Windows XP Delta Edition

https://xpdelta.weebly.com/

by kosasbest • 4 years ago

358 198 4 years ago

xpdelta.weebly.com

8organicbits3• 4 years ago

This looks like a lot of effort for pirated software, unless I'm missing something.

andai• 4 years ago

From the FAQ:

Q: What is the product key?

A: One is not provided so the project stays legal.

https://xpdelta.weebly.com/about.html

8organicbits3• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure that's not how copyright works. Besides there's a product key on the download page.

nonamenoslogan• 4 years ago

Fun fact: The 'smartphone' version of MS Activation still works with XP keys. I put XP on an old ThinkPad a few months back to play some early-2000's games and was able to activate it this way.

frostedflakes• 4 years ago

You might've missed the following: That not everyone cares about all that legal intellectual property stuff, and, that it was probably fun to make.

rektide3• 4 years ago

In a better world, companies would support & embrace this kind of creative exploration.

It's just a sad chilling legal regime that rules us. Control is prioritized over fun, for fear that the fun get out of hand or come to not reflect well on the corporate image.

xmonkee3• 4 years ago

Why are there so many narcs on HN

rejectfinite• 4 years ago

Its devs who hate piracy now that they wanna charge for their software but grew up doing it so they feel guilty.

kosasbest3• 4 years ago

For those wondering about other fan-made XP editions, there is MicroXP:

https://archive.org/details/MicroXP-0.82

As for piracy, it seems Microsoft just don't seem to care. MicroXP has been on Archive.org since 2019!

nyolfen• 4 years ago

man, eXPerience brings back some memories. i used tinyxp for most of the late 00s, in high school.

sgtnoodle• 4 years ago

Microsoft themselves offer a freely downloadable software compatibility tool which internally contains a full Windows XP virtual machine. There's instructions online for how to import the imagine into Virtual Box.

I wonder if it has to do with the common practice of using a stripped down windows install as a live bootable environment to run recovery tools?

zeusk• 4 years ago

WinPE (recovery tools) is very different from the desktop SKU

joshcryer• 4 years ago

You can get a ton of old, abandoned, or unsupported, software from Archive.org. I have no idea if the original authors are aware of it but if they are they don't seem to care that much.

pjerem• 4 years ago

Everything on archive.org is user uploaded. So I think authors don’t event know. I just recently uploaded an old Pocket PC / Windows Mobile game that I found on an old disk drive. It took me less than five minutes to register and upload it and it was immediately available.

ranger_danger3• 4 years ago

It's not that, archive.org has a DMCA exemption for being a library. It makes it legal for them to host the data, but that doesn't mean it's legal for you to download it. Weird I know... I mean why else would they store it if it's illegal to access? I've never gotten a straight answer to that.

wtallis2• 4 years ago

I mean why else would they store it if it's illegal to access?

It's not permanently illegal to access. In the US, there's a constitutional requirement that copyright and patents be time-limited, so eventually all that stuff will be public domain. And the copyright period is current so absurdly long that by the time XP is public domain, it will be hard to find outside of dedicated archives.

sp3323• 4 years ago

They have fairly strong protections, but it's not a blank check. Nintendo for example is aggressive about getting stuff taken down from there.

bscphil• 4 years ago

An ordinary library can not scan a copy of a book and allow unlimited downloads of that scan from the web. The DMCA exemption doesn't allow that. Actually, archive.org got in trouble pretty recently because they were accused of doing almost just that. Their response was not that they had the right to do it but rather that they had never been doing it to begin with - that each copy given out was merely "lended" and backed for the duration of the lend by an actual physical copy in a partnering library.

Similarly, you will find a bunch of copyright software on there, including for recent DRM-free and cracked video games. Unfortunately, my impression is that the archive managers simply do not care about copyright. Anyone who wants to get something they own taken off the site has to put in quite a bit of work, similar to the old wild-west days of YouTube.

wrp• 4 years ago

Even if you have a licensed copy of WinXP, MicroXP is useful because it is a stripped down version that has been tested. That represents quite a lot of work.

grishka• 4 years ago

I also remember ZverCD being popular in Russia. It had Vista icons and a more glossy theme.

igtztorrero• 4 years ago

What about security holes ?

orionblastar• 4 years ago

Just don't use it on the Internet. Internet Explorer doesn't work because the certificates have expired.

