this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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I still think 10 is a waste of space and would be using only linux or 7 if not for gamepass (old distant friends have xboxes only). I still run 7 on my living room PC and its honestly a better experience then 10. If not for end of life (that lets face it are mostly arbitrary at this point) there is little reason to upgrade, even the few things not in things 7 or 10 (like auto HDR support or new Direct X) are simply withheld for no reason and often people have worked out how make it work anyway.
I am old enough to remember how each new windows addressed a flaw in the last (even if that flaw was made up). Here is off the top of my head some examples (leaving out the better NT line) :
My theory is that after 98 windows started to follow the "this one shit, next one good" pattern. ME was shit, XP was great, Vista was shit, 7 was great, 8 was shit, 10 is good. Obviously 11 is shit and if the pattern holds the next one will be good again.
The issue with that theory is that the "good" keep getting worse and the "shits" plumb the depths more and more with each cycle.
They look good when comparing it with the last one but I would say ME (I used ME as a teen I know it) was better then Vista and Vista was better then 8 and 8 was better then 11.
Microsoft decided to skip Windows 9 because, after doing a lot of research, they found that a lot of commonly used legacy software had implemented compatibility hacks which involved checking for "Windows 9" to detect when the software was running under either Windows 95 or Windows 98.
Instead of breaking a lot of software or requiring a lot of updates (some of which could even be from vendors who were no longer in business) they decided to work around the problem by just skipping straight to 10.
Edit: My mistake, I responded to the wrong comment. But I'm gonna leave it here because I already typed it.
Version check on Windows 9x was done by comparing with the number 4, which was the internal version number, not with the marketing name.
You skipped 2k, the first NT intended for consumer use. If you ask me it's been downhill ever since, some security stuff they added certainly makes sense but 2k was the last actually coherent OS Microsoft published. Oh they also added search which is useful because who the fuck can find settings nowadays, how many different interfaces to various settings does Windows 10 have? Twenty?
I agree the NT line was better, but I left it out.
Genuinely I'll give Michaelsoft credit on skipping 9, they did that to avoid SEO poisoning windows 9x variants.
What? if that was a good enough reason to skip 9 they could have called it something else. What happened was that marketing said 10 is cooler.
The did name it something else. They named it 10. A lot of programs had checks for windows version looking for 9 for 95/98 which would cause issues without updates. So it's better to avoid it altogether.
That's an urban myth. Programs check for the internal windows version major and minor number which doesn't resemble the official name in any way. The version for Windows 9x was version 4 and the version for Windows 9 (if it existed) would have been 7.
B-but seven ate nine...
I for one expect my computer operating system company to be able to count to at least 10.
Me and 8 gave me a good chuckle, great list.
I hated ME so much when I had it but looking back it was not nearly as bad as say 8. And once you learn how to delete the evergrowing windows files safely it was fine.
I'm sorry but as someone who remembers Win 3.0 I have to say that Win 95 was a fucking revelation when it came out. The taskbar with star menu paradigm made many a man cross their legs.
Well as someone who also was there, I agree. That was why I wrote "first time dos was really secondary", that was not a slight on dos.