[HN Gopher] Show HN: Windows 2000 on Docker
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Windows 2000 on Docker
Author : hectorm
Score : 257 points
Date : 2021-11-14 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tm11zz wrote:
| Inside the image for those interested:
| https://contains.dev/hectormolinero/qemu-win2000
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'd like to use or build something like this for vintage gaming.
| gravypod wrote:
| I wish there was an easy way to mux display usage to containers
| sor hat things like these wouldn't need to run an RDP server for
| you to access the and we could have `--display window=640x480` or
| `--monitor /dev/....`.
| NexRebular wrote:
| I've been using Apache Guacamole to have central access to
| KVM/bhyve-inside-a-container (or rather inside a zone) servers
| running on SmartOS.
|
| However, I'm not using RDP at the moment as there is also VNC-
| access available as default that Guacamole connects to.
| racecar789 wrote:
| Did anyone frequently run into ntoskrnl errors that prevented
| Windows 2000 from booting? I ran into that error every six months
| but to be fair a number of the incidents happened after a power
| failure with no UPS.
| djbusby wrote:
| Was it the IDE reg tweak to fix it? (Search mergeide.reg or
| something). That was a common issue when hardware swapped.
| chris_wot wrote:
| (comment is a little off-topic, feel free to downvote)
|
| I'm curious how ReactOS stacks up to Windows 2000.
| hectorm wrote:
| I have a similar image with ReactOS if you want to compare :)
|
| https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-reactos
| chris_wot wrote:
| Oh nice!!!!
| argsv wrote:
| I just ran this on a Fedora machine and connected to Windows
| using rdesktop. It works and it's amazing. I like it. The
| Internet will surely be confused today with a surge of traffic
| from Internet Explorer 5. Incidentally, google.com still loads
| and allows searching; bing.com does not load.
| coderdecoder wrote:
| Nice trip down the memory lane :D. Works great on POP_OS
| (didn't uninstall my desktop).
| voakbasda wrote:
| The fact that bing.com does not load using their own browser
| speaks volumes about Microsoft.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| What volumes does it speak about microsoft?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I think it's ironic. Microsoft since the dawn of time has
| been known for backwards compatibility in Windows. They
| would go out of their way to ensure random 16 bit apps with
| bugs and major issues continued to work through years of
| major upgrades to Windows. Raymond Chen has written
| countless stories of the hacks upon hacks they had to keep
| running through the years: http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/i
| mages/9780321440303/samplech... So now to see it all
| abandoned as Microsoft is pulled into the age of web
| applications is kind of amusing.
| djbusby wrote:
| And just recently on here I was talking about how MS is
| known for backwards compat but we actually observe Linux
| doing it better
| rbanffy wrote:
| While breaking backwards compatibility with user space
| apps is frowned upon, I can't imagine Linus approving
| adding old bugs so that buggy programs can still work.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Yes, it says that they are moving forward and not targeting
| browsers that are EOL.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Using their own outdated, unsupported browser? Why should
| they develop websites against a 22 year old browser version?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| I realize that it probably doesn't pay, but it wouldn't be
| that difficult to implement just a form to type queries and
| a basic html result page that works without javascript.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It certainly wouldn't. Forms have been with us for a very
| long time and I've done it more times than I can
| remember.
| heyoni wrote:
| On the one hand, it's a sign of technical prowess to be
| able to accommodate browsers going that far back.
|
| On the other, it's kind of embarrassing not to have a
| barebones version of your website load in case an old
| browser is detected. IE5 had Ajax after all, what more does
| a search box really need? The answer? Endless tracking and
| cookies and phoning home. God forbid someone uses a browser
| we can't use to collect infinite metrics.
|
| Makes me wonder, does bing work with lynx?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Lynx is not outdated. It's actively maintained and
| updated. Last release is a couple months old.
| xxpor wrote:
| What're the most recent tls features IE5 supports? Does it even
| work with non-sha1 certs?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Google looks at your user agent and doesn't redirect to https
| if it's an old browser.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Isn't this a security vulnerability?
