The depth of my loathing for Microsoft has no bottom...

[BlueCross]

Yes, I've ranted greatly against Microsoft before.  But this is the New Improved Windows 10 Rant.

Windows was first introduced in 1985.  Yes, 1985!  32 fucking years and they still can't get it right!  Most horrible OS ever.

The latest catalyst for this tirade was Microsoft's re-introduction of the infamous Blue Screen of Death.  Here is the Windows 10 version:



Unbelievable.  I'm just merrily browsing, editing, coding, etc and wham! Let's reboot because "We know more than you do!"

Thirty years on and they still are clueless about memory management, program and application isolation, etc. etc. etc.  There is no doubt in my mind the whole Windows development is driven by marketing, and to hell with technical improvements.  The hubris displayed by the developers should be criminal.

32 YEARS!  I mean, really...

[TK]

I'd say buy a Mac but my Mac can be frustratingly curmudgeonly too. Buy an abacus, a theatre troupe, a brass band, cats and a subscription to a 'special interest' magazine and have done with it.

[Hoopy Frood]

Two pedantic nitpicks:

1) That BSOD has been around at least since Windows 8. It might have even been part of Windows 7. I don't remember for sure.

2) Windows was not an official OS until Windows 95.* Before that it was a graphical shell running on the DOS kernel. Interestingly enough, starting with Win95, DOS became a shell running on the Windows kernel.

*Edited to Add:  Well, except for NT. That always was an operating system, and it came out in 1993, so I guess you could argue Windows became an OS in 1993.

[TK]

Consumer operating systems up to XP were still underpinned by DOS, ME wasn't able to drop in to native DOS mode out of the box but you could re-instate it.  9x is basically still a shell with fancy bits bolted on.

I'm building a retro gaming box in an Atari ST case and I'm surprised at how usable windows 98 is there's still pretty decent driver support if you manage to get the right bits and pieces.

[Hoopy Frood]

Consumer operating systems up to XP were still underpinned by DOS, ME wasn't able to drop in to native DOS mode out of the box but you could re-instate it.  9x is basically still a shell with fancy bits bolted on.

Yes and no. The Kernel for Win95 was overhauled from MS-DOS 6.22 (the last version of that OS). MS-DOS never had preemptive multitasking. Win95, WinNT, and everything after did. (Sort of. Win95/98/ME wasn't quite full preemptive multitasking like WinNT, Unix, and Macintosh had. But they did have a scheduler, which no version of MS-DOS/Windows 3.11 and earlier ever had.)