
Unofficial Windows XP SP4 - bcaa7f3a8bbc
https://ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10321
======
cheeze
Oh man, this brings me back. I used to love making those streamlined XP
installs where I stripped out as much as posisble. Was insane how fast you
could get XP.

Don't even get me started on when Longhorn leaked. OS ended up sucking but the
Longhorn leak was amazing.

~~~
cco
I never heard about a Longhorn leak, what was amazing about it?

~~~
Macuyiko
If I recall, those first Longhorn builds found a great middle ground between
the foundations of XP and the few good parts of what would became Vista,
including some nice ui concepts.

Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.

~~~
kompakt
Longhorn concept was awesome. I remember how crazy and advanced this Longhorn
promo was [https://youtu.be/b9ifQvQCO7Y](https://youtu.be/b9ifQvQCO7Y)

>Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.

Maybe with the first versions, but after a few service packs it was really
usable. Hell, Windows 7 was referred to as "Windows Vista SP3" :)

But I do agree that Vista wasn't as Longhorn. I think they realized it was too
demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later
versions.

~~~
pstch
In the video, is the last application that opens when Longhorn starts up a
package manager ? I've never really understood why both Microsoft and,
especially, Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by
Linux distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the
end users and application developers. I suppose this is because they were
focused on enterprise customers, and there was already a model in place for
shipping software to such customers. However, for home users, installing
applications have always been a tedious process that is full of risk.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Apple have never tried to adopt a model similar to the one used by Linux
> distributions, positioning themselves as the intermediary between the end
> users and application developers.

Wait, isn't the prime example of an OS or device manufacturer doing that _not_
“Linux distros”, but instead the app store model that Apple embraced we
exclusive consumer mechanism for add-on software with iOS, and have since
extended in less-rigid form (because of legacy expectations) to MacOS?

------
293984j29384
It might just be nostalgia but I really liked the GUI for Windows XP. The
Start Menu was a clean and intuitive interface to find things you've
installed. Windows 10 seems to be a huge step backwards in terms of usability.
I tend to use xfce or lxqt on all my Linux systems. These days, all the action
is happening in the web browser and I want my operating system is just work.

~~~
the_af
I liked WinXP -- possibly the last Windows I liked -- but if I remember
correctly, the first thing power users did was de-XP-ify the GUI and switch it
back to the classic, cleaner look :)

~~~
asveikau
I used to do this up into Win7 days, avoiding the "Aero" theme. A shame they
took that option out of 8 and later.

~~~
to1y
Classicshell.net is quite good for that

~~~
asveikau
It doesn't make the window borders feel like the 90s, or get rid of dwm.exe.

------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
Yes, one shouldn't use Windows XP. But it's still handy to keep a working XP
virtual machine with some basic tools to run ancient programs that one
encounters from time to time get the job done...

~~~
txdv
windows xp running on modern hardware is lightning fast.

~~~
vwuon
Windows XP running on the hardware of the time was much more responsive[] than
10 running on modern hardware.

[] if we don't count accesses to the disk, of course

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
I didn't realize how broken Windows 10 is, until I tried it on someone else's
computer... At this point, it's unsuitable for any computer without a SSD: M$
has made a huge amount of background system update & housekeeping activities
as integral parts of the system and they will continuously SEEK your disk to
death, it doesn't need to be 20 MB/s, just 2 MB/s random seeking will render
it useless for doing any actual work at any time. It's laughable that high-end
commercial laptops are still being sold with those 5,400 RPM, 1 TB HDDs,
totally unusable.

You'll never see this kind of bullshit disk access on *nix (as long as you
turned off your desktop search index service), or, for this matter, Windows
XP...

~~~
r1ch
A lot of modern software is unfortunately following this trend. As companies
outfit developers with higher end systems including NVME SSDs, performance
issues from inefficient I/O patterns are hidden during development.

~~~
craydandy
This! In my hobby projects I start the development usually with Raspberry Pi
as backend, even for db, as it forces to use resources efficiently and reveals
problems fast. Only building/compiling is good to be done on fast machine.

~~~
yrro
You can use the cpu cgroup controller to starve your program of CPU time. Use
the cpu.cfs_quota_us and cpu.cfs_period_us knobs.

Now if only there was a way to use the blkio controller to emulate the
performance characteristics of spinning rust (reasonable sequential IO
performance but with a big penalty for random access...)

------
outime
I have very good memories from Windows XP. I moved from Windows ME (which was
absolutely terrible) directly to XP and it was so much better. I even liked
the overall appearance. But then I guess nostalgia and being less critical
myself back then plays a role...

