Windows 10 only exists because of how much Windows 8 sucked.
Windows 7 also only exists because of how much Windows Vista sucked lol.
XP and 7 was Microsoft at their best. They'll never reach those heights ever again.
Windows 7 was the peak. everything since has been a decline.
Windows 7 was the first Windows OS that didnt require constant reboots, didnt require regular reformat/reinstalls to fix random over time slowdowns/degredation/crashes/etc.
Windows 7 had a relatively light weight, and very easy to use interface.
Windows 7 was the last Windows OS that you actually owned when you bought it.
Every OS after Windows 7 was centered on taking control and usability away from the owner/user.
iirc microsoft began going heavy on telemetry (and consequently cutting their QA and testing budget) at some point during Windows 7. That's why it went downhill after that (Windows 8 and after)
They had QA before?
Even Vista was ok, it was just pre-installed on computers that could barely run it and UAC was overtuned but it was solid with the later service packs.
Yea, vista was the ME problem all over again.
People running it on old hardware and old software wasn't written to use UAC yet.
Well, sort of, but it was SOLD on hardware that couldn't run it
Pre-installed with the craziest bloatware too. I had multiple come to me thinking there computers were hacked they had so much trash from the factory on them
The only thing that sucked about windows 8 was their decision to force mobile friendly UI on everyone. Seems to be reoccurring issue.
When I first got windows 10, I hated it. Then time went on and my hate flowered into a deep loathing. When it was time to say goodbye, I thought about all the times I hated that OS.
Don't worry if you still need to use windows, I have pleasant surprise for you when windows 12 will be out windows 11 will be perceived as better.
I hated windows 10 before windows 11 was out.
yup. Windows 10 made me switch to Linux. About twice a year, always a couple times a year, for whatever reason Windows 10 would essentially kill my wifi card on my laptop. reinstalling drivers didn't work, physically unplugging the card from the mobo and plugging it back in didn't work. nothing worked. the ONLY thing that would work? reinstalling the entire OS. I had to do this twice a year. they'd release some update and just nuke the wifi card.
So finally I decided to give Linux a go cause I had enough. been using Linux ever since. and the thing with Linux is that it made me fall back in love with using the computer again. with tinkering and customizing and everything. made me fall back in love with my development work because of the sheer ease of doing dev stuff on linux especially with NixOS. playing around with various configs and modules and what have you is fun. maintaining random packages is fun. hell even just maintaining my nixos git repo is fun. It's a blast.
Windows 10, the last "sane" Windows. Bruh, this is where the bullshit started.
"last sane windows left"
And the bullshit started a long time before that. I think people were complaining about win95 phoning home to MS.
No XP was where the bullshit started. I quit windows then.
2000 was the last sane (and maybe only) windows.
Why did did it start at XP? I'm too young to remember.
A few things that people seem to have forgotten over the years:
The "Fisher-Price" visual style fiasco. (People claiming XP's UI design choices were too unprofessional)
Extremely unstable on base release, with things only getting better after Service Pack 1.
Activation servers required to install the OS.
The start of Window's Customer Experience Improvement Program telemetry.
Integration of Windows Update into the OS, which re-enabled Microsoft defaults like Internet Explorer, after patches were complete.
The start of confusing SKUs: Home Edition, Professional Edition, Media Center Edition, and Professional x64 Edition which was confusingly a re-badged Server 2003.
I'm sure I am forgetting a lot more. It wasn't all sunshine and daisies like people seem to remember... but it was a lot better than now.
You got these right, and I wrote basically similar things.
But I had to reply because if you remember all of this, you might also remember seeing how long an XP machine could last on the internet before being patched enough.
It was crazy that you HAD to upgrade it offline, because it would be owned before you could even get it patched. At the time we saw 10 to 15 minutes tops before it was infected.
In any case, yes, XP was the start of all the things we hate today. Its interesting how much more push back there was back then: anti consumer advocates, government intervention, class action lawsuits, even the EU got their own version because they got involved.
Now everything is even worse, and only the consumers seem to be the ones complaining.
