[HN Gopher] Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2025-04-11 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | You can't say WDDM wasn't a step forward... Being able to crash
       | your video drivers and reboot them without crashing and rebooting
       | your whole machines made Windows a lot more stable.
        
         | bgirard wrote:
         | Peak doesn't mean that it's a monotonic decline without any
         | steps forward.
        
       | markus_zhang wrote:
       | TBF XP and 7 are both decent. Everything went down after those,
       | including the Ads, the update, etc.
       | 
       | I didn't upgrade to 10 until I purchased a used Dell laptop
       | (which includes 10 prof) a few years ago, and I never used 11 and
       | hopefully never needs to use it.
        
         | Clubber wrote:
         | I believe XP was when Windows Activation started, so that's a
         | pretty big negative for me. Other than that, XP, 7 and 10 were
         | pretty good, although 10 introduced advertisements if I'm not
         | mistaken.
        
           | milesvp wrote:
           | XP also inexplicably required at least twice the ram as 2000.
           | when XP came out that was a significant cost, and I
           | personally was able to salvage many laptops at the time by
           | downgrading them from XP. Eventually XP became the default
           | for me because ram got a lot cheaper and the service packs
           | and driver support made it more viable.
           | 
           | But then, tangentially, I started using ubuntu at work, in a
           | sort of misguided belief it would make me a better sysadmin,
           | and it was only a matter of time before I couldn't stand
           | windows at home as well.
           | 
           | I thought win7 was pretty solid, though I didn't upgrade
           | until well after win8 was shipping. But lucky for me, proton
           | finally got really good, and that allowed me to basically
           | skip win10+. Now it's only for the rare tool that I even boot
           | into my windows partitions anymore. When I do, being
           | bombarded by random attention grabbers is completely jarring
           | and I want flee as fast as I can.
        
         | SirMaster wrote:
         | If you think 11 is bad, I bet 12 will be even worse. When 10 is
         | unsupported and 12 is out, you will probably be reaching for 11
         | by then...
        
           | markus_zhang wrote:
           | I'm already moving into Linux for one of my laptops. If the
           | drivers and desktop experiences are good enough (or bad
           | enough in Windows) I might move 100% to Linux in a few years.
        
             | SirMaster wrote:
             | Fair enough! I am probably just projecting my own probable
             | fate haha.
        
             | specproc wrote:
             | I made the jump a few years ago and the experience has been
             | largely great. Lots of learning, which has been half the
             | fun, and no goddamn ads in my start menu.
             | 
             | Totally usable as a daily driver, provided you don't need
             | Windows only software. The year of linux on the desktop was
             | probably about 2020.
        
               | wing-_-nuts wrote:
               | Steam's proton has made gaming on linux _astoundingly_
               | good. The only thing that still needs improvement is mod
               | support, as mod managers, game downgraders, bin patchers,
               | some more involved mods involve little utilities written
               | for windows that are not easily runnable on linux.
               | 
               | It is slowly improving though. The steam deck has moved
               | things forward in leaps and bounds.
        
               | SirMaster wrote:
               | It seems like basically all the games I play aren't
               | supported on this unfortunately and it feels like they
               | never will be.
        
               | DrillShopper wrote:
               | Even then, a VM can get you really far.
               | 
               | If you need direct hardware access (like for gaming) then
               | you can run a passthrough VM. You can do that even on a
               | single video card system.
        
               | Teever wrote:
               | > You can do that even on a single video card system.
               | 
               | Like with consumer video cards? Tell me more.
        
         | cosmic_cheese wrote:
         | I love 2000 and XP but 7 has a special spot for me because it's
         | a "modern" Windows (supporting proper alpha blending in its
         | theme drawing and such) without the various problems that 8 and
         | newer bring. I have an old laptop with it installed and booting
         | it up is honestly refreshing. Its visual style is a little
         | dated feeling but not that much.
        