I would rather use Linux with WINE.

zamadatix• 4 years ago

Windows XP Delta Edition is an unofficial modification of a 21 year old operating system, and should not be used as a daily driver. Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in 2014, and all unofficial updates stopped in 2019. Windows XP Delta Edition is made by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.

It's not meant to make it usable, just fun.

accrual6• 4 years ago

I still play around with my XP laptop and even browse with MyPal. It has native WPA2 and can connect to a modern access point. As long as you're behind NAT and aren't downloading random warez, there's not too much to worry about. Just don't do anything sensitive like banking, of course.

Hackbraten• 4 years ago

TIL that MyPal is a thing!

mproud• 4 years ago

Thus it must be legitimate!

irthomasthomas• 4 years ago

I've been using the same xp vm about 8 years and I love it. 2 secs to boot and blazing fast. Only occasionally do I need win 7 or rarely 8. Not that I use windows much. I'll never use 10+, never ever.

orf• 4 years ago

If you’re using a VM, why wouldn’t you just suspend it? Boot speed seems somewhat irrelevant

chrsig• 4 years ago

windows tends to need rebooting at just about every turn

adrian_b• 4 years ago

The original Windows XP did not require a reboot at least once per day, like Windows 98, but it still required a reboot after 2 or 3 days of intense use.

The many Service Packs that have been applied later to Windows XP have improved a lot its stability, but I have not used Windows XP for enough years to reach a Service Pack version where Windows XP would never need periodic reboots. I have stopped using Windows XP in 2005, maybe later revisions have solved the remaining bugs.

I have used Windows 2000 on much less computers and for much less time than Windows XP, so the accumulated experience might be insufficient, but with Windows 2000 I have not encountered any situation when I was forced to reboot the computer, like it was needed from time to time with Windows XP. Even so, the improvement in stability between Windows 98 and Windows XP was huge.

Simultaneously with using Windows XP on many desktops/laptops, I was managing a large number of FreeBSD servers. Those were rebooted exactly once per year, in order to do a kernel upgrade, even if that could have been skipped without problems.

wtallis2• 4 years ago

I similarly have a Win2k VM that I use for vintage software. Post-XP applications tend to be easier to still run natively or with Wine.

tlhunter• 4 years ago

The Royale theme remains one of my favorite OS interfaces to this day.

gdulli• 4 years ago

I wonder if the custom Windows image scene will get a revival when they start to force online accounts. I'm not looking for a way to avoid paying for Windows, but I'll do what it takes to keep a local account.

causality0• 4 years ago

That would be nice. Windows AME and NinjutsuOS are basically your two options for Windows 10, aside from LTSC.

spaniard89277• 4 years ago

Thanks for this imput!

3234• 4 years ago

There will always be offline accounts because there will always be offline computers, for a variety of reasons.

dymk3• 4 years ago

For enterprise, sure. But they've already shown a willingness to gimp their operating systems for common consumer use. For instance, you can't use virtualization features on Windows 10 Home edition. I wouldn't be surprised if you need a special license key to use Windows offline (past activation, at least) in the future.

stevewatson301• 4 years ago

The field is active even today, you may want to check out TeamOS. (I’m not sure if I can leave a link to it here, so just search for it.)

andix3• 4 years ago

i think they will never force online accounts. A lot of small business prefer/need offline accounts, and there needs to be a solution for them, besides Windows Enterprise Edition.

kosasbest3• 4 years ago

You can get lots of other software .ISOs (Mostly operating systems) here:

https://archive.org/details/operatingsystemcds

init• 4 years ago

Thank you for sharing this link. The Internet Archive is truly a marvel of unequaled value. Didn't know it had such a trove of warez without the risk of pwnage that warez and torrent sites came with.

manjana• 4 years ago

How do you know these are free of any malware?

accrual6• 4 years ago

Even more on WinWorldPC:

https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems

I like WinWorld since each file usually comes with a bit of history about the release, as well as nearby serials.

mnsc• 4 years ago

I love the screenshots of windows ME!

genewitch4• 4 years ago

aw, they don't have windows home server!

branon• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the hacked-up Windows XP Service Pack 3 images you'd find on warez sites. I fondly remember XP "Black Edition" with custom themes.

