It was hailed for its improvements in stability from the time it was released. My recollection was that it was a massive improvement over 98/ME lineage. It was mostly a wash vs Windows 2000.
Yes, it became more stable with the service packs, but it was a significantly more stable OS out of the gates than anything consumer users had been getting.
Rampant malware was a separate (and very significant) issue.
Re:Make Tmux the OS
by tehologist on Saturday October 03, 2026 @08:59PM
(#49949505)
I was a windows 2k user during that time because win xp was horribly unstable till sp3. It was rock solid after that, finally as good as windows 2k. Though I never liked the Fisher price color scheme.
> My recollection was that it was a massive improvement over 98/ME lineage.
That much is true.
> It was mostly a wash vs Windows 2000.
No, not really. They did some empirical testing at the university I went to and the conclusion was that they kept the Windows boxes on 2k almost until Vista.
My university switched pretty quickly. But I do not know how empirical that decision was. Anecdotally all of my friends made the switch from 2k and were fine with XP. But again, anecdote. Your university apparently found that 2k was meaningfully more stable for them.
What most people remember of XP now is what it became after a couple of years of fixes and improvements, and the contrast with Vista.