Windows XP was released 20 years ago today

[Kaido]

Windows XP - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Kaido]

Also:

 

[Kaido]

Go for a test-drive:

WinXP - Windows XP in React

Windows XP in React and Hooks! Try Minesweeper, Internet Explorer, Notepad in your browser!

winxp.vercel.app

 

[lxskllr]

All I have to do is go to work. We still have two xp machines running, and I can partake of all the delights(what were they again?) as much as I like.

 

[dasherHampton]

The thing I remember best about XP coming out is that I had just bought my first serious desktop - a Dell 8100 with a Geforce 2 and a nice 17" trinitron monitor.Still one of my favorite monitors I've ever owned.

The thing was supposed to come with a free upgrade to XP (it had Vista pre-installed) but it didn't work. I think you had to enter your serial number or something and the site would say "invalid number".

Needs to say, I was pretty pissed at Dell and went to the support forums to complain. You know the answer I got? "Just contact Michael Dell directly and he'll make sure its taken care of. He's good about that kind of stuff.". Seriously.

lolol - yeah let me get out my black book. I'm sure his private number is in there. I eventually bought the upgrade at Best Buy.

I haven't bought a Dell product since then.

 

[SKORPI0]

 

[lxskllr]

As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun,[13] he eventually ended up writing an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he (at age 21) announced this system in a Usenet posting to the newsgroup "comp.os.minix.":[14]

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
— Linus Torvalds[15]

History of Linux - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[brianmanahan]

The thing was supposed to come with a free upgrade to XP (it had Vista pre-installed)

you mean it came with ME preinstalled?

 

[dasherHampton]

you mean it came with ME preinstalled?

Yeah, I think you're right. It was ME.

Whichever version it was - it was garbage. The most unstable piece of shit ever. If you didn't back up whatever you were doing hourly you were likely to lose it.

BSoD was daily not weekly.

 

[dasherHampton]

This gives me PTSD to this day.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Damn crazy to think it's that old.

Lot of companies (especially banks and hospitals) rely heavily on it even today. It's the Abrams tank of operating systems.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Also:

View attachment 49271

I did that once, and had one of those fake tech support scammers remote in.

 

[BUTCH1]

Damn crazy to think it's that old.

Lot of companies (especially banks and hospitals) rely heavily on it even today. It's the Abrams tank of operating systems.

compared to '95 or'98 XP was much more stable and felt mature right out of the gate.

 

[Muse]

I'm still running XP on 2 fully dedicated machines. One is my HDTV, running MyHD PCI card and software, the other a laptop running Total Recorder Standard Edition. Both machines are used to make programmed recordings, one of TV, the other radio broadcasts.

compared to '95 or'98 XP was much more stable and felt mature right out of the gate.

I still have my install disks of Windows 2000. The stability of XP is due to the fact that they used the Windows NT kernel for it, which was relatively rock solid.

 

[Kaido]

I was just at Costco playing with the new iMac, which as thin as an iPad & comes with a wireless keyboard that has a fingerprint reader built-in for logging into everything. Oh, and comes in colors too. What a leap forward in technology since that commercial!

 

[Kaido]

This gives me PTSD to this day.

ME + Vista + 8 can all DIAF. But especially ME. Sooooo many hours wasted troubleshooting ME desktops & laptops!

 

[Kaido]

As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun,[13] he eventually ended up writing an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he (at age 21) announced this system in a Usenet posting to the newsgroup "comp.os.minix.":[14]

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
— Linus Torvalds[15]

History of Linux - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook is still one of my favorite textbooks & I review it regularly:

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook: Nemeth, Evi, Snyder, Garth, Hein, Trent, Whaley, Ben, Mackin, Dan: 9780134277554: Books

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook [Nemeth, Evi, Snyder, Garth, Hein, Trent, Whaley, Ben, Mackin, Dan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook

www.amazon.com

When I got my first cubicle job in IT after college, I was all hot-to-trot on open-source stuff. I was going to change the world! Then I realized that there are only 16 hours of waking time available in a day, and only one of me, and I had 100 employees to support, and I couldn't sit there & monkey around with PFsense or FreeNAS all day trying to troubleshoot problems, which is why paying companies like Barracuda to manage the firewall nonsense started to make sense. And even troubleshooting viruses on computers...I couldn't sit there for 6 hours figuring it out, I needed to wipe the machine & get it back up & running so an employee didn't have to waste their entire day.