           | vintagedave wrote:
           | I like it for the same reasons. I just wish it supported high
           | DPI. It, and Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion era OSX, at high
           | res would be peak desktop usability.
        
         | kevinpacheco wrote:
         | If you intend to stick with Windows for the long haul, you will
         | have to upgrade eventually. I hung on to 7 for a while, but
         | several apps stopped getting updates: iTunes, the Spotify
         | desktop client, Google Chrome, and even Firefox dropped
         | support. I was using iTunes to download podcasts, which after a
         | while became impossible with some feeds because I would get an
         | SSL error each time on that old version. For 10, the ESU period
         | ends one year after 10/14/25 for consumers and three years for
         | organizations. It's possible that apps will continue to receive
         | updates during that time.
        
           | markus_zhang wrote:
           | Thanks, yeah, I figured. Maybe I can move to Linux in 5
           | years. I'm already using Linux for my dev laptop.
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | Windows 10 LTSC IOT has all the bloat and spyware stripped out
         | and will get security updates for years. It's super lean.
         | 
         | Will third party apps keep installing updates ? Hard to say.
         | The adobe suite already refuses to install the latest version
         | on any LTSC (for no reason other than they don't want to
         | support it - it works great) so who knows.
         | 
         | Suspect my next OS will be Windows 12 LTSC if I can hold out
         | long enough - every other Windows version alway seems to be
         | experimental crap going all the way back to ME (millennium
         | edition)
        
           | jiggawatts wrote:
           | I tell customers that they should use LTSC for things like
           | virtual desktops. You need stability, such as it not randomly
           | deciding to install a 4 GB game like Minecraft for every user
           | as a "critical update".
           | 
           | Microsoft joined a meeting and told the customer that they
           | don't agree with my recommendations because they want to make
           | sure all users get the "latest experiences".
           | 
           | There's your problem right there: pushing your own KPIs
           | instead of what's best for the customers.
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | Come try out Fedora, or whatever flavor of Linux you want.
         | 
         | It's surprisingly fantastic for almost all modern computing
         | tasks. Yes, it's true, some software won't work, such as Adobe
         | Photoshop, but most people aren't using software like that
         | anyway. For gaming, I'd say we're close to 99% of games
         | supporting Linux out of the box on Steam. The few left that
         | still don't choose not to via kernel-level anti-cheat or
         | forgetting to toggle a checkbox for Linux support
         | (EasyAntiCheat and friends).
         | 
         | The point is, it "Just Works" for darn near everything these
         | days and is a very pleasant experience. Try it out!
        
           | supportengineer wrote:
           | The best Linux I have ever seen is Linux Mint. I tried it out
           | because I needed to do something with firewire, but all of
           | the other Linux kernels had dropped firewire, and it was the
           | only one left that still supported it. I found it to be
           | intuitive and friendly and everything just worked.
        
       | 2809 wrote:
       | 2K 100% was the best Windows. The NT benefits with none of the XP
       | downsides.
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | I preferred XP/2003 in classic UI mode. Lots of little
         | improvements.
         | 
         | If you could get winterm on it and recent Firefox it'd be quite
         | usable. Perhaps ReactOS one day.
        
           | gjvc wrote:
           | and 64-bit (x86_64 not IA64), which no version Windows 2000
           | was AFAIK
           | 
           | Windows 7 with classic UI is probably the most-recent decent
           | version.
        
           | antod wrote:
           | yeah while 2K was their best ever single breakthrough
           | improvement, it was a v1 and XP/2003 in classic mode was a
           | more refined 2K eg more drivers and better plug and play,
           | more graphics compatibility. And 2003 Active Directory had a
           | number of quality of life improvements.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | NT3.5 was perhaps the most stable version I ever used. NT4
             | brought the new UI, making NT5 aka 2k not the first version
             | of the 95+ UI.
        
