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This is a topic for Legacy Windows Operating Systems, as well as programs relating to these operating system versions.
This includes:
*Windows 1.x through 3.x
*Windows 9x (95, 98, and ME)
*Windows NT series (prior to 2000)
*Windows 2000
*Windows XP
*Windows Vista
*Windows 7
*Windows 8.x
*Prototypes of the above operating systems and certain canceled operating systems
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medians wrote:

This is a topic for Legacy Windows Operating Systems […]
*Windows 8.x

I feel old all of a sudden

Heathercat123 wrote:

medians wrote:

This is a topic for Legacy Windows Operating Systems […]
*Windows 8.x

I feel old all of a sudden

Same (though I put it there because a lot of legacy Windows communities consider 8.x to be legacy, which is insane to me)

I personally really like the NT 6.x series, that is everything from Vista to 8.1. I also like the server editions of 8.x, and embedded 8.1 industry, due to them containing less bloat / feeling closer to 7.
My Windows laptop currently has Windows Vista, 8.1 (Server 2012 R2), and 10 (in case I need it for compatibility; Server 2019). IoT LTSC 2021 and Server 2022 are notably quite slow on it (it's a Vista-era laptop), I haven't tried 11 but I wouldn't be surprised if it were to just bootloop.

Heathercat123 wrote:

medians wrote:

This is a topic for Legacy Windows Operating Systems […]
*Windows 8.x

I feel old all of a sudden

Considering 8.1 is the last OS in the series before the bloated spyware known as Windows 10 (and by extension 11), the classification kinda makes sense.

Also I have a bunch of interesting stuff I found regarding old Windows.

First of all, I have some identical tablets, which all came with Windows 8.1. I installed Windows 8 (not 8.1) on one, and of course it lacked a bunch of drivers. I installed the drivers, but notably pnputil froze on a few INFs (in one case, actually the whole system froze too). I ended up with working touch and battery drivers… and yet no WLAN and random BSODs and glitches, lmao.
I'll have to try some Windows 8 betas too… I couldn't boot Win8 build 7850, or 7 SP1 (with UEFI boot files from the former), IIRC due to acpi.sys issues signature checks respectively. Still newer builds might boot up just fine.
These tablets use IA32 UEFI, but have x86_64 processors and can run Linux for that architecture (I've managed to boot Alpine and Arch). Unfortunately though, it means I'm stuck with 32-bit Windows.

Now about some embedded editions, firstly for Windows 7. First off, there's POSReady 7 which can boot off a flash drive without any special tweaks. There's also Embedded Standard 7, which is very modular and lets you choose pretty much all of the components you want at install time (to the point of being able to get rid of explorer for instance).
Now, I also found some weird embedded versions of 8. First of all, there's Embedded 8 Standard, which is likely the same deal as its Win7 counterpart. There's also Embedded 8 Industry Pro, which is not the same as its 8.1 counterpart at all, and features a special installer. I also tried to install it manually with dism and it didn't boot, and the installer didn't boot on my tablet, so there's something special about it in general. Unfortunately both ISOs I tried required product keys (I think they were MSDN ISOs I found, I might try the evaluation ISOs from Microsoft's website instead later).

One more thing… I found this video a while ago. It features quite an interesting (and pessimistic) take on Windows XP.

How would you guys rate the difference Windows OSes (in order)

chipmunkmc wrote:

These tablets use IA32 UEFI, but have x86_64 processors and can run Linux for that architecture (I've managed to boot Alpine and Arch). Unfortunately though, it means I'm stuck with 32-bit Windows.

Ah yes, I've heard of that problem before! The only available fix right now is to use CSMWrap which, from what I've heard, can boot up to Windows 11 just fine.

medians wrote:

How would you guys rate the difference Windows OSes (in order)

I'd say:
1. Windows 7
2. Windows Vista (Forced UAC, but looks nice)
3. Windows 8.1 (Flat but not fat, the start screen isn't great, but has non-aggressive UAC)
4. Windows 8 (There's no start button, you can't shut down from the start menu)
5. Windows XP (CTRL-A doesn't work, search function is a joke, you can't type "cmd" into the file explorer to open cmd)
6. Windows 2000 (It's XP without the Luna theme, and it can't run DDLC!)
7. Windows 10 (Forced Microsoft Edge, kinda fat, but at least it's stable)
8. Windows NT 4 (It's like Windows 95, but generally more stable)
9. Windows 98 (Similar to 2000, though generally not very stable)
10. Windows ME (It's Windows 98 without DOS mode!)
11. Windows 95 (The file manager is pretty bad)
12. Windows 11 (Fat, buggy, sluggish, generally less stable than 9x, AI, forced Microsoft Account, I'm a taskbar on top guy, requires an internet connection to set up without bypasses, requires "Secure" boot for no reason at all…)

Note that Windows 3.1 and older aren't in the list, neither are Windows Server, or the Embedded versions.

medians wrote:

How would you guys rate the difference Windows OSes (in order)

Windows 7/Vista - Both are quite comfy, just work, have similar driver compatibility, and generally look pretty (tho Vista is the prettiest imo). Though there are differences in program compatibility (vanilla Vista < vanilla 7 < modded Vista) and whether I want an embedded edition (Vista lacks one). Unfortunately their installation media is large and requires more RAM to use.
Windows 8.x - Feels like a modernized version of 7 that still doesn't completely stray from Aero. Added proper UEFI and ARM support too, and can run some modern software such as modern Node.js. Unfortunately I find the metro stuff unnecessary for desktop usage, and I notice many of the annoyances from Win10/11 (like MS accounts for instance) began here.
Windows XP/2003/2000 - Also quite similar, with the newer one having much more program compatibility. I have to confess though, Luna isn't my favorite though. Both are sort of source available.
Windows NT 4 - Less program compatibility and idk much about it. Supports PowerPC and some other nice ISAs though, also source available.