| Narretz wrote:
| For who? For Google? Or for the client? The server's
| security shouldn't be dependent on https
| speedgoose wrote:
| Both. If you can stop a https redirect by rewriting the
| user agent header, it can be used to track the Google
| searches for example. HSTS would help if the browser did
| connect to the https website recently, but it looks like
| a security vulnerability to me.
|
| I just realized after writing this comment that if you
| can rewrite http headers, you can also stop the redirect
| so perhaps it doesn't matter.
| toast0 wrote:
| For IE5, there's two distinct obstacles to serving https.
|
| 1) It's unlikely to accept any x.509 certificates you can
| get issued under today's CA/B guidelines; and I'm also
| not sure how many CAs from then are still valid, either
| because they had too small of keys or they expired
|
| 2) I'm not sure if ie5 supports TLS 1.0 and if it does,
| it's probably not by default, because that how things
| were back then.
|
| Given these conditions an https handshake is highly
| likely to fail, and as the server operator there's no way
| to provide useful information to the user in that case.
| If they go to your http site and you redirect them to a
| handshake error that you know they were going to see...
| That's not useful. You could be secure and not provide
| service... but then again, your redirect could be MITMed
| cause http. Or you could provide a useful service with no
| security.
|
| This is a choice, not a vulnerability.
|
| This doesn't open up any new way to attack a modern
| client. Modern clients would have google.com HSTS
| preloaded and not use http at all. But even if that's not
| available, a MITM that fiddles with the User-Agent to
| avoid getting a redirect could have fetched the search
| results via https and proxied them back via http, as long
| as the client made an http request.
|
| Edit to add: if you could get a cert IE5 would accept, it
| likely wouldn't be acceptable by modern clients, so you'd
| need to distinguish clients from the TLS handshake
| (although, I guess it really is an SSL handshake for
| ie5?). There's no client identifier in there, but you can
| certainly tell the difference between modern and ancient;
| it gets trickier to tell the difference between ancient
| and pretty old or pretty old and trying to do a fallback
| handshake.
| userbinator wrote:
| It wouldn't be surprising if they did that so people
| could download a newer browser (such as Chrome...) which
| would itself be signed anyway.
| duskwuff wrote:
| In modern browsers, google.com is in the HSTS preload
| list, so the browser won't even make an initial request
| over HTTP.
| ehPReth wrote:
| Only www.google.com and other subdomains are preloaded
| unfortunately.. I'm having trouble quickly googling the
| reason (is that irony?) but from memory a Googler said
| that they had a lot of internal stuff hosted above
| google.com they couldn't make https (HVAC controllers and
| such?)
|
| You can see the full HSTS list here I believe: https://so
| urce.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:n...
| PeterisP wrote:
| Perhaps, but all the vulnerability is in using IE5;
| there's nothing the site can do to make an IE5-compatible
| connection secure.
| IronWolve wrote:
| I really liked how stable W2k was as a workstation. I could run a
| bunch of terminals, programs and hardly ever had a crash. Nothing
| is worse working an outage or deployment and POOF there goes your
| desktop.
|
| This was also around the time you could even run bbwin and
| themes, and tweak it some for fun. Pretty sure cygwin was also
| around.
| manbart wrote:
| Windows Server with the Desktop Experience enabled (plus a few
| other tweaks: https://www.windowsworkstation.com/win2016-2019/)
| is much better than Windows 10/11 IMO. Way less bullshit that
| way
| flatiron wrote:
| Cygwin was very much around. I went to college in 2001 and was
| forced to use w2k and lived in Cygwin as a result.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Cygwin was a wonderful thing. It wasn't fast, but integrated
| the Linux side with the Windows side much better than WSL2
| does (at the expense of binary compatibility). It allowed me
| to develop server apps for Linux on a corporate sanctioned
| Windows box and deploy them to the real servers (mostly Linux
| with some Solaris).
