Yeah. When I was a high school student, we set up the new school network (end of the 90s). We used Windows NT on all the desktops and the domain/file server and SuSE Linux as a firewall/router. The whole setup was super stable and NT ran well, even on the modest desktop hardware.

When we graduated, maintenance was taken over by a local consumer PC builder and had no clue experience maintaining corporate/organization networks. They replaced all desktops and servers by Windows 9x (probably 98), as it was all they knew and the network was constantly down, desktops broken/compromised, etc.

NT 4.0 was a really good OS in those days for servers/work desktops. It was less great for games (though IIRC there was DirectX at some point).

NT4 ran quake perfectly, including glquake.

What other game was needed in the 90s?

Unreal; and later, Deus Ex, based on Unreal too :D.

But Windows 2000 was much better for gaming. NT4 supported DX3 and DX5 unnoficially'.

W2k had a DLL call flag to enable a Windows XP like compat mode:

http://www.activewin.com/tips/win2000/1/2000_tips_43.shtml

It only worked on desktop shortcuts, but enough to run most quirky Win95/98 games.

I think Unreal Tournament ran on NT4 as well.

Despite Win2k and NT4 kinda having a rep for not for gaming, I found that most games actually did run on them fine. Especially Win2k, probably the most underrated OS of all time in the Windows lineup.

Really I think it got that rep mostly from people trying to run DOS games or shoddy ports from DOS to early Windows that still relied on a bunch of DOS stuff.

I always suspected Microsoft tried to market it as such otherwise their Windows ME (remember that sh1t?) wouldn't sell...

win2k's support for games was miles ahead of NT4 because of DX 8.1? support. If not DX8, DX7 0a was for sure supported.