Windows XP Delta Edition is a modification of Windows XP which aims to recreate the Windows XP Beta 2 aesthetic and bring back lost features, functions, and programs from previous versions of Windows, along with prerelease versions of Windows XP.
I like these community releases for Windows XP. While I never really liked XP when it was current, and while you really shouldn’t be using XP in any serious capacity today, it can be a ton of fun to try and see how far you can get in the modern world with XP on old hardware or in a VM.
Windows XP was in my opinion the first Windows that could be used as a daily driver and not to fall apart when using it. Windows 7 could be considered as an upgrade in regards to visuals. Everything else was a rather big meh. And it all went downhill after Windows 7. Considering the position Windows has on the market and considering all the resources they have. One does wonder on why are they so bad at it. Likely they follow the idea if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. And then they go ahead and apply some “fixes” anyway. The results obviously can’t be good.
Geck,
Part of the problem for companies like microsoft is that once their products become good enough in the public eye, it becomes harder to generate new sales without turning to new gimmicks, Like turning to superficial requirements to drive demand for new computer sales. The cyclic good and bad swings that windows is known for may look like incompetency, but I think it’s part of their strategy. “If it ain’t broke, break it first, then upsell a solution later.”
The problem is i could objectively consider XP and W7 as being a “good cycles”. But the rest is bad, bad, bad, bad … It feels as if Microsoft gave up on Windows long ago. Not producing a “good release” for more then a decade now.
They tried new things, and eventually Windows is no longer their primary driver of revenue. And that is a very rare achievement by large companies.
Their cloud business have surpassed home business, which also includes entertainment, like the Xbox: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2021-Q4/segment-revenues
They have of course tried, and failed in Web TV, Windows Mobile, MSN Messenger, Groove Music / Zune, Windows RT/Surface RT, Kinect, and many other projects. And not for lack of trying or being innovative.
Still I don’t think they look at Windows as the main component of their success anymore. And that means it will get even less care over time.
sukru,
Yeah, that’s why they’re keen on adding more advertising to windows. I think all platforms (mobile ones too) are facing upgrade cycle fatigue and companies are going to have to find some way to combat lost sales revenue. At least phones have a built-in countdown via diminishing battery life, which is something manufacturers are probably thankful for.
Alfman,
I would say everything is moving towards a subscription model. But it is not straightforward.
For example, phones used to come with a two-year contract, and a renewal at the end. But that changed, with “unlocked” being common. Yet, the manufacturers now have to provide OS updates for many years, and are scolded if they cut corners.
And there is a fundamental issue at the core: who pays for software maintenance?
When Microsoft used to have a roughly 4-5 years cycle between Windows versions (3.1, 95, 2000, XP) they could afford to send updates (service packs), as long as people were willing to upgrade en masse.
But after XP, it became “good enough”, and there was little incentive to move onto Vista, 7, 8, or later 10. But they still need to maintain all those Windows versions at the same time, and someone who purchased Windows XP 15 years ago would still be a “free rider”.
With a subscription (or ad monetized) model, they can keep the cashflow constant, and continue to fund the development of the OS, or invest in other projects (like Xbox or the Cloud).
That is why, I think “once and done” sales models will eventually fade away, and we will own less things over time. I don’t think this is a good thing though, and would have preferred if Microsoft just sold “Window XP SP2” for a $25 fee instead.
* and that comes with other issues…
sukru,
To be perfectly honest, many in FOSS would find it far preferable that manufacturers not be involved at all! In lieu of maintenance, they should just provide the full source and build environment to the community. Projects like LineageOS and others could realistically do a better job without costing the company anything. This would closely mirror the PC model where the manufacturer and OS developers are completely separate entities.
(I’m not expecting this to happen, but I do think the “funding issue” would resolve itself if the community were allowed to be responsible for it’s own support without being left in the dark).
Yes. They kind of painted themselves into that corner when they made windows upgrades free. It was an elective business decision that they committed to, but it wasn’t necessarily something they had to do.
That’s my opinion as well.
Clearly companies are switching us over to subscriptions because that’s what they’ve calculated is in their own financial interests. They obviously wouldn’t do it otherwise. It is like adobe software that one can no longer buy as standalone products. Consumers weren’t ecstatic about that, but it gives adobe much more power extract more revenue from users over the long term. Their marketing will spin it as a pro, but they know what they’re doing wasn’t done in the interests of consumers.