Although these days, everything is better. Windows 10 is pretty decent, not as good as 7 yet, but pretty good. I prefer Malwarebytes, as it does anti-virus now, plus has some really insane proactive features like EDR, and love to use Macrium for desktop & server backups, which has cryptolocker protection built-in these days. A 100TB NAS is under $10k these days. Although so many companies are going to the cloud, and DaaS, while in its infancy still, is looming.

It is crazy to see how Linux has grown. I was a really bag fan of Linux From Scratch back in the day:

Welcome to Linux From Scratch!

I still like to monkey with those $35 Raspberry Pi boards. And today you can buy a $30 Linux smartwatch:

Pine64's $30 Linux Smartwatch Launches

Expect five days of battery life and a growing list of apps to enjoy on this open-source watch.

www.pcmag.com

Android launched 12 years ago, back in 2008, using a modified Linux kernel. Which is now available as a factory option in the form of Android Auto direct from vehicle manufacturers:

Android Auto | Android

Experience the best features of your Android device when driving with Android Auto. Just tap your car display or get hands-free help with your Google Assistant. So you can focus on the road.

www.android.com

And Jeff Nelson wrote Google OS in 2006, which was launched as Google Chrome OS in 2009, which become what we know as Chromebooks today:

Inventing Chromebook

Jeff Nelson's blog about Chromebook, cloud computing, and the Internet industry.

blog.jeff-nelson.com

And then came full-circle, letting Chromebooks run Android apps on them using a shared kernel in protected mode:

Google's Chrome OS will soon be able to run all Android apps | TechCrunch

The Play Store is coming to Chrome OS, Google announced at its I/O developer conference today -- and with that, you will soon be able to install and run

techcrunch.com

And now you can get Bluestacks, a free Android emulator, for Windows:

BlueStacks – Die beste Mobile-Gaming-Plattform für PC & Mac | 100% Sicher und KOSTENLOS

Hol dir die schnellste und zuverlässigste Gaming-Performance mit BlueStacks - der weltweit beliebtesten, sichersten und KOSTENLOSEN Mobile-Gaming-Plattform für Windows und Mac.

www.bluestacks.com

And of course, Microsoft had to join in with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), with WSL2 adding a real Linux kernel with full system call capabilities:

Windows Subsystem for Linux - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's really fun reading computer history, especially as I was born in the early 80's & computers became a part of my childhood growing up, as we got to see all of this unfold.



I had no idea that in 2021, I'd be addicted to 1-minute videos on TikTok on a tiny color screen streaming wirelessly in the palm of my hand & preventing me from falling asleep at a reasonable hour, hahaha! Tim Berners-Lee wrote a fun book called "Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web" that's worth a read (audiobook version also available!)

Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web: Tim Berners-Lee: 9780062515872: Books: Amazon.com

Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web [Tim Berners-Lee] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web

www.amazon.com

Another really good book is "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet" from 1996, which is one of the best histories of the Internet I've read:

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet: Hafner, Katie, Lyon, Matthew: 9780684812014: Amazon.com: Books

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet [Hafner, Katie, Lyon, Matthew] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

www.amazon.com

I've posted about this before, but before she passed, I always enjoyed talking to my grandma about technology. She was born in the depression & lived to be nearly 100 years old. She was born just decades after the Wright Brother's first flight, then saw WWII, the Jet Age, men landing on the moon, Roomba's, flat-screen TV's you could hang on the wall, Facetime video calls, and Alexa reading you books & setting timers when verbally asked. We really live in a golden age of technology! Last year I picked up a 12.9" iPad Pro with the Pencil 2.0 & do everything from 2D vector artwork to 3D CAD on it. I design stuff to run on my vinyl cutter, CNC machine, laser machine, and 3D printer...all of which I own & live in my basement! You can get an AMAZING 3D printer for less than the price of a Playstation these days!



I also have an Oculus wireless VR headset (base version is $300 & comes with a built-in computer that has roughly PS3 graphics!) & can use it draw in 3D, play games, stream games wirelessly from my computer under Steam, etc. Everything is like magic these days!

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I had no idea that in 2021, I'd be addicted to 1-minute videos on TikTok

Another site I'll never go to.

I will not be assimilated by any Zuckertype site. I will resist.



---------



I remember Win98SE as fairly cool. Win7 is as close to XP as anything else and I prefer it over much of anything else. Tried the one named after the Peanuts character with the piano but never got very far.

