[arjie]

Vista got a lot of hate when it came out but honestly, I liked it then and I continue to not think of it as problematic. It introduced `gksudo` to everyone and people complained about it but I was an Ubuntu user prior to using Vista so it felt natural to me. Overall, it was an operating system that worked well, as did Windows 7 afterwards with signed drivers and so on. In fact, those Windows versions got the reloadable graphics drivers at the time which I much envied since it was not so easy to get graphics restarted on Linux if it froze.

I had my Dell XPS M1330 set to dual boot into Vista. Power button would take me straight to windows. And the alternative bootloader Media button would take me straight to Ubuntu. Fun little setup. No need to grub chainload.

[bbatha]

Imo vistas biggest problem was they underspecced the minimum system requirements. Most peoples experience with vista was on sub 1gb of ram machines with a single core, no gpu and 32 bits. Vista was an os for modern architectures first. Windows 7 had the luxury of those features being the default at launch.

[miladyincontrol]

Theres a bit more to that story, leading up to Vista Intel's iGPUs lacked proper DX 9 support, just partial. Particularly 910/915 were marketed as "Vista Capable" but not "Vista Premium Ready".

And the later ones which did have full DX 9 support really weren't that much better. I recall drivers being an absolute mess for a lot of external peripherals too, many that weren't even dated took ages to get something usable for vista if at all.

[Rendello]

It's fun running into Vista references in contemporary TV shows, which run the gamut from "it's like a good pair of jeans" [1] to "Vista! We're going to die!" [2]. I was too young to form much of an opinion on it, but I remember it feeling quite unstable. I can say I preferred Windows 8 to Windows 7, though.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Paw-EKCw_3o&t=86s

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IfnjBHtjHc

[alephnerd]

Same. I think the UX changes plus the 32/64 bit issues led it to have a rocky start.

IMO, Vista crawled so Win7 could run. Same with Win 2000 and WinXP.

[thesuitonym]

Did you mean Windows Me? Windows 2000 was rock solid, and almost exactly the same thing as Windows XP.

[alephnerd]

I meant from a consumer usage and uptake perspective. I was lucky to use Win 2000 as a consumer as my dad was a SWE who got free licenses from work (along with Compaq workstations, ergonomic chairs, and tickets to ATT Park), but apparently Win2000 for consumer usage was much less common than I thought.

[j45]

Vista helped a lot of people switch to Mac, first to run windows XP on it, then slowly switch to Mac more permanently.