         | wing-_-nuts wrote:
         | Hard agree. The windows 2000 UI was peak UX and each step since
         | has been a downgrade, (with a possible exception of windows 7)
        
         | ThrowawayB7 wrote:
         | Windows Server 2003 was the best Windows by far. All of the
         | good parts of NT/2000 with any parts of XP available when you
         | needed them.
        
           | amlib wrote:
           | Except that AFAIK 2003 kernel was different enough that a few
           | apps and specially games refused to run, properly or at all,
           | compared to XP.
        
           | icedchai wrote:
           | I agree here. I ran server 2003 on my early 2000's desktop
           | for a while.
        
         | jimt1234 wrote:
         | Agree. My company ran a bunch of web servers on Windows 2K and
         | Apache web server, because management was afraid of Linux
         | (general FUD and Microsoft's lawsuit threats) and the
         | engineering staff was afraid of Microsoft's IIS web server
         | (security dumpster fire at the time). It was actually a pretty
         | good system, super easy to maintain.
        
         | yelling_cat wrote:
         | Definitely. If 2K supported ClearType I would have stuck with
         | it on my personal machines for another half a decade.
        
         | tomwheeler wrote:
         | Perfectly stated. It was more stable and had better UX than
         | NT4, but didn't have all the unwanted anti-features that came
         | in later versions of Windows. It was the last version of
         | Windows that didn't get in my way.
        
       | debian3 wrote:
       | I don't know why they always alternate a good with a bad release.
       | Technically Windows 12 should be good.
        
         | dlachausse wrote:
         | People always say that, but it's not really been completely
         | true.
         | 
         | < 3.1 Bad
         | 
         | 3.1 Good
         | 
         | 3.11 WfW Good
         | 
         | NT 3.5 Okay
         | 
         | 95 Good
         | 
         | NT 4.0 Good
         | 
         | 98 Good
         | 
         | Me Bad
         | 
         | 2000 Good
         | 
         | XP Good
         | 
         | Vista Bad
         | 
         | 7 Good
         | 
         | 8 Bad
         | 
         | 8.1 Okay
         | 
         | 10 Good
         | 
         | 11 Bad
         | 
         | There just really isn't a pattern to it.
        
           | NikkiA wrote:
           | The only 'bad' thing about Vista was it's change (and thus
           | deprecation of many drivers) of driver model. Once tweaked
           | and with good native drivers it was the first good 64bit
           | windows - far more reliable than XP64. At least until 7 came
           | out.
        
           | acheron wrote:
           | Windows 3.0 was good. 3.1 was a minor improvement.
        
           | karmakaze wrote:
           | NT 3.51 Best
           | 
           | These are also mixing two separate streams: Win3.x/9x/ME and
           | NT+
        
           | tonyedgecombe wrote:
           | >95 Good
           | 
           | That's arguable, I thought it was poor at the time.
        
             | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
             | Windows users have low expectations. I still have PTSD from
             | all the problems 9x caused me.
        
             | dlachausse wrote:
             | On well supported hardware 95 was a major upgrade. The
             | Start menu, long file names, preemptive multitasking, plug
             | and play hardware, and Direct X gaming support. In many
             | ways it even surpassed MacOS at the time.
        
           | hyperman1 wrote:
           | When Win10 started, it was clearly Bad. No good reason for
           | updates, invasive privacy-breaking telemetry, updates at
           | random moments of the day, and everything was a little
           | different but nothing was better. People flat out refused to
           | upgrade when it was given for free. Microsoft had to force it
           | trough windows update, and did multiple rounds of breaking
           | software people explicitly installed to block the upgrade.
           | 
           | When did it become good? WSL and DirectX 12 were real
           | changes, but all in all, my impression is that the user has
           | been frog boiled over the years, with 2K,XP and 7 becoming
           | distant memories.
        
             | supportengineer wrote:
             | I remember that too. Microsoft was more aggressive and
             | hostile towards the user than ever before.
        