They also had it configured to receive the Windows XP POSReady security updates, which made the system serviceable long after the general EOL date.

syntaxing• 4 years ago

Super nostalgic! I remember them having a lite edition which ran noticeably faster on my netbook

comprev• 4 years ago

nLite was popular in the carputer scene. I ran a stripped down XP version on a low power industrial PC (Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, laptop disk) hooked up to a Lilliput touchscreen up front.

Good times!

nunez• 4 years ago

definitely installed xp netbook edition, and it was faster than full boat xp but still a chonker compared to whatever the popular linux distro for netbooks was back then

IceWreck• 4 years ago

Pretty sure they still do those for Windows 11 and so on

xeromal• 4 years ago

A trip down memory lane. I loved my pimped out XP black edition with all the addons and features.

russellendicott• 4 years ago

POSReady

There's a name I haven't heard for a long time. I used to work in POS and remember getting big license packs of POSReady in the MS Gold Partner Program loot packs.

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

This reminds me of XPize.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/xpize.html

kif• 4 years ago

Whoa... this throws me back. It was pretty slick for the time. I loved it.

no_time• 4 years ago

Not bad but I prefer Gold Edition for its additional bling. https://preview.redd.it/bv1f9do7esky.png?auto=webp&s=dc5a65b...

kcplate2• 4 years ago

To each their own, but to my eyes that is bloody awful.

dymk3• 4 years ago

That's _why_ it was great. So gaudy. Blatantly opulent and tacky. Like rolling up to the Trump tower with spinning rims.

itvision• 4 years ago

Windows XP, Vista and 7 were the most beautiful operating systems ever.

Since 7 we've had what could only be described as horrendously unusable and ugly.

extrememacaroni• 4 years ago

Agreed, 7 was the last Windows I felt had more to love than to complain about. When 10 entered a silly update failed - keep retrying failing updates just to fail again loop I just said nah not worth it and switched permanently to linux mint. It was the last straw so to speak. I was supposed to install an update manager and use it to install updates instead? Bleh.

Some audio tweaks here, some kernel tweaks there, we've been through a lot together already this OS and I :D

thatfrenchguy• 4 years ago

More like we’re all just all getting old

icedchai2• 4 years ago

I always felt XP looked like a toy, compared to say Windows 2000 or NT 4.

lostlogin2• 4 years ago

It certainly grated if you were coming to it from macOS.

dashundchen• 4 years ago

I think mobile OS designed also peaked with Windows Phone 7. Android and iOS haven't touched the intuitiveness and usability it had. Not to mention the Nokia Lumia hardware was light-years better in build quality then even most Android phones today.

They were too late too market and lost developer mindshare with the Windows Mobile to Phone transition.

andix3• 4 years ago

To me XP always looked ridiculous. Like an April’s fool joke, „Windows Toys“r“us Edition“. I still can’t believe that it was used to run nuclear power plants (it probably still does).

jhgb• 4 years ago

The first thing I always did with any XP install was to switch to the W2k look. It saved screen space, too.

signaru• 4 years ago

Still using 7 when I'm not using Linux. Every new Windows after that just gave you more bloat you didn't ask for. Unsure whether the OS should run on a desktop or a tablet.

graiz5• 4 years ago

I was a former program manager on the Windows XP release so it warms my sprit when I see projects like this. Thanks for keeping the dream alive.

imdsm2• 4 years ago

I have warm memories of Windows XP, upgrading to it from ME at about 11/12 years old, where I truly began my independent journey into SWE. I used to switch to the silver theme every now and then to keep things fresh. Windows XP + an internet connection, what more could a 12 year old geek want? Thanks for helping provide that!

iKevinShah• 4 years ago

I am with you on that. Almost same timeline. Plus the amazing art work, icon packs, editing shell32.dll (or whatever it was called, sorry I dont remember accurately) to make it look like Aurora (or longhorn). Those were the days for a geek.

fartcannon7• 4 years ago

Windows XP was actually the trigger for me to move to Linux full time. There was an option to let windows verify you owned the media files on your computer via a third party service when you set up Windows media player. Since this was slightly after all the hoopla about Napster and copyright law, it struck me then that perhaps Microsoft wasn't one of the good guys.

