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Switch to Windows 95
- danschumann 9y agoThese posts are fun, but they are in jest right? Does win95 have true advantages over any modern OS? ( I currently use debian for most of the day )
- ams6110 9y agoA lack of feature bloat. It would probably be fast as lightning on modern hardware. Though I don't use Windows regularly anymore, I always liked Windows 2000. It was stable, but only slightly more bloated than '95 from a GUI standpoint.
- cryptoz 9y agoI have more nostalgia for Windows 2000 than practically anything else from that era. I use mostly Mac and Linux these days but wow do I feel something for win2k.
- TomMarius 9y agoFor me it's XP. That thing was perfect - and would be even today if it had 64bit and 4K support - and of course modern apps and drivers.
- IncRnd 9y agoThere was a 64bit version of XP. The tiny little whispers on a 4k were unworkable, though. Besides, if an app can't run on 64bit XP, what's the point of running it, anyway?
- lowtolerance 9y agoWindows 2000 is far and away my favorite Microsoft operating system of all time.
- jlgaddis 9y agoSame here. I wish I could still run it today. As a desktop, it was awesome: separate user accounts, much more stable than previous versions, etc. I stayed with Win2K Professional as long as I could, holding out until the very end, only switching to XP when I had to. On the server side, Win2K introduced many new features, including, of course, Active Directory, which was amazing (at the time). Windows 2003 Server brought with it some cool new stuff as well, but (just like with my desktops) I had Win2K Server machines that I held onto as long as possible. I really did miss it. The stability (compared to its predecessors) was simply amazing. I've still got the ISO images around here somewhere.
- fredley 9y agoIt has the one genuine advantage over any current consumer-oriented OS that it is not tracking your actions in any way and reporting them back to the vendor. Even Ubuntu includes some basic tracking of its users.
- eatonphil 9y agoPerhaps check out TrueOS, the desktop-oriented distribution of FreeBSD.
- Sylos 9y agoThere are many consumer-oriented Linux distributions that do not track the user. I'm also pretty sure that Ubuntu does not. You might be thinking of the so-called "Search Lenses", which sent your search terms from the system search to Canonical's server, then they proxied that to prominently Amazon by default, optionally to others as well, to gather product results for your search term. Their privacy policy was perfectly straightforward that they do not store the search results or use them for anything else and it's disabled by default since Ubuntu 16.04, and is effectively unavailable from Ubuntu 17.10 onwards, as they switched to GNOME for the desktop environment, which does not support this.
- fredley 9y agoI'm aware that almost all *nix distros don't track, but they might be for us, but they certainly aren't for 99.9% of consumers.
- mindslight 9y agoNeither is Windows 95, because essentially the only feature that makes an OS "for [most] consumers" is that it comes pre-installed on the appliances at Best Buy.
- hedora 9y ago> There are many consumer-oriented Linux distributions that do not track the user. Can you name one?
- pavlov 9y agoCertainly there's no point in using Windows 95 today. These posts are more like software archeology. If you want to use a Microsoft OS from that era, Windows NT 4.0 is much more solid.
- organsnyder 9y agoWindows 2000 is the best Microsoft OS I've ever used. Perfect blend of consumer-oriented convenience (and compatibility) on a truly stable core.
- beamatronic 9y agoI like it a lot but for me Windows 7 (ultimate edition) is the pinnacle of Windows. It just works and it pleasant to use.
- acct1771 9y agoAfter three service packs, and all this time to get the drivers in place, be disappointing if it didn't.
- bartread 9y agoIn many ways I agree, and I very much liked Windows 2000, although there's no denying it was shot through with security holes. Granted much of that fault probably lies with IE6 but, regardless, those were bad times.
