r/pcmasterrace • u/737Max-Impact 7800X3D - 4070Ti - 1600p UW 160hz • Jul 15 '26
Meme/Macro The lifecycle of a Windows OS
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u/TheCovarr Tinkerer Jul 15 '26
Ehh, in the 7 era the overwhelming consensus was "sweet, this is what Vista should've been in the first place".
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u/aqwn Jul 15 '26
Yeah everyone liked Windows 7. I held out for a long time before finally going to Windows 10. Windows 8 was stupid and should’ve been only for touchscreen devices.
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u/PancakesandMaggots Specs/Imgur here Jul 15 '26
I only had 10 for about 2 years because I held onto 7 for so long.
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u/Longjumping-Prune931 Jul 15 '26
The OP meme is really stupid and completely wrong. Basically everyone except purist loved windows XP and windows 7. Windows 10 was god awful and most people never updated until they were literally forced to. Windows 10 was better than 11 but again, people were forced to upgrade. If there was a LTS version of Windows 7 I think a large percentage of users would choose it over 11 or 10.
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u/makoblade 9800X3D | RTX 5090 Aorus Master | 96 GB 6000 MT/s CL30 DDR5 Jul 15 '26
For a long time Windows had a predictable cadence of alternating between a good, refined OS and an unstable clusterfuck of bad ideas.
Windows ME, Vista and 8 hold a special place in hell.
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u/Longjumping-Prune931 Jul 15 '26
Windows 11 is just as shit but there is no alternative, imagine if Windows 7 quickly depreciated and you were forced to use Windows 8. There are so many weird bugs in Windows 11, for example for whatever reason my wifi adapter simply shuts off for a minute or two couple of times per day. There is nothing I can do except just wait for it to restart and reconnect to wifi. Then a windows update fixed it, but it reintroduced again. Downgrading the drivers doesn't help, no fix can be found online.
I am installing Linux on my next machine no doubt.
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u/makoblade 9800X3D | RTX 5090 Aorus Master | 96 GB 6000 MT/s CL30 DDR5 Jul 15 '26
That's fair. Win11 initially felt like Win10 with no meaningful changes but Microsoft managed to fix that issue by piling on bad decision after bad decision.
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u/PassiveMenis88M 7800X3D | 32gb | 7900XTX Red Devil Jul 15 '26
Win11 initially felt like Win10 with no meaningful changes
If you were using an Intel cpu. The early versions of 11 fucked up the scheduler and gimped the performance on AMD chips.
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u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jul 15 '26
Windows 11 is just as shit but there is no alternative
Unless you are using a machine that requires Windows 11's updated scheduler, Windows 10 LTSC is still a fine candidate to use, especially because its IoT Enterprise variant will have updates until 2030.
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u/Spiffydragon Jul 15 '26
I used XP long after it was no longer supported and begrudgingly used windows 7 after I crippled all the telemetry and spyware in it. I kept using 7 up until around last year when I switched to Mint. XP was peak Windows and everything after it has been nothing but bloat.
MacroGreed seems to have intentionally sabotaged Windows 7 because a lot of patches, DLL files, kernel access points, driver signatures, etc. seem to be missing, and trying to update Win7 results in a Swiss cheesed install. I finally jumped through enough hoops to get my drivers and old adobe software working, but both M$ and Adobe have finally pissed me off enough to move to Linux and Krita.
Proton/Steam means nearly all Windows games run on Linux without any extra steps. I have no reason at all to ever go back to windows. Long live FOSS.
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u/kawalerkw Desktop Jul 15 '26
Vista was good when installed on devices that was made for it. Forcing it on XP machines was a mistake. My 4GB RAM Vista laptop was the best out of the box Windows experience I had. In comparison my father's 1GB RAM Vista laptop was the worst and he would never believe me it was Vista's fault. To add insult to injury his laptop's iGPU was taking 128MB of RAM, so the system was running below minimal requirements, but it didn't prevent manufacturer from shipping it with Vista.
People forget that XP had driver issues with older hardware if you only had drivers for 95/98/ME. Early in XP cycle it wasn't so uncommon advice to update from 98/ME to 2000 instead of XP. Also people say 98 was the good Windows after bad 95. It was 98SE that was good.
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u/alphonse03 R3 2200g 16gb DDR4, GTX 950 :/ Jul 15 '26
Oh come on, you cant compare ME and Vista to 8.
The choice to make it more oriented to touch screens was an incredible stupid idea on their part, I agree on that, but the performance was actually very good imho, specially on 8.1. Not like ME that shat on their pants with a little noise or Vista that needed way better specs than the standard was to the date it was released to be able to run properly.