I was slightly older than you though, so perhaps that gave me a different perspective.

bombcar2• 4 years ago

I held out on Windows 98SE for awhile because of games, and then went to Windows 2000 for the classic UI when I learned you could often get XP drivers to load in 2000 with a bit of INI fiddling.

It wasn’t until nearly 2003 that I finally moved over to XP.

polishdude20• 4 years ago

Windows XP was my first operating system when my family got their first computer. At the time our school computers were running Windows 98. I felt so special having the new "XP" system at home haha. The login sound still brings back memories. Thank you for your contributions!

fartcannon7• 4 years ago

How did you guys feel about all the Linux patent sabre rattling that Microsoft was doing at the time or shortly thereafter?

jchw• 4 years ago

I think when it comes to big companies of any sort, not just big tech, a lot of unloved initiatives are also not well-liked from within, but even fairly critical people tolerate it as long as they’re not in close proximity to it. I can only imagine others here can relate to the pressures of trying to balance pressure to prioritize short to mid-term business success vs investing in long-term gains and user trust. Maybe Google is a bit of a weirder case, but I was there when Dragonfly was uncovered and though some people quit, most people just complained. (To be sure, I definitely understand that some company culture would be more aggressive against internal dialogue like this. I’m somewhat neutral on it as it definitely had its ups and downs.)

graiz5• 4 years ago

Keep in mind that at the time Microsoft was being sued for being anti-competitive behaviour by Netscape and there were a lot of attention on the company for being a bad actor. Most of Microsofts's patents were defensive (they rarely used them offensively to my knowledge). There was a group of execs that were nervous about Linux but the lack of UI/UX/Usability strength put most of the focus on server capabilities. To this day many people want Linux to be a broader desktop OS but the only strong and focused effort on this are ironically ChromeOS and Android.

blackhaz• 4 years ago

And I thought Program Manager was a Windows 3.1 thing... Badum-tss!

graiz5• 4 years ago

Congrats on your fatherhood - only a dad could make a joke that bad.

RedShift12• 4 years ago

God I love that superbly crisp Tahoma font.

accrual6• 4 years ago

Early Windows UI as a whole was incredibly crisp, like using a bitmapped OS sometimes. I miss it.

OsintOtter69• 4 years ago

Anyone remember that golf game that was on XP?

xmonkee3• 4 years ago

That black and orange theme brings back memories. Does anyone know of a way to get that exact look in linux?

opan• 4 years ago

The Zune theme! I found this from a quick search:

https://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Metacity...

xmonkee3• 4 years ago

Thank you!

sydthrowaway• 4 years ago

Is Windows XP faster than Windows 11?

bombcar2• 4 years ago

Depending on what you want to do with it almost certainly.

After all, it ran on twenty year old computers, and quite usable, too.

sp3323• 4 years ago

Not for opening .zip files lol.

accrual6• 4 years ago

What boggles my mind is how slow the Win 10 start menu can be. Unless you disable the web integration via regedit, it can take _seconds_ to open something as simple as the calculator. Plenty of times I'm tapping my fingers for something that would have been instant in XP.

This makes Win 10 so much more pleasant for me:

    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
    "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001

foxtacles• 4 years ago

This also works on Windows 11. Thank you!

Lammy• 4 years ago

For maximum nostalgia they should find a way to remove the volume-license key blocklist (added in SP1) so I can install Delta Edition with the "FuCK GateWay" key that is still seared into my memory 20 years later.

rootw0rm2• 4 years ago

pretty sure that's done? I used to distribute my own little hacked together bit of kit called TurboXP that used volume key

andix3• 4 years ago

Okay, nice idea, well done, but whyyyyy? :D

fuzzfactor• 4 years ago

Why not?

With a proper BIOS PC or CSM enabled, you can partition a SSD for a few MBR-layout partitions, then format the first partition FAT32. Following partitions can be formatted NTFS.

Windows 98SE can then be installed to the volume if your BIOS can enable ATA mode (for HDD access to complete the boot process), otherwise you still can manually install the plain DOS (which underlies W98SE itself) to the FAT32 volume, but that way you only boot to the bare metal command line.

