It’s funny how conservative Windows is, it still has components from the NT.
That calling: ensuring things are compatible with old software and not fucking your users over. Just for fun I tried to install Photoshop 6 from 2000 on Windows 11 and it works just fine. Same goes for MS Office 2003.
It's basically the same time I started using Linux somewhat more. I didn't go Windows-free until 2007 though and then returned to Windows because I needed it for something with my Master's thesis. I kind of shudder at the thought how my old setups looked under the hood. You learn a lot in 18 years... Probably copy-pasted a lot of shell commands back then. But UT2k4 in its OpenGL glory was worth it