Comment by ako

NT was Stable what was really missing in the MS world at that time. But a "good" OS? Other than stable I expect to be able to administer HW, fine grained permissions, and lots of out-of-the-box functionality. Compared with a GNU/Linux of the time, I have never hesitated in going for Linux (or FreeBSD at the time).

Sure, if you ignore all the anticompetitive bullshit they pulled to blackmail high street stores into removing BeOS, DrDOS, Linux and others from their shelves.

And the stunts they pulled to kill other IMs.

Or how they crippled the web for a decade due to killing competing browsers, building Windows lock-ins into IE (eg ActiveX controls), fragmenting Java, and then leaving IE to die themselves.

Or how they lied about Windows 98 requiring IE4.

Or how they didn’t give a crap about OS security until halfway through the life of XP. Leaving literally millions of people vulnerable to a plethora of different forms of attacks from malware to direct hacking on open Telnet ports.

Or how they tried to land grab IRC with their comic book GUI. Which, in fairness, was a novel app. But unfortunately it was another embrace, extend, extinguish play.

Or how they tried to kill ODF with their own faux-open document format: OOXML

Or their constant stream of FUD messaging about Linux being “communism”.

Yeah, MS were really noble in their goals to create a good OS. /s

It’s a pity they couldn’t even manage to do that well given every iteration of Windows has been bloated, buggy, and years behind the competition in terms of performance and capabilities. Windows was never a good OS.

In fact I’d go further and say Microsoft have never release a good OS. Even their versions of BASIC sucked compared to the competition.

Microsoft have always been good at negotiating with businesses. It’s why Azure is used in governments, why Windows is the “business platform”, and why 9x beat the competition in the 90s despite being consistently the worst in class for basically every metric you could think of.

Windows didn’t succeed because it was good. Microsoft succeeded because Bill Gates was ruthless!