I was working at MSFT when Windows 2000 shipped. XP came out about a year later. My biggest gripe was that they moved a lot of stuff around. Get used to one set of operations and XP changed the way you worked. That being said, XP was Windows Done Right. Big fan. Simple, speedy, none of the fscking bloat you have in Win10 (even more expected in Win11). You were not "nudged" to join the BORG. You booted it up, did your work and that was that.
Seems like I am not the only one who loved it.
Twenty years old today - from Bleeping Computer:
It's Windows XP's 20th birthday and way too many still use it
Today is the 20th anniversary of Windows XP, and although the operating system reached the end of support in 2014, way too many people continue to use the insecure version of Windows.
Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001, and is considered one of the most loved versions of Windows due to its ease of use, fast performance, and stability.
Today, after Microsoft has released Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11, a small but respectable number of people are still using the old operating system.
This continued usage is a testament to its success but also raises concerns regarding ts lack of security.
More at the site including this bit:
How many systems are still running Windows XP?
According to StatCounter, the percentage of Windows users using the XP version of the OS in September 2021 is 0.59%, a significant number when you consider how many Windows systems are deployed worldwide.
I wish MSFT would just open source it like they did with MS-DOS and Windows NT. Let people develop a FOSS version of XP. I have a couple copies that I use on machines that never see the internet. Hard to get drivers for modern hardware but for simple stuff, it does the job.
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