Geck,
IMHO win2k was actually good. I’d say the cycle is more relative to adjacent versions. I’m not a big fan of windows 10 due to antifeatures for me and probably you too, but for most consumers they’re going to see windows 10 as an improvement over windows 8.
As for the “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” philosophy, it does sound good to me. But there comes a point when the product is mature and changes are too subtle for people to see the point in upgrading. The changes aren’t there to make the product better, they’re there to help create the new product feel to justify new sales. I don’t think MS are alone in this either.
Don’t forget XP X64 or as many of us old greybeards knew it before it came out win2K3 X64 Workstation, its was Fan F’n Tastic! I was rocking a quad with 16Gb of ECC when most were still stuck on P4s with sub 4Gb of RAM, and man was that OS stable as a rock! I tried Vista for a week then went right back to XP X64 until Win 7.
And I have to agree about Win 7, if I could still get patches? I frankly wouldn’t be on 10. It never fails at least once a week i find some task that would have taken 3 seconds to do in Win 7 takes 20 minutes of jumping through hoops and finding some Powershell script because God Forbid we have a functional control panel instead of something made for grandma, hell just telling Win 10 Home on one of my boxes “I don’t want that driver it blows” required me to first hunt down an old copy (since of course MSFT no longer supports it) of a Win 10 Update Troubleshooter to let me hide the driver…which MSFT then broke for good in 21H2 which meant finding a .BAT file to enable GPEdit so that I could drill down to a deeply buried admin template to hide device drivers by driver ID…all this to do what took a single right click in Windows 7…argh!
bassbeast,
“Home” editions are notorious for overriding Windows update preferences. Recently even “Pro” versions are cutting features, for the “Enterprise” editions (curiously, “Student” editions are still fully featured).
And btw, “WinXX Workstation” site is unfortunately no longer online:
https://www.windowsworkstation.com/win2016-2019/
you can still get new updates to win7 google “bypassESU” and then you will be supported until 8th feb 2023 without a service contract.
Windows NT 4 and Win2k on good hardware were fine as daily driver workstation OSes, I tortured them mercilessly. They still got beat on raw performance by redhat and of course IRIX, but software availability forced me to use them often. But server stuff they were still bad, but IMHO they still aren’t great unless hosted in azure.
I ran Windows XP since it was released till 2005, when I eventually replace it with Ubuntu 5.04 as my primary OS. I did run Windows XP with various tweaks, like Whistler Luna and such but Royale Noir being my favorite. XP Power Toys was pretty good add-on, which gave live thumbnails when Alt-Tabbing between open windows. I do have good nostalgic memories of XP and I will definitely run this in a VM. Thanks Thom, now there goes my Sunday.
I still maintain that the Windows Whistler (codename for XP betas before it got the XP name) is the high point of Windows aesthetics. It’s just a beautiful interface.
Oh, this looks glorious.
I’ve mostly stopped using XP VMs by now except for faffing around. Wine has gotten really good in the last decade or so, and IME for legacy games it’s often more stable than native Windows. But the UX definitely hits my nostalgia buttons.
I saw the article this morning and thought I’d give it a go. Unfortunately, the ISO gets stuck in both VirtualBox at the Windows Setup screen and displays the message: Setup is starting Windows. I am getting a bit futher in VMWare.
I also had issues with it in Virtualbox, but it works fine for me in virt-manager/qemu-kvm FYI.
I don’t like to play the role of a mean party pooper, but It would have been nice to add a line saying that, while the distribution of themes and such is not a problem, Windows XP is still well under copyright, and the download of a complete ISO is illegal in most jurisdictions.
Delta downloads are on Internet Archive, that is based in San Fransisco and it`s hard to find country that is more crazy on copy right that USA, so I guess it`s legal.
Marshal Jim Raynor,
No, it’s definitely illegal in that it infringes MS copyrights.
The author of the FAQ believes it’s legal without the product key (which is also on archive.org), but the author is wrong and MS is within it’s right to take it down. The author very deliberately uploaded to archive.org to mitigate their own distribution risks.
In terms of microsoft, they may or may not care about an OS that has zero commercial value to them now. They might take it down if someone reports it, but on the other hand it would bring bad PR and you could make the case that they’d rather people using illegal copies of windows than support ReactOS or something else.
https://www.techdirt.com/2007/03/13/microsoft-exec-admits-that-company-benefits-from-piracy/