What is the most nostalgic OS for you?

[rain]

For me, it's probably Windows XP - even though I'm pretty sure the first PC I've used was running 98. I remember starting to get more and more into computers back when XP was still a thing, ahaha.

[brisray]

For me it's the GEM GUI that gets me all nostalgic. Like the early verions of Windows, it was more of a glorified file manager that sat on DOS. I got the Amstrad PC1640 - just like the one pictured, but with a massive 640K of RAM, still no hard drive though.

[Phoenix]

For me it's the GEM GUI that gets me all nostalgic. Like the early verions of Windows, it was more of a glorified file manager that sat on DOS. I got the Amstrad PC1640 - just like the one pictured, but with a massive 640K of RAM, still no hard drive though.

Woahh ive never seen anything like this before! It looks super interesting!

[tenkai_no_perusona]

Definitely Windows 98. It accompanied me from my first contact with computers and the internet, when I was 7 years old, all the way to 2010, when a BSOD finally killed the machine running it. I went straight to Vista instead of going through XP—I lack the usual nostalgia for this last one.

[arsenicCatnip]

For me it's the GEM GUI that gets me all nostalgic. Like the early verions of Windows, it was more of a glorified file manager that sat on DOS. I got the Amstrad PC1640 - just like the one pictured, but with a massive 640K of RAM, still no hard drive though.

Amstrad!! Haven't heard that name in a while...Amstrad Action magazines were quite popular back in the day, weren't they!

[wygolvillage]

Windows 7 for sure, but I also have a soft spot for XP as well :)

[Yaya]

Windows 95/98 for sure. Definitely brings back the most positive memories!

[virtue]

I'm going to show my lack of age here and say... windows 7, actually! I grew up on windows XP, and I use every major version of windows after that, but theres something really perfect to me about windows 7's gui. I actually just set up windows 7 on a real machine designed for it in my living room! I've been having a lot of fun playing around on it, hehe.

[serenefork]

Windows 7 has always been the most nostalgic for me, though I've only really noticed it in the past couple of years when I got my current laptop and was forced into Windows 10. I had been putting it off for so long already and then my old laptop died and I needed to get a modern one for the classes I was taking at the time. I miss Windows 7, I would like to use it again someday.

[Goobins]

A LOT of people point to Windows XP as the quintessential 2000s OS but for my money, Windows 7 will always be the GOAT. It could honestly pass as a modern OS, albeit without the constant ads, built-in bloatware, and useless garbage that bogs down the whole user experience. The most nostalgic aspect of the whole OS to me will always be its version of Movie Maker. I have so many memories of sitting on my little Acer laptop, cutting together footage of comedy sketches me and my brother filmed on our V-Cam Now 2.0, and uploading them straight to YouTube from the built-in uploader, which was WICKED slow. Windows XP was the first OS I ever used, but 7 was the first one I got to know intimately, so it'll always hold a special place in my heard.

Side-note, does anyone else remember that odd evolution of AIM Instant Messenger that came out sometime in the late-2000s? It was pretty sick for the time. It had integrated Facebook (and I think Twitter?) support, which was CRAZY at the time, considering there was otherwise no way to access Facebook's messenger without being on the website actively.

[nintendowii99]

Windows 95 - 7 are all extremely nostalgic and capture most of my childhood (8 came out when I was in high school). Windows 95 was the OS on my first desktop, and while I don't have many memories of it, I do still enjoy it. We only used vista for about a year, but that year coincided with a lot of my internet use as a kid (my webkinz/neopets/online games era). 7 was the OS on my first laptop, so there's lots of nostalgia there.

However, XP is definitely the most nostalgic OS for me. I used it from around when I was 4 to when I was 12ish. This was the OS in my elementary school computer lab, on my personal desktop that I spent hours and hours playing, and on our family computer. I love pretty much everything about the OS and still use it today. I have a dual boot with Windows 7 just for utility purposes, but I use XP daily.

[varve]

Hmm, hard to say. My first computer that was *mine* ran windows 95, and I had that thing for years. But I don't know that I'm nostalgic for it. I had many hours as a small child playing (aka programming) on the TRS-80 - which we didn't have a tape drive for, so there were no games I could load up and play. Ah, when "10 print hello 20 goto 10" was the height of amusement! I don't remember it clearly enough to really say I had nostalgia though.

I have many good (and some frustrating) memories of linux. I do sometimes find myself itching to muck about on system level stuff, so that's probably the one I have the most nostalgia for - then I remember that I don't actually want to be a sysadmin anymore.

[PurpleHello98]

XP was the OS on the family laptop when I was young, but I first used 7 in-depth on my mother's computer, so maybe that! Although I admit, it might be Windows 8.1, which I had on my first computer. I have lots of memories of tinkering around with that!

[MarcieBee]

We were all windows all the time in my house, but when I was very young we had iMac G3's in the computer lab. So, a lot of my fonder memories of using an OS as opposed to software was using those Macs running Mac OS 9! Also, my first laptop came preinstalled with Ubuntu 12.10 instead of windows, and reading this post made me think of it again. looking at screenshots, yea, instant nostalgia. I think I know what I'm setting my wallpaper to 

[soapfriendo]

Im gonna say iOS 1-6! Before the 7 redesign:


It was a really weird OS, it had fake wooden shelves, leather and metal and all these glossy icons n stuff. I'm not sure I'd say it was my favourite era of design, but it definitely stuck in my head and it's so completely lost to history, no modern UI is anything like it! (Apparently, they fired the entire team who designed it in an overnight coop just before launching the new flat UI iOS still uses now)

For computers, I love the OSX 10.1 pinstripe UI, but the one I remember using most was the 10.4 Tiger brushed metal look! (Aka when Apple was still cool  )

i have a good amount of nostalgia for 2000s era apple OSes too, huuge fan of the usage of fake materials for their ui and i'd like to do smth like that for my webpage at some point. i haven't used mac os since i was a kid so if i were to use it now my muscle memory wld need some rewiring