Re:The Day Windows Died
by kjellsbells on Monday April 03, 2023 @07:02PM
(#35432566)
One difference is that in the late 90s, Microsoft themselves offered a non-crufty alternative. NT4 was pretty solid and feee of distractions and fluff, but at the cost of requiring better hardware and not always playing nicely with others (eg drivers). Tbh, it reminds me of Linux: when Win11 finally drives professional users crazy, it seems to be linux that they turn to, and linux on the desktop is about the level of (relative) maturity that NT4 was to 95.
Re:The Day Windows Died
by WorldMaker on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @01:46PM
(#35443370)
NT4 wasn't consumer friendly at all and just about no consumers used NT4. This is a bit like saying "well at least Microsoft offers an LTSC branch of Win11, I'm so thankful they have a version without all the cruft" (which is certainly still true today, though even more than NT4 the LTSC branch of Windows is impossible to get outside of professional environments).
Re:The Day Windows Died
by kjellsbells on Tuesday April 04, 2023 @02:53PM
(#35444314)
You're reading an assertion where non exists. I didnt say everything was fine, nor that NT4 was for consumers.
My point was that in contrast to today, where consumers have windows, and pro users are turning to non-windows alternatives, in the late 90s Microsoft themselves provided the pro user alternative.
Perhaps Microsoft intend LTSC to be that pro alternative, but as you say, thats not available to everyone.
I think it has a lot more to do with nostalgia goggles. Windows 95 still had a lot of the same cruft on install. It really wanted you to sign up for an MSN dial-up account to use the bundled IE to browse MSN.com as your home page "of choice". Another bundled app suggested a subscription service to get and send Faxes.
(Windows was always like this. It seems far more "extreme" now, but the roots are deep and old. A lot of regular Windows users don't even notice what Windows 11 is doing because the frog has been boiling in that pot for so long.)
Don't forget was Windows 95 that became the anti-trust scandal because a lot of people felt at the time that Microsoft didn't have to genuinely attempt to compete economically for their OS.
(Same as it ever was.)