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Not really
Windows 7 was pretty, it was customisable, it was stable. And microshaft had yet to start fucking about with ads everywhere and invasive "features". Peak windows right there.
XP was also pretty good for its time. At that point Linux and OSX had caught up and surpassed it in many ways, but it did what it had to without getting in the way.
95 was an innovator if anything, ahead of pretty much anything else on desktop at the time, even if it DID fart and die whenever someone looked at it funny.
It was always a proprietary creation by an anticompetitive tech megacorp, and therefore bad from THAT angle, but it didn't start being truly shite from a pure user experience angle until like. 8.
Win 7 was ok but remember, it still came with three control panels, a fucking registry and 8bit palette drwatson icon in system32 along with gigabytes of absolutely useless shit.
It was good for a windows, but it was still windows.
Nothing wrong with the Registry
It's a different way of handling things compared to how Linux (and most unixes) does it with 18391823 text files
But it's a perfectly functional and sensible solution for storing system configurations.
The registery is much easier to break, much harder to debug and much harder to fix, UNIX config is more human-friendly, I'll never mess with the registery again
Also add that registry exponantionally growing over time bad documented and not easy way to clean it up and thus as time going windows start booting up longer and longer
In theory having a database of configuration settings isn't a horrible idea.
But the execution was terrible.
The technology behind the registry is fine (which is what I think @VinesNFluff meant)
But it's execution in Windows was ass
In theory, a configuration manager with DB-like abilities (to maintain relationships, schematic integrity, and to abstract the file storage details), isn't a bad idea
But the registry as it is today is pure pain
A centralized place to store settings (e.g. the registery) isn't a bad idea in and of itself.
That.
I'll add that a lot of the issues people have with the registry have less to do with the registry itself (it's just -- A database of settings. Nothing shocking about that) and a lot to do with Windows' philosophy and the problems that creates.
Like yes, the registry of a computer that has been running windows for a few years is a bloated mess which creates a bunch of problems of its own -- But that's not in and of itself because the registry is a centralised binary database.
Rather it is because -- Well. Microsoft. Tech corporations in general. Want computers to behave like magic boxes. Not machines you have to learn to operate. This means that whenever you install something or modify something on windows, you are left in the dark as to a lot of the stuff going on under the hood. Windows error messages are very obscure and nonspecific. When you install something, do you know what it has added to your registry? What dlls it has dropped around your machine? And with so many third party programmes and utilities dropping into the system, that shit builds up, and not even an experienced user will fully know what has built up unless they've been making a deliberate effort to keep track.
Compare that to Linux, which is made by nerds FOR nerds... And so everything is thoroughly documented. With the general unspoken understanding that a. You will sooner or later go under the hood and mess about in there; and b. If something fucks up, whether it is directly your fault or not, you're the one who will have to fix it, so here's ALL the receipts on how shit works so you CAN do that.
I'd want a registry that was compartmentalized meaning each app gets an area to store its own configuration and the apps can only modify their own settings (without root permissions).
Apps should never be expected to modify system settings directly but only through system calls.
Some Linux packages achieve this kind of behavior by adding an additional user which owns their configuration directories. That always felt hacky to me.
Anyone who saw Mac at the time would know what pretty was for interfaces. Windows has never been pretty.
I have an old rig for old games and I still have Win7 SP1 installed on that. It never gets updates as it's not connected to the internet. I know everything works there and thus it is now a time capsule. Never change a running system lol
You've perfectly summarized my own feelings toward the best versions of Windows. Thank you. I feel more centered seeing it summarized so well in writing.
I'll add that I found Vista cool and interesting on a technical level, even while the practical outcome was pretty awful.
I always get pooped on when I say this, but I didn't like 7. it brought the confusing libraries, ugly glass theme, and all computers I used it on, explorer (file manager, taskbar) crashed a lot and had to do win+r -> explorer.exe to get it going again.
I liked vista, but I only used it on my very first pc and for not much else but web browsing. I also liked 8.1, just needed to tweak it a bit, like replace that horrible start menu. I had instructions for myself for all kinds of registry stuff that needed to be done to a fresh install.
hated 10 from the beginning because it immediately seemed like it fights back too much, forcing microshit down your throat, and all that spying crap.
and finally when I saw 11....well, I've used mint for about two years now.
People who don't like Glass Themes can't be my friends. Frutiger Aero looks like happiness and a better time when technology was exciting instead of alarming.
You are otherwise entitled to your opinion (fwiw I never used those libraries and still don't know what they were FOR) and I entirely believe your experience of having instability. Windows just be like that sometimes. No pooping here.
I totally forgot about explorer just s****ing the bed randomly in 7 lmao.
XP was bloated to hell and back, and yeah 10 was okay overall but the “kiddie gloves” hostility towards users sucked, especially hiding away control panel and trying to get rid of it altogether in 11 is what pushed me to Linux.
It still does shit the bed regularly for me (at least, at work), on win 11; address bar in file explorer just randomly stops accepting input, new tabs get stuck showing whatever was on the previous tab, etc
Oh god I’m so sorry. I haven’t willingly touched my Win11 boot in probably close to a year so I didn’t realize things were that bad.
explorer (file manager, taskbar) crashed a lot and had to do win+r -> explorer.exe to get it going again.
This still happens on up-to-date Win10 occasionally. I've seen it on multiple machines, hardware tests good. A variant I've seen is that the Start button responds to click (changes color) but does not open the menu.
95 can suck eggs... The GUI was largely items they had co-developed with IBM for the next release of OS/2 that they instead split last minute due to contractual arguments since Microsoft wanted a larger cut of profits. There's more depth of course but tldr version.
It's a large part of why 95 was so crashy until osr2.5... it was largely 32 bit GUI stuck onto rushed 16 bit DOS with some quick protected mode hooks.
That said, XP was the first version I could stand.
7 was actually pretty good.
95 was an innovator if anything, ahead of pretty much anything else on desktop at the time, even if it DID fart and die whenever someone looked at it funny.
com/com 😂