Not a known bug as such. If you take a box with decent hardware that has decent drivers, install Win2K on it (or even NT4), install the software you need and then leave it...

...apart from applying the occasional service pack...

...and using the software on it...

...then the chances are it will keep going for ever without registry problems.

However, if your machine is the typical geeks workstation where you are constantly adding and removing software and hardware (not all of which has good drivers) then registry death will probably get you in the end. The problem is less apparent in Win2K than it was in NT4. In NT4 I was lucky if I could make it to nine months before needing a reinstall on my workstations, whereas machines that were just left to get on with it survived the lifetime of NT4.

In Win2K it appears I can go about 2 years before registry death gets me, as I have one workstation at home and also my one at work (on which I run a very different mix of software, but still repeatedly install and reinstall stuff) that are getting close to forcing me to reinstall.

I use Linux as well, and have done since the early days before distributions. If I still used Linux on a workstation I would get into similar problems. Not the same problems, because there is no binary configuration file sitting there that I can't fix when it is broken. I would still get into a similar state though and end up having to reinstall after a couple of years. Sure, in theory I could fix it on Linux, but it would take too much effort to clean up the mess you can get into with library versions and the like.

Again, with Linux this is less than a problem than it used to be, as for example you don't often need to change the major libraries anymore because they are more mature (I remember getting into a fun mess moving to glibc at one point).

I still take a look at Linux occasionally to evaluate it as a workstation OS, but I still prefer Win2K as my workstation OS. I still prefer the Windows UI (even though with Gnome and KDE things are getting more coherent on Linux) and when it comes down to it all the desktop apps that I like run on Windows. I know about the latest Wine developments, but it would still only run a handful of my apps. Try running VS.NET under Wine...

Thankfully I can afford to own several machines, so I can have my cake and eat it, there are two Linux servers in the house as well as my Win2K server, Win2K desktop and Win2K laptop.