If you could pick any EOL operating system to revive, what would it be?

[Ampera]

Windows 2000 was the last of it's kind, as part of the NT line it was an operating system designed for power users who knew what they were doing and didn't want an unstable lump of rubbish that would crash if you did so much as peer beyond outlook.

Win9x was the teething period of Windows after it's OTHER teething period. It went through a teething period in the NT era, and is now just stagnating with offensive policies and god awful legacy software support.

[Halcyon]

Win9x was the teething period of Windows after it's OTHER teething period. It went through a teething period in the NT era, and is now just stagnating with offensive policies and god awful legacy software support.

Win95a was meh. You may as well just stuck with NT 4.0 Workstation or Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
Win95b with the USB supplement installed was fairly stable, but the USB support was pretty clunky.
Win95c was rock solid as long as you did a custom installation and unticked all the junk (those bloody CompuServe, AOL and Microsoft Network trials!!).

It wasn't until Windows 98se came around that I updated.

And the way things are going, if they don't drop this whole cloud bullshit, I won't be upgrading from Windows 7. I'll use it for as long as I can and then... who knows... it might be time to bite the bullet and go Linux.

[Kjelt]

I hate the teletubby extras from win10 at opening, i do not want or need win news at startup. So if you could disable a lot of that garbage that would be a plus.
The updates are necessary, people forget that when 2000 was an os there were no big security threads. Now youre computer is hacked and powned in seconds and 98% of windows users have no idea how to prevent this, and with an outdated os no-one even the super know it all can protect themselves unless jou disconnect from the net and create an airgap. So stop whining about the updates or creare an airgap for yourself.

[blackbird]

After working with many, sometimes exotic, OS's I have to decide between Risc-OS and AOS/VS.... The winner for me is Risc-OS.

[Ampera]

After working with many, sometimes exotic, OS's I have to decide between Risc-OS and AOS/VS.... The winner for me is Risc-OS.

Hah, I've been pretty friggin stagnant with operating systems. I've never used OS/2, RISC OS, Amiga anything, GEM anything (have used CP/M on my C128), I've never worked with any SGI workstations (wish I could tho.) and my strangest OS I've ever used must have been Damn Small Linux, which I attempted to install on an 80486 IBM PS/1, and failed instantly since I didn't have a math coprocessor.

 

[timb]

When Windows 2000 came out, I desperately wanted to use it. Unfortunately, driver support was *very* spotty. A lot of consumer hardware just didn't have drivers and/or supporting software available for it.

I ended up with Windows 98SE with all the cruft pulled out. You could entirely remove IE all together (and by extension, the forced IE integration from the OS) using 98lite. Needed a copy of Windows 95 to replace parts of the shell; 95c worked best. It made it super fast and *very* stable.

[setq]

Windows 2000 for me. Was the last windows without the successive layers of smudged turd polish and crazy and no activation.

[rrinker]

 I want to set up a system and run Microsoft BOB on it.....   

[Cerebus]

For Windows, 2000 was the last Windows I'd use out of choice. I'd rather not use Windows at all if I could - burned by Microsoft incompetence one time too many.

Desktop operating system of choice: OS X 10.6.8. Stable, easy to use, not loaded with features that force you to use Apple as the centre of your universe.

Mainframe operating system of choice: Multics, somewhere around SR9, with TOPS-10 a not very close second. Anything from ICL or IBM goes to the end of the list. Multics had the best security design of any operating system I've ever used. Interestingly it was designed for use by a 'computer utility' in a world where it was thought that computers would be centralised and accessed remotely where people who might need to be protected from each other while using the same computing facilities.  Cloud computing anybody?

Minicomputer OS: Probably Primos, but most minicomputer OSes sucked rocks in some way or another and I used most of the big ones at some time.

Unix flavoured server OS: Solaris 10. Rock solid stable, only ever rebooted when the power went out or you had to physically move a machine. Got very good performance out of the same hardware compared to other OSes.

[rdl]

What was the last version of Windows that did not require NTFS?
That's probably what I'd go for. I'm guessing it was XP?

[Sal Ammoniac]

For me it would be VAX/VMS v3.3 and RSX-11M 3.2.

[BravoV]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

[Halcyon]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

[C]

What was the last version of Windows that did not require NTFS?
That's probably what I'd go for. I'm guessing it was XP?