~~~
nolok
Ehh not really XP was a great Windows OS for the time it came out.

For the entreprise users it was mostly the same as Windows 2000, a great OS
released just a few months before that was much better than NT 4.

For the home users it was a move away from the old 9x kernel line and into the
NT kernel line, which was infinitely better.

XP's problem was that with Longhorn's delays and then Vista sucking so much,
it took until mid-2009 for a suitable replacement to appear, and by then XP
was really outdated. But at the time it came out ? It was great.

~~~
laumars
Quite a lot of people did also run 2000 at home as well. It was actually a
damn good OS given it's era: Linux wasn't ready to be used as a primary OS for
most people, 9x/Me was total garbage and OS9 was somehow worse. Apple hadn't
yet released OSX (that came a year later IIRC) and there were some inevitable
compatibility and onboarding issues when that was released. The only real
contender was BeOS (which did support x86 by that point) but sadly that didn't
have the momentum to challenge Microsoft.

> _For the entreprise users it was mostly the same as Windows 2000, a great OS
> released just a few months before that was much better than NT 4._

Windows 2000 definitely wasn't "mostly the same" as NT 4. They were as
different as Vista was to XP. 2000 and XP (pre-SP2) were very similar though.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Windows 2000’s stability was something else coming from 98SE and Mac OS 9. My
family’s shared/house PC back then was a Dell Dimension 4100, which was
actually pretty great in terms of hardware but was chained down by 98SE. The
increase in usability that thing had as a result of being upgraded to 2000 was
staggering. It went from “ok” performing and bluescreening every so often to a
rock solid powerhouse in a single step.

If only all OS upgrades went that way…

------
pjc50
Ah, POSReady! The special version of Windows XP for point-of-sale systems and
ATMs. They have a service life target of something like 15 years, since the
companies using them don't want to go through huge replacement cycles if they
can possibly help it.

~~~
myu701
Windows POS Ready 2009 is the Windows-7 based product that we still use here.
Supported until 2023 by contractual obligations. No wonder they are offering
ESUs to businesses and maybe even consumers - gotta write the updates anyways,
might as well push em out to a few other skus?

------
fsiefken
I wonder if ReactOS is by now more lean and mean then XP_SP4, would be nice to
run Office2010 in Parallels as I don't really grok the MacOS Office365

~~~
aasasd
There's offline Office 2011 for Mac. It seems to be available on Ebay. And
apparently the 2016 version also has an offline edition.

~~~
lloeki
IIRC volume licensees have access to fully offline 2016 and 2019 Office
versions.

------
perlgeek
Is this reputable / trustworthy?

~~~
rzr
No clue, but if it can be reconstructed from officials URL, I assume it's the
best you can expect.

Or just compute checksum of its contents and try to find the sources of
binaries ?

------
heelix
I stayed on Windows XP-64 for a very long time. It shared code with the Server
2003 if I remember right. Drivers were solid... if you had them. God help you
if you did not. (most of the quality parts did, however) I miss the days of
nlite tuning an ISO.

As an OS, it did what I'd hope an OS would do - just stay out of the way and
let me run my apps.

------
rzr
Is this pack refreshing SSL/TLS Root certs ?

------
bbmario
How can I make a VirtualBox VM out of this?

------
jacobush
Date should be updated to (2019), the latest fixes are from POSReady updates
from May this year.

------
joering2
How hard is it to write your own OS ? Based on experience of Gates and
Torvals, I think someone will eventually write an owesome Operating System
that will be beautiful abd flashy yet yseful and wont steal user data to make
extra money.

~~~
n0rbwah
You'll need to have strong backward compatibility with a popular system for it
to have chance to become popular.

MS-DOS was compatible with CP/M when it came out and MS kept working on
backward compatibility since then.

Linux was unix-like and filled a hole for a FOSS unix-like OS at the right
time. The GNU utilities were among the first things that were made to work on
it and it was kinda source-compatible with other unixes.

If your new system requires that everything under the sun gets ported to it
before people can use their favorite tools, it will fail.

BTW, Gates didn't write his own OS, he bought it and got people in his company
to work on it.

~~~
toyg
It’s so ironic how Gates, who looked and acted as a stereotypical übergeek,
found ultimate success by... being a shrewd businessman and doing as little
own work as possible. And still, most non-IT people think he was some sort of
hacker genius.