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u/GostBoster Jul 15 '26
Yeah, back then people were actually hyped for future versions of Windows even if there was no information to get it from. Like we had very little access to computers (saw one firsthand for the first time in 1997) and no stable Internet access until 2003, and by stable, I mean I could use dial-up late night.
I remember at the turn of millenium hoping there would be a cool Windows version to celebrate it, we had WinMe installed on the lab, saw it crash too often enough to actually hinder education, so we rolled back to 98 until the proper Windows 2000 arrived, and we envied people who had a powerful enough computer to run XP, most people were still running 98 or 2000 with mods to emulate XP look and feel.
Now? Starting with 8 we started going back, modding current gen Windows to emulate back features lost or changed for worse from older versions. There's a reason why Win7 and WinXP are so celebrated, these were the first versions where people actively wanted to rollback.
Also my experience with W10 was tempered with the fact that we were ordered at corporate level to NOT use, install, acquire, endorse or acknowledge W10 and they had a very strong technical and LEGAL case to enact this policy.
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u/tired_Cat_Dad Desktop Jul 15 '26
7 was the one that most felt like a tool I could just use without any inconveniences. I actually felt like a capable PC user despite not having any IT background.
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u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jul 15 '26
It treated users who wanted to use it like an expert's workstation accordingly - it still had Win98/Win2k Control Panels but it also had an easy to use interface for those who didn't want to mess with what's under the hood.
Win8 was... well, whatever the hell it was it wasn't it.
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u/dontgetitwisted_fr Jul 15 '26
Still running 7 at home
Held out as long as I could at work but forced obsolescence is unfortunately a thing
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u/TheMissingVoteBallot Jul 15 '26
Tons of applications forced me out of Win7. Steam won't work, most modern browsers won't work. etc.
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u/dontgetitwisted_fr Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I only use my home pc for torrenting and home network admin so win7 works fine.
Rolled back version of chrome still does the job as a browser.
I'm around computers all day at work, dont like to turn on my home one too much tbh
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u/neotank35 Jul 16 '26
still use windows 7 too. although everytine I post it I get downvoted into Oblivion.
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u/ThrowAway233223 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I didn't even choose to migrate to 10 on my first computer that ended up using it. M$ kept pestering with a pop-up asking if I wanted to upgrade to it and I kept saying no. Well, I guess they popped it up again at some time when I wasn't looking and took my lack of "No" within a timely fashion as consent. I came back to my computer to work on something to discover it upgrading despite me repeatedly declining it.
Edit: fixed a typo.
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u/Maleficent_Memory831 Jul 15 '26
Windows 8.1 was ok. Once you hide the start screen and ignore the added apps, tweaked some registry settings, then I like it better than 7. Some hate the flat look of the UI but I really liked it, and dislike the glossy GFX-card assisted UI. At the same time I was on MacOS at work when it also had a flat look with minimalist window decorations (0 width borders instead of the 1 pixes minimum I could get in windows 8.1).
8.1 was also had a noticeably smaller RAM footprint. They had taken some effort to deal wih the bloat criticism.
Of course, Windows 8 had other crap that overall hurt things.
Today, there's stuff in Windows 11 that I would want to keep. The WSL2 for instance is great, and the new terminal, the new task manager, etc.
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u/ScottieNiven Dell M1710, T7600, 4GB, 7950GTX 512MB, 256gb SSD Jul 15 '26
Windows 8.1 ironically is my favourite in the exact way you describe, once classicshell was installed and a few other tweaks, it has been the fastest and most responsive OS I have used.
I used it until around 2019 on my main PC when I moved to to 1909 on a new PC. I'm still on this PC with Win 11 and I really dislike how things are going.
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u/KillingTime_ForNow Jul 15 '26
8.1 was fantastic & too few people experienced it to know. And it used like half the system resources that 10 did.
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u/Abbi3_Doobi3 5950X + 3080 Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I remember that era vividly. 7 was almost universally liked (maybe not quite loved), because it was what people expected Vista to be.
Also because computers got more powerful between Vista and 7 which helped a ton with performance perception.
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u/deep8787 Jul 15 '26
Yeah Vista got somewhat screwed by PC manufacturers claiming their device was "Vista ready" when it wasnt at all. Also, drivers were migrating from x86 to x64 in that period too, so a lot of people's hardware didnt work on the newer OS until a significant time had passed.
I had Vista for like 2 days and went back to XP due to the first reason I mentioned just now. Oh well.