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Questions about this implementation's legality? Liability?
| Security?
|
| https://github.com/hectorm/docker-qemu-win2000/blob/master/D...
|
| Makes me think this is done as a POC, but definitely fork a local
| copy as you can just swap that line out with your local copy of a
| Win2k ISO
| hectorm wrote:
| Effectively this is done as a POC, don't expect any security on
| a machine running Windows 2000 nowadays.
|
| Regarding legality, I hope that Microsoft doesn't claim any
| rights, since the Windows 2000 image has been published in
| WinWorld for years without issues.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Careful with your claims. What is the supply chain of that
| win2k iso? You could be compromised before you even begin.
|
| Just because it is past EOL doesn't mean you chuck all
| security best practices out the window.
|
| "Oh well it's end of life, might as well store passwords in
| plaintext"
|
| Microsoft still owns copyright on Win2k, so you could be met
| with a cease and desist or you could be liable for
| infringement.
| xxpor wrote:
| If you connect windows 2000 to the internet, you're
| probably owned within a few minutes regardless. Similarly
| for xp pre-sp2.
| genezeta wrote:
| I'd guess that the "don't expect any security" comment
| above meant exactly that. Not that you should _forgo
| security_ , but that you should _expect this to provide no
| security at all_.
|
| Some other comments mention browsing with IE5. You should
| expect that to provide no security either.
| hectorm wrote:
| The ISO is downloaded from WinWorld, which is a website
| dedicated to archiving old software, it's certainly
| community maintained but at least gets some scrutiny. I
| also searched the checksum and it matches with other
| sources, but as there is no longer an official Microsoft
| source you can never be entirely sure.
|
| I've done my best to confirm the legitimacy but if anyone
| has an original CD it would be awesome if they could
| confirm it.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| My suggestion is to not embed third party urls for
| infringing software.. that makes you a target. Inside
| leave that variable empty and make suggestions on where
| one could find the media whether it's the original or
| from questionable third party websites.
|
| This is how popular emulators survived the 90s, they
| emulate the bios but force you to find the firmware
| yourself. Even if it means downloading from an unknown
| source without a supply chain and running unknown code on
| your computer. The emulator and author are in the clear
| 0x0 wrote:
| Well they seem to add vnc and netcat shell listeners to the
| startup scripts so it is kind of backdoored on purpose already
| outside of what's in the iso
| hectorm wrote:
| During the installation I add Netcat to have a bind shell,
| this way you can get a CMD shell from Linux using the
| "vmshell" command included in the image.
|
| So yes, technically it's backdoored but only for yourself :)
| mysterydip wrote:
| Windows 2000 was my favorite version of the OS. I kept it running
| far longer than I should reasonably have. Thanks for giving me
| another reason to fire it up!
| qsort wrote:
| I completely agree. People fondly remember XP, but Windows 2000
| was peak Windows. It almost looks like a real operating system
| :)
| laumars wrote:
| I agree. People often forget that early releases of XP was
| basically just a re-skinned 2000 but with a few tweaks for
| games and fonts. The problem was those skins ended up
| doubling the memory and CPU requirements. In fact XP was a
| pretty bloated OS on hardware from 2002. It wasn't until much
| later into the life of XP when hardware caught up and newer
| service packs added enough to the OS to really differentiate
| it from 2000. But for the first few years of the life of XP,
| it was an embarrassment.
| cesarb wrote:
| People also often forget that Windows XP was the first
| Windows to have WGA, which was fairly controversial.
| Windows 2000 was the last Windows version you could truly
| own, instead of having to beg Microsoft for permission
| every time you reinstalled or replaced hardware.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Windows XP volume licensing still gave customers full
| ownership without online activation.
|
| I remember a friend used magic jelly bean to pull keys
| off every pc he came across to stockpile new volume keys
| he could use after the initial key that went public got
| banned for windows updates.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I preferred XP with the classic theme, some of its utils
| were improved.
| laumars wrote:
| Which utils?
|
| I think XP introduced the "switch user" option. But I
| couldn't find much in XP to justify the additional drain
| on memory and CPU. However I might not have needed the
| same utils you came to prefer (Every user is different).
