Worst Windows?

[alyx@frogs.lgbt]

@ryanc I primarily used Vista after it had service packs and it was... fine? It was nothing to really speak wonders about, but it was okay.

ME, on the other hand, on the few machines I used it on, had poor software and driver availability, felt more unstable and I always dreaded using it.

[gsuberland@chaos.social]

@ryanc I suspect Windows 11 will end up winning due to recency bias and the fediverse's demographic skewing young, but Windows Me was definitely the worst.

despite Win11 not putting the user first, with enough effort you can strip the worst out, and at least it doesn't crash and lose all your data three times a day.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

I was doing tech support for a WISP in the '00s and my annoyance with having to deal with customers on Windows XP before "Wireless Zero Config" was added in Service Pack 2 almost makes me hate it more than Windows ME. Almost. Bug ridden , but it got me using Linux, so I guess that's one hood thing about it.

I've never used Vista, 8, or 8.1.

Oh, also the Fisher-Price default theme for XP was bad.

[xabean@infosec.exchange]

@ryanc my answer (from memory) is DKRBQ-TXYCX-6K4GD-4CPJ7-C6B26

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@gsuberland Yeah, Windows ME drove me to the point of "fuck this, I'm learning Linux".

[thekitmalone@hoosier.social]

@ryanc

I don't even usually respond to polls like this but I hated WinME so much that my voice could not be silenced

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@gsuberland Windows 10 is fine once debloated IMO, and I'm just kind of dreading 11 because the pattern seems to be that every other version is awful.

[gsuberland@chaos.social]

@alyx @ryanc yeah, Vista was actually not terrible, it was just the first OS on the NT6 kernel and the introduction of Windows Driver Foundation, so there were initial teething pains. plus it kinda coincided with everything suddenly being USB, so all the horrible vendor drivers from those early days (pre-WDF) broke a lot, so that caused a lot of the BSODs that Vista got blamed for.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

For those of you who hate Windows ME so much that you want to vote for it twice:

[paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange]

@ryanc

wow... that's like "would you prefer toxic waste, nuclear waste, or asbestos".

so many bad choices here... i will say that windows 11 is shaping up to be the privacy and security disaster we're all reminiscing about like this in 5 years.

[wyatt8740@tech.lgbt]

@ryanc WinME sucks, 8 is really bad, but 11 is fucking unusable

[russss@chaos.social]

@gsuberland @ryanc I would have said ME but I don't really have enough experience of modern Windows versions to form a complete opinion.

The only version of Windows which I have vaguely fond memories of is NT 4.0.

[fritzadalis@infosec.exchange]

@ryanc
Windows 8, because that was the beginning of the end, where users became secondary.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@wyatt8740 sucks... and blows... at the same time...

[smartasabrick@techhub.social]

@ryanc Ah yes. Windows ME. All the stability of Windows 95 and all of the hardware compatibility of pre-sp1 Windows 2000.

[smartasabrick@techhub.social]

@ryanc and while I'm reminiscing, people forget just how bad early Windows XP was. It was not pleasant to use.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@SmartAsABrick I was doing tech support pre SP2, I will never forget, as much as I'd like to.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@SmartAsABrick in any event, it was still objectively an improvement over ME

[smartasabrick@techhub.social]

@ryanc PCMCIA wifi (802.11b, of course) card drivers were something I'd forgotten about until just now. I'm going to work hard to forget them again.

[ryanc@infosec.exchange]

@SmartAsABrick My recollection is that USB 802.11b was even worse.