liam_on_linux | What was the importance of Windows 2000?

(Another recycled Quora answer)

It was a pivotal release of the NT family of OSes.

It is forgotten now but Microsoft has had multiple tries at creating operating systems. In the very early 1980s, it had its own UNIX, called Xenix, which it offered for multiple computer platforms including the Apple Lisa.

Xenix failed.

Then there was MS-DOS 4, an attempt to create a multitasking DOS. This failed, and was replaced with IBM’s PC DOS 4, which was a very simple enhancement of MS-DOS 3.3, supporting larger hard disk partitions and adding a simple graphical program launcher called DOSshell.

Then there was OS/2, co-developed with IBM, designed from the ground up to be a multitasking, networked OS. Unfortunately, IBM crippled it, by insisting that the new OS could run on 80286 computers, because IBM had sold thousands of 80286-based PS/2 computers and promised its customers that they would one day be able to run OS/2.

The customers didn’t care — they ran PC DOS on the machines and were happy. OS/2 should have targetted the new 80386 processor, which would have made it able to multitask DOS applications. But it didn’t, so it failed.

A desperate Microsoft adopted an unofficial back-room skunkworks project to improve the commercial failure that was Windows 2. This was called Windows 3 and it was a huge success, but it ran on top of the very limited MS-DOS. It was a technical triumph that Windows 3 worked as well as it did.

IBM and MS “divorced” over the failed OS/2 project. IBM alone developed OS/2 2, a 386-native version. It was superb for its time — I bought it and ran it for years.

MS got “OS/2 3”, a planned portable version that would run on non-Intel chips. However it was little more than a plan.

MS headhunted Digital Equipment Corporation’s superstar OS developer Dave Cutler and his team and gave them the OS/2 3 project to finish. It was renamed OS/2 NT (for the Intel N-Ten RISC processor it was first built on) and then renamed again to Windows NT, since MS wanted nothing to do with OS/2 any more.

The result was NT 3.1 in 1993. I deployed this in production. It was a great OS. It needed a lot more RAM and more CPU power than OS/2 2, but it was much easier to install and configure, supported both 16-bit and the handful of 32-bit Windows apps (as well as DOS apps and text-mode OS/2 apps, and could support Unix apps if they were recompiled). Unlike OS/2 2 it had excellent networking built in — it was the first OS I got online on the Internet using PPP to CompuServe, in 1993.

NT was an excellent business workstation OS, but it needed a very high-end expensive PC, and it was poor at multimedia.

So Microsoft continued to develop and enhance the DOS-based Windows line. This yielded many advances:

Windows 95, the first 32-bit bit mass-market Windows with a superb desktop that every modern Linux still imitates today.

Win 95B, adding FAT32 and USB 1 support.

Windows 98, with built-in Internet Explorer, power management, multiple network interface and so on

Win 98SE with multiple-monitor and USB 2 support.

… All running on cheap mass-market PCs, all offering good rich multimedia, hardware 3D acceleration when that appeared, Plug’n’Play for easier hardware configuration.

Meantime NT was only sold to businesses. By NT 4 it finally got the Win95 desktop but nothing else. No USB, no FAT32, almost no power management, almost no plug’n’play. Fairly useless on laptops, as it destroyed battery life and could not do sleep or hibernation.

MS was pinning its hopes on a radical new OS called Cairo. This was never finished and got cancelled.

What did ship was NT version 5, with a new name: Windows 2000.

This was NT with all the good stuff from the Win9x line: power management, plug’n’play, multimedia, etc.

Unfortunately, MS ran out of nerve. Windows 2000 should have been the release that finally replaced the Windows 95/98 product line, as it did everything 98SE could do any more — except run DOS device drivers.

However, NT still needed a fast computer and really wanted 256MB of RAM to run well. Performance in 128MB was poor. In 1999/2000, a well-specified PC had 64MB of RAM.

So MS did one last version of Win9x, Windows ME, with booting to DOS finally removed, and support for Firewire and many other refinements. It ran great in 64MB and was quick if you had more — I put it on refurbished machines with 80–96MB and it was fine after a few updates.

Windows 2000, although intented to be the replacement for both NT 4 and 95/98, was again only sold to businesses, not home users.

That had to wait for Windows XP, which finally killed off the MS-DOS-based line forever.

But it should have been Windows 2000. It was more than good enough, but the hardware wasn’t ready. Poor old W2K didn’t get USB2 until SP4, its 3D acceleration was never all that good, it never got the latest & greatest DirectX.

XP really added very little to 2000: it booted quicker, did hibernation & resume much quicker, and it had the Luna skin and support for themeing, allowing teenagers to make Windows hideously ugly for years to come.

Otherwise, it was the same product.

Windows 2000 was NT 5 and a big advance.

XP was just NT 5.1 — a minor point release. But XP’s the one that the weenies and the n00bs remember fondly, because they could put their neon dayglo skin on and play MP3s through Winamp. Those of us who were grownups at the time appreciated W2K more for its elegance, relative simplicity and cleanliness, and the fact that it just worked without pointless performance-sapping bling.