 

[pmv]

I remember I carried on with Windows 98SE for a long time after XP was released. Till I ran into horrible disk corruption problems due to Win98 not supporting drives over a certain size. At the time I couldn't figure out what the cause of the problem was, as that size limitation issue didn't seem to be widely known (probably because hardly anyone was still using 9X at that point). Only realised what the cause had been retrospectively, long after getting a new PC that came with XP.

 

[Muse]

ME + Vista + 8 can all DIAF. But especially ME. Sooooo many hours wasted troubleshooting ME desktops & laptops!

I skipped ME, have a laptop that's running Vista stashed in my locker at my volunteer gig (bought used, had/has Vista Business installed). One day they'll let us back there (pandemic forbidden for that gig, we're all working from home).

Never ran 8 either. Ran 7 for quite a while on several machines, did the free upgrade to 10 on those. That did resolve a very bad issue with one laptop running 7.

BTW, curious @Kaido, how often you go to Costco? You said you always grab a rotisserie chicken there. I go every 2 weeks, am going tomorrow, but thinking of skipping the chicken this time. It's dominated my dinner for over a month now! Chicken and pilaf, chicken salad, chicken salad sandwiches.

Thanks for your last awesome post there in this thread on burgeoning computer driven technologies:

Windows XP was released 20 years ago today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Release

forums.anandtech.com

 

[Kaido]

Another site I'll never go to.

I will not be assimilated by any Zuckertype site. I will resist.

Oh man, you're missing out! It's basically like Youtube, but shorter. Most of the videos are under a minute, although now they have 3-minute videos max. I've learned so much stuff from TikTok it's not even funny. I follow food people, tech people, maker-lab people - there are just so many ultra-talented people who maybe wouldn't otherwise have a website or a Youtube channel, but are willing to do quick videos right from their phone.

I actively avoided it for awhile, but eventually got into it, and I'm glad I did! It's a great app to fill random periods of time, like if you're in line somewhere, and the algorithm they use that figures out what you like & what you're into is really fantastic. I'm into stuff like 3D printing, cooking with the Instant Pot, etc. & it tailors my homepage with tons of awesome stuff every day. I really like it!

 

[Kaido]

I skipped ME, have a laptop that's running Vista stashed in my locker at my volunteer gig (bought used, had/has Vista Business installed). One day they'll let us back there (pandemic forbidden for that gig, we're all working from home).

Never ran 8 either. Ran 7 for quite a while on several machines, did the free upgrade to 10 on those. That did resolve a very bad issue with one laptop running 7.

BTW, curious @Kaido, how often you go to Costco? You said you always grab a rotisserie chicken there. I go every 2 weeks, am going tomorrow, but thinking of skipping the chicken this time. It's dominated my dinner for over a month now! Chicken and pilaf, chicken salad, chicken salad sandwiches.

Thanks for your last awesome post there in this thread on burgeoning computer driven technologies:

Windows XP was released 20 years ago today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Release

forums.anandtech.com

Windows 8 wasn't terrible, but Windows 10, particularly the later versions, is pretty decent! Windows 7 SP1 & Windows XP SP3 are still my favorites tho. I still like OSX & was into Hackintosh for a long time, but after Apple neglected FCP, I switched to Premier & migrated to Windows & honestly it hasn't been bad! My main PC is from like 2013...it's so old I had to install a beta BIOS just to run my 1080Ti, which is now three generations old lol.

Costco? Depends. I only have one customer nearby them, so unless I'm in the area for work, I have to go out of my way to go haha. So at minimum once a month. Although I picked up a chamber vac recently & have been doing a LOT more vaccum-sealing because it's so easy to use, which makes it easier to take things like chicken & spread it out over time because I don't have to eat it right away haha.

Although I do use a LOT of chicken in my meal-prepping. It's an easy & cheap way to hit my macros. I'd say my favorite meat to eat is pork (bacon, pork belly, pulled pork, etc.), but my favorite meat to cook with is chicken, because there are literally thousands of amazing recipes, everything from Indian chicken curry to crack chicken to chicken soup!

Side note, I've been using my Anova Precision Oven as a reheating tool & it's completely changed the way I deal with leftovers. The food comes out 90 to 95% as good as the original meal. Completely game-changing! What I've been doing lately is vac-sealing meal-prep containers & then reheating them in the APO. Food comes out AMAZING!

