Re: W12 will be arriving soon.
Why do people keep posting this nonsense? Tell me you never actually used any of these versions without saying it.
Win95 - Everyone called it a poor man's MacOS at the time, saying how Microsoft shamelessly copied Apple (which, frankly, they did). And it still sucked if you ran even a single 16-bit app.
Win98 - So bad they had to release a second version
Win98SE - Aside from FAT32 making it into a non-OEM version of Windows, there wasn't really that much different about it because it was still of the DOS lineage
WinME - The only thing I've ever seen people complain about with ME is that Microsoft moved around things like control panel icons
XP - Everyone HATED XP when it launched. They called it the Fisher Price OS, complained about how slow it was, people bitched because all their old DOS games wouldn't work since the OS was enforcing the policy of apps requesting data from hardware via drivers, everyone was making claims about monopoly abuse because of the Windows firewall... Let's also not forget that, literally -- that's not hyperbole, I am being literal with my use of the word literally -- literally for about the first two years of XP's existence there was a new RCE CVE for either IE6 or XP every. week. It took until SP2 for it to finally stabilize a little to where it was usable for most people. Of course this was still the golden age of malware, which was helped along by a lot of shortcuts Microsoft took to try to win the browser wars. For pretty much the entire XP lifespan, everyone had a collection of at least 2-3 different malware remover apps that would live along side the AV program.
Vista - Was a very important release. Mac OS X was eating Windows' lunch at the time, and without Vista laying a lot of very important groundwork, Windows and Office was in significant danger. Vista rewrote the GUI as a DirectX app, allowing for full hardware acceleration, there was significant work done on improving security, the process scheduler learned the difference between dual-core and dual-CPU (a subtle, but oh-so-important difference), and big chunks of the under the hood components of the OS were ripped out and replaced with modern replacements.
Win 7 - Just a warmed over Vista, though it did have some improvements to security and the process scheduler. It also refined UAC a bit to make it a bit less obnoxious. Granted the whole point of UAC was to be obnoxious and make people stop and think about whether they really wanted to do something that could cause problems. They maybe overshot the mark a little with Vista, and 7 was maybe a bit of an undershot.
Win 8 - Another very important release. For starters, for all the talk about how bloated Windows is, no one seems to give Microsoft any credit for shrinking the size of Windows by 2-3GB during the Windows 8 years. Sure, it was part of a misguided effort to shoehorn the OS onto low spec tablets and laptops that didn't pan out, but they still debloated the OS quite a bit and no one gives them credit for it. There was significant work done improving security on Windows 8, the process scheduler started to learn more about things like CPUs with more than 2-cores. For the first time ever Windows had a search system that didn't completely suck. The file copy/move dialog box got a makeover and the ability to pause/resume transfers, and the task manager also got a major facelift. I'm not going to defend the decision to try to cram a mobile UI onto a desktop system, but the OS taken as a whole was excellent.
Win 10 - Had a pretty bumpy rollout, but after a few years of plugging away at it, it got to be pretty good. The Creators Update is probably where things started to turn the corner with Win 10. Has a lot of important security updates added, even if a lot of them are switched off by default. While I dislike the forced installation of updates as much as everyone else, I do recognize that ever since Microsoft started imposing updates on people, the number of issues that can be traced directly to known security exploits in Windows has gone down significantly.
Win 11 - Using the incomplete 10X UI was certainly an... interesting choice, and I'm not sure what they were smoking when they came up with the supported hardware list, but the OS as a whole is quite good. It's the only version that understands the big.LITTLE core layout on Intel CPUs, a lot of those Windows 10 security features are now switched ON by default, and it adds a few more. Everyone whines about the superficial crap, like the icons being centered on the taskbar, but honestly, after about a week you stop even noticing unless you're one of those people who gets hard by holding a grudge over stupid shit.
Win 12 - We still know next to nothing about it, so too early to say, but odds are it'll be more of the same. Improved security, refinement of key under-the-hood components, and a lot of people mewling because Microsoft moved a button by 1px.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