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u/TheGreatPiata Jul 15 '26
That was my take too. Same with winXP. Pretty much universally liked when it came out.
There's some weird revisionism going on in this meme.
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Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
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u/Ilestderetour Jul 15 '26
(it became stable at SP2)
No, it was at SP1. SP2 added the firewall an dit was a big deal at the time.
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u/linkinstreet 8700 Z370 Gaming F 16GB DDR4 GTX1070 512GB SSD Jul 15 '26
I remember that Wireless support was shit before SP1/SP2 and if you're IT support at the time it can be annoying when dealing with staffs that didn't install the Service Pack.
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u/oriolid Jul 15 '26
XP SP3 was universally liked, especially when compared to Vista. XP as it was first released was a total mess.
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u/toutons Jul 15 '26
Windows XP was totally called "fisher price" when it came out. And since it dropped ms dos mode a lot of people thought it was a step backwards.
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u/thingamajig1987 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Not necessarily, when 7 was new there were an absurd amount of XP hold outs that were pissed when they were forced to update or get left behind.
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u/Icybubba Ryzen 5 3600 | RX 9060 XT | 32 GB DDR4-3200 Jul 15 '26
Re: Windows 10.
Windows 10 received 6 years of content updates. The Windows 10 that got usurped by Windows 11 in 2021, is not the same Windows 10 that released in 2015.
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u/Paxton-176 Ryzen 7 7600X | 32GB 6000 Mhz| EVGA 3080 TI Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
The wild thing is that Windows 11 was generally fine on its release. They just forced it on everyone.
I got a surface tablet and it had Windows 11 it was how I first tried it. It wasn't a bad OS people just didn't want to change yet.
Now they force co-pilot on us and now I'm starting to hate it.
Edit: For the people reminding me of the issues. I doubt you are wrong. If anything have better memories than I do. Honestly my comment is from my personal experience and I had zero problems.
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u/SoItGoesdotdotdot 555 Jul 15 '26
Windows 11 raised the hardware threshold and deprecated a bunch of hardware that wasn't that old. That's my personal issue. Turned millions of computers into waste for the average person. Nobody better give me any shit about the work arounds or alternatives because the average person won't do that. They'll just buy new shit unnecessarily.
For the record I have ditched windows in my home entirely and couldn't be happier. I know it can be disabled but the constant need to go in and disable copilot or the web search in the start menu after updates was getting old.
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u/unabletocomput3 core ultra 270k rx 9070xt Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I remember early windows 11 having a few issues, namely with requiring a connection and Microsoft account when setting up, ryzen cpus losing up to 10-15% performance from 10, and the usual early OS bugs. There were also some UI changes that sucked, namely right click settings getting significantly simpler, task bar getting locked to the bottom of the screen, and I think I remember the task bar icons couldn’t be shifted over to the left for a while, like how older windows versions looked.
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u/Niaaal Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Delete it. Also, install a custom start menu that removes all the web searches, online recommendations and ads. I use the one called ClassicShell with the Fluent-Metro skin, it's free on GitHub. It's a game changer.
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u/FlamePuddingPrince b650m hdv m.2 | r5 7600 | rtx 3060 12GB | 32GB DDR5 Jul 15 '26
The search stuff can be disabled with a registry edit (or in settings in the eu) now you can have a fuctional search without extra programs.
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u/CrashTestDumby1984 I9-13900k | RTX4090 | 32 Gb Jul 15 '26
Windows 11 was NOT fine on release. It was missing so much basic functionality that has existed in Windows for decades.
5 years in still waiting on an update that will let you resize the taskbar, file explorer is noticeably slower and uses more ram, the start menu was bloated Frankenstein mess…
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u/YouDoNotKnowMeSir Jul 15 '26
It’s dogshit and I’m clinging to windows 10 for as long as they extend security support
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u/slickwillyclinton67 Jul 15 '26
Normal Windows 10 22H2 will be receiving security updates 'till October of 2027 now. Personally I'm using Windows 10 LTSC 2019, which is receiving security updates 'till 2029. As for software compatibility, it's honestly better than Linux still.
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u/Slayr79 Jul 15 '26
Windows 10 is still receiving security updates until 2027 so it's still a valid system at least for another year
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u/Head-Researcher-1748 Jul 15 '26
Win7 was peak
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u/snappydragon4 Jul 15 '26
Same, I actually loved 7, I refused 8, but installed 10 as it was close enough and had modern features, I didn't like some aspects of it though. 11 has had a lot of problems for me, it has not been a smooth experience at all. XP was great too.
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u/quick20minadventure Jul 15 '26
I tried windows 8 so hard cause i was young and ready to experiment/customize.