           | nobleach wrote:
           | XP was the last that I really REALLY used. I've had Windows 7
           | (on my work machine that I didn't use) and I have a Windows
           | 10 machine that I boot from time to time when I want to mess
           | with recording gear. But I kinda fell into "they're all bad,
           | I was just used to them".
           | 
           | I'll give my prime example. I used to know Device
           | Manager/Control Panel SO well. I could just get things done.
           | Now I have to hunt around forever to do any sort of hardware
           | related task. In their attempt to make it "so easy, even your
           | grandma could use it" they've alienated power users. My
           | grandma still has to call me to help her attach a printer...
           | but now I have to say, "I dunno... let me watch a YouTube
           | video and pray that it matches the sub-version that you're
           | using".
        
         | NikkiA wrote:
         | Win 11 and Vista have been unfairly maligned, with some minor
         | tweaks (and start11) both are solid performant windows
         | releases.
        
           | znpy wrote:
           | Windows Vista was essentially unusable on release unless you
           | had very high-end hardware.
           | 
           | A couple of weeks after release the first step after getting
           | a new computer was changed from "downloading firefox" to
           | "downgrade to windows xp". Unironically, many people did
           | that.
        
             | NikkiA wrote:
             | And that unusuability was mostly due to the driver model
             | change, once native Vista drivers appeared it performed
             | better than XP/XP64 unless you were running old video
             | hardware that couldn't handle aero - in which case you were
             | still better off running Vista with the classic UI,
             | although that did entail forgoing the Luna styling.
        
           | dlachausse wrote:
           | Windows 11 is the only version of Windows I've used where the
           | taskbar routinely crashes on login and refuses to load.
        
           | mystified5016 wrote:
           | I think the vista hate is well earned. Remember when
           | Microsoft had to trick users into trying it by calling it
           | 'Mojave' instead?
        
             | olyjohn wrote:
             | Also the unending and relentless UAC prompts.
        
               | tomwheeler wrote:
               | It felt like malicious compliance. Oh, you want security?
               | OK, here you go, hope you choke on it.
        
           | bigstrat2003 wrote:
           | Vista was indeed fine. I used it for many years and had nary
           | a problem with it. The problem with 11 isn't the core
           | (everyone seems to agree that is fine), it's that Microsoft
           | insists on putting ads and other user-hostile BS in.
        
             | Modified3019 wrote:
             | I basically skipped windows XP entirely, only seeing it on
             | other people's computers.
             | 
             | I staying on a thinkpad R31 with win2k until I got a R61
             | (4gb ram) with vista on it several months after vista's
             | release. At that point it seemed like driver and other
             | early teething had been worked out, so my experience was
             | pretty positive.
             | 
             | When I eventually moved to win7 I didn't notice any real
             | difference.
        
         | ruined wrote:
         | they should've just skipped 11 like they skipped 9
        
           | omoikane wrote:
           | The story I heard[1] was that Microsoft skipped 9 because
           | people used to check for "Windows 9" prefix string to
           | identify 95 and 98:
           | if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))         { /* 95 and 98 */
           | } else {
           | 
           | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/comme
           | nt/...
        
         | SirMaster wrote:
         | It feels like Windows 12 will be riddled with AI stuff nobody
         | wants and ads, and forced to be online and connected to
         | Microsoft in some way.
        
       | gigel82 wrote:
       | Nostalgically, yes, Windows 2000 was amazing. At the time of
       | launch, on period hardware, it was the fastest and most
       | lightweight OS released by Microsoft. And looking back, I always
       | appreciate that I can look in Task Manager and immediately
       | recognize all of the processes by name.
       | 
       | Windows 7 (except for the last few updates that introduced
       | telemetry and ads) comes in as a close second. But everything
       | after is just bloated crapware.
        
