5 ms·

Somehow, Windows 2000 does not look dated to me. It looks functional and usable, and maybe even somewhat fresh. I never actually used it long-term (during colle

by bartvk 2mo ago

Somehow, Windows 2000 does not look dated to me. It looks functional and usable, and maybe even somewhat fresh. I never actually used it long-term (during college, started using Linux), so it can't be nostalgic. Anyone else feel the same?

hsbauauvhabzb 2mo ago
The only thing better is server 2003.
- RamRodification 2mo ago
  Having had consulting jobs working with Windows servers around 2015, this was ruined for me. Sooo many ancient out of support 2003 severs. Seeing it actually triggers some light anxiety ("oh no not another one!")
- GeekyBear 2mo ago
  Dave Cutler created and ran the Windows NT product line through Windows 2000. Other people ran Windows XP, but Cutler was still in charge of Server 2003 before moving on to special projects like creating 64 bit Windows and Microsoft Azure. His attitude towards the eradication of known bugs really led to Windows feeling rock solid, with the exception of driver bugs (being the leading cause of blue screens).
  - cube00 2mo ago
    The dog fooding of building NT on daily builds of that same kernel was an impressive commitment to quality. Yes, it slows down velocity and we can't certainly have that (/s) but it's a nice glimpse into what engineering that prioritises quality could look like.
  - happycube 2mo ago
    64-bit Windows was being worked on for 2003. x64 XP was in fact a build of 2003, and beta-wise, guess what Windows 2210 referenced in the readme is... ;) (haven't tried it yet)
- bobmcnamara 2mo ago
  I ran 2003 on my laptop for ages. Only tricky part was installing the audio stack.
spyrja 2mo ago
It really wasn't a bad operating system. In fact it kind of blew its (lame) Win9X predecessors out of the water! I ran on Win2000 for years before finally switching to Linux. Of course Microsoft ended up going a different course with its newer "offerings" and I have nothing but pity for those who still have to use their products on a day-to-day basis.
- roadbuster 2mo ago
  > It really wasn't a bad operating system It was a wonderful operating system. It provided consumer desktop essentials (Plug & Play, DirectX 7, ACPI power management, Windows Driver Model (WDM), and support for consumer I/O interfaces like USB and Firewire) alongside a modernized UI, all running atop the NT kernel. I was extremely lucky to receive a free copy of Windows 2000 Pro as a student, because I rode that horse for years. Then Microsoft added a green start button and dark blue backgrounds and packaged Win2k for home users as Windows XP.
  - gosub100 2mo ago
    the drawback for me was the startup time. it really seemed to hang out on the splash screen for quite a while (just as NT4 did, and ofc they were from the same core)
    - Borg3 2mo ago
      [dead]
    - doublerabbit 2mo ago
      Windows 2000 was the first release of NT5. That's what made it 2000. Windows ME on the other hand...
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 2mo ago
      IIRC, Win2000 would wait for most/all services to complete startup before showing the login UI. XP would allow login as soon as enough of the system was started to support it. The tradeoff is that you might have slow performance from HDD thrashing while everything else finishes starting up. It's been 20+ years so it's possible I had it wrong then, or remember it wrong now.
hadlock 2mo ago
I ran W2K through most of high school and until like 2009 when Valve finally dropped support for it. It was a great OS fast, rarely crashed, most games would actually run on it. Valve dropping W2K support meant TF2 no longer ran without jumping through a bunch of hoops
bobmcnamara 2mo ago
You can fix Windows7/8/10/11 with Retrobar
projektfu 2mo ago
There are a few APIs from Windows 7 that are great improvements over Win32, such as DirectWrite and Direct2D.
mysterydip 2mo ago
I daily drove it in the 2000s, and loved it. Later I used it for my server VMs due to the small memory footprint and fast remote response. If it supported current applications, I’d still be using it
anthk 2mo ago
If you ran XP and Windows 98SE you got a close interface, even more with classic mode in XP, which was almost the same.
MobiusHorizons 2mo ago
I had windows 2000 on a laptop in the 2008 2010 era. It was already old at the time, but I actually preferred it to XP and certainly vista. You get NT which is nice compared to dos based 95/98/me but you get those tried and true aesthetics, which work well. I’m not sure I’d go back to it now, but it definitely sticks out as the high point of windows in that time period.
kjs3 2mo ago
Ton's of people ran w2k as a 'better desktop windows'. I did, and pretty much all the developers I knew back then did.
pavlov 2mo ago
Windows 2000 really was the best desktop OS from release until 2002 at least. Linux was incomplete, Sun and SGI were dead except for servers, classic Mac OS was a crashy dinosaur, and Mac OS X was a slow mess. I bought 10.0 on release day and installed it on a dual core G4, almost the top Mac you could buy. It was not usable, much as I wanted to. (The real v1 was Mac OS X 10.2.) Windows 2000 was designed for real professional apps because late ‘90s Microsoft had a serious appetite for taking over the workstation market. Microsoft acquired companies like Softimage, the leading 3D CGI app, and rebuilt their previously Unix-based products on Windows. This pro usability focus reflected back into the OS itself. This didn’t last because Microsoft unified the Windows 95/98 consumer lineage into NT/2000, so starting with XP there wasn’t a pro Windows anymore. They had decisively won the workstation market and saw no need to invest anything more (just as happened with browsers). So 2000 remains the last time a major tech company built a pure pro desktop OS. Mac was always a consumer/pro hybrid, and ultimately Apple did it better than Microsoft.
- sgt 2mo ago
  I seem to recall more or less exactly when OS X became legendary. Must be around Jaguar or Panther. But coming from a Linux (and Unix) background, this was a godsend at the time. Now, quarter of a century later - still running it and it's brilliant. The only thing that bugs me is notarization.
  - ramgine 2mo ago
    I still have my snow leopard usb installer. That was a great OS. It made me switch to daily driving a Mac completely
protocolture 2mo ago
I used to run Windows 2000 in production and it never gave me even a bit of grief. That said, it was mostly just an internet gateway/dhcp server. But gave me less issues than the Win 98 clients.
stasomatic 2mo ago
Same. Also NT 4.0, even better. There is quite a bit of DNA sharing with DEC.