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd go even further: XP was 2000 with some UI elements and
| ideas that came from Windows Me. That grouping in the
| control panel only made it harder to find what you needed.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why do you think Windows isn't a real OS? It successfully
| powers I'd guess hundreds of millions of devices.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| To be fair, Linux powers quite literally billions of
| devices
| rbanffy wrote:
| And those Windows boxes wouldn't be able to do much
| without the ones Linux powers, but that's beside the
| point: Windows is an OS. It's quirky and feels weird for
| the Unix crowd, but a lot of it will be oddly familiar to
| the VMS elders.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| And a hundred million isn't enough to be real?
| arendtio wrote:
| It is a joke to say that it is not a real OS.
|
| But if you want to argue: You could say that a 'real OS'
| must be 'mostly POSIX-compliant' [1]. That way most other
| OS (Linux, MacOS, iOS) but not Windows would be included
| in your definition of a 'real OS' ;-)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#Mostly_POSIX-
| compliant
| edgyquant wrote:
| Windows is mostly posix compliant as it had a POSIX
| subsystem until 2000, then it had Windows Services for
| UNIX/Interix and now days has Windows Subsystem for
| Linux.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I wouldn't get why POSIX is the only way to design an OS.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's not. It's an API. IBM's zOS has a POSIX-compliant
| Unix subsystem and it has absolutely nothing to do with
| Unix under its hood.
| arendtio wrote:
| It is not.
|
| But that way you could pretend to have an objective
| definition of the term 'real OS' and exclude Windows
| while including most other major OS.
| authed wrote:
| Same... XP was almost as good because it was basically the same
| thing, except for its ugly skin.
|
| But even if Windows 2000 would make a come back, I would not
| switch back to Microsoft because they would probably
| incorporate their newest tracking methods.
| city41 wrote:
| You could set XP to look just like 2000.
| ectopod wrote:
| Not quite. They broke smooth window resizing in XP.
| edwinyzh wrote:
| I agree too! It's the BEST!
| rbanffy wrote:
| 2000 and XP/2003 were the last Windows versions I used and cared
| about. It was with 2000 that I realised working with 2 200MHz
| CPUs was a better experience than a single 400MHz one (at least
| on Windows).
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| I really wish docker (not specifically but containers frameworks)
| had support for graphical output. Be really cool to containerise
| visual apps.
| nayuki wrote:
| A year or so before Windows XP brought the NT kernel to home
| users, I chose to switch from Windows Me to 2000 to reap the
| benefits in computer stability. I was using a business operating
| system before it was cool.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| What a cool project. Expose that port 3389 (RDP) to the internet
| & see how long before it gets cryptolocked.
| rezonant wrote:
| Finally! We've been waiting for Windows containers to hit feature
| parity with Linux for a long time! /s
| arpa wrote:
| cool! I've never considered running qemu in a container. This
| project is a matroska on actual windows systems, as docker
| runs/used to run in VM (has WSL changed that?). So
| VM->Docker->VM. You could probably also run windows-something
| that supports Docker and run the same image. Oh this gives me
| baaaaad ideas. Thank you, OP
| NexRebular wrote:
| illumos has had qemu inside a container (or zone) since I
| believe 2011 when Joyent ported KVM to SmartOS. Nice to see
| docker catching up already...
| arpa wrote:
| Did you mean linux? because docker is just an interface foe
| cgroups, namespaces and chroot.
| NexRebular wrote:
| the docker system including all the bells and whistles. But
| indeed I could've just said linux is playing catch-up in
| this area too...
| xxpor wrote:
| WSL2 itself also runs in a VM
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| This is amazing! Does anyone know if KVM hardware virt works on
| EC2 / ECS / Lambda / other cloud or VPS vendors?
|
| Also, does anyone know which versions of Windows have
| restrictions on where you can run it? IIRC, recent versions
| stipulate you can't just run your own copy of it virtualized
| without an approved hardware vendor? Or maybe I'm crazy. I know
| with MacOS the EULA states you can't run it on anything but Apple
| hardware (thanks, Apple).
|
| If only their EULAs weren't so restrictive, it would be easy to
| spin up a build+test cluster for your apps for all platforms.
| Sucks that developing cross-platform is now legally/financially
| more troublesome than it is technically.
| comprev wrote:
| A handful of PCs running pirated Win2k licenses and Small
| Business Server 2003, hooked up via an eBay Cisco switch was the
| start of my career in Ops. I learned so much back then!
| rado wrote:
| Truly great OS. The pinnacle. Rock solid. Just look at that
| perfectly consistent UI. Everything afterwards is bloat and UI
| BS.
| noja wrote:
| I love the speed and simplicity of Win2k.
|
| What would HNers change in Win2k to bring it up-to-date? What's
| must have features does Windows 11 have that Win2k does not?