         | dlachausse wrote:
         | The only bad things I remember about Windows 2000 are that some
         | software written for Windows 3.x and 9x had compatibility
         | issues and it took an eternity to boot up. It was go take a
         | coffee break as soon as you turn your computer on for the day
         | bad.
        
           | sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
           | IIRC, Win2K would wait for most / all service startups to
           | complete before showing the login prompt. XP and later would
           | allow login to occur while many services were still starting
           | up.
           | 
           | It's a tradeoff. A Win2K system was pretty responsive when
           | you log in after a reboot/startup, but you've got to wait for
           | that experience. In the days of spinning disks and single
           | core CPUs, you had to fight those still-starting services for
           | resources, making the first several minutes of XP usage
           | painful.
        
             | olyjohn wrote:
             | Win2k also had the smoothest mouse movements that I had
             | ever seen. If you had a PS/2 Mouse, you could turn up the
             | sample rate up to the max. Dragging windows looked
             | incredible. Even my Mac to this day with a fancy brand new
             | 4k display can't match it. My mouse still looks blurry as
             | it moves across the screen.
        
             | keyringlight wrote:
             | I remember using the BootVis tool (IIRC was an early part
             | of what would be the performance toolkit) to profile the
             | startup process, and then you could it to optimize the
             | location of data loaded from HDDs to reduce the seeking
             | required. Also back when PATA was still in use depending on
             | your motherboard I seem to remember making sure windows
             | wouldn't try to autodetect link speed on unused attachments
             | as that could take ages trying to find something that
             | wasn't there.
        
           | antod wrote:
           | I used the NT 5 betas for a while, and loved alerts not
           | stealing focus. But that came back in the released W2K, and I
           | remember being slightly annoyed by it.
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | It was anything but lightweight on a Pentium 90 or Pro, or
         | whatever was common at the time. Really needed to upgrade to
         | 16MB of RAM (lol) which was expensive at the time. Why only
         | business and not normal folks used it.
        
       | tonyedgecombe wrote:
       | I don't know whether Windows is for corporate desktops,
       | enterprise servers, PC manufacturers, Azure, home users or
       | advertisers. It certainly doesn't feel like it is the right
       | product for me anymore.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | I think I am not the only one who memorized this: _FCKGW-
       | RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8_
        
         | SirFatty wrote:
         | Raises hand: I always remembered the first series of numbers as
         | f*ck GW (as in Bush).
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | I always heard it as FuCK GateWay (the PC maker)
        
       | dehrmann wrote:
       | It's a shame ReactOS never got mature enough to be a serious
       | competitor. If it had modern app and hidpi support but was suck
       | in a 2000-era UI and didn't have feature bloat, it could be a
       | great daily driver.
        
         | snvzz wrote:
         | ReactOS is not dead though. They just made a release.
         | 
         | And it has the 2000-era UI and the modern app support.
         | 
         | It's just dragging on other things, such as SMP and 64bit. But
         | development focus seems to actually be focused on precisely
         | these two.
        
       | wolpoli wrote:
       | In the 90s, Windows was simple enough that I was able to read
       | tech articles and understand a lot of what is going on inside, up
       | to the point of Windows 2000, and to a certain extend, Windows
       | XP. That completely changed with Vista/7 where I can no longer
       | recognize the name of many processes that are running or
       | understand what actions/situations make my computer lag.
       | 
       | Nowasdays, even through I don't worry anymore as Windows 11 is
       | happy as long as you give it a quadcore cpu, ram, and an SSD,
       | sometimes I still wonder why it writes 40GB to the SSD everyday.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | There are software and scripts to decrapify Windows 11. After
       | uninstalling and stopping everything that's not needed and making
       | start menu and the bar behave like in Windows 7, it's quite
       | decent.
       | 
       | This adds maybe 20 more minutes to install time but it's worth.
        
         | bigstrat2003 wrote:
         | I don't think anyone doubts that you can do this. It's more
         | that I refuse to pay for an OS which needs to be de-crapped in
         | the first place. If Microsoft can't make something which
         | prioritizes my needs above their corporate metrics, then they
         | don't get my money.
        