XP ruled idk what they're on about. Windows 8 really began the death knell of Windows IMO. A new UI people didnt want or like forced down your throat. They started their new hideous and confusing design language, which led to the truly abhorrent Windows 10 half-baked replacement for the control panel. Then the ads. Spyware baked in. Vibe coded start menu that takes 300ms to open. Sigh.
Sanity died with $(windows_version_i_grew_up_with)
Naw. I grew up with all the Windows, 7 was the last sane one.
Have to agree. Windows 10 LTSC was tolerable, but it still was pretty batshit with how they designed the settings menus. So many things were now tucked away and hidden, with the real settings you often needed being in Windows 7 settings windows that carried over, but virtually always hidden as normal hypertext links below a much larger windows 10 button that didn't actually do the thing you needed. The only real advantage of 10 was the inclusion of many drivers out of the box, updating a bit faster, and being able to swap the SSD between completely different computers without it freaking out and bluescreening.
Windows 7 was just an advanced Windows XP/2000, and for the most part was still very intuitive to use, with logically laid out settings menus.
Nowadays Linux has far surpassed Windows in ease of use and UX for normal settings with the mainstream desktop enviornments.
And what was up with 3 different styles of settings pages? There was the old MSC style, the more UI friendly pages and then the full-page, here's your phone on Windows, you need to reboot to get back to the desktop version where you have 2 buttons for all your network settings. Fucking infuriating.
It's just heinous now. I don't know how people handle it, I get fucking mad within 5 minutes of having to do anything technical on Windows now.
I grew up with 95/98, and still think 7 was the best one and it went downhill after real quick.
Praising windows 10 is just wild. (From someone who experienced 95 onward). I mean, it was alright. I think 7 was my favorite.
I've used everything from XP to 11. Win 7 was definitely, and by far, the most comfortable for me to use. 8 was hot garbage, 10 was tolerable, and 11 made me switch to Linux a week in.
I made the mistake of starting on 95, now I can't stand anything fancier than XFCE.
8 was pretty solid under the hood, but they really pushed that Metro interface, and even if you managed to disable it with something like Start8, it was still crippled by the tablet-first design on an OS that had like 2 tablets. And even with the tablets it sucked because lots of settings were still in the old control panel that required a mouse and keyboard.
If we'd had a Service Pack that just gave us the Win7 UI and the Win8 backend it could have been great.
Praise be to our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds!
i think that's miku, actually
Have you ever seen Linus and Miku in the same room at the same time? Hmmm
Windows 10 already had a ton of forced telemetry and more UI clutter than ever. It was a huge downgrade from Windows 7.
I'd rather use a Mac these days and I hate apple products.
Im loving Bazzite.
Except for the whole "now I have 6TB of SSDs that I can't figure out how to get rhe data off them without buying new hardware"
Are you sure you mounted the drives correctly?
I'm never sure of anything ever.
now I have 6TB of SSDs that I can't figure out how to get rhe data off them without buying new hardware
Are these drives completely full? If not you can likely split the partition 50% NTFS where your data resides and 50% EXT4 so that Linux distro’s can access them properly.
Move the data from the NTFS partition over to your new partition gradually, expand the EXT4 partition and shrink the NTFS one as you go.
NTFS partitions do work on Linux however you’ll experience permission issues and such which is why it’s generally not recommended for day-to-day use, Bazzite is such a beginner-targeted distro that they don’t want the blame put on them if you do something wrong and lose data.
They're full, but the stuff i want isn't large. I think. Honestly I can't remember if anything I want is really on the drives.
I never liked windows, windows 7 was the most tolerated one
Our family PC still has 8.1 (parents really don't like change and Firefox got security updates until recently). I think I'll upgrade it to 10 when I have time, the amount of debloat required to keep it sane is manageable as opposed to 11. Mom could handle mildly riced XFCE Linux with Firefox and our legal copy of Office 2007 under Wine but dad uses Total Commander and won't use anything other than drive letters.
A suggestion:
Dual boot!
Call the Linux partition "Mom's speed machine" and the old Windows 8.1 partition "Dad's slow shitheap".
Make the Linux partition as easy and intuitive to use as possible. Let the Windows partition rot.
I'm sure dad will come around pretty soon when he sees mom's sleek setup and he gets a pang of jealousy.
Good luck!
Hint: :q!
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