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| Modern desktops do multi-display and scaling better. Perhaps
| also GPU-work, however I greatly prioritize low latency over
| any fancy windowing.
|
| I wonder how the Windows 2000 desktop latency was? I remember
| it felt really snappy.
| pengaru wrote:
| Is booting windows in a vm something noteworthy in 2021?
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| I was searching for your question. I agree I don't know why
| this is in the first page... Maybe some people [1] are right
| when they say most of HN's audience is interested in business
| and technology, but not technical themselves.
|
| [1] http://n-gate.com/
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What happened to ngate? Have they ever been on a long hiatus
| like this one before?
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think people don't realise that Docker isn't really doing
| anything here.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| yea I don't get it... I have docker/qemu images for every
| windows version ever made, but I don't go parading them around
| to everyone. they're so simple to make anyways.
| nix23 wrote:
| I miss W2K :(
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Why?
|
| >> "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
| could, that they didn't stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian
| Malcolm
|
| I like this "Why?" "Why not?" attitude. Surprised though that a
| whole operating system, kernel and all, is dockerised though,
| especially that the impression of Docker to me is that it is
| normally everything but the kernel.
|
| Edit: I didn't read the QEMU in the name. I won't be surprised if
| this is a full software emulation though (instead of the now-
| common hardware-assisted virtualisation).
| als0 wrote:
| KVM is being passed to the Docker container, so it is using
| hardware-assisted virtualisation. Of course, certain things
| like the BIOS and peripherals will be fully handled in software
| by QEMU.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I thought that quote was so funny, I actually laughed out loud.
| I've definitely dug into technical challenges way deeper than
| necessary merely because it felt like a challenge and I wanted
| the feeling of beating/solving it.
| flatiron wrote:
| You could spend 15 minutes and modify the dockerfile to
| accept an autoboot executable and it would actually be
| useful!
| tatref wrote:
| Seems like this runs qemu inside the container.
| xaduha wrote:
| Yeah, pretty run-of-the-mill as far as similar projects go.
| Maybe a tad over-complicated to put it mildly.
|
| I've done something like this except not with KVM, but with
| headless Xorg+PulseAudio+Wine to have Hearthstone with sound
| over RDP.
|
| Did it run? Yes. Did it run like crap? Absolutely!
| FpUser wrote:
| Windows 2000 running in VM in Docker. Might as well skip the
| docker stage as it does not really add anything.
|
| Otherwise sweet memories. I used Win 2K as a workstation at the
| time. Loved it.
| [deleted]
| NabiDev wrote:
| But, Why?
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Because a project like this is the exact ethos that HN thrives
| on and the niche that 'Hacker' community exists to fill.
|
| I would love to see 100 of these a day.
| crehn wrote:
| Why not? It's fun.
| jagger27 wrote:
| I like to boot up old operating systems for UI design
| inspiration. Software really felt different back then. This
| sort of "pointless" project saves me a lot of hassle!
| IshKebab wrote:
| Is it that hard to do directly using QEMU?
| https://wiki.qemu.org/Windows2000
| z3t4 wrote:
| so it runs Ubuntu which fires up a virtual machine that runs
| windows. Why not run the VM directly without Ubuntu !? (and
| without Docker)
| hectorm wrote:
| You can of course set this up manually outside Docker, I
| provide this image so that you can easily have a preconfigured
| installation with VNC, RDP, bind shell and a Samba server.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Docker can run Win 2000, but older versions of Win 10 can't run
| Docker. There must be some irony here.
| tiernano wrote:
| Someone posted that 2k was the last nt edition without bloat... I
| think that was wrong (plus comment seems to have been deleted).
| 2k3, 2k8, 2k8r2, 2k12, 2k12r2, 2016 and 2019 all have no bloat or
| random crap... 2022 is mostly the same.... And comes with
| (chrome) edge too... Since the xp days I have always skipped the
| home/pro/workstation editions of windows and used server... Gave
| more features I needed, like hyper v, and felt more stable...
| Plus less crap...
| pacifika wrote:
| How is the compatibility with everyday applications?
| tiernano wrote:
| I haven't found any app that doesn't run on windows server
| that does on win desktop. I don't game, so never tired
| games... Wsl on 2019 was limited to v1, but think that got to
| v2 on 2022... Docker works, all dev tools work... Yea, all
| good!