On windows, if you are not using NTFS and using FAT__ then you are risking a corrupt disk and should note that checkdsk can not fix all problems in a FAT__ directory.   

[doobedoobedo]

BeOS. I remember getting BeOS icons for my Amiga.

[timb]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

No, I think he's correct. There was an issue with the way driver models worked between 95/98/ME and NT/2000. So, drivers designed for 98 wouldn't work on 2000.

I can't remember if the issue was with *all* drivers, or just USB ones. I know the reason I couldn't run 2000 was because my USB based (pre-WiFi) wireless dongle didn't have a driver for Windows 2000. It was an Intel brand wireless card, too! This would have been around March 2000.

Video card drivers in 2000 also had serious performance penalties compared to their 98 counterparts; especially for high performance AGP cards. Once I realized that, I ended up losing interest and waited for XP to come out.

I remember going to the Windows XP launch event in Norfolk, VA (they had them in cities across the country) and winning a free copy of XP Pro and Office in their raffle. (Little did they know I had already been running the (cracked) GM since August.)

Edit: Ahh, so Windows 98 supports both WDM and VxD drivers, but Windows 2000 only supports WDM.

At the time, a lot of consumer hardware used VxD drivers, because that allowed them to support Windows 95 as well. The highest performance video card drivers also used VxD as it allowed direct access to the hardware.

[rdl]

I've never seen a "corrupt" disk, nor have I ever had any disk problem that could be fixed just because of NTFS. Maybe I'm just lucky, but considering how many disks I've had just keel over and die, I doubt that's the case.

[Ampera]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

No, I think he's correct. There was an issue with the way driver models worked between 95/98/ME and NT/2000. So, drivers designed for 98 wouldn't work on 2000.

I can't remember if the issue was with *all* drivers, or just USB ones. I know the reason I couldn't run 2000 was because my USB based (pre-WiFi) wireless dongle didn't have a driver for Windows 2000. It was an Intel brand wireless card, too! This would have been around March 2000.

Video card drivers in 2000 also had serious performance penalties compared to their 98 counterparts; especially for high performance AGP cards. Once I realized that, I ended up losing interest and waited for XP to come out.

I remember going to the Windows XP launch event in Norfolk, VA (they had them in cities across the country) and winning a free copy of XP Pro and Office in their raffle. (Little did they know I had already been running the (cracked) GM since August.)

Edit: Ahh, so Windows 98 supports both WDM and VxD drivers, but Windows 2000 only supports WDM.

At the time, a lot of consumer hardware used VxD drivers, because that allowed them to support Windows 95 as well. The highest performance video card drivers also used VxD as it allowed direct access to the hardware.

I'm pretty sure version specific drivers are the same to this day. I think there are a handful of exceptions, but for the most part you need a winxp driver for winxp and a win7 driver for win7

[Halcyon]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

No, I think he's correct. There was an issue with the way driver models worked between 95/98/ME and NT/2000. So, drivers designed for 98 wouldn't work on 2000.

I can't remember if the issue was with *all* drivers, or just USB ones. I know the reason I couldn't run 2000 was because my USB based (pre-WiFi) wireless dongle didn't have a driver for Windows 2000. It was an Intel brand wireless card, too! This would have been around March 2000.

Video card drivers in 2000 also had serious performance penalties compared to their 98 counterparts; especially for high performance AGP cards. Once I realized that, I ended up losing interest and waited for XP to come out.

I remember going to the Windows XP launch event in Norfolk, VA (they had them in cities across the country) and winning a free copy of XP Pro and Office in their raffle. (Little did they know I had already been running the (cracked) GM since August.)

Edit: Ahh, so Windows 98 supports both WDM and VxD drivers, but Windows 2000 only supports WDM.

At the time, a lot of consumer hardware used VxD drivers, because that allowed them to support Windows 95 as well. The highest performance video card drivers also used VxD as it allowed direct access to the hardware.

I'm pretty sure version specific drivers are the same to this day. I think there are a handful of exceptions, but for the most part you need a winxp driver for winxp and a win7 driver for win7

Pretty much. It wasn't that the driver model in Windows 2000 was broken, it was just different. Sometimes you can get away with installing Windows 2000 drivers on a Windows XP machine.

