If Microsoft had literally just released Windows 8.1 with a start menu and called it the next version of Windows, people would have bought it in droves and we would have been hailing the new best OS above Windows 7.

I liked Windows 8 and 8.1 because it was trivial to skin them to look and function like Windows 7. It took years for a pixel-perfect Windows 7 skin to come to Windows 10, and even then it's through some dodgy closed source program that tries to rework your whole computer.

if m$ had any clue what they were doing they would have open sourced their os ages ago

>>105872925 (OP)
They did just like that, only they called it 10 instead of 8.1

I Dienst even notice that my work PC upgraded to 11 untill coworkers talked about it
How detached am I?

>>105873139
*didn't

>>105872925 (OP)
Still looks like dog shit compared to Windows 7, just like 10/11.

>>105872925 (OP)
I am not gonna lie, windows 8.1 was peak to me.

>>105872925 (OP)
Still use Windows 7. No need to updoot unless you use nuhardware, which is objecitvely bad.

>>105873451
7 doesn't have proper DX12 support or NVMe support so Win 8.1 wins easily

>>105872925 (OP)
I used classicshell for that

>>105873121
No.

Could that have stopped MS from getting taken over by india? I recall indian invasion not really being a thing back then, until Obama at least.

>>105873121
10 works shittier

>>105872925 (OP)
If they were so sure that iPads were going to replace PCs in the long run, they should've just made Windows 8 a proper Windows 7 successor, with a sort of tablet skin/setting, or made Windows Phone's OS compatible with tablets too, no need to ruin their main OS because of their fear of tablets, which had just become a thing and weren't that big anyways, it was so dumb.

>>105872925 (OP)
With flat design, being live service and MS Store it began to turn into shit right with 8. Having a start menu wouldn't have changed that.

Windows 8.1 unlike 10 is perfectly usable with a HDD, the system had a relatively small footprint and had some QoL features like Hybrid Sleep, which allowed for fast startups from cold boots even on mechanical drives.

It is regretable that many people, myself included, jumped in the 8 hate bandwagon back then, it really wasn't that bad. The experience could be made decent with mods like Classic Shell.

If MShaft had made a Win 8.1 core with 7 skin/early 2010s skeumorphic theme, no tablet hybrid abomination and no UWP, it would've been hailed as the best modern Windows ever and M$ would have needed to get a lot more aggressive with their GWX shit to get people to migrate to their data mining OS.

>>105872925 (OP)
windows 8.1 was underrated. completely looked over.

too late tho, macfag now.

>>105872925 (OP)
Unusable in 2025. Can't run modern games

>>105872925 (OP)
Most people who disagree with this haven't used 8.1 for long enough to consider that the changes from 8.1 to 10 were actually massive and fairly detrimental.
8.1 was designed to run on garbage anemic tablets. By 2017 or so, when people pretty much forgot about its existence, it was a much, much, much, much, much more stable version of Windows than any existing version of 10. You could open a Win 8.1 virtual machine on a shitty laptop and do your work there just fine, whereas a Win10 machine would completely shit itself.
Not to mention, Win 8.1 barely replaced anything about 7. Its settings application replaced pretty much none of the control panel elements, and pretty much all features were still present there. The Ribbon UI made a few people seethe, but it was pretty convenient to have quick toggles to shit like hiding and showing files or extensions right there. Also I had less trouble with it than 7 regarding scaling and multimonitor setups. The only shameful thing about it is the lack of vendor support because as it turns out its market share was null compared to 7, so completely arbitrarily they decided to drop driver support for it very early on. Installing AMD drivers on it turned into a fucking headache. Shame on everyone shitting on this OS which would have been perfect to keep 10 at bay for a few more years. And even more shame on the revisionist cock loving subhumans that act like W10 was always good and 11 is oh so much worse.