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The issue is hardware. Most gaming hardware does not have
| server qualified drivers which may mean you can't use your
| hardware. Issues normally with WiFi cards and GPUs, most
| other things will work. No chance of running Windows Server
| on a laptop.
|
| The qualification is to prevent random crashes; it's not
| really needed, but it is hard to impossible to disable last
| I checked.
| tiernano wrote:
| Never had an issue with drivers... Was running nvidia
| cards and the standard nvidia drivers worked without
| issue... Also did manage to run win2003 on a laptop at
| one stage... Can't remember if drivers for wifi worked...
| The machine was hard wired in...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Everything after 2008R2 is significantly more bloated. I still
| interact with a few 2008R2 VMs at work and every time I log on
| to one I'm actually a little freaked out by how much more
| responsive it is.
| snazz wrote:
| I've also used Server 2019 on a desktop and it's pretty solid.
| A couple of pointers:
|
| - If you're considered a "student" by any means, you probably
| have access to an institutional email address that gives you
| access to Azure for Students. Through the Azure site, you can
| download an ISO for any LTSC edition of Windows Server
| (including Datacenter) and get a valid license key. This is a
| great way of saving money and avoiding sketchy key resellers.
|
| - Driver support is basic out of the box. The PC I used for
| Windows Server has an AMD graphics card, which normally comes
| with GPU drivers as soon as you install a consumer version of
| Windows. This doesn't happen automatically with Windows Server.
| When you download the GPU drivers from AMD, the installer will
| detect that you're running Server and error out, but you can
| tell Device Manager to install drivers from your C:\AMD folder
| and it will work fine (minus the fancy GUI control panel, which
| is arguably bloatware itself). Something similar should work
| for Nvidia cards.
|
| - Normal Win32 applications work great (I used Chrome, Office,
| IntelliJ, and a number of other everyday apps and they worked
| perfectly). However, you don't have access to the Windows
| Store, so installing UWP applications that aren't part of the
| base system (i.e., anything other than Settings, pretty much)
| is a pain.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Driver support isn't a given. There's lots of normal hardware
| which may never be server qualified. You can make a desktop
| that will run server fine, but it's kind of a Linux
| situation; you can't pick random parts and assume they'll
| work.
| chronogram wrote:
| I have yet to run into this problem, do you have any
| examples? I don't have any exotic hardware outside of the
| ThinkPad X220 dock which nowadays only works with Linux.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Thinkpads are a good bet for Linux compatibility because
| they are very popular with Red Hat and Ubuntu kernel
| developers. They'll do whatever it takes to make Linux
| run well on their machines.
| chronogram wrote:
| In a sense yes, but like my current Latitude 7xxx and
| those original Thinkpad Xxx it's just paying for a
| premium product and getting premium hardware and premium
| chips inside so I get hardware that staffs a development
| team that makes good drivers and that has manufacturers
| that staffs a development team good enough to put it on
| fwupd.
| geofft wrote:
| There's a fairly active community of folks gaming on the
| major public cloud providers, which only provide images for
| Windows Server, but games work just fine. In fact, NVIDIA
| provides an official gaming AMI based on Windows Server:
| https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-xrrke4dwueqv6
| kreeben wrote:
| Way back in the day I played Max Payne on a Win2k server and
| it worked great. Couldn't make the OS crash even if I tried.
| Best MS OS ever.
| Crontab wrote:
| I was always a fan of NT4, personally speaking.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Me too. While I think 2k was peak when it comes to a usable,
| lean desktop os, to me, NT4 was the first Windows NT that was
| "complete" and usable, the "we're done" milestone. Can't find
| the proper expression for it really, but it just has a
| special place in my IT heart.
| rbanffy wrote:
| NT4 blue screened on me when I was demoing IIS process
| separation. It was an auditorium full of very technical
| people, who mostly already knew me from one place or another.
| Fortunately, I was quite good as a stand up comedian.
|
| I felt vindicated when 98 did the same with billg at COMDEX
| (or was it CES?).
|
| NT4 had an architectural flaw that was introduced to make
| some people happier - many device drivers started to run in
| kernel space and their bugs were able to crash the whole
| machine, unlike 3.5, where a crashed driver could be
| reloaded.
| gfodor wrote:
| Best MS OS, they should have just maintained this for the last 20
| years.