DOS is simple enough where the BIOS or CSM can transparently handle access to the ATA, SATA, or USB drives, keyboards and mice without drivers or anything. Sound is not so easy though.

DOS will usually work with the full amount of modern memory still physically installed, but W9x not, so excess memory might need to be disabled in BIOS or physically removed beforehand for full W9x use.

If you have a (empty) WINDOWS folder already on your FAT32 DOS volume before you try to install W9x (or WXP) on it, then you will be given the option of putting the new install into a differently named folder if you wish, I would choose for a WIND98 folder rather than WIN98 since the latter was almost like a keyword.

To a fresh FAT32 DOS volume without any of its few files in actual folders (directories) at that point, when you installed W98 it created your first 3 folders; Documents and Settings, Program Files, and your main Windows OS folder (which was either the default WINDOWS or your chosen alternative such as WIND98).

When you upgraded from DOS to W9x the bootsector no longer loaded simply IO.SYS, but WINBOOT.SYS then which brought in the whole Windows GUI on top of DOS.

As mentioned WXP can also be installed to a FAT32 volume, works great but it was never a mainstream approach. You can search much faster when its a FAT32 volume.

XP install CDs usually also need to use ATA mode rather than SATA (AHCI) mode in the BIOS unless the proper SATA drivers have been slipstreamed into the ISO.

Maybe this Delta edition handles that well.

If you install XP to your FAT32/DOS/W9x volume which still contains your (intentionally empty) folder named WINDOWS, you will again be given the option to choose an alternative OS foldername such as WINXP. The WINXP choice was the actual XP default at the very beginning (W2k used WINNT foldername just like NT3 & NT4) before reverting to WINDOWS foldername for most XP PCs and newer.

This would not be a recommended approach for users who were not comfortable renaming an existing Program Files folder used by Win9x to something else such as Prog98, otherwise installing XP over W9x would overwrite a number of the default Windows 98 programs in the Program Files folder with NT versions. Better to just hide the W9x Program folder and let XP write a whole new Program Files folder for itself when it installs. Either Windows version then boots using just its own uniquely named Windows folder. W9x doesn't care if the Program Files folder is from a newer version of Windows, it will still boot. When booted to W9x some of the common programs in the XP Program Files folder will only run under NT and you will get an error for that, but to workaround you could set a shortcut to your renamed Prog98 folder in that case.

This NT install also overwrites the DOS volume bootsector so upon bootup it searches for NTLDR rather than DOS bootfiles, but it also makes a backup of your DOS bootsector first saving it as c:\bootsect.dos so if you want to you could use your new NTLDR to still boot to DOS or W98 if present (since it's FAT32 anyway) by adding the line c:\="DOS from W98" to your boot.ini text file. In boot.ini "c:\=" syntax in this case is shorthand for "c:\bootsect.dos=". Quite convenient and un-necessarily deceptive at the same time.

IOW for advanced MBR operators who want to sometimes boot to Linux from a Windows-formatted volume using the NT bootloader, you need to back up the NT bootsector (disk editor is good for this), prepare a Linux bootsector using GRUB or Syslinux then save it as a file named something like c:\bootsect.lin. Then you can replace the NT bootsector to the volume from backup. Then in your boot.ini add a line such as c:\bootsect.lin="Linux on type 83 partition 4" for instance.

Anyway with DOS, W9x and Wxp in the FAT32 bare metal root, WIND98 folder, and WINXP folder respectively, sharing the same FAT32 volume you could ideally choose any one of them (even further choose Linux or Windows installs on different partitions/filesystems if you went there) from the regular Windows NT multiboot menu which will appear upon PC startup.

It has also been seen that on an NTFS volume already containing W10, if the Windows 10 Program Files folder was renamed to something like Prog10 beforehand, XP could still be installed afterward to a folder other than WINDOWS and share the same volume as long as the HDD was set up using MBR layout rather than GPT and you have a good BIOS or CSM, with SATA or plain ATA handled accordingly. Carefully, W10 can also be booted from the NTLDR bootmenu if you had saved a copy of the W10 NTFS bootsector as a file such as c:\bootsect.nt6 beforehand. Then address that in your boot.ini. Which you would need the W10 bootsector backup file anyway normally, to restore to the partition (after XP has "downgraded" it) so you can go back to using the original W10 NT6 BOOTMGR instead of the older NTLDR from XP. You then have to manually add an NTLDR bootentry to the modern NT6 BOOTMGR bootmenu to boot XP from there.

