There’s a chance that, even if you’ve never used the program, you recognize the iconic Bucolic Green Hills of the Windows XP background image. Twenty years ago today, the world got its hands on both the Bliss wallpaper and the classic Windows operating system for the very first time.
As pointed out by @DayTechHistory on X, Windows XP launched officially on October 25, 2001. XP follows up Windows 2000, which is almost equally iconic. Widely praised for its performance and stability, Windows XP is known for having chunky icons, and an incredibly popular, violin-driven startup sound. That wallpaper is among the very best Windows has ever had (find out where in our ranked list of them all).
It’s a very simplistic OS, that doesn’t try to immediately sell you on One Drive and Xbox Game Pass, like Windows 11.
The final update for this legendary OS was in May, 2019, where it received one last security update. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, only 0.10% of Steam’s user base is on a Windows OS before Windows 7. However, Windows XP does seem to still be used as terminals and backends for businesses, especially those that don’t need access to the broader internet.
In fact, almost as many Windows XP machines are still in use as Windows 8.1 despite the yawning chasm of time between their respective releases.
Though some ultra-nostalgic few might opt to keep that iconic background and look, a brave Windows explorer earlier this year showed how vulnerable the OS is to modern-day hacking tools. Within just 10 minutes, a virtual machine with Windows XP was riddled with Malware, thanks, in part, to its lack of firewall and anti-virus software.
Modern operating systems have these things built in, but you have to add them manually with Windows XP, so it can make the software particularly vulnerable. If you are particularly tech-savvy, you can get by with older versions of Windows but they get more dangerous to use, with age.
Take even Windows 10—it is losing support in just under a year’s time, which means Microsoft won’t be keeping it up-to-date with the latest security protections. As time goes on, using older software makes you less protected. Today, on Windows XP’s 23-year anniversary, it is both a nostalgic trip and a sorrowful reminder that it’s probably time to update that OS.