What Windows is overall the best to you and why?

[DudeBeFishing]

I don't have much experience on operating systems older than XP, so I can't say which is the best. I've used 3.1 95, 98, ME, 2000, just not enough to experience the quirks of each. I stopped liking Windows, and instead tolerate it, when Windows Vista came out. As a home user, Vista is pointless. It uses more system resources, with no improvements for daily tasks. I stayed on XP 64 Bit until Nvidia's drivers stopped being written well for it, then moved to 7.

Windows 7 wasn't any better with resource usage, but at least the task bar was a little better. I didn't like the icon only taskbar at first, but I've grown to like it. It's like a quick launch bar, without wasting taskbar space. I hate the Aero theme. I switched to the Classic theme, and turned off all the animations and other useless ricing that Microsoft added. Even if I liked Aero, it was incompatible with many apps.

Windows 10 is ass. No other way to describe it. There's too many issues to go over. Terrible game performance, and updates constantly breaking the OS, are the main ones. The only reason I use Windows 10 is because some games are artificially soft locked to it with their useless anticheats, and I like playing with friends. If LTSC didn't exist, I'd probably run Atlas OS or some other barebones unofficial version of Windows.

I haven't used 11 myself, but just seeing the GUI makes me hate it. The AI screenshot datamining feature doesn't make it any better. It's so bad looking, that I've contemplated buying a few licenses for Redhat, so I at least have some basic support when the OS breaks. I decided not to go that route, because Redhat spams your email with promotional garbage if you register an account with them.

 

[thesmokingman]

10 has been fine, can't stand 11 and then its spying sheesh. We get what another year on 10 till 2025 and then... yikes.

 

[wNotyarD]

Unironically, I'd say the Windows I had the LEAST issues with was 8.1. It worked way better than 7 on weaker hardware and fixed many shortcomings 8 had.

98 had lots of issues, so much that 98SE was launched. ME was crap because MS couldn't decide what it would make of DOS and it'd crash right, left and center. Both 2000 and XP were good from start but needed some service packs to reach greatness (XP overshot and SP3 wasn't well-liked). Vista was revolutionary, but driver support and hardware user base didn't follow until it received a SP. 7 was great from conception, using what Vista established. 8 tried and failed to reinvent what Windows should be due to MS misreading the market, but otherwise worked fine. 10 and 11 are further refinements of where 8.1 ended, but the ever increasing telemetry is a PITA.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Windows 10 has supplanted my previous opinion of Windows 7 as the best although I detest the creeping intrusiveness that has crept into 10. You forgot to put Windows NT4 on that list btw. For the Windows 98 era NT4 (I think it went to service pack 6) was great to work with.

 

[thesmokingman]

Windows 10 has supplanted my previous opinion of Windows 7 as the best although I detest the creeping intrusiveness that has crept into 10. You forgot to put Windows NT4 on that list btw. For the Windows 98 era NT4 (I think it went to service pack 6) was great to work with.

I remember being in college and NT4 with Pro chips was unobtanium ah those were the days.

 

[micropage7]

still running win 7 on my desktop and still pretty good, nothing to worry

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Voted 10, tried 11 a couple of times now, was on it for ages once until it shat itself as it seems to do sometimes. So back on 10 for now, even though 11 is probably better for the 12700k. Win 10 boots so fast compared to 11 though, maybe less than 10 seconds for 10, but seemingly ages, 30 seconds plus for 11, what is it doing that takes so much longer. I might do a dual OS, 10/11 for a while so I don't have a unrecoverable win 11 again which is reeeeally irritating.

 

[mb194dc]

2000 was most revolutionary and its not even close. Before that Windows NT didn't have the latest directx or many other features.

It was nearly perfectly stable and about 10x as good as 98se and Me. The latter of which is probably the worst ever due to frequent bsod.

All OS since 2000 have just been building on it.

 

[AusWolf]

My vote is on 7.

10 isn't bad with all the updates, but 7 has a nicer, more classic Start menu. I never liked 10's alphabetical grouping, not to mention the tiles which are more annoying than useful.

I didn't vote XP because it had issues with stability/BSOD, and the standard blue-green theme wasn't as nice as some of us seem to remember.

I also loved 98, it was a simple, down-to-earth OS, but it didn't get my vote for the same reason XP didn't (stability/BSOD issues).