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| This brings back great memories. Windows 2000 sparked my interest
| in computing.
|
| I was in elementary school and was obsessed with the 'Log on to'
| dropdown box on Windows login screens, and how you could use the
| same credentials on any PC.
|
| Somehow I managed to salvage an old computer and source myself a
| copy of the ISO and managed to setup an ADDS domain controller
| and join my mother's laptop to the domain.
|
| I went and asked the IT guy for advice on doing a multi forest
| configuration and I think it blew his mind. Why did I want multi
| forest? Guess I was preoccupied with whether or not I could, and
| didn't stop to think if I should. : )
| xattt wrote:
| Some of the most interesting pursuits in my "youthful"
| computing experience was looking into how to make things work
| that were meant for large-scape deployment work for personal
| use. I had a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop (circa 2003, RIP 1 year
| after due to bad soldering on the mainboard) which came with a
| Smart Card reader. At one point in time, the holy grail would
| have been making it work for password-less login on Windows XP.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Why did I want multi forest? Guess I was preoccupied with
| whether or not I could, and didn't stop to think if I should. :
| )
|
| Good news; you belong on Hacker News:)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Are we sure that's "good" news?
| djbusby wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| One of us, one of us, gabba gabba hey!
| cagataygurturk wrote:
| I am happy to hear that I was not the only nerd interested in
| enterprise software during middle school years. You know, while
| my friends were waiting the latest games, I would wait for the
| next Service Pack of Windows 2000. Constant exploration of AD,
| firewalls, networking, purely for curiosity and fun.
|
| Now those friends ask me how to get an IT job by the way :)
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Same here, I experimented with win 2k server as a domain
| controller and also installed Red Hat with Samba for doing
| mostly the same. Not because it was useful at home, but because
| 13 year old me wanted to underhand how it worked and had lots
| of time.
|
| The windows domain thing was a bit magical, but in the end an
| old PC with Red Hat and later Debian became a useful home
| server and router. I think I was quite lucky that my father had
| a background in IT so we did some things together in early
| Linux exploration. He hadn't used it before either but did use
| Unix in the early days.
| [deleted]
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Yup. This exact thing pretty much lead me to a network admin
| job during college. I had friends that got hired as admins in
| high school, by the high school, and I was super jealous. The
| pay sucked but it was a humble start to my career in tech.
|
| God now I am getting nostalgic for the huge network drive
| shared by the entire school. That shit was _wild_
| tsumnia wrote:
| > This brings back great memories. Windows 2000 sparked my
| interest in computing.
|
| Same, I remember being so resistant to porting to XP. AND funny
| enough, when I finally made the shift, it was the first time I
| ever wiped a hard drive, losing all my precious pirated MP3s.
| mikehollinger wrote:
| > Somehow I managed to salvage an old computer and source
| myself a copy of the ISO and managed to setup an ADDS domain
| controller and join my mother's laptop to the domain.
|
| Ha. That brings me back as well. I installed (pirated) Windows
| 2000 Advanced Server onto a Compaq that I won. I ran my own
| active directory which let me share printers to my mom's laptop
| (an iBook at the time), and our other PC. It was total
| overkill, but I deeply enjoyed tinkering with each and every
| setting to see what it did, discovering the registry and seeing
| what all of -that- did, breaking things, fixing things... and
| now here we are. :-)
|
| I miss that feeling. :-)
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| Eerily similar to me! Minus winning the computer, would have
| begged someone instead!
|
| My mother wasn't very happy with my experiments with group
| policy, which included adding the secure attention sequence
| (control alt delete) to her login screen. And various
| lockdowns of the start menu and Windows Explorer :)
|
| Overkill is an apt description.
| unglaublich wrote:
| In general: https://hub.docker.com/r/tianon/qemu
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