Can you name an Operating System which changed your experience with emulators

[NewDeli]

As you may know, I wasn't happy with XP. My biggest mistake with Microsoft in a 10-year period of time was thinking it would be much better than Win2k (Let me assure you that, despite all the fuss, I was pretty pissed up with it ).

It's the controversial Windows Vista which got me back to retro-gaming in general, and to Amiga emulation in particular.

I was wondering if, in the perspective of running your fav. emulators, any of the mentioned OSes bear advantages with the same lasting appeal for you, whether ease of use, stability...

[Retroplay]

WinXP here all the way.
It's rock solid on my system and my current XP installation is almost 4 years old.
Never had a single BSOD.

[TCD]

Won't say that Win XP reinvented the wheel or something, but like Retroplay said it's nice and stable Can't judge on Vista, because I only use it at work, so maybe it will change when I use it for emulation

[davideo]

XP for me too.

I don't like the look of Vista and like all Windows products I'm waiting for all the cockups to be fixed. Which knowing Windows systems could be a long time

Dave G

[DH]

XP here too

Never really had any problems, everything seems to work fine, so I ain't gonna fix it with Vista. I wouldn't want to put WinUAE through the pain of installing it on an newer but inferior OS, I hate it 'cause I've used it and I don't want to change until it's problem free.

[TheCorfiot]

I've been running VISTA for over 2 yrs now beginning as a Beta Tester and I have to be fair its absolutly fine apart from the fact that it likes a minimum of 2GB memory to run smoothly, a powerful CPU & GPU helps too.
BTW WinUAE runs fine on VISTA

XP I have no problem with I like it very much too, But for me the most stable & best Windows was Windows 2000, It's was never pretty but not resource hungry, as capable as XP & has been rock stable since day 1

regarding emulation though, the day I moved over from 9x to 2K was the day so many issues disappeared.

TC

[onkelarie]

for me it's xp as well. It's the first incarnation of windows which actually feels smooth and it's running my emulators just fine.

[prowler]

My first recollection of trying emulators was FusionPC 3.0 for DOS running Mac OS 8.0 just like a real Macintosh! I remember being astounded that you could change the desktop resolution on the fly from within this emulator when Windows 3.1 could only do this with a powerful (for the time) graphics card and the very latest drivers installed. (FusionPC was doing it using a generic VESA 2.0 driver for DOS.)

At around this time I discovered DOSUAE 7.5d and had this running Amiga OS 3.1 just like a real Amiga, too. It was quite a while before I discovered that the reason I could only emulate df0: and df1: floppies was because I didn't have enough file handles declared in my DOS startup configuration! Constant ADF-swapping made OS 3.1 so much more long-winded to install.

Later, I managed to install Amiga OS 3.9 in WinUAE 0.8.8r8 running under Windows 95 using a procedure written by Thomas Rapp and available from his home page. In fact, Thomas continued to recommend this version of WinUAE in preference to later versions in which to install Amiga OS 3.9 for quite some time, and I found it worked very well.

By the time later operating systems came along, I had been well and truly bitten by the emulation bug, but it was really my experiences with emulators under MS-DOS version 5.0, when I had no other machine but a Pentium 133 PC, which converted me into the multi-platformer I am today.

So, my vote has gone to 'Other'.

[MazinKaesar]

XP is quite the best OS I ever used. Yes, it's vulnerable, but with a good firewall and an antivirus it's almost secure - I never take a virus excepts when I tried them intentionally on a dummy installation. There are a lot of emulators, faster than any other version on any other OS and more complete. WinUAE and MESS are a good example: on Linux and Mac they are old, on XP they rock. I will use it for a long time in the future.

[Charlie]

I guess it's XP for me:
Having discovered the joys of nLite & M$'s less well publicised XP-variants I've got to say I've found a mainstream OS I can live with...
...best emulator support.
...stable (enough).
...surprisingly low overheads (after some work).

There's OS's I MUCH prefer but there's no software.

Oh, dear I wonder if I'm an XP fan-boy..?

[BlueAchenar]

The GP2x handheld console (Linux) really changed my experience of emulators. Playing Sensible Soccer, Golden Axe, Dune, etc... in bed is wonderful.

[andreas]

with me, it goes exactly the other way round. I was experimenting with UAE (Linux) 0.8.7 in about 1996, when most people thought UAE only stands for "United Arab Emirates"

Windows was still far away. I think the first Windows version I used still had no GUI and it was WinUAE 0.7.5R1. (very good release for that time)

[whiteb]

You have to look at PC operating systems this way. There is always a DECENT OS before Microsoft go and Balls it up.

98, then came ME
XP, then Came Vista.

[gimbal]

well in that respect, Windows 98 release 1 was worse than Windows 95 OSR 2.5. Windows 98 Release 2 was rock solid though.

[keropi]

I have migrated to Vista SP1 since 4 months now, and I must say that it is not bad at all!! I liked it so much, that I even installed them to my work PC. If you have a somewhat good PC then they are OK...
XP was great too, but intentionally limited to DirectX9 , so for a gamer VISTA is the only way nowdays... sure most games have dx9 support too, but the differences are too big to have your expensive vga limited

[Leffmann]

I was reluctant to switch to XP at first because W2K had and did everything I wanted it to. Eventually I did switch because of lacking support, but I've been very pleased with XP since. It looks and feels just like W2K (you can remove all the big shiny blue buttons) and I haven't had a single BSOD ever.

There has always been a sliver of unpleasantness directed at Microsoft's products in general, but with Windows Vista this has reached a completely new level and the issues with Vista you hear of are in a league of their own. I'm sure Vista brings some neat features, but I would never pay the system resources and headaches needed to get them.

Personally I will stick to Windows XP until I'm forced to upgrade because of lacking support.

[MazinKaesar]

[OT]

Originally Posted by whiteb

98, then came ME

ME has a bad reputation 'cause the hardware producers never released drivers specifically for this OS. Usually the created driver for 98 only, so on ME they sometimes created system crashed.

[/OT]

[TCD]

Maybe a thread about which emulator changed your view on emulation would also be nice

[OT]
@Mazin
Nice X-Mas avatar
[/OT]

[MazinKaesar]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

[OT]
@Mazin
Nice X-Mas avatar
[/OT]

[OT]
He's Bastarda Claus, he arrives at Xmas and kick in a** bad kids
[/OT]

[AmigaFriend]

I tended to upgrade almost instantly when a new OS appeared and I must say I had good experiences with all versions (never used Win2K at home) including ME which was the most performance wise on my 1997 Mitac portable that came originally with Win95.

But with Vista no. I hate Vista since the first beta came out. Too much resource hog, much useless applications, that Control Panel resembles like a f*** zoo!

I use Win XP Pro since day 1 and it is by far the best OS Microsoft ever made. Quick, very stable, highly configurable. Until a specific application that I need to use in a regular basis doesn't support XP, I will stick with it.

I'm on my third different full PC, since I bought my Win XP copy and I think this says everything.

Emulation wise it provided me till now the best experience, the Amiga coming in second place.