 

[ARF]

So, it seems that if 10 is something like 8.2, then 11 is something like 8.1.1. Absolute failure...

 

[FoulOnWhite]

My vote is on 7.

10 isn't bad with all the updates, but 7 has a nicer, more classic Start menu. I never liked 10's alphabetical grouping, not to mention the tiles which are more annoying than useful.

I didn't vote XP because it had issues with stability/BSOD, and the standard blue-green theme wasn't as nice as some of us seem to remember.

I also loved 98, it was a simple, down-to-earth OS, but it didn't get my vote for the same reason XP didn't (stability/BSOD issues).

I use start is back plus($4.99) on 10 and get the nicer win 7 start menu

 

[Ferrum Master]

This thread kinda does not into account the age of the people, as most doesn't even know the older OS and the sauce. I've started since early DOS times, then 95, it was crap, then OSR2 came I used that because 98 was unstable crap, then 98SE came and Me... well I don't have to comment on that, but it was patched too and usable at the end, but 98SE lingered with me due to sound card drivers until 2000 was good with drivers(I used NT4 a brief moment as I had Pentium PRO, so no choice, it was horrible, I installed it using two full boxes of floppy disks), then 2000 stayed as XP was utter piece of shit OS until the SP2 came and became usable... then Longhorn, canceled, as this time they got a hunch that the OS will be shit, the mk2 NT6 Vista came... we know the story, was also unusable driver wise, it had many firsts also, but no. XP stayed as main driver, as you had to work and earn money not look at 3d aero desktop backgrounds, I actually didn't use 7 that much, but it had the same pattern, bumby start, I agree much less than usual, but comparing how Vista was, it looked better no matter what. Then 8 and 8.x versions came, as usual the start menu shitstorm, it was patched out and usable at the end... so... came 10, I consider it a rebadged NT6.4 with start menu, not a NT10 like they wish and now the W11... OS that caused me to switch to Linux.

You got the idea that Microsoft always had done like that, their new OS is piece shit at the start. The problem is W11, that's fairly new, gets only worse. I blame generation change and M$ HQ, the old assembly guys are gone, they knew the whole software stack including kernel top bottom from their head, now leaving only monkeys with some rare exceptions, that IMHO are over abused on doing stupid things.

 

[Marcus L]

Windows 98 for me is when I got into computers and was a golden time looking back through rose tinted glasses, I learned a lot back in those days about installing and configuring hardware and software, you had to actually do stuff to get stuff working kinda like Linux, 98se was amazing though I couldn't wait to upgrade to xp when it was released even though my machine at the time was woefully under specced for it and forced me to build a new machine, an Athlon xp 1900+ and pc chips motherboard with a geforce 2, glorious times indeed I would love to have a time machine to go back to the early 00s best time for games and the internet by far imo

 

[xtreemchaos]

win11 for me cus its the one im using but as soon as Linux supports VR better ill be jumping ship for sure. windows is just getting too much controlling for me nowa days and linux is so much more minty .

 

[Carillon]

I voted vista because everyone says it's s**t, but except for one program that was BSODing both times I launched it, I never had any problems, and has been my first stable windows

 

[ypsylon]

Without doubt W2000 was best OS Microsoft ever released. It finally ditched the "consumer" kernel of 95/98/Me which was dead end. It solved some issues NT 3.51 had. In fact best version of W2K was W2K server because you had to actually activate few items required for normal day to day operation and then it was smooth sailing. Incredibly stable and everybody could get this easily, not like today where they charge you for number of cores and paywall the entire platform behind ludicrous corporate pricing structure. W2K had 0 bloat on it. The only Microsoft OS from 2000 to today. Period.

XP was not that good as W2K, especially 64b version was very problematic because of lack 64b drivers for many devices. Plus it started this bloat-ware trend which continues unabated until today. I was excited for XP because at that time M$ was planning to introduce WinFS which would replace ancient (now and then) NTFS. To this day we have nothing and NTFS is seriously bad in age of super fast NAND/X-Point storage, to the point that NTFS is slower than ZFS while it cannot compete on redundancy and data protection.

I'm probably the only person in the World I can't say wrong word on Vista. Rock solid platform, much better than XP by far.

