@westyvw > Pretty good at collecting every virus under the sun

Not really.

It did have some fails security-wise but 99% of exploits happened on non-updated machines which also had firewall disabled.

98 was far worse in that regard.

@drq It is not like we have two nations at war here, each with their ideals, religion and glorious leader. It is more about people who are users, developers and other contributors and it is also about evolution.

You'll have hard time evolving if you dismiss everything (or maybe you'll get real good at fleeing and hiding but that's about it).

I mean there were countless times when I saw people asking "how do I do this on Linux which I did in Windows" and getting "YOU DO NOT. WE DON'T NEED THIS SHIT HERE". (for me it was something Samba related and I got a great advice to just use NFS. Yeah, right).

For three or so years using Linux I never had people asking or talking about Windows features that would be cool to have. It is like taboo. Even Mac gets a pass.

It gets a bit better in corporate sector where people care less about tribalism and more about getting things to work. I wonder if Linux would took off to what it is now if corporations ignored it for some reason (e.g. extreme licensing enforcement) and decided to make their own - which is kind of happening btw.

@mittorn 2000 was workstation system.

By the way Server 2000 was pretty nice too. I think it was the first Windows server OS I worked with.

@mittorn In my experience XP had larger set of drivers for older hardware as well. Or maybe it was better at detecting devices. Anyway it was just easier to put it on even older laptops where it was a bit slow but everything worked out of the box.

@drq This sort of flippant fanboyism never helped anything.

Myself I think this is one of those things that really stall FOSS as it just dismisses both competition and coexistence.

@mittorn Well, my experience was clearly the opposite. Notably I worked in refurbished laptop store back then and later in some factory in IT department - and installing XP was the first thing we did. We had 2000 for most workplaces as established standard but it almost always required drivers for everything and it was even worse before with laptops. XP picked up all basic devices most of the time, quite often - all of them including weirder laptop hardware like IR ports and dock stations.

@mittorn It is just an example.

You can check other sources and the picture is largely the same.

As for enshitification - not everything is about UI. One watershed moment for me was with XP almost never requiring basic drivers. Maybe except audio. Another was about being able to just use Explorer and not needing additional file manager. Yet another was supporting a lot of file formats out of the box.

Suddenly I needed only OS distro CD to make a simple desktop work.

@lritter We'll see how it goes.

I expect Windows becoming less relevant because of web apps and cloud taking off.

It is not necessarily good by the way, for the most people it already means they don't have to run anything on their machine... or even have anything on their machine... just buy a subscription for movies, photo storage, email, messaging, office apps, isn't it great? Gaming isn't there yet but soon. And all these nice cloud-controlled IoT toys! No drivers, no cables, just your Wi-Fi password (and soon it won't need even that).

@Diplomjodler3 > I've worked with Unix before Windows was even a thing. Only in the last couple of years did it really become unbearable.

Same story. Using Linux at home for three or four years. I tried it before and it was just... not very good. And yes, it was Microsoft who gave me the final push with their innovations.

@mittorn I guess everything that hit their trackers and had adblockers good enough to hide the platform :)

@mittorn I don't care much about interface consistency when I can't run software which worked on '98 :)

Also that consistent interface lacked features. A lot.

But it did crash far less than 95/98/Me family and still was less rigid and soulless compared to NT.

Still I welcomed XP with open arms.

@lritter Yes, this works like that for everything in life.

However it is also the problem. Criminals go for popular things because they go after people using them. Lesser interest to make viruses and exploits goes together with lesser interest to make software, drivers, hardware... Heck, I remember days when a lot of popular websites didn't work too well with anything except Internet Explorer - and it was real security nightmare at the same time with very real zero click exploits.

@teft No, not really. It was stable but lacked versatility. It was nice for business but gave some headaches at home.

Also some people went even further and run Server 2000 on home computers :)

@lritter Yeah, looks like this is what it will take because nothing else works (or everything else is much worse that no amount of enshitification offsets it).

@drq I think it was not about the car but looking like a fool which he turned out to be really sensitive for. Maybe he was a bit insecure behind that facade of real ladies man who did manage to get in his bed half of the office including some married women :)

I guess everyone can have weird weak spots.

@drq Somewhat related pranks we did sometime:

1. If you are mail admin (or can create recipients) make an account mimicking someone important (maybe not CEO unless you want your ass fired but your boss or their boss will do) replacing one letter from another layout or just using similar ones (I and l being usual favorites). Hide it from the address book and initiate some correspondence involving that account and some pranksters about something sensitive involving your victim. Then "accidentally" leak it. The victim won't go to the boss (hopefully) because they are not supposed to see it but they'll get all squirmy and start asking around about salary cuts or whatever.

Or they will go to the boss or the boss above that boss and then the prank is on you :)

2. Make a computer account mimicking your victim in the same way. When they leave the room, log with that very similar account and lock it up. Watch them trying to enter password. Help them reset it multiple times because you don't know why it doesn't work, is your keyboard ok? Let's test it on my PC, look, you can log in just fine, go and type your new password, it must work. Look, it works on your phone. Maybe try to reset your password yourself from my PC? Oh, bummer.... No, I didn't do anything, let's reboot your computer, must be Windows glitch.

@drq Usually my pranks quickly went to "oh, it is you, IT IS YOU AGAiN" moment so I didn't really have to come clean except saying "well... yes".

There was one time when I had to come clean and confess and it took some hesitation. One guy at work had Ford. His car had that usual oval Ford emblem on the front but it could be flipped upside down revealing a keyhole to open the hood. So when we went to smoke or something sometimes we flipped it. He always noticed and smiled or was slightly annoyed but that's it.

One day I flipped it upside down and he didn't notice it this time. Next morning I came and there was heavy atmosphere in the room. He was walking around all sulky saying "Who did it, why don't you leave it alone... yesterday I noticed it when I parked at home so I had been driving through half of Moscow like an idiot... everyone saw it on the road...". I had no idea why he took it so close to the heart (maybe because he was kind of classy guy and cared about his looks). I thought it was no big thing but when it continued on the next day. He just couldn't shake it off. I had to confess to give him some closure and we stopped doing it.

@drq My colleague suspected me immediately so I had to come clean :) The boss wasn't interested as he had habit of blowing up at anyone he saw first no matter the situation and then forgetting (or "forgetting" and sending someone else to mend things he fucked up as people didn't took it well - one time we almost lost our primary ISP as he managed to piss off all their managers because of major outage which wasn't their fault even).

@drq Once I put a CO2 fire extinguisher under my colleague chair. He had a habit to really drop into his chair with all his weight so it was supposed to trigger a partial discharge - which was very loud with the stream of CO2 knocking things around but then it would dissipate without much trace so not much harm done.

The guy always came earlier than everyone else and spent some time watching YouTube before work so he supposed to be alone.

It worked. Except that morning our boss also came very early and was sleeping at his desk right in front of the setup. He also was a very toxic person and was going through his divorce which made him even greater asshole than usual. So the blast startled them both and threw some papers off his desk which resulted in all Hell breaking loose even though no one understood what the fuck happened and my colleague got all the blame in the moment.

@Provider I miss the freedom of the old Internet. It truly was INTERnet as everything was connected to everything. Geoblocks, censorship, blacklists, etc were almost non-existent. It felt like an open global world where everyone was welcome and everyone was free to decide who they wanted to talk to.

I kept thinking "wow, this is what the future is like" and naively expected the offline world to eventually follow. I guess it was very naive.