[microtonal]

Yeah. When I was a high school student, we set up the new school network (end of the 90s). We used Windows NT on all the desktops and the domain/file server and SuSE Linux as a firewall/router. The whole setup was super stable and NT ran well, even on the modest desktop hardware.

When we graduated, maintenance was taken over by a local consumer PC builder and had no clue experience maintaining corporate/organization networks. They replaced all desktops and servers by Windows 9x (probably 98), as it was all they knew and the network was constantly down, desktops broken/compromised, etc.

NT 4.0 was a really good OS in those days for servers/work desktops. It was less great for games (though IIRC there was DirectX at some point).

[knorker]

NT4 ran quake perfectly, including glquake.

What other game was needed in the 90s?

[anthk]

Unreal; and later, Deus Ex, based on Unreal too :D.

But Windows 2000 was much better for gaming. NT4 supported DX3 and DX5 unnoficially'.

W2k had a DLL call flag to enable a Windows XP like compat mode:

http://www.activewin.com/tips/win2000/1/2000_tips_43.shtml

It only worked on desktop shortcuts, but enough to run most quirky Win95/98 games.

[hnfong]

I think Unreal Tournament ran on NT4 as well.

Despite Win2k and NT4 kinda having a rep for not for gaming, I found that most games actually did run on them fine. Especially Win2k, probably the most underrated OS of all time in the Windows lineup.

[chungus_khan]

Really I think it got that rep mostly from people trying to run DOS games or shoddy ports from DOS to early Windows that still relied on a bunch of DOS stuff.

[hnfong]

I always suspected Microsoft tried to market it as such otherwise their Windows ME (remember that sh1t?) wouldn't sell...

[anthk]

win2k's support for games was miles ahead of NT4 because of DX 8.1? support. If not DX8, DX7 0a was for sure supported.