Windows 10 - It has good compatibility with new programs and hardware. It most notably has aarch64 builds. With that aside I have many complaints:

• Same issues as 8.x.
• In prior versions you could trivially disable Windows Update or Windows Defender permanently through the UI, but good luck doing that on Windows 10 without regedit/gpedit. It more-or-less treats the user as if they were a toddler, quite insultingly at that. (on a side note: screw automatic updates, they waste disk space (on update files) and modify installed software without my consent)
• "Forced" Microsoft accounts on Home edition (can be bypassed by disconnecting the network, but would show us what was to come).
• Allegedly it contains a bunch of telemetry. I personally notice that many more sockets are visible when running netstat upon booting Windows 10 than on prior versions (where an empty output is common).
• The update model changed such that new builds of the OS are (were?) released often, with the exception of LTSC/Server versions. Newer builds can sometimes be very slow and/or break things.
• I heard it also forcefully installed UWP software on some machines.

Windows 11 - Okay there's not much to like anymore…

• Same issues as 10.
• Ugly new UI that's implemented as a wrapper around the old shell, and it's allegedly implemented via websites too.
• Rounded corners - obscure the corners of windows and don't even work without graphics acceleration.
• x86 builds are pointlessly gone (for the most part).
• Forced inet connection and MS account, at least on Home - Heathercat123 mentioned this already.
• The retarded fake system requirements you're likely familiar with. Maybe Vista sort of had these (IIRC the installer required 512MB of RAM for instance), but while that is not an amount of RAM required to run the OS either, it is likely required to run the installer (I've tried to apply large WIMs on a laptop w/ 256MB of ram and it of course failed), and the same cannot be said for 11 so it's worse.

As a bonus… Vista is the first to be unnecessarily large, though at least minimal mods for it exist (TinyVista and Tiny7) and also Embedded Standard 7 is a thing, and I guess it can be forgiven on hardware from the right era.
Windows 10, however, is imho the first edition to add annoying crap to server editions, and to eliminate the choice to not install the Desktop Experience feature on such editions (which sorta brings us back to the XP/2003 days).

My favourites: Windows XP (3rd), Windows 7 (2nd), and Windows Vista (1st, my favourite OS)
My least fav: Windows 11

Heathercat123 wrote:

Ah yes, I've heard of that problem before! The only available fix right now is to use CSMWrap which, from what I've heard, can boot up to Windows 11 just fine.

I see, maybe I'll try that. Speaking of CSMWrap, it would also let me try DOS and the likes which would be fun.

Heathercat123 wrote:

5. Windows XP (CTRL-A doesn't work, search function is a joke, you can't type "cmd" into the file explorer to open cmd)

Wait, so that's why I couldn't CTRL+A when I was renaming a file on that one VM I ran in like 2019/2020? It's been years and I didn't know that…….

Heathercat123 wrote:

Note that Windows 3.1 and older aren't in the list, neither are Windows Server, or the Embedded versions.

I mean… personally I treat them as variants more than as versions to be fair. NT 6.1 is NT 6.1 regardless of whether it's Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, or Windows Embedded POSReady 7.

Oh and I forgot to say, I have other things I find wrong with Windows versions (like IE asking to send stuff to MS, Vista's Control Panel search asking to send searches to MS, pretty much everything in the Windows XP video I linked too). I just find them to be tame enough to bare, personally. Though to be fair I also cheat by running Server/Embedded 8.x releases.
Speaking of IE… pretty much all modern mainstream browsers have spying features too, maybe even worse ones. spyware.neocities.org has some interesting info about this.

chipmunkmc wrote:

Newer builds can sometimes be very slow and/or break things.

That reminds me of how they turned the start menu into a separate process to avoid it freezing with the rest of the shell. That really felt like a duct tape solution to stability problems.

chipmunkmc wrote:

[*]The retarded fake system requirements you're likely familiar with

I believe they inflated the system requirements to avoid another "Windows Vista Capable" situation, where most computers that could officially run Windows Vista ran it like garbage. Keep in mind that Windows 11, in terms of resource usage, is even worse than 10's somehow.

Heathercat123 wrote:

That reminds me of how they turned the start menu into a separate process to avoid it freezing with the rest of the shell. That really felt like a duct tape solution to stability problems.

I didn't even know about this but that's crazy, lol.