           | Melatonic wrote:
           | LTSC is likely what you want then (needs to be purchased
           | through a VAR but it's not hard to find a smaller one that
           | will sell single copies)
        
             | abhiyerra wrote:
             | My company has access to these licenses to resell through
             | our distributor Pax8. Contact me (profile) if interested.
        
         | psyclobe wrote:
         | Unfortunately all that crap eventually comes back. Microsoft
         | likes to reset settings... I'm pretty sure I must've spent the
         | majority of my youth setting the same explorer settings over
         | and over and over again ... And it never ends with any custom
         | setup you do; given enough time it reverts.
        
       | sitzkrieg wrote:
       | the point of an OS is to be out of the way, w2k was both the best
       | and last windows to do so
        
         | keyringlight wrote:
         | The way I see it (and similarly with browsers now) is that the
         | OS is a venue providing a stage for others to perform on, they
         | provide the facilities so every act doesn't need to build their
         | own venue. Most of the time people don't visit/use a venue for
         | the sake of it.
        
       | jmclnx wrote:
       | I only used Windows at work and I was very happy with NT, when XP
       | came out I was able to go to Linux (RHEL) for my workstation at
       | work.
       | 
       | I never had Windows 2000, but lots of people said it worked great
       | compared to the other Windows systems.
       | 
       | But really for me, the best M/S setup was DOS with Desqview.
        
       | hcarvalhoalves wrote:
       | The fact Windows 2000 was peak Microsoft and OS X 10.5 was peak
       | Apple is proof that the golden age of software is way behind us,
       | unfortunately.
        
         | TMWNN wrote:
         | I thought 10.6 Snow Leopard is peak OS X?
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | 10.6.8
           | 
           | Still kicking myself for not getting an Axiotron Modbook
           | running Snow Leopard.
        
       | justin66 wrote:
       | It's the Register and therefore too worthless to get worked up
       | about, but their naming a _server_ version of Windows as peak
       | anything is an indication that they probably just polled a few
       | drunks at a bar.
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | Are we just doing OSes or are we doing the entire conglomerate?
       | 
       | #1 Windows 7
       | 
       | #2 DOS 5.0
       | 
       | #3 Office 2003
       | 
       | #4 Windows 95
       | 
       | Honorable mentions: IntelliMouse Optical and XBOX (2001)
        
       | yankcrime wrote:
       | A modern reimagining of Windows 2000's UI - professional, simple,
       | uncluttered, focused, no cheapening of the whole experience with
       | adverts in a thinly-veiled attempt to funnel you into Bing - with
       | modern underpinnings and features such as WSL2 would have me
       | running back towards Microsoft with open arms and cheque book in
       | hand.
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | Not an obligation, but ReactOS exists and needs help:
         | 
         | https://reactos.org/donate/
         | 
         | Surprisingly close. I recently tried its package manager and
         | installed a recent Python! So better than the original XP-era
         | Windows in some respects.
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | There are Linux distros that meet your description (no need for
         | WSL2 either!). I am guessing you're not running towards them
         | with open arms and cheque book in hand ... or maybe you already
         | ran to Linux and are just nostalgic about going back to
         | Microsoft ... ?
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | If MS stripped *ALL* ads and bloatware (telemetry for calc??) out
       | of Win 11 and restored the traditional UI of start menu +
       | desktop, it would be fairly good overall. Certainly within their
       | top 5. They really are close to peak yet again _but_ cannot
       | realize they are striving to make it worse.
        