Last really good M$ platform was W7. 8 was iffy, 8.1 is just a bad skin on top of 7&8. 10 is reasonably stable and if you flip coupe items in BIOS M$ will never force you to upgrade to 11. W11 is just malware. Simple as that.

 

[dj-electric]

Asking which Windows is the best windows pretty much begs the argument that this infinitely incompetent piece of software was ever great.
The 3 types of answers are:
Windows 10/11 - because it is the most modern and feature rich
Windows 7 - because it was relatively simple and isn't remembered for being full of bugs, bloatware and needlessly complex and backwards ways to reach the same options and locations
None - Because this software has been historically abysmal to handle if you are used to and familiar with anything that works the way you want it to, as an owner of it.

 

[Vayra86]

I voted 95, but then my system bsod'd apparently because it didn't manage to complete my 64k connection modem sequence there to phone TPU and post the vote.

So then I logged into today and voted 10.
In a few years I'll probably vote 11.

7 was good, it just never occurred to me much how good it was I think. Never stood out. Just another Windows to me, after Vista, which, in my experience, didn't run badly either, and both were certainly more stable than the shitshow called XP. 7 also gained traction with me when they released 8. That Metro UI was making so little sense to anyone, I'm still baffled how they arrived there in design. Then 10 kinda brought it all together, or actually it really didn't, as various Windows screens weren't updated proper, even to this date on 11 I think the GUI is unfinished in some places.

If you look back on that you could say that with 11 they're finally finishing the GUI work they started failing forward with on 8. Its a mystery why we never got Windows 9, too. But its clear that Metro UI and the whole new-born Windows idea has been a huge box of problems for MS, all sanity went out the door, slowly but surely, and with 11, they've probably hit the bottom of what they can do in that sense, with the Copilot and other online-only bullshit tacked on to it. While still fixing the GUI

As for the OP's idea of making 'a better Windows' ... yeah, dream on. Das war einmal. When I was like 10 years old or something. Microsoft has shown the highest achievable thing with Windows is keeping the thing afloat and versatile and capable as it should be, while they 'evolve it' to keep current with the needs of today. As if those have really changed, and as if they have a good track record of success there. Lol. The core of Windows that is most prevalent is the same thing we've had for three decades now. Office, capable of running various applications, internet, gaming. That's it.

 

[ARF]

I use start is back plus($4.99) on 10 and get the nicer win 7 start menu
View attachment 358423

Why would you pay 5$ for a thing that lacks Aero?

I guess M$ problem with the post Windows 7 Start menu is the desire to copy the Android / Windows phone user interface, which for a desktop OS is super dull and inappropriate.

 

[Vayra86]

I use start is back plus($4.99) on 10 and get the nicer win 7 start menu
View attachment 358423

You are paying MONEY to get a start menu you like? Damn. You know you can also get into your file explorer right away then right? Create one map with that list you got there except in shortcuts and you've achieved the same thing for $0,-, not even needing a third party app.

 

[mclaren85]

Feature and core-wise - 11. It’s by default, the latest OS core will always be the best. When people say “I want 7/XP back” what they mean is 7 with all the internal improvements that Windows had since.

Usability though? Probably 7, or even let’s go further back and say 2000. MS more or less perfected the desktop GUI a long time ago and everything since has been sidegrade at best and an incomprehensible experimental nonsense at worst.

Isn't the core is as the same with 10?

 

[AusWolf]

I use start is back plus($4.99) on 10 and get the nicer win 7 start menu
View attachment 358423

It looks great, but I wouldn't want to pay for OS modifications that should be included by default.

 

[Blaeza]

XP. I dream of a super-cut down win 11 with an XP reskin.

 

[Onasi]

Isn't the core is as the same with 10?

It was vaguely the same at launch, yeah, legacy of 11 being essentially refurbished from the 10X project. It’s not anymore and will be even less so with 24H2 rollout, whenever that happens.

 

[mechtech]

I put a vote in for 2k Pro. Was nice, clean and light and stable. I think full installation was around 250MB, however I think it was about a gig once it got to SP4.

Think I moved on to XP after SP2 was out for a bit, and driver support for consumer gpus was better than vs 2k pro. Stayed on that until w7 and then finally went for 64-bit. On 10 now, but after support ends, might go to Linux.