Meet my $600 toaster oven

TL,DR: This is a cool new oven that (1) automates cooking to (2) give you perfect results. It's expensive, but 100% worth it if you want to save money by cooking at home & eat delicious food all the time without really trying. This is an Easy Bake Oven for Adults lol. This is basically Sous...

forums.anandtech.com

The statistics here are important to consider. Regarding feeding ourselves:

* 3 meals a day is 21 meals a week, which a LOT
* That works out to 80+ meals a month
* Which is over 1,000 meals per year!

Then the financial picture:

* The average family of 4 spends $7k a year on food
* $3,000 of that is spent on takeout (restaurant foods, prepared foods, delivery, etc.)
* $1,500 of that goes to food waste

The APO was $600 & the vac-sealer was $1k, so the payback for people who would use them can be as quick as six months for people who use it to actually cook at home & store leftovers. Granted, these are pricey toys, but they are worth saving up for!

Because I'm on a budget, I have a really simple automated savings program that pulls ten bucks a week into an external savings account, so that I don't have to think about it (automated withdrawal), won't spend it (external piggy bank I can't instantly access), and it lets me increase my kitchen inventory slowly over time, which gives me time to learn the ins & outs of every gadget:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kaidomac/comments/jlsa5t

This is an Instant Pot pasta meal (chicken Alfredo penne) inside of a meal-prep container, but vac-sealed using the chamber-vac. I have limited deep-freezer space so it's hard to do long-term testing without rotating the food, but most flour-based products like breads, batters, and pastas are good for about 3 months using this method, and when coupled with the APO's reheating expertise, it's really cut down on the hassle of having to prepare food for every meal!

 

[Red Squirrel]

It is crazy to go down memory lane, stuff has come a long way with computers. It's so nostalgic looking at older OSes or old commercials.

A buck a day!

Genuine MDG!

Our hospital had a bunch of old MDG computers when I worked there about 10 years ago lol. (probably older than the ones being sold in that commercial)

 

[Kaido]

Thanks for your last awesome post there in this thread on burgeoning computer driven technologies:

Windows XP was released 20 years ago today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Release

forums.anandtech.com

It's really crazy what has happened since the 80's, technology-wise. That book by Tim Berners-Lee is so interesting because it essentially boiled down to him having the lightbulb moment of hyperlinks between data on different computers, which eventually lead to the insane amount of worldwide networking we enjoy today!

It's sort of like the apple hitting Newton on the head, as the story goes, in parallel with Bernoulli's principle as applied to flight, which eventually culminated in the Wright Brother's first flight, which lead to the benefits we enjoy today of being able to fly anywhere in the country in less than a day.

Or fly from LA to Singapore in a single, nearly 18-hour flight. Which lets you "watch all 6 movies in the Mission Impossible franchise, plus Top Gun AND Jerry Maguire…and still have almost an hour to spare" hahaha!

From a food standpoint, we have amazing tools like portable induction hotplates, Instapots, home combi ovens, and digitally-controlled pellet smokers. And the world's knowledge is available via Google search, Wikpedia, Youtube, and TikTok. If you're even the least bit creative, the world is your oyster these days!

Although I see a few problems:

1. We have electric lights & sub-par food available, which means it's easy to stay up late & have mildly-low energy all the time, which makes it really hard to immerse ourselves in things proactively, because we constantly don't feel like it & we're not in the mood.

2. We have such an overwhelming amount of opportunities & information available that it's easy to fall into possibility paralysis & go into stasis. Sometimes I'll surf Pinterest for ideas of what to cook & then end up eating a bowl of cereal for dinner because my brain trips a circuit hahaha.

3. Human nature still exists, regardless. Productivity (i.e. defining what we want & then getting ourselves to work on it to get what we want) is still a massive challenge for humanity (recently solved this after 20+ years of working on it, working on a tutorial!).

So we have to fight ourselves (our human nature), low energy/fatigue/apathy (from a number of modern traps available), and a sometimes overwhelming number of options to choose from, which is a lot to deal with! Especially day after day after day!

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Windows ME is the only “current at the time” version of Windows I ever removed. I upgraded from Windows 98 to ME and couldn’t believe how awful and unstable it was. I bought and installed a copy of Windows 2000 Professional and risked incompatibility with some of my software just to get rid of ME. Windows 2000 is probably still my favorite OS from Microsoft.

As far as XP goes, I have an old laptop with a GeForce 6800 which can still play some of the classic games I used to play, but I haven’t booted it in years.