by bartvk 2mo ago

hsbauauvhabzb 2mo ago

The only thing better is server 2003.

RamRodification 2mo ago
Having had consulting jobs working with Windows servers around 2015, this was ruined for me. Sooo many ancient out of support 2003 severs. Seeing it actually triggers some light anxiety ("oh no not another one!")
GeekyBear 2mo ago
Dave Cutler created and ran the Windows NT product line through Windows 2000. Other people ran Windows XP, but Cutler was still in charge of Server 2003 before moving on to special projects like creating 64 bit Windows and Microsoft Azure. His attitude towards the eradication of known bugs really led to Windows feeling rock solid, with the exception of driver bugs (being the leading cause of blue screens).
- cube00 2mo ago
  The dog fooding of building NT on daily builds of that same kernel was an impressive commitment to quality. Yes, it slows down velocity and we can't certainly have that (/s) but it's a nice glimpse into what engineering that prioritises quality could look like.
- happycube 2mo ago
  64-bit Windows was being worked on for 2003. x64 XP was in fact a build of 2003, and beta-wise, guess what Windows 2210 referenced in the readme is... ;) (haven't tried it yet)
bobmcnamara 2mo ago
I ran 2003 on my laptop for ages. Only tricky part was installing the audio stack.

spyrja 2mo ago

It really wasn't a bad operating system. In fact it kind of blew its (lame) Win9X predecessors out of the water! I ran on Win2000 for years before finally switching to Linux. Of course Microsoft ended up going a different course with its newer "offerings" and I have nothing but pity for those who still have to use their products on a day-to-day basis.

