. What can I say, I really like the 98 styles.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:28:

In fact, I deleted/moved the ctl3d.dll files in Windows 3.1x before, so it would not show the new 3d elements of Win95 and continued to look 2D with the white/blue scheme.

That's why I have a soft spot for Windows 2.x and OS/2 version 1.x-3.x, also, I think.

Didn't knew about that. Good idea, might try it later here. Inconsistent UI design drives me crazy because of OCD... every UI component must be the same.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:28:

The Luna theme of Win XP also was "2D" again.
For some reason, though, I liked the green/silver theme, also.
But the Royale/Bliss theme and the Embedded theme were even prettier, IMHO. 😀

Any other colorful XP theme I just hated it. I tried to use Zune or Royale Noir theme at some point, but I simply could not stand the colorful theme. Too much for me, so I reverted back to Classic 9x.

Actually on modern macOS I use the dark theme everywhere. I have a soft spot for the OS 9 platinum theme for the same reason I like the Classic 9x theme. OS X brushed metal themes after Tiger also gets the same hate I have for XP themes. OK, Snow Leopard onwards was "tolerable" until I saw Big Sur and loved it. I like Jaguar/Panther pinstripe scheme too. But Big Sur UI is my standard for everything I tend to design for web. Boring? Maybe. Effective and simple? Yes.

Other UI I really dislike is early versions of iTunes. God, the brushed metal abuse.

I remember that I laughed when I saw the XP colorful theme for the first time after install, and said "Wait, is it supposed to be called a 'Professional' operating system? OMG... looks like it was dumbed down for kids ('Windows XP Professional')".

Jo22 wrote on 2021-08-23, 17:28:

I hope we're both thinking of the Win 2000/Me theme with the sandy colour scheme. ;) […]
Show full quote

I hope we're both thinking of the Win 2000/Me theme with the sandy colour scheme. 😉

The gray taskbar (concrete look) in Windows 95/98 made me depressive for a while (years ago), so I made it white.
- seriously, I'm not trolling. 🙁 I guess I was too much a sensitive person, whatsoever .

In fact, I deleted/moved the ctl3d.dll files in Windows 3.1x before, so it would not show the new 3d elements of Win95 and continued to look 2D with the white/blue scheme.

For some reason, though, I liked the green/silver theme, also.
But the Royale/Bliss theme and the Embedded theme were even prettier, IMHO. 😀

Yes "Classic" and I like the green/silver but changed background a bit to be more of an aquamarine (??) or maybe call it a Caribbean green/blue sea color ? Easier on the eyes at night.
What amazes me is that a good setup of XP takes about 120Mb ram at idle compared to about 1Gb for Win7. DO not even get me started on what Win10 wants even fine tuned at idle...
Ok rant over 😁

I use XP pro on a lot of my systems as it's very stable and quite lightweight. I have it on my son's socket A build and it runs all of my old educational games perfectly. And most of them are from the early 90s. He loves the magic school bus games as well as Maxis titles. And the best part is not having to deal with the instabilities and other win 9x troubles.

I was 18 and a freshman in college when XP came out. A lot of my friends at the time were very negative about XP, especially the two row start menu. I think there was a thought that it was a dumbing down of NT by Microsoft since they'd messed up with ME so badly, but I think, in reality, it was just a bunch of mindless hate directed toward Microsoft by the type of folks that were already nostalgic about DOS back then and still had an axe to grind about the 95 release. On new-ish systems of the time, XP was better than 98SE in my experience, especially if you weren't running a lot of older software, but if you had a slightly older system, I would have rather run 2000 (and did until spring 2002).

However, something happened between the release of SP1 and SP2, and I think the best I can say is that XP got really, really familiar for a lot of folks. Also, unlike early-95 and ME, XP just worked and worked well, ultimately better than 2000 in my experience. That combined with the fact that Microsoft waited more than five years to release Vista as a replacement and then botched that release makes it the all time great MS operating system in a lot of folks' minds. Plenty of people, myself included, basically ran XP for the entirety of 2000s over multiple systems (3 desktops and 2 laptops), and it was the OS on my work computers for my first three jobs through 2015 IIRC. Heck, I built my one and only Win7 system for personal use to dual boot XP and it still does.

That longevity plus the inherent distrust of new Microsoft OS releases (see 95, ME, Vista, 😎 is probably the biggest factor for the love of XP.

All of this makes me feel old.

It's funny, as long as XP was around, I almost entirely passed it. I stuck with a copy of Win2K my dad "borrowed" from work for ages and ages, because unlike XP it didn't need to be activated, and it felt like XP without a ton of cruft. I stuck with it until I burned out my hot rod Athlon 64, Geforce 6800 GT PC overclocking in 2006, stuck with a laptop for a year that had XP on it, and then jumped to Vista when I built a brand new Core 2 Duo, Geforce 8800 GT system in 2007.

Of course my workstation at the office was on XP for ages until I jumped straight to Win 7 and then Win 10. But I had no particular affection for that experience.

I stuck with a copy of Win2K my dad "borrowed" from work for ages and ages, because unlike XP it didn't need to be activated

Hardly an issue with volume license versions.

Because it just works.