[cobbaut]

> Seriously, Windows 2000 was one of the most stable OS back in the day, rock solid. I used 2000 server as a desktop OS, instead of 98.

Really? Oh, compared to other Windows versions...

Because it never came close to the stability of OS/400, Netware 3, AIX, Solaris or even OS/2 v2.

[ThinkBeat]

I will fully agree on OS/400, of the operating systems and platforms I have worked with, it is by far the most stable.

That is easier to achieve when your operating system only runs on your own proprietary hardware. (No mess of millions of drivers to write for one).

It worked well for years without any sysadmin touching it.

Well my mom was trained to be the "sys admin", which meant rotating backup tapes.

[pjmlp]

Part of my 1994's Summer job role. :)

[tmountain]

I dunno how to compare stable to stable but I ran Win2k for so long that I got bored with it (something like 5-7 years) and never experienced a single crash. This is coming from a Linux guy btw… so I’m no Microsoft fanboy, just saying, it was as stable as any other stable OS.

[cobbaut]

Didn't mean to bash you, sorry.

I saw years of uptime on those systems whereas Win2000 iirc needed a reboot for every single update of the OS, and even for applications like IIS or Exchange.

Compared to NT4 it was probably very stable, since I remember telling most clients to just shut it down Friday evening and boot it Monday morning cause the pre-SP4 NT4 could not stay up more than three weeks.

Compare that to AS/400, where we pushed updates all over the country, without warning clients, to system running in hospitals, and there never was even the slightest problem. It sounds irresponsible to do that today, but those updates just worked, all the time and all applications continued to work.

[throwaway7356]

> I saw years of uptime on those systems

This just means security updates were never installed.

(Or you claim that all those operating systems never had kernel-level security issues which seems doubtful...)

[cobbaut]

Since these systems were from the 90ies they indeed did not get security updates.

Most were only locally connected (for example OS/2 had a Token Ring in one building). The WAN connection (for AS/400) was trusted.

[hulitu]

You are comparing supermarket apples (Windows) with localy grown plums (AS400). Even today, Windows is not able to update Office without closing it.