But that's kind of backwards, ideally things like Vista, W7, W8, W10 & W11 would each be installed on their own remaining NTFS partitions without sharing the volume with any other OS. As each of these OS's is installed to its partition on an MBR-layout HDD it writes its additional bootentry to the NT6 bootmenu within the standard BOOT folder on your "Active" MBR partition, typically the FAT32 volume on your first partition which is often small in drive space and considered reserved for boot files alone. Alternatively, as we have seen, regular DOS can easily format as much as a 32GB FAT32 volume so there can be plenty of room for things like DOS, W9x, or Wxp to be also installed and function right there beside the active boot files. And the boot files can access other partitions too.

With a BOOT folder this beefy, and NTLDR in the mix you may now have DOS, W9x, NT5, NT6 and even Linux on the bare metal at your fingertips.

Next adding a new similarly beefy EFI folder to the FAT32 volume will provide an additional, alternative way to boot the same OS's on the same partitions, but on non-BIOS PCs only the OS's modern enough to support UEFI booting will be available (for booting) when a proper CSM is not enabled.

UEFI alone is supposed to support booting from either MBR or GPT layout on the HDD, as long as a readable useful EFI folder is on a recognizable FAT32 volume.

When not using a BIOS or CSM, UEFI can't really boot into DOS, W9x or Wxp any more, but when they are on the bare metal anyway you can still use them in a VM inside a modern OS, from right where they are if you do it right.

101008• 4 years ago

So many memories. I am one of those who grew with WinXP (though I usd Win95 at school and for a few years Win98 at home), and as someone said in another comment, what else could a teen geek want besides WinXP with a bandwith connection?

I still feel that seeing a XP Desktop screenshot invites to much more experiences (possibly online) than a Win10/Win11 screenshot. It may be with the fact that I associate it to different internet eras as well. With XP I used to browse websits, fansites, blogs, forums, chats, MSN messenger/Yahoo Messenger/etc, whil now everything seems to be the boring social networks where almost everything is generated/shared.

Internet used to be much fun back then, and it may be the reason why most of the people have good memories about XP. I think the main reason (and I wanted to write an "essay" about this for a while) it's that we were offline by default in our lives, and we used to "go online" for a few hours durnig the day. Then you had your experience in the real world and went online to talk about them. Now it is the other way around - we live online by default, sharing photos and videos from a concert almost in real time, photos from a museum, etc. I think it took away its novelty.

tijuco2• 4 years ago

"we were offline by default...you had your experience in the real world and went online to talk about them" that is strong and so true.

saiya-jin• 4 years ago

You know, nobody actually needs to participate in this rat race for few seconds of attention (of people you don't care about much), there are no real gains at all in it, not long term, not anything in say quality of life lived or happiness.

I used to be like that, posting 50+ albums of beautiful curated adventure photos per year (basically every weekend trips to alps, backpacking plus ie some evening climbing outdoors on mountain nearby and rest of life like concerts etc). Literally tens of thousands of photos at this point, sometimes stuff NatGeo would be happy to use. Backpacking around the world in wild places relatively few visit, always having full frame camera (+ diving cam + often gopro) with me.

I got told I should start Instagram, get followers, create 'brand' etc but never went that way since that wasn't the reason for doing it.

When first kid came, I toned down everything, stopped some things, less time to curate all those photos in lightroom. With second child, I practically stopped using camera and currently use just good phone (Samsung S22 ultra). My public photo stream basically died since I don't feel the need to share my kids/family photos, they feel much more intimate than just myself doing something cool/extreme. Close family still gets quite a few of those, but that's it.

And you know what? I am fine, I don't miss this at all, and I definitely don't miss similar feeds coming from other folks (especially if they go to some place / experience something and then for a week there are photos dripping 1 by 1 about the same single thing, I began to hate that). Actually I am more than fine, unplugging quite a bit, reversing this process, having more time for much more important matters in life.

Unplugged from quite a few social circles around those activities (but not all). So online life became similar kind of novelty you describe.

andrepd• 4 years ago

With XP I used to browse websits, fansites, blogs, forums, chats, MSN messenger/Yahoo Messenger/etc, whil now everything seems to be the boring social networks where almost everything is generated/shared.

