VOGONS


First post, by SRQ

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Something I want to do with some of my older systems in the near future is run a few beta level OS's- some of the longhorn builds maybe, Chicago, Mephis... Neptune maybe? However, I know that as betas these will naturally have potentially horrifying bugs which is why I come here to ask- which builds are relatively stable, and which ones are broken and should be avoided?

My thinking is there should be plenty of builds that are more or less the stablity of the previous OS with experimental new features, right?

Reply 2 of 7, by Jo22

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In comparison to current Win 10 (aka Windows - neverending beta edition), any older beta is stable and worth using. Well, at least to me. 😉
Edit: Not very stable but (IMHO) interesting are Windows 2k Beta (Alpha/PC-98), Neptune, Whistler (pre-Beta2) and Windows Longhorn with the Plex design.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 7, by Jo22

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Yes, a japanese model. Windows 2000 (beta ?) is notable for beeing the last Windows it got.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 5 of 7, by Tetrium

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I don't know which ones are the best or the most usable, but there used to be a forum dedicated to beta OS's (something like betaarchive).
It had a lot of knowledge contained within its community and they traded beta disks kinda like they trade om Amibay.
Dunno if it exists, but if it does, it's probably easy to find using google.

Personally I've (at the least) used a beta of Windows 98 and I've used Neptune, but both for only very short amounts of time.
The Win2k beta3 seems to me the most interesting one, as it supposedly had support for hardware that the release version of 2k didn't have anymore.

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My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
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Reply 7 of 7, by r.cade

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Memory plays tricks on me, but I recall using a Win95 beta for a while that was on maybe 7-10 floppies, and it seemed to multitask better than release. You could do other things while formatting a floppy, for example.

I used it well after release, until something came along that wouldn't work anymore.

This was in 1994, so it had to be earlier than build 300.