It remained horrible completely.
Windows 7 vs 10 is still very very close because windows 7 would run into driver issues, windows 10 never did. But, windows 10 is still plauged by stupid shit control panel + settings window and very very frequent changes in critical areas of settings. Absolutely hate that.
Also hate the microsoft account forcing, but it's easy enough to bypass one time.
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u/gggg_man3 Jul 15 '26
My belief is that windows xp was peak.
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u/No_Oddjob PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
XP wasn't peak. But it was by FAR the biggest advancement. It was a massive leap forward in so many ways, so it was def peak advancement, but not peak experience.
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u/Briggie Ryzen 7 5800x / ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / TUF RTX 4090 Jul 15 '26
I could never get homegroups to work reliably
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u/jacksonk232t Jul 15 '26
LAN networking is still hopelessly broken. I have 7 PCs in my home, and I can only reliably connect to 3 or 4 and I've NEVER been able to get the rest to be visible on local network.
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u/Mightyena319 more PCs than is really healthy... Jul 15 '26
Honestly networking stuff is cursed, regardless of operating system. I'm still not completely convinced there's a hidden startup script that runs a "will I be detectable by other computers on the network today?" RNG every boot
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u/Cabusha Jul 15 '26
The WinXP start menu was the best. I could drive that thing with keyboard commands so easy.
Windows 7 was my fav Windows edition for being rock solid, but its start menu was a step backwards, and the start of the regression.
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u/gggg_man3 Jul 15 '26
I was big into messing with the back end of windows then and it was a lot of fun. Definitely the most nostalgic OS for me. That is a matter of opinion so I did not expect you to agree with me.
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u/MoenTheSink Jul 15 '26
It wasn't stable enough. It was a huge upgrade over previous versions but 7 was a lot more stable and easier to deal with.
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u/Impressive-Jump3981 Jul 15 '26
I tought that too but after i started a job where i run CNC machine with XP daily it is not a pleasant os to use anymore. Windows 7 has way better usability
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u/Davenator_98 Intel i13 33337K, QTX 69100, 420GB DDR6, 32GB SSD Jul 15 '26
Win7 will always be the GOAT when it comes to compatibility.
While 10 struggles with running XP stuff, 7 will just eat up 95 programs with zero issues.
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u/Zealousideal_Type814 Jul 15 '26
i unironically agree with all the opinions in this meme
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u/Green_Ad5186 PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
You agree that dos was peak?
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u/Zealousideal_Type814 Jul 15 '26
yes
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u/Nubanuba RTX 4080 | R7 9700X | 32GB | OLED Jul 15 '26
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Jul 15 '26
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u/dib1999 Ryzen 5 5600 // RX 7700XT // 32 gb DDR4 3600 MHz Jul 15 '26
Ugh, a GUI? You want me to waste precious background resources on a solid color background?! 🤢
CLI or GTFO 💪
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u/codythewolf PC Master Race I7-8700k 32GB DDR4 3200MHz RTX 2070 Jul 15 '26
You wanna be staring at a bright nasty screen shooting electrons at you? Nah, punch cards and TTL are the only real way to compute.
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u/R3turn_MAC Jul 15 '26
Ahh, the days of editing autoexec.bat and config.sys to squeeze the most out 2MB of RAM.
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u/wrongbutt_longbutt 7950x3d / 4080 Super / 64GB RAM / 34" 155hz OLED / now I'm broke Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
You had 2MB? My PC Jr had the added brick of RAM on the side to give us a massive 256KB. Pair that with the 4.33MHz processor, and you're in for some of the finest EGA 16-color gaming of your life.
EDIT: I should add that i still have this computer and it still runs the same as it did in the mid 80s.
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u/Ultimatesims Jul 15 '26
I mean you can still use command line
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u/Dry_Departure_7813 Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I created my own batch files to load soundblaster 16 before launching the game.
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Jul 15 '26
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u/dgrantuk Jul 15 '26
they were shit times until you got the autoexec.bat and config.sys nailed with himem.sys putting stuff in the right place. it was a total piss about really and most people couldn't get to the sweet spot without help...
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u/Korenchkin12 Jul 15 '26
Yes,you could run modem stack for baycom as tsr(rtos,baycom was sw modem for ax.25 for ham),that was peak :)
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u/specter_in_the_conch PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
I mean for what it was, it was peak if you had no contact with the equivalents of the time there was little to no comparison an average user was able to make.
For example, my first PC had something installed on dos where it had a fixed highlight over the syntaxes of several commands. I thought it was standard until I used other pcs and had a comparison.