That 2005-2009 period was absolutely the swan song of the pre-corporate internet.

Or maybe it's just nostalgia for a simpler time.

com2kid• 4 years ago

That 2005-2009 period was absolutely the swan song of the pre-corporate internet.

Try pre 2000. Nearly every website was made by an enthusiast of some type. Banner ads just barely existed, and you could reach out and talk to almost anyone who was online. There was also an assumption of politeness and civility.

panic• 4 years ago

I feel like it was just as corporate, but it was at a different point in the lifecycle. Like, early on, companies had to make the best software they could to get people using computers and communicating over the internet. Now that everyone is hooked, the corporations can switch to extraction mode.

makeitdouble• 4 years ago

we were offline by default in our lives […] Now it is the other way around - we live online by default, sharing photos and videos from a concert almost in real time, photos from a museum, etc. I think it took away its novelty.

We’re probably the same age, and I definitely see people matching that description.

Just to note, there’s also a decent number (most I know?) that went almost the opposite way:

“online” was a novelty but also the only place to share their experiences and participate to their community. With a group of friend we pestered the local com. company for broadband and were among the test group when they decided to start, and spend a crazy amount of time on IRC/ICQ/usenet.

I recently met again with some of the old friends, and our facebook accounts are stubs to keep our name. We’re still on other anonymous SNS but it’s clear we don’t want to share more than needed, and don’t want to spend too much time on it overall.

Basically now that “online” can be used anytime from anywhere, there’s no need actively seek it and novelty is gone so we’re more restricting what we do there.

rlabrecque• 4 years ago

Similarly I was 'online' much more during my teen years than I am today. I think two key things changed:

1. I started enjoying things outside of the internet more and more, partially due to how the internet has changed, partially due to how I've changed. 2. There's less FOMO due to as you mention, being able to be "online" anywhere. This creates an entirely different atmosphere, I won't miss something because I'm not at my computer. This actually leads me to being online much less, I can be out and about doing things and get ping by my friends on Discord. Very different than when I didn't want to go out because I couldn't talk to my friends.

ta988• 4 years ago

The thing is all of these are still here. There are a ton of artisanal websites, blogs and fansites. Lots of communities on IRC, MUDs... Yes it is a small percentage compared to all of current internet users, but still enough for you to spend several lifetimes reading and long hours participating into.

Aeolun2• 4 years ago

Internet used to be much fun back then, and it may be the reason why most of the people have good memories about XP.

To some extend, but I think most people enjoyed XP mostly because it came after 98/ME, and before Vista, which I think are both much worse for different reasons.

burner556• 4 years ago

The implication that Microsoft operating systems are anything but pain and misery does not Compute.

imbnwa• 4 years ago

Anybody remember those Performance Edition ISOs?

RedShift12• 4 years ago

I just intalled it into a virtual machine and it's already doing that thing where you go to network connections in the control panel and it hangs for like 60 seconds before it proceeds... Good times...

zerr• 4 years ago

Windows XP is the last Windows where Classic theme (thus GDI before WDDM/Aero) is hardware accelerated.

sigzero• 4 years ago

Yup! I ran the Classis theme exclusively. I was never a fan of the default "Fisher Price" theme.

mikae12• 4 years ago

https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/421851-accele...

bitwize• 4 years ago

That's because nobody uses those graphics primitives anymore, and by removing the legacy cruft graphics device drivers can be simplified. Aero/modern UI, by contrast, is much closer to how the modern Windows graphics stack actually works, so it makes sense for Microsoft to move everybody to it and deprecate GDI except for legacy applications.

hedora• 4 years ago

I only use those primitives these days. My remaining Windows install is 3.1 in dosbox on a raspberry pi 4

Maybe I should see how XP runs on it.

bovermyer• 4 years ago

Starting from a Windows frame of reference... 98SE, then XP, then 7, and then (with reservations) 10 was the gaming experience.

From a nostalgia perspective, I'm likely to view even Windows 3.11 clones in a positive light.