Heathercat123 wrote:

I believe they inflated the system requirements to avoid another "Windows Vista Capable" situation, where most computers that could officially run Windows Vista ran it like garbage. Keep in mind that Windows 11, in terms of resource usage, is even worse than 10's somehow.

Well I mean, the TPM has absolutely nothing to do with performance as far as I know, nor does the boot firmware / "Secure Boot" capability.
Also I've honestly had mixed results with the performance of running Windows 11. The original leaked build (which introduced the check) ran fine on a Dell Latitude E6410, a laptop with 2gb of RAM that certainly violates the requirements. Whatever the latest builds were in 2022-2024, however, ran very badly on a Dell box (forgot the model) from 2018 or so which met the requirements enough to get an official upgrade. I never checked if the slowness existed on a clean install though. It did run fine on a VM with 2gb of ram running on a 2009 Dell box… maybe? It was still sort of slow.

Performance yap aside though, the Secure Boot and TPM requirements aren't unrelated. To me, it partly seems as if Microsoft wants to force trusted computing upon its users.
I don't really have a low-level understanding of how the TPM is used by Windows, however I have heard that it's maybe used in a feature where the OS can automatically encrypt the user's disk, with the TPM performing the actual cryptographic operations and as such deciding when the user actually should have access to their disk, I guess similarly to how phones do disk encryption via TrustZone. As much as this seems like nice security feature, if it's not supported on Windows 11 due to a lack of hardware… I don't see why it wouldn't be supported on a prior version of Windows either, and so I don't see how security would be any worse after installing 11.
Trusted computing also has quite a few evils, which can already be seen in the phone world (notice how you can't use many banking clients after installing a custom ROM). I also heard somewhere that TPMs are required to run certain video games with already intrusive anti-cheat, I guess to ensure the user didn't patch their kernel. Since I am against the very idea of client-side anti-cheat (which usually boils down to not letting the user modify the software they run, a direct violation of my principles) I don't really intend to ever play those games anyway, but it could become much worse in the future.

Microsoft could just add a warning, more or less "this will run like garbage if you install it" but stated more formally of course. Still, I have some guesses as for why they didn't do that:

• Microsoft's hand-forcing philosophy from Windows 10 - since they treat the user as a toddler, that might mean they decided the user can't decide they'd be fine without some overcomplicated security feature or the likes.
• Microsoft did it to get people to buy more new PCs - an old conspiracy theory, but I feel as if it could very well be true; hell, I've had family members wanting to get new PCs in recent years. Maybe they're getting money from OEMS, and/or want to force newer hardware as an excuse to not optimize their shitcode.
• They want to force trusted computing, but for malicious reasons.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist but yea.

chipmunkmc wrote:

Heathercat123 wrote:

That reminds me of how they turned the start menu into a separate process to avoid it freezing with the rest of the shell. That really felt like a duct tape solution to stability problems.

I didn't even know about this but that's crazy, lol.

Yeah, that happened on like 1903 or something. Before that, it was in ShellExperienceHost, just like the rest of the UWP parts of the desktop.

chipmunkmc wrote:

Well I mean, the TPM has absolutely nothing to do with performance as far as I know, nor does the boot firmware / "Secure Boot" capability.

Yeah true, Secure Boot is probably just greed. Idk about TPM though, I've heard that it was used for BitLocker.

chipmunkmc wrote:

• Microsoft did it to get people to buy more new PCs

Possibly. I mean, they do get money from OEMs, and with properly optimized code (Arch Linux with KDE is what I tried), a 16 year old computer or laptop is still usable to this day.

chipmunkmc wrote:

…and/or want to force newer hardware as an excuse to not optimize their shitcode

"Let's make the start menu React Native! And in a different process! And make parts of explorer UWP since we fired everyone who knows how to code in win32! And heck, why not put an UWP tab/navigation bar in the file explorer? That definitely won't cause any problems! (spoiler: it crashes for me quite often) And make the OOBE intro a 4k video! I mean, modern GPUs can handle that just fine, right? And everyone has a GPU driver since no good customer clean installs Windows, and the OOBE runs only once, so nobody will ever care! And let's make Microsoft Edge run in the background permanently because why the hell not? And heck, I heard customers think the File Explorer takes too long to open, so let's keep that running in the background too! I'm the profit master!"

Heathercat123 wrote:

Yeah true, Secure Boot is probably just greed. Idk about TPM though, I've heard that it was used for BitLocker.

What I meant to say earlier is, if any relevant security features (i.e. the BitLocker implementation in Windows 11) cannot exist on the hardware and/or did not exist on prior versions of Windows, I see no reason why it would hurt to run Windows 11 without them, since they weren't available to begin with.

In the Android world, there have been multiple instances of OEMs not supporting security features added in newer versions of Android (like Android 5's FRP and Android 6's dm-verity) in updates porting said versions of Android to older phones. Hell, some of these features were purely implemented in software, meaning the OEMs very well could have supported them.
Either way, people got their Android 5 and 6 updates, and more likely than not enjoyed them. They didn't need the availability of some fancy new security features just to use their new systems.
Disclaimer: I don't particularly like FRP, nor dm-verity when it's on a locked-bootloader device where it cannot be disabled. That's beyond the point though.