Less funny when you realize it's mostly banks, government agencies, and militaries still using it.
I'd say more likely it's labs, hospitals, and other scientific stuff where you have to deal with old instruments cause lack of money. I'm fairly certain the military uses some other OS, I believe NATO uses Solaris for example.
Also that machine only works under very specific circumstances, so you fear changing anything in case your entire protocol breaks and you have to start from scratch.
"Windows for Submarines"
It's XP for Vanguard subs. I really hope none of them provide any telemetry for these stats though.
doubt they're connected to the internet. In fact I'd wager 99% of shit running windows XP is not connected to the internet (and shouldn't be)
As a former banker I can tell you that most ATMs run Windows NT 4.0.
However since the network is completely clamped down and the OS boots via network as well (no hard drives in ATMs), they are pretty secure.
I've also indeed seen some Windows XP terminals in use just lately - one in fact in a hospital my current company collaborates with - but it's isolated and used to run some sequencer that was never ported to a 64 bit architecture, and apparently doesn't run in compatibility mode either.
I highly doubt it. I work for a large bank, and it's all W10/11 due to the need for continuous security patches/currency updates. Large banks don't mess around with EOL software that has a risk of vulnerabilities
After XP, Windows focused on adding crap to their aid that use unnecessary resources for crap things. I remember the Aqua look on Vista that sucked the life out of computers. Let’s not talk about Windows Me. Then 8 was a weird interface that no one liked and also not compatible with older machines. So XP is the most stable Windows os that can run on older devices.
XP still had the designed-by-engineers vibe. Since then, Microsoft got completely taken over by dipshits with marketing MBAs.
They now code Windows to impress executives and shareholders with how much they can harvest data and manipulate customers into using their stupid Store and so on. They stopped caring about the experiences of power users, or even casual users.
They don't want the OS to work for us. They want us to work for them.
Though enshittification was coined, I think, with online services in mind, this is a perfect example of the process as it applies to an OS.
Very well said.
Do you have any suggestions for people wanting to go back to an XP feeling?
A particular distro of Linux, etc.?
I second the recommendation of giving Linux Mint a shot. I didn't use XP extensively but Mint is low hassle and gets out of your way.
I'm not sure it has quite the same feel, but closest I can think of that is also approachable coming from Windows. Obviously a lot of other distros also satisfy the "built by engineers" vibe.
I have a lot of respect for Linux and use it here and there, but I am by no means an expert on it. The best thing I've done with it so far is running a Pi Hole at home.
Unfortunately, my job involves using MS Windows. A lot. After I retire...soonish...I hope to take some time and learn Linux better.
For my day-to-day Windows misery, I find that ShutUp10 does a great job of toggling off the bullshit you don't want running. And it's easy to toggle things back on if you ever need to. It's a free program you can download and run. I send them a little money every year out of gratitude, but donations are completely optional.
Some FUD mongers will tell you that ShutUp10 'breaks' Windows. That's simply not true. It puts all the Windows settings you can change yourself in one easy-to-find place. Things that are normally scattered all over the UX and the registry.
While you could mess some things up using it if you're not careful, it's very good about color coding and letting you know which toggles are best to turn off, which ones are a little questionable, and which ones you should leave turned on (unless you know what you're doing and can take the risk). I have used it for years now, on multiple PCs, with zero problems. It doesn't make Windows 10/11 GOOD but it makes them less horrible.
Mint is the usual recommendation for transitioning from windows to Linux.
Don't forget about Windows 7. That boy ripped. Too bad they didn't take the good lessons from it.
XP was a pretty good running OS with plenty of software and games. I held out till 10 was out for a bit and there were programs I wanted to run that required it.
I guinely hate windows as a product. But man XP was a banger for it's time
As usual I think that sentiment was retroactive, certainly once Vista came out. At launch, people hated the Fisher-Price look of the Luna default UI. Like, a lot. The switch to the NT based kernel for the home version of Windows also caused a shitton of people's hardware and peripherals not to work anymore because they needed new drivers and the manufacturers of said gadgets -- if they were still in business -- could not be arsed. Some of this could be alleviated by bullying that hardware's Windows 2000 drivers into working with XP. Some of it could not.
A lot of public infrastructure in the US (powerplants, waste management, etc.) runs off XP or older.
i have several clients with xp systems (or even older), still, mostly for CNC applications, bulk trailer and tanker loaders, and similar. i keep recommending upgrading the systems, they keep balking at the high prices from their vendors.
That seems to be the same decision our company has made on some stuff. In a way the old licensing model really hurt some businesses. They got so used to spending once and holding onto stuff for so long they basically cut the budget for maintaining and upgrading the same systems. Now it's all considered profit and there's no way will they let that money be purposed for something that, in their eyes, still works.
Newest versions of windows 11 make it incredibly hard to find the screen that shows all your network adapters. It is now easier to use device manager to disable and reenable an adapter.
How do I know? Because all the shit tier screens and tools that offer to help you with a network issue didn't work. ONLY reenabling the NIC did.
Had to do it on my whole network
Learn the ways of the run prompt: ncpa.cpl launches you right to the classic network adapter control panel screen. I have to get in there so often that I've taught myself plenty of those little shortcuts because MS can't leave shit where it was.
its
To be fair, whomever decided to use an apostrophe to indicate possession AND abbreviation clearly didn’t think through all the possible conflicts before going ahead and making it a thing. Should have made a separate symbol for one of them.
Windows XP outliving two of it is successors.
When I was working security for a hospital they wanted to send imagery from an MRI (or maybe CAT, I forget) upstairs to be interpreted without allowing any network traffic to be able to reach the host machine because it was running XP. I asked why, and they told me that in order to replace it the vendor was requiring a $7 million replacement of the whole MRI.
That should be illegal and the vendor held accountable for security incidents happening because of this.
What worries me more is what eldritch horrors await us in other versions
"Please watch this advertising video that is relevant to what you were discussing with your wife in the other room this morning before your browser can be launched."
Played the heckin' heck out of Lionhead Studios' Black & White on XP. Good Times.
I don't even know why people use Windows 10 (or 11) other than momentum.
I haven't used Windows for years, but my daughter's new online school required either a Windows 10/11 computer or a Mac and we can't afford even a new decent Windows notebook, let alone a Mac, so we ended up getting a refurbished Thinkpad running Windows 10 from NewEgg.
Windows 10. Is. Annoying. As. Fuck.
We are constantly getting interrupted by unnecessary popups (or were until I took the time to disable everything I could think of, which was a pain in the ass).
After running updates, it made me go through a bunch of screens turning down paying for things. Twice. And those popups still asked me about paying for things. Motherfucker, I already paid $300 for the computer, I'm not paying you shit.
And wow is stuff counterintuitive in how to do it compared to either any Linux GUI I've tried or Mac OS. Just trying to figure out how to get to a File menu is baffling half the time.
I don't blame anyone for using XP over that shit. Let alone Linux or even a Mac.
I don’t even know why people use Windows 10 (or 11) other than momentum.
Security updates. That's it, that's the only reason I recommend anyone unwilling or unable to switch operating systems all together to move to Windows 10.
There's tons of legacy shit still running XP and there probably will be for at least another decade.
I liked Vista.
There. I said it.
Vista Service Pack 2 was a solid OS, XP actually needed a few service packs to get fully to the place people remember it being great.
$20 says there's at least one person out there still running Win3.1 daily.
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