         | Spooky23 wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | jmward01 wrote:
       | I'm just surprised that it feels like very little deep innovation
       | in the OS world has happened since windows 2k. 3.11 brought
       | networking in. 95 brought true multitasking to the masses and 2k
       | brought multi-processing/multi-user (yes, NT3.1 had it, but 2k is
       | where most normal users jumped in). And, yes, I know these things
       | existed in other OSes out there but I think of these as the mass
       | market kick offs for them. In general I just don't see anything
       | but evolutionary improvements (and back-sliding) in the OS world
       | beyond this time. I had really hoped that true cloud OSes would
       | have become the norm by now (I really want my whole house
       | connected as a seamless collection of stuff) or other major
       | advances like killing filesystems (I think of these as backdoor
       | undocumented APIs). Have we really figured out what an OS is
       | supposed to be or are we just stuck in a rut?
       | 
       | [edit] 3.1 should have been windows for worgkroups 3.11
        
         | jmward01 wrote:
         | Looks like there is some negative feelings towards this
         | comment. So if we aren't in a rut, what are the big
         | revolutionary OS advancements that have happened since this
         | time?
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | This is a forum populated almost entirely by people whose
           | day-to-day existence depends upon building the new stuff that
           | sucks :) (mine too!)
        
         | codr7 wrote:
         | Definitely stuck. We found a pretty strong optimum that no one
         | has been willing to venture outside, strong enough to keep
         | selling and that seems to be all that matters these days.
        
       | turtlebits wrote:
       | This brings back a lot of nostalgia and I wholeheartedly agree.
       | Back then I ran Windows 2000 server beta 2 on a dual proc system
       | with P2-300s. It was rock solid.
        
       | zamadatix wrote:
       | For folks that pick Windows 2000 Server, why not Server 2003? Is
       | it just because by then NT had XP out as the "Windows for Home
       | Users" and people didn't use Server 2003 as much or were there
       | changes about it folks hated for some reason? To me it always
       | seemed to bring so many more features/capabilities without
       | trashing the classic UI.
        
         | Spooky23 wrote:
         | Remember that it also introduced Active Directory. I helped
         | build out a global enterprise network that was consistent and
         | supported the same way, with like a quarter million users and
         | tbh, it pretty much worked flawlessly.
         | 
         | Of course that innocence was lost with Welchia and other
         | issues, but Windows 2000 made the year 1999 feel like ancient
         | history in 2001.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Agreed. Windows Server 2000 through Windows 7 were peak Microsoft
       | operating system.
       | 
       | By Windows 2000 Server, they finally had the architecture right,
       | and had flushed out most of the 16 bit legacy.
       | 
       | The big win with Windows 7 was that they finally figured out how
       | to make it stop crashing. There were two big fixes. First, the
       | Static Driver Verifier. This verified that kernel drivers
       | couldn't crash the rest of the kernel. First large scale
       | application of proof of correctness technology. Drivers could
       | still fail, but not overwrite other parts of the kernel. This put
       | a huge dent into driver-induced crashes.
       | 
       | Second was a dump classifier. Early machine learning. When the
       | system crashed, a dump was sent to Microsoft. The classifier
       | tried to bring similar dumps together, so one developer got a big
       | collection of similar crashes. When you have hundreds of dumps of
       | the same bug, locating the bug gets much easier.
       | 
       | Between both of those, the Blue Screen of Death mostly
       | disappeared.
        
         | ryao wrote:
         | Drivers can crash the rest of the kernel in Windows 7. People
         | playing games during the Windows 7 days should remember plenty
         | of blue screens citing either graphics drivers (mainly for
         | ATI/AMD graphics) or their kernel anticheat software. Second, a
         | "proof of correctness" has never been made for any kernel. Even
         | the seL4 guys do not call their proof a proof of correctness.
        
       | supportengineer wrote:
       | Windows 7 was my all-time favorite. I remember you could not use
       | it straight out of the box, there was a whole bunch of UI tweaks
       | that I would make right away. After that, it was perfect.
        
       | ryao wrote:
       | Microsoft never should have dropped Xenix to invent its own OS.
        
       | andromaton wrote:
       | [delayed]
        
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