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u/zeek609 7700 | RTX5070 | 32GB | 64TB/2TB | Ghost Spectre Superlite Jul 15 '26
Because each one is comparing to the previous OS. So they're all objectively correct.
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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Jul 15 '26
Eh they're skipping versions.
Windows XP, 7, 10 were all pretty universally liked when they released because they came out immediately following ME, Vista, 8.
If they got the version numbers correct I would agree with it but people when 10 came out weren't calling it bloated it was more "Thank fucking christ this isn't 8.1!" *
*Yes 10 had people saying it was "literally malware" they were a very vocal minority.
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u/Visual-Scallion1535 Jul 15 '26
Because people skipped versions.
I went from XP to 7 and 7 to 10. It was extremely common, especially since upgrades werent free back then, you had to buy a new license.
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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Jul 15 '26
Yes but the consensus around windows wasnt whats listed above.
Like I said the consensus going from 8.1 to 10 was "Windows 10 is a way better OS". Pretty much everyone agreed.
Same with Windows 7, no one got windows 7 and pined for the days of XP. For that matter anyone who got Windows XP in 2006 was fucking thrilled, those were the last days of XP and it was at its peak.
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u/BothAdhesiveness9265 KDE Plasma my beloved Jul 15 '26
tbf there's still people who will swear by win7 and continue daily driving it. hell people got UPSET that FF14 dropped support for it a while back (after steam already dropped support)
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u/McGuirk808 Debian Jul 15 '26
XP was absolutely not universally liked when it released.
Since the operating system ditched DOS on the back end, it broken unfathomable amount of software that people were regularly using at the time.
Drivers were unstable, it generally just had a lot of problems until it got a few updates, I want to say service pack 2 is when it started to get pretty good.
Most people never ran millennium edition, they were coming from 95 and 98.
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u/theotherdoomguy Jul 15 '26
There are aot of rosy tinted glasses in this thread. XP was absolutely a shit show until SP2 released. Windows 10 had a loud denouncement where the whole argument boiled down to "at least it isn't 8", Windows ME was somehow a regression from all the improvements 98SE made, back to original 98 levels of stability (hopes and dreams)
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u/SLStonedPanda R9 7950X | RTX 3080 | 64Gb 6400 MT/s Jul 15 '26
8.1 was actually good, its reputation was just too damaged, because at launch 8 was actually terrible.
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u/el_ghosteo Jul 15 '26
8.1 is still my favorite version of “Modern” windows by far and many users forget how slow 7 was by comparison. 8.1 is also when we never really had to worry about drivers anymore because unless the device was flat out unsupported, it just kinda found everything on its own. I was a broke teenager who had to switch between my divorced parents houses at the time so i only had access to cheap windows xp computers i found at thrift stores and 8.1 ran night and day better than 7 on those. While it’s hated, SkyDrive was really important during that time of my life when i needed my school documents synced across houses but still accessible at school. It helped that i had an xbox 360 at the time too. 8.1 really just needed 10’s start menu and windowed apps and i believe it would have been up there with the best versions. Also did we all forget how malicious 10 was about installing itself on windows 7/8 PCs? And it didn’t have compatibility issues to stop it like 11 did. Defending 8.1 is the hill i will die on.
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u/Axvalor Jul 15 '26
Notice how there is not a mention for Windows 8 or Vista being good. Nor will be for 11.
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u/_eg0_ Ryzen 9 3950X | 32Gb DDR4 3333 CL14 | RX 6900 XT Jul 15 '26
I always liked Vista ( without the games for Windows nonensense) but noone properly supported it hence it turned into a mess.
8.1 was actually pretty good, too.
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u/pfohl Ryzen 5 3600 | PNY RTX 3070 | 16 GB Jul 15 '26
yeah, win7 was unironically basically Vista SP3 because Microsoft knew the Vista name was toxic
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u/BebopFlow Jul 15 '26
Vista was rough on launch but people forget that it came with a huge architecture overhaul to support x64 and that broke a lot of compatibility for both software and hardware. It was a necessary growing pain unfortunately. By the end of the Vista lifespan it was actually in a good place, though Win7 was still an improvement
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u/iknownuffink R9 5900X | RTX 3070 | 32GB Jul 16 '26
Most people running Vista were running on systems without enough RAM. "Vista Ready" PC's absolutely weren't Vista Ready in most cases.
I ran Vista on 8GB of RAM, and had very few issues. Other people were trying to run it on 2GB and had ALL the issues.
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u/ThePupnasty PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
Vista was good after SP2. 8.1 was great and actually gave a performance boost in most cases.
