easymode

I've been daily driving Linux since Proton hit the scene, but like a lot of folks, I grew up on Windows. There's been a lot of good and bad Windows OSes over the years....which one do y'all reckon was the best?

For me, it's either 2000 or XP. I used both extensively in my childhood and adolescence. They were both rock solid, especially with all of the updates and service packs applied. Sure, they didn't have the bells and whistles of later editions, but they were simple and speedy. There's a reason I have my XFCE desktop set up to work in a similar fashion.

So, what do y'all think?

Personally I found Windows 7 to be the best. XP had a fair amount of issues and some limitations, luckily a lot were resolved with SP3. I come from a System Administrator background and 7 was a lot easier to manage and care for in an industrial/office environment when compared to XP and that's probably why I favor 7 over XP. While I had a computer growing up it was one box in a house of seven people so I didn't get a lot of time on it. By time I managed to get my own computer 7 was the new OS on the block so I spent a vast amount of time with it compared to XP.

This was also around the time SSDs started to be cheaper and I was able to vastly speed up my cheapo hardware I had available at the time. I do miss the clicks, clacks, and hums of the spinner drives in the beige boxes these days though.

I would have to go with Windows 7 for the looks, feel, and gaming experience on the OS. I still have a old laptop running Windows 7 just for fun. I actually like Windows 11 Pro but only after debloating the whole thing. I also like it for all the new security features and compatibility with all the software I use, I couldn't stand Windows 8 or 10 but 11 looks better in my opinion when you customize it and debloat all the AI and junk out.

Probably 7. Looking back now it was the last one that actually felt like a OS designed for PCs. It was very stable for me and just kind of got out of the way to allow you to do what you wanted.

We didn't have a home computer until 2001 so my time with anything earlier than ME was limited to the school computer labs. ME was trash though. XP was great. It allowed us to use the PC without constantly crashing! I didn't get to use it much though because being the youngest meant that I didn't get much time on the family computer.

It's not really what you asking, but probably my hottest Windows take is that I liked Vista. We purchased a new PC right after Vista came out and it had decent specs for the time and ran it fine. The only issue I ever had was with an old printer that never got updated drivers, but I feel like that is HP's fault more that Windows.

7 was the last time Microsoft ever gave you a complete OS package with out wanting to hold your hand too much (though I'm pretty sure that kind of shit started way back or ramped up with Vista) or con you into buying services that you could probably provide yourself for nothing. That's my pick and I remember it fondly. Might even run a VM just to play around with.

Casey wrote: Feb 26th, '26, 06:38 I've been daily driving Linux since Proton hit the scene, but like a lot of folks, I grew up on Windows. There's been a lot of good and bad Windows OSes over the years....which one do y'all reckon was the best?

For me, it's either 2000 or XP. I used both extensively in my childhood and adolescence. They were both rock solid, especially with all of the updates and service packs applied. Sure, they didn't have the bells and whistles of later editions, but they were simple and speedy. There's a reason I have my XFCE desktop set up to work in a similar fashion.

So, what do y'all think?

Have to agree Casey, Win2000 or XP for me too

I think we solved general desktop UI design with Windows 98: You have icons on the desktop, functional start menu, taskbar, AND the quicklaunch. That's' it for me... The only other thing I need is launchy (not sure if that was compatible with 98)... Remember this?


So, Windows 98 isn't the best version of Windows, it lacks too many modern features, but I find that 80% of the ui changes since then have just slowed me down. I always use retrobar on W10/11 these days to get the quicklaunch back... and on Linux I go for Plasma with the quicklaunch equivalent settings.

I think I'd probably vote for XP SP3 as my favorite just because it was compatible with so many games and programs... and I preferred the start menu over Windows 7. That plus launchy, and I was good to go. This was all I needed: As for Windows 7, it was the last great version of Windows... However, Vista had a superior taskbar since it was the last to have the quicklaunch option. I always did a registry hack to bring it back in 7. Those bubbly icons slow me down immensely. I also preferred the start menu in XP, though 7 just werked.

I think Windows 10 can be nearly perfect with Retrobar and open-shell... but The real start menu in XP and 7 always seemed to work slightly better.

I could go on for a loong time with all this. Windows is still my favorite OS, but 11 is trash and MS is totally hostile toward their customers now.

ward wrote: Feb 27th, '26, 22:44 As for Windows 7, it was the last great version of Windows... However, Vista had a superior taskbar since it was the last to have the quicklaunch option. I always did a registry hack to bring it back in 7. Those bubbly icons slow me down immensely. I also preferred the start menu in XP, though 7 just werked.

You perfectly encapsulated why I preferred XP to Vista and especially 7. Don't get me wrong, both were pretty good (Vista was overhated and I will die on that hill) but XP for me had the perfect desktop UI.

I want to talk about Vista more since you mentioned that it was over-hated... That is extremely true. The big issue was that it took 6 years and it was kinda a mess at launch. First, it was far more resource hungry than XP and many people upgraded their 6+-year-old PCs to Vista and screamed. They also rewoked their driver model so there were so many hardware issues. However, Vista running on modern (at the time) hardware with up-to-date drivers, was pretty good.

Windows 7 almost feels like a SP3 for Vista to me. It fixed a lot of the underlying issues with resource management, updated some of the ui for the better (some for the worse imo), but yeah... They had to go to 7 because of all the Vista hate... anyone remember this corny marketing campaign for Vista?

I enjoyed Vista. Definitely got more hate than it probably deserved.
The only thing I remember pissing me off every day was the UAC warning that it was disabled. I know it's disabled! I disabled it!!!

There were some useful sidebar gadgets too. I managed to find a large collection on archive.org that had the ones I used to use

When I eventually get round to rebuild my Core 2 / 8800 era PC I think I'm going to have to dual boot XP and Vista

Windows 8/8.1 might have been fast but UI change was just wrong
Windows 10 was never finished and Windows 11 feels like Windows 10 with a new coat of paint over the same unfinished features