A different mindset
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For those not familiar with DOS/Windows any more, for most of us that's what Windows always referred to. It's weird that there were two product lines that at different times were known as Windows. The one we have today is the offspring of OS/2, not DOS, and has no relationship to DOS or Windows as it was traditionally known. So the current system called Windows was traditionally called Windows NT and once DOS died out, it kind of took over the name Windows before getting renamed formally to Windows 10. But everyone thinks of it as NT because its kernel keeps that in the name and nothing else.
But the original system from the 1980s was DOS. Then Windows was a desktop environment that you ran on top of DOS. Not unlike Gnome on Ubuntu today. DOS was the OS, just as Ubuntu is the OS. And Windows was the desktop environment just like Gnome or Cinnamon are desktop environments.
Windows 1 released, then Windows 2, Windows 3, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 95 SE, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME
That was it. That was the entire run of traditional Windows. The Windows NT family split from OS/2 and release its first product about the same time as Windows 3.1. So at one point there was Windows 3.1 and Windows NT 3.1 on shelves and you could pick the Windows family or the Windows NT family. Windows was always 16bit code. Windows NT was a big deal because it was 32bit native. Windows NT had an emulator built in that could run a 16bit mode and could run most Windows apps, but only most, and not always very well.
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Thank your for your informative reply Scott, I'm not bashing Microsoft in general. I think have done very well with their azure platform, but I feel they don't give a shit about windows anymore. Windows XP with sp3 and windows 7 felt like they finally made a decent OS, vista was just a pain from the memory requirements increase. Then along comes windows 8, a joke of an operating system to say to users we want to cater for mobiles and tablets, but don't give a shit about work environments that require a practical desktop environment.
I personally thought windows 2000 was quite decent. -
So the CMD.exe in Windows that we all know and love is not DOS. This is why people always say "that's not DOS" and are amazed that people think that it is related to DOS. It shares some command names and such, but Ubuntu 19.10 shares command names with System IV in the early 1970s, but we don't assume that they are sharing anything, it's just useful command names.
The Windows NT family that we use today (aka Windows 10) has never had any form of DOS on it, under it, with it, nothing. Even going back to the summer of 1993 there was zero DOS in that first release. DOS is an operating system, not a shell like CMD, so different things conceptually. DOS and NT were competing OSes.
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@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I personally thought windows 2000 was quite decent.
Did you use NT4 before it? Windows 2000 wasn't bad on its own. It was bad, IMHO, in comparison to NT4. As far as I am concerned, NT4 SP6a was the shining example of the best of the best of Microsoft's product development. It was fast, it was light, it was stable, it was secure-ish, it was easy to use and easy to maintain. Every release before and since paled in comparison to it. Windows 2000 especially was slow and bloated compared to it. But way more flashy.
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It was a big advantage, I think, coming from the CP/M and DOS days, seeing Windows layered onto it, then seeing NT come along. Getting to see all of that, step by step, really helped to teach what was the OS, what was the shell, what was the desktop environment, how the pieces got put together.
Later on, everything is so heavily abstracted its impossible to tell what you are looking at. But all of it was so raw back then.
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Here is something funny to think about...
Windows 1 through Windows ME, the entire run of the Windows family, was only 16 years: 1985 - 2001. That's all. The entire legacy of the Windows world was created over such a short time frame.
Also weird, more weird I think, is that the legacy of DOS - that iconic picture of the 1980s businessman or programmer typing away on that IBM PC with just text on the screen. That era lasted a total of just four years. 1981 to 1985 when Windows was added. Of course, you could keep running DOS after 1985, but people really didn't, the move to Windows was essentially ubiquitous and instantaneous. Once you had a 16bit Windows layer with multi-tasking, the uni-tasking 8bit DOS system seemed pretty lame.
Only four years, but boy does it stick in our minds!
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I used to be part of a computer club after school when I was young, due to my interest in computers. I was taught how to use MS-DOS, at the time I believe it was windows 3.00 and ms-3.2. I had been given computers by my uncle as he worked in London for some big companies, my first computer I got when I was in my teens was a olevetti 486dx2 66. That was running Windows for workgroups 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.2.