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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue Jul 15 '26
8.1 was fast, and legitimately a decent OS, but no one would get over the start menu so it didn't matter.
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u/Sleepy_Witch_Maple Jul 15 '26
I just used classic shell on it. It fixed the start menu pretty much completely.
And it was better for me than 10 because you could actually just download security updates instead of being forced to download every feature update
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u/ThePupnasty PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
I bought 8.1 pro with my student discount and noticed in some cases double digit jumps in fps in some games. It was silky smooth too even on older harder at the time (i7-860, 20GB RAM, GTX 580, then a 770sc)
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u/ThePupnasty PC Master Race Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Dunno why the fuck I'm being downvoted for something I experienced, whatever reddit, you do you.
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Jul 15 '26
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u/ArchinaTGL EndeavourOS | Ryzen 9 5950x | 9070XT Nitro+ Jul 15 '26
8.1 was essentially just a snappier 7 if you installed Classic Shell and had support for a lot of programs designed for Windows 10. Vista sucked at the beginning just because of how buggy it was and how much extra bloat it added to systems (and most systems couldn't handle the extra bloat.) Though once the OS was more refined it was a solid to use.
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u/sioux612 der8auer 8700k~5.1ghz, 2080Ti - ThreadRipper 3960X, Titan RTX Jul 15 '26
Big thing i noticed with Vista was that if somebody switched over for DX10 they tended to have hardware that was good enough for Vista
If they switched because its the new OS that looks a bit nicer, they tended to struggle
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u/jdatopo814 Ryzen 7 5700X | RTX 3060ti | 16gb 3200 Jul 15 '26
Windows 8.1 was actually the most solid and stable OS performance wise. It could’ve been so huge if Microsoft didn’t absolutely fumble the UI.
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u/BigBoyYuyuh Jul 15 '26
Windows 7 was bloated? I thought 7 was great. Windows 8 had amazing performance but the interface was shit.
Windows 7 interface with Windows 8 performance would’ve been peak Windows.
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u/kodaxmax Only 1? Jul 15 '26
they were comparing it to vista, as win 8 didnt exist yet. Still i don't think it was bloated. Mayby because it came with msoft office and a few other things preinstalled?
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u/TheZoltan Jul 15 '26
No one has said try Linux yet. Quick spam your distro of choice.
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Jul 15 '26
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u/Konju376 Jul 15 '26
But KDE, no one likes gnome
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u/ibeerianhamhock Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Fedora and its variants are "it just works" distros. I love Linux but I don't use an OS to play with an OS, I use an OS to get real work done and do some gaming.
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u/According_Smoke_479 Jul 15 '26
Don’t forget to scoff at people who like a different distro than you
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u/dieplanes789 9800X3D | 5090 | 32GB | 16.5 TB Jul 15 '26
Mint, because it just works.
I'd probably use CachyOS but I still need secure boot for the other OS and Mint just works with it and isn't a hassle like many other distros when it comes to secure boot.
I still have a dual boot to windows 11 but Mint is the main OS.
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u/Inevitibility 3900x, 3090, 64GB DDR4 Jul 15 '26
Debian Debian Debian Debian Debian
Also great experience with CachyOS
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u/314kabinet Jul 15 '26
Ubuntu, fuck it.
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u/turkoid Jul 15 '26
Back in the day it was one of the best user-friendly distros. I have nothing but respect for it and no hate to anyone who uses it. I currently use Ubuntu on both of my personal servers. However, I'm dual booting CachyOS on my main.
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u/ingframin Jul 15 '26
Fedora because it runs on my laptop without fiddling with drivers and (contrary to Mint and Ubuntu) it did not break after updates in the past 6 years.
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u/Bug_406 Jul 15 '26
Using Pika OS on main pc currently, am a fan of Ubuntu, Pi OS is everywhere. Debian based flavors, I guess. Tried Arch, but meh, relearning is hard. I do have a Windows laptop as well, because yes, sometimes it's required.
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u/uV_Kilo11 Jul 15 '26
Seriously, now is the time to try it. You can even live boot and run it without deleting anything, see if it's for you (for most people it can be).
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u/Obvious_Scheme_2063 Jul 15 '26
Its almost like it keeps getting worse
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u/AgileExample Jul 15 '26
Yeah people are missing the point. It's not a circle it's a spiral.
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u/unknownman0001 RX7800XT|R5 7500F|32GB|FEDORA KDE Jul 15 '26
Windows 11 legit made people dipping their toes in Linux's distros.