On a side note, I remember spending hours trying to get networking drivers working in DOS. They were a pain in the ass. Some decent NE2000 and compatible cards came with an install utility that worked and the Microsoft Network Client made things easy if you had a supported card, but if not, you were stuck modifying config.sys and autoexec.bat files yourself. Of course you didn't have Plug and Play either, so you had to dick around with jumpers, IRQs and DMA settings. I don't miss that!

[daybyter]

Concurrent cp/m

[eugenenine]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

I ran NT4 and one day bought a new scanner.  Plugged in the USB port and learned that the hard way.  I spent an entire Sat backing up and installing windows 98 and all my software to the point it said the registry was full.  No problem I thought I'll just go in computer properties and increase it like I did in NT4. 
Spent all day Sunday reinstalling NT4 after returning the scanner.

I upgraded the W2k when it was still in beta.  Had went 9 months and had to reboot so I could enable the IR port on my laptop.  2K was the last windows that actually worked without issues.  I've had a few xp sytems after that (wife and kids) or work provided.  They all will fail to resume 5% of the time, fail to recognize usb after too many uses, they all have the huge security hole thinly disguised as a web browser, they all constantly his swap all the time but have plenty of free ram.

I know the OP said no Amiga because of AROS but its not the same.  I'd revive the classic Amiga OS and the hardware with it. make it a 64 bit 680000 CPU.

[timb]

I see there are many wishes on Win2K, if my memory serves me well, isn't that version suck in supporting usb and matured starting at XP ?

You might be thinking of something else. USB support wasn't an issue in Windows 2000, by that stage it was fairly mature.

USB support was non-existent in Windows NT 4.0. There were reports of being able to use some third-party drivers to get it working but mileage varied considerably (I've personally never bothered to try). Microsoft provided USB support in 1997 to Windows 95 OSR2 (AKA Windows 95b) through the installation of the USB Supplement. Then it was built-in from Windows 95 OSR2.5 (Windows 95c) onward.

No, I think he's correct. There was an issue with the way driver models worked between 95/98/ME and NT/2000. So, drivers designed for 98 wouldn't work on 2000.

I can't remember if the issue was with *all* drivers, or just USB ones. I know the reason I couldn't run 2000 was because my USB based (pre-WiFi) wireless dongle didn't have a driver for Windows 2000. It was an Intel brand wireless card, too! This would have been around March 2000.

Video card drivers in 2000 also had serious performance penalties compared to their 98 counterparts; especially for high performance AGP cards. Once I realized that, I ended up losing interest and waited for XP to come out.

I remember going to the Windows XP launch event in Norfolk, VA (they had them in cities across the country) and winning a free copy of XP Pro and Office in their raffle. (Little did they know I had already been running the (cracked) GM since August.)

Edit: Ahh, so Windows 98 supports both WDM and VxD drivers, but Windows 2000 only supports WDM.

At the time, a lot of consumer hardware used VxD drivers, because that allowed them to support Windows 95 as well. The highest performance video card drivers also used VxD as it allowed direct access to the hardware.

I'm pretty sure version specific drivers are the same to this day. I think there are a handful of exceptions, but for the most part you need a winxp driver for winxp and a win7 driver for win7

Nope. WDM drivers are mostly forward compatible. Meaning, you can install a Windows 2000 driver in XP, but not an XP driver in 2000. In fact, a lot of the older network card drivers that came with Windows XP came directly from Windows 2000!

Now, Windows Vista did break some stuff with WDM drivers; as I recall it had to do with the implementation of UAC and the underlying security of the OS. Of course, what *didn't* Vista break? That said, most Vista drivers worked just fine in Windows 7 and some will even work in 8 and/or 10!

On top of that, some VxD drivers from the Windows 3.1 era could be installed all the way up to Windows 98!

Edit: That said, if a newer version of the driver exists for your specific OS it's generally always better to use it, as it can take advantage of newer WDM features. Though for specific niche hardware, or hardware that's no longer supported you don't always have a choice.

[T3sl4co1l]

I want to set up a system and run Microsoft BOB on it.....   

?



Tim

[eugenenine]

Microsoft Bob isn't EOL, it was just renamed to iphone 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I did like the video slightly after 6:50 mark where M$ decided to update the OS during the weather report.

If Micro$oft make cars: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw/microsoftjoke.htm