roadbuster 2mo ago
> It really wasn't a bad operating system It was a wonderful operating system. It provided consumer desktop essentials (Plug & Play, DirectX 7, ACPI power management, Windows Driver Model (WDM), and support for consumer I/O interfaces like USB and Firewire) alongside a modernized UI, all running atop the NT kernel. I was extremely lucky to receive a free copy of Windows 2000 Pro as a student, because I rode that horse for years. Then Microsoft added a green start button and dark blue backgrounds and packaged Win2k for home users as Windows XP.
- gosub100 2mo ago
  the drawback for me was the startup time. it really seemed to hang out on the splash screen for quite a while (just as NT4 did, and ofc they were from the same core)
  - Borg3 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - doublerabbit 2mo ago
    Windows 2000 was the first release of NT5. That's what made it 2000. Windows ME on the other hand...
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2mo ago
    IIRC, Win2000 would wait for most/all services to complete startup before showing the login UI. XP would allow login as soon as enough of the system was started to support it. The tradeoff is that you might have slow performance from HDD thrashing while everything else finishes starting up. It's been 20+ years so it's possible I had it wrong then, or remember it wrong now.

hadlock 2mo ago

I ran W2K through most of high school and until like 2009 when Valve finally dropped support for it. It was a great OS fast, rarely crashed, most games would actually run on it. Valve dropping W2K support meant TF2 no longer ran without jumping through a bunch of hoops

bobmcnamara 2mo ago

You can fix Windows7/8/10/11 with Retrobar

projektfu 2mo ago

There are a few APIs from Windows 7 that are great improvements over Win32, such as DirectWrite and Direct2D.

mysterydip 2mo ago

I daily drove it in the 2000s, and loved it. Later I used it for my server VMs due to the small memory footprint and fast remote response. If it supported current applications, I’d still be using it

anthk 2mo ago

If you ran XP and Windows 98SE you got a close interface, even more with classic mode in XP, which was almost the same.

MobiusHorizons 2mo ago

I had windows 2000 on a laptop in the 2008 2010 era. It was already old at the time, but I actually preferred it to XP and certainly vista. You get NT which is nice compared to dos based 95/98/me but you get those tried and true aesthetics, which work well. I’m not sure I’d go back to it now, but it definitely sticks out as the high point of windows in that time period.

kjs3 2mo ago

Ton's of people ran w2k as a 'better desktop windows'. I did, and pretty much all the developers I knew back then did.

pavlov 2mo ago

Windows 2000 really was the best desktop OS from release until 2002 at least. Linux was incomplete, Sun and SGI were dead except for servers, classic Mac OS was a crashy dinosaur, and Mac OS X was a slow mess. I bought 10.0 on release day and installed it on a dual core G4, almost the top Mac you could buy. It was not usable, much as I wanted to. (The real v1 was Mac OS X 10.2.) Windows 2000 was designed for real professional apps because late ‘90s Microsoft had a serious appetite for taking over the workstation market. Microsoft acquired companies like Softimage, the leading 3D CGI app, and rebuilt their previously Unix-based products on Windows. This pro usability focus reflected back into the OS itself. This didn’t last because Microsoft unified the Windows 95/98 consumer lineage into NT/2000, so starting with XP there wasn’t a pro Windows anymore. They had decisively won the workstation market and saw no need to invest anything more (just as happened with browsers). So 2000 remains the last time a major tech company built a pure pro desktop OS. Mac was always a consumer/pro hybrid, and ultimately Apple did it better than Microsoft.

sgt 2mo ago
I seem to recall more or less exactly when OS X became legendary. Must be around Jaguar or Panther. But coming from a Linux (and Unix) background, this was a godsend at the time. Now, quarter of a century later - still running it and it's brilliant. The only thing that bugs me is notarization.
- ramgine 2mo ago
  I still have my snow leopard usb installer. That was a great OS. It made me switch to daily driving a Mac completely

protocolture 2mo ago

I used to run Windows 2000 in production and it never gave me even a bit of grief. That said, it was mostly just an internet gateway/dhcp server. But gave me less issues than the Win 98 clients.

stasomatic 2mo ago

Same. Also NT 4.0, even better. There is quite a bit of DNA sharing with DEC.