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u/ciuccio2000 Jul 16 '26
Hello. After a horrible experience with ubuntu and nvidia drivers like 10-15 years ago I swore to never try Linux again. Then win11 happened, and now I've been an Arch user btw for two years.
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u/Morter_ Jul 15 '26
Nobody that lived through win 95/98 would say 98 was better than XP. And 7 was actually the first OS that kinda forced people to get graphic cards or upgrade in general, so it had that issue (otherwise great)
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u/DeliciousLiving8563 Jul 15 '26
Vista is what you are thinking of. It had about the same requirements as 7 several years earlier. w Which is why vista sucked. People were selling new laptops that didnt match the spec unless you included the RAM taken by the on board GPU in the available RAM and pretended celeron was the same as pentium. Still shocking that brand new devices would not run it.
Several years later 7 needed the same specs, i remember that being a big impressive Deal. 7 was loved on release and the OP is revisionism.
That said maybe some people skipped visa because it sucked and finally upgraded for 7. But it was vista that was first.
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u/NimRodelle Jul 15 '26
98SE was getting a lot of love during the cluster**** that was the ME launch. But yeah, once we got XP we were pretty happy with it right out of the gate because we were all so traumatized by ME.
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u/Keynsha Jul 15 '26
Windows XP was generally pretty well received, after years of weird windows versions
It was stable, with a standardized UI, not too bloated nor slow
Then Vista was shit
Then 7 was pretty good
Then 8 seemed designed to infuriate everyone
Microsoft used to fumble every other version but the others were not bad nor too badly received (except the more and more invasive drm)
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u/TheGlennDavid Jul 15 '26
> XP was generally well received, it was stable
I was there Gandalf, and it was NOT sunshine and rainbows. XP was atrociously insure at launch. SP1 and 2 fixed a lot of that but the service packs themselves fuuuucked a ton of a machines and software.
I was doing student IT supper at a university when SP2 dropped. We had this networking software that wouldn't let student machines onto the network unless they were fully patched.
It was a god. Damn. Nightmare.
XP SP3, whe it was all the way done, was a very solid OS. But there's a heck of a lot of nostalgia bout the road to get there.
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u/Meli_Melo_ Jul 15 '26
Is there anyone who thinks w10 was peak ?
W11 is just reskinned, downfeatured w10.
W7 will always be peak.
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u/stgm_at 7800X3D | RTX 4070 TiS | 32GB DDR5 Jul 15 '26
win3.11 + win2k were peak,
change my mind.
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u/rollingviolation Jul 15 '26
you are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
2000 had the UI of 95, plug and play support, and the NT Kernel. Best Windows ever. No advertising, no fisher-price color schemes, no attempt to hide the system from the users...
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u/crevulation 3090 Jul 15 '26
Yep, all the real pros were on Win2K as soon they could at home - NT with real multimedia support, at last! Stability AND Winamp AND Counter-Strike!
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u/stgm_at 7800X3D | RTX 4070 TiS | 32GB DDR5 Jul 15 '26
ikr! it was such a relieve after having used 95, 98(se) and for a short period of time me to have a stable, no-bullsh- operating system.
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u/Haiquli Jul 15 '26
Classic straw man skipping the shit ones
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u/professorbuffoon 7700X | 9070 | 32GB DDR5 | CachyOS Jul 15 '26
Tbh, as an old guy who has seen every version of Windows come and go, Windows 2000 was peak. We'll never top it. Best stability, best UI, modern(ish) capabilities.
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u/iMissTheOldInternet Jul 15 '26
Win2k Professional was the best OS that MS ever made, and that’s fucking sad. Windows has been going downhill ever since, and the fact that people still use it is both infuriating and baffling.
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u/TurbulentWing3820 Jul 15 '26
Agreed.
All the stability of NT4 and the ease of use of 98.
It looked good, it was solid, it was my favourite Windows of all time.
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u/MarioShroomsTasteBad PC Master Race Jul 15 '26
Couldn't agree more, stability of NT with the niceties of 98.
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u/Pussy_handz Jul 15 '26
So we're jsut casually skipping over the abomination of Win 8?
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u/HeroDanny i7 5820k | EVGA GTX 1080 FTW2 | 32GB DDR4 Jul 15 '26
I still think windows 7 was peak. It was the perfect blend of usability and aesthetic.
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u/DysonSphere75 5800X3D | Pulse 7900 XTX Jul 15 '26
It was peak because it was Windows XP but pretty... or Vista but not shit
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u/Express_Ad5083 W11, 7 7800X3D, 9070XT, 32 GB DDR5, X670 X AX V2. Jul 15 '26
Every single time now yeah, I remember people shitting on W10 only to now defend it as best thing ever
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u/nunya_bidnes77 Jul 15 '26
Its because the problems have only gotten worse, so by comparison Win10 is better.
