[macjohnmcc]

Many years ago when I worked at Microsoft I asked for the source code to Solitaire. A few days later I received a stack of CD-ROMs with the entire source code of Windows NT (4.0 maybe).

[herodoturtle]

And what of the source code to Solitaire!?

Cool memory, thanks for sharing.

[macjohnmcc]

I just thought of something. At the time blank CD-R's were about $15 each and the fastest burners at the time were 2x burners. I'm sorry I wasted so much of time the person who burned these and the cost of the media!

[macjohnmcc]

It took ages to figure out where the code even was in the many files and folders. The directory structure did not make it obvious.

[westmeal]

Can't wait until cozy bear leaks that :D

[sn_master]

NT 4 code was already leaked almost full back in 2004. You can still find it with relative ease if you know where to look, or search for certain keywords in the code.

[keyle]

Man I'm old, but give me NT 4 with modern technology support, modern drivers and GPU driven and I would move in a heartbeat.

[macjohnmcc]

Yeah I remember when there weren't dozens of services running in the background just for basic OS functionality.

[sn_master]

What do you miss the most? The UI? Speed?

[keyle]

UX, speed, simplicity, lightness. Applications ran without talking to the internet, asking if it's ok to run it, telling me it's probably unsafe to run it, telling me I need to update for security reason, telling me I should play candy crush, letting me search my files without adding recommended noise somewhat supposed to be relevant to what I did 3 days ago. I could go on. I just want to stare at a blue flat colour knowing tomorrow it will be just the same. /s

[vxNsr]

Yes! UI was amazing and obviously you can’t beat the speed it would run at on modern hardware

[macjohnmcc]

Make that winning animation use the GPU!

[sedatk]

That was before Source Depot, I presume.

[macjohnmcc]

They were using SLM (Slime) but I did not have access to the server since I was on a different project (Microsoft Systems Management Server).

[rbanffy]

> a stack of CD-ROMs with the entire source code of Windows NT

That's a lot of code. Scary.

[mandeepj]

>That's a lot of code.

It's estimated to be around 40 million lines of code

[macjohnmcc]

And it was not compressed it was just a bunch of files and folders. My guess is it was around 15 CD-ROMs

[rbanffy]

40 million lines of 80 characters would fit in 5 CDs. With a more reasonable average length, it'd fit comfortably in 3.

And 40 million lines for an OS is a crazy amount of code.