Really, though... harboring no specific ill will toward any OS developer, I just hope that L/indo/nix figures out how to properly interoperate, and we get a computing ecosystem that allows for new users to quickly and accurately figure out what kind of system they want to live in.

kenesary• 4 years ago

I sometimes have to develop and test for Windows, and running latest 10-11 dev evaluation version from Microsoft in a virtual machine is nothing but pain (in terms of performance and usability, since I use FreeBSD/macOS/Linux for last ~15 years and anything after XP is a huge pain to me).

Will definitely try this one and see if it will work for my purposes!

genericacct• 4 years ago

Such modernity. I liked windows better when you had to install your own tcpip stack

guerrilla• 4 years ago

Grrr, make the screenshots clickable...

tomjen3• 4 years ago

I was a Windows user until I moved to Linux and then Mac. I don't anticipate going back to Windows again, but the one that would tempt me would be an updated version of Windows XP. Like better security, drivers and maybe the search function in the start menu, but otherwise Windows XP.

I feel like this was the last OS where Microsoft gave a damn about you as the user.

pigtailgirl• 4 years ago

only ran xp for a while - much preferred win2k - loved skinning windows - here's a screenshot from the brief skinned xp days: https://share.getcloudapp.com/p9uOpZeB#

Uptrenda• 4 years ago

I always loved Windows XPs UI design. So comfy. How legal is this project though?

divbzero• 4 years ago

I miss Windows 7 too. That was the last version of Windows that I really liked.

moralestapia• 4 years ago

Royale Noir ftw!

noisy_boy• 4 years ago

I created a vm of the XP install that came preinstalled on my HP laptop a out 11 years ago. Through multiple laptops and migrations, it has still survived and is so convenient when a website expects to be accessed from Windows. Boots in less than 5 seconds to the login sounds that has been burned into our memories.

terrycody2• 4 years ago

Its so nice and comfortable feeling, my favorite Windows version ever, and will ever.

terrycody2• 4 years ago

let alone many old games only run on XP, not windows 7 or later

jonhohle• 4 years ago

Luna was one of my favorite Windows themes of all time. Microsoft was actually way ahead on “flat” design but it was usable, looked modern, and was attractive. They threw it away to mimic the Aqua aesthetic but didn’t really understand why Aqua worked, just kind of how it looked. The final XP themes were so ugly and inconsistent. It was like at least three different widget designs were mashed together (the window frame, the standard widgets, and the scroll bars all appear to be from different worlds).

Office XP and Visual Studio.NET had their own variations of flat widgets that also looked fantastic and seemed true to Luna. For a few seconds, Netscape 6 also had a really nice flat design that was replaced with bulbous, XP-esque chrome.

It would have been great if Microsoft would have stuck with that flat design language. It was original, very true to their brand, and looked “professional”. I would love to hear why it was scrapped in favor of what shipped.

tomc1985• 4 years ago

Funny, I hated the color scheme back in the day. It reminded me of Fischer-Price children's toys.

My very first customization was to always set it to the silver theme.

01walid• 4 years ago

Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition
Windows XP Delta Edition

userbinator3• 4 years ago

I wonder if anyone will make an Omicron Edition?

wodenokoto• 4 years ago

There is something about those screenshots that makes XP looks good. I remember when it came out we all thought it looked like a Fisher-Price toy. A very un-serious and unprofessional aesthetic.

greyhair2• 4 years ago

As a developer, I really don't understand the lovefest for XP, other than in the context of Windows 98, in particular the Windows 98 ME fiasco, and the evolution of Windows NT into Windows 2000.

Windows 7 pretty much fixed all the brokenness of XP, granted much of that brokenness was XP being a victim to the progress in hardware buses.

Yes, Windows Vista was a hot mess, which carried over into the first release of Windows 8, though by the second release of Windows 8, it was pretty solid, but still tainted by the stench of Vista.

But Windows 10 completed so much of what Windows 7 started. Everything in '10' was so much better. The network stack, particularly WiFi. Printer drivers. USB support. All of it really.

When I think how far forward 10 moved from XP, and having lived with Windows from '95' on forward, including writing NDIS network drivers for NT, I just don't have any nostalgia for XP at all.

And I know a lot of people hate Windows 11, but I have to say, USB support for Linux under WSL2 in Windows 11 is good, so it has that going for it.

Windows XP Delta Edition

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