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u/snappydragon4 Jul 15 '26
I second this, I remember some people hating 10 but not as many that hate 11.
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u/mrheosuper Jul 15 '26
Yeah, even the XP was being bashed at release
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u/Briggie Ryzen 7 5800x / ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / TUF RTX 4090 Jul 15 '26
XP was buns until SP2 came out in 2004. Until then, unless you had a new computer, a lot of people were still rocking windows 98.
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u/Cabusha Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I always thought 10 was “fine”. A more annoying Win7, with a lot of half-assed menus that couldn’t decide if they were modern or windows 2000 legacy. But it was stable enough. If 7 were still supported I would have definitely preferred it.
By contrast, Win11 was a steady downhill regression, with patches randomly breaking audio, bypassing registry changes I’d made, forcing more and more onedrive integration, then forcing AI crap that would turn itself back on after updates. Final straw was their AI updste for Outlook making it prioritize reading my mail for their AI training, rather than actually checking for new mail. I finally gave up on it and switched to Linux. Good job Microsoft. I’ve been using Windows since 3.1 when I was like 6, and you’ve so ruined it that I gave up 30 years of comfort knowledge and training (former IT) to jump ship.
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u/Zealousideal_Side987 Jul 15 '26
i finally switched to Linux..for some HIV reason . shit is so smooth and organised
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u/StellarWaffle 7800X3D | RTX 5090 | 64GB RAM Jul 15 '26
It's the best. I can configure everything exactly how I want it to be set up. Nobody is going to change it on me.
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u/Sufficient-Trade-349 I7-13700K | RTX 4070 Super | 32GB 6000Mhz Jul 15 '26
But win 11 is generally shit. I prefer 7 still
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u/tjb122982 Jul 15 '26
windows 98 was not peak lol, it crashed one me twice a day
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u/afrotronics Jul 15 '26
I think Windows 98SE was peak. I found that all of the crashing I was dealing with was caused by a common mobo chipset manufactured by VIA technologies. Basically prolonged use of any USB device risked a crash. It had something to do with instability of the 5v pins causing noise on the data pins.
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u/Pudding-Swimming Jul 15 '26
Win2000 was best. Basic, no bloating. Exactly what an OS is supposed to be
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u/quaternionmath Jul 15 '26
Windows 2000 was peak.
Finally had the NT kernel in a consumer OS, and the UI was modern (for the time) and consistent.
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u/Shadow_s_Bane i9-14900KS | 64GB DDR4 | 9070 XT Jul 15 '26
Windows 7 is the peak, 10 sucks ass but is way better than 11.
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u/Kobymaru376 Jul 15 '26
You're not wrong but this is just evidence that they just keep shoving shit down our throats that we don't want but have to get used to because we don't have the option.
Except for UAC lmao, running everything as Admin was idiotic. Why that was ever a thing is beyond me.
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u/FlyE32 AMD 7800X3D | 7900XTX | 64gb | PG32UCDM Jul 15 '26
I would say I agree, but I genuinely hated windows 10 to this day. Windows 7 was simply the best
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u/bjmartynhak Jul 15 '26
My first Windows was 3.1. I'm not expert by any means.
- 95 was revolutionary
- 98 seemed similar, but better
- XP felt weird. I didn't like it. I guess it was security issues and pop-ups when browsing
- Vista - I skipped it at home. But I when I used, it felt... slower? However, the new Office layout - became much better once got used to it.
- 7 - great!
- 8 - wtf were they thinking?
- 10 - perfect
- 11 - more of 10. Finally, tabs on Explorer.
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u/TheRealBillyShakes Jul 15 '26
Nobody said Win 7 was bloated. We all loved it at the time.
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u/Tman11S Ryzen 7 5800X3D | Radeon RX9070 XT Jul 15 '26
Win XP was so popular that most people skipped vista straight to 7, then people only upgraded from 7 to 10 because it was free and support was ending and today people are still holding on to 10 because they don’t want 11’s AI slop
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u/Ninja__53 Ascended | Full Hardline | 9800x3d, 9070xt Jul 15 '26
okay, but nothing has changed since 2016? Still dont want a MS Account, still has Spyware, and is still Bloated. Difference being that we now have stripped downloads, dont need a Microsoft account to operate unless you want Minecraft, and the spyware is no worse than a modern browser.
Windows 11 has Vibe coded elements. I ain't touching it.
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