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Windows NT release in 1993, DOS was only 12 years old, Windows only 8 years old! Windows NT is still going (but not so strong anymore) and is now 27 years old!! Windows NT has already gone 3.5x as long as Windows did from beginning to end and certainly isn't going to vanish anytime soon. Yet DOS and Windows remain more iconic even with their tiny life spans. And Windows had to contend with having been "already replaced" for its last eight years. 50% of the run of Windows, it was already the deprecated technology!
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@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
That was running Windows for workgroups 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.2.
That would have been DOS 6.22. Windows 3.1 (not for workgroups) was shipped with 6.2. And 6.22 went as an update to go with 3.11. So goofy.
DOS 7 shipped with Windows 95.
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I was lucky, I learned DOS 2 I believe that it was on a first generation IBM PC before Windows had been released. So I really learned both a small amount of IT and a lot of programming in the real DOS era. I did the first large amount of learning to program on straight DOS. I miss those days.
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I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
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@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
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@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
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@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
And PS/2 is the "new" stuff. Original PC keyboard uses a 5 pin DIN connector.
PS/2 is of course named so since it was introduced on IBM's PS/2 computer.
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@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
And PS/2 is the "new" stuff. Original PC keyboard uses a 5 pin DIN connector.
I had a nine pin "joystick" connector in 1987.
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@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
And PS/2 is the "new" stuff. Original PC keyboard uses a 5 pin DIN connector.
I had a nine pin "joystick" connector in 1987.
That was called the gamepad connector. Can't remember what kind of gamepad it was from though.No, wait. It was probably the game port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_portOnly 9 pin connector was the dsub connector which was the serial port, where the mouse was connected. I don't think the PC ever had any serial keyboards.
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@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
And PS/2 is the "new" stuff. Original PC keyboard uses a 5 pin DIN connector.
I had a nine pin "joystick" connector in 1987.
That was called the gamepad connector. Can't remember what kind of gamepad it was from though.No, wait. It was probably the game port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_portOnly 9 pin connector was the dsub connector which was the serial port, where the mouse was connected. I don't think the PC ever had any serial keyboards.
Nope, nine pin. Wasn't a PC.
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@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
And PS/2 is the "new" stuff. Original PC keyboard uses a 5 pin DIN connector.
I had a nine pin "joystick" connector in 1987.
That was called the gamepad connector. Can't remember what kind of gamepad it was from though.No, wait. It was probably the game port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_portOnly 9 pin connector was the dsub connector which was the serial port, where the mouse was connected. I don't think the PC ever had any serial keyboards.
https://www.retrorgb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mysza.jpg
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@Pete-S said in A different mindset:
@scottalanmiller said in A different mindset:
@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I feel quite happy that I have saw a lot of history of how hardware and software has developed to this day, and you have seen more then I have. Like people today won't know what a ps/2 mouse is or a serial based mouse lol.
I still end up with those from time to time!
I use one almost every day - a Keytronic keyboard. About 20 years old.
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@StuartJordan said in A different mindset:
I've always had a passion for working in IT and I feel my love is changing towards how things are changing, especially with Microsoft. It's not azure or cloud services that I feel unhappy with, it's windows itself. I don't even like using it, I just find a lot of things about it annoying, even the amount of times I want to leave an application for it to be closed down, after an update that happend at 3am or trying to scroll that shitty start menu...in the past when vista or Windows Me were launched we was able to stay on the previous OS and Microsoft soon launched a better replacement causing us to eventually move on. With windows as a service, it's all pushed to how Microsoft wants you to use your computer now. Even In a previous thread it was mentioned in regards to pushing users to use their online outlook account, this no doubt will eventually be forced.
The last couple of years I've been focusing more with Linux based distributions, mainly Ubuntu server edition and Cent OS. I feel I'm more happy with working with Linux based systems now, putting effort into using bash has actually been more enjoyable, once again I couldn't stand powershell. I'm now even thinking changing my main desktop to a Linux based distribution.
I've worked with computers since I was 16, I'm now approaching 38, starting from a break fix environment, I just feel the last couple of years I've lost some enjoyment working within IT, has anyone else experienced this feeling?
Yeah I think a lot of us have gone through this. Windows is often frustrating. While it does mostly work, and probably ideal for a certain subset of users, it isn't enjoyable to use. I have done the same as you. I have moved to Linux workstations. I use Opensuse and Fedora daily. Those are on my laptops and Fedora on my cloud servers. So its not just you.