- mhd 9y agoThe first NT that included potentially volatile graphics drivers into kernel-space?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- beefhash 9y agoI'm not 100% sure if I understand you correctly, but I think you're asking about the title? As far as I can tell, the title is called that way because there was an icon literally called "Switch to Chicago"[1] in the Windows 3.x "emulation" feature of a Windows Chicago (95 beta) build. The OP is a follow-up that ports the feature to a newer build of Windows 95, repeating part of the title. [1] https://blog.krnl386.com/index.php?post/2017/11/19/Switch-to-Chicago https://blog.krnl386.com/index.php?post/2017/11/19/Switch-to...
- Stratoscope 9y agoThank you. The article is exactly as you say, and it certainly isn't advocating that anyone should run Windows 95 on their computer today. It's much more interesting than that. I don't know if I would call it a Windows 3.1 emulation, it was actually running a standard build of Windows 3.1 in a Chicago/Win95 window by using some special drivers. Interestingly, the "port" consisted mostly of removing a version test in WIN31.EXE that checked that it was running under Windows 4.0. As described in the Raymond Chen post the article links to, Chicago originally reported itself as Windows 4.0 in the GetVersion() API, but this was rolled back to 3.95 before the Win95 release because many apps had bad version checks. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040213-00/?p=40633 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040213-00/?p=...
- ronsor 9y agoIt's more trustworthy than Windows 10 and it's much smaller than any modern OS. I wouldn't use it on anything newer than 2004 though :)
- userbinator 9y agoI suppose some would consider the inability to run any recent software an advantage because it reduces distraction, much like some writers continue to use a DOS text editor. Having used 98SE daily, well into the XP and even Vista era, I can say that despite the reputation for the 9x series being unstable is almost completely due to the other software you run on it; since it has minimal memory protection, badly written apps will eventually crash the OS, but good ones will work continuously.
- IncRnd 9y ago> These posts are fun, but they are in jest right? Does win95 have true advantages over any modern OS? ( I currently use debian for most of the day ) The author wasn't recommending the use of Windows 95 in 2018.
- oldcynic 9y agoIf I was going to switch to anything that old it would be Intuition (Amiga)
- icedchai 9y agoHuge Amiga fan here! It was my favorite early 90's platform. By the time Windows 95 was out, it felt pretty long in the tooth. Also, you probably just mean AmigaOS. Intuition was the high level UI and library, not the whole OS.
- 0x0 9y agoI think you're missing the point of the article. The article is a demonstration of a less known feature in windows95 that let you run windows 3.1, but offered a button to "switch to windows95" at runtime (i.e. switch to something newer, not to something older).
- interfixus 9y agoThe Windows 95 UI was innovative and trulky groundbreaking. People like to say it was a rip-off of one thing or another, but it really wasn't. Imitation being the sincerest flattery, my present Arch/Xfce desktop is basically a somewhat enhanced version of that very classic interface.
- eadmund 9y ago> The Windows 95 UI was innovative and trulky groundbreaking. People like to say it was a rip-off of one thing or another, but it really wasn't. Say what‽ I like this ad from Apple[0]: Introducing Windows 95 It lets you use more than eight characters to name your files. It has a trash can you can open and take things out of again. It lets you drop files anywhere you want on the desktop. Imagine that. The funny thing is that it's now 23 years later, and Windows is still not as usable as a circa-1995 Mac. It's a bit crazy! [0] https://www.cultofmac.com/386189/how-apple-responded-to-the-release-of-windows-95-twenty-years-ago-today/ https://www.cultofmac.com/386189/how-apple-responded-to-the-...
- balnaphone 9y agoTo be fair, it's now 23 years later, and macOS is still not as usable as a circa-1995 Mac. It's a bit crazy!
- bdcravens 9y agoI would say the Start menu and File Explorer were the biggest innovations. I don't know that Finder of the day was as useful, and in many ways, I think Finder in 10.12.x still falls short.
- dfox 9y agoIn default configuration Windows 95's and NT 4's File Explorer works in essentially same way as classic Finder (ie. what is called "spatial file manager" today). I think that popularity of various orthodox file manager is at least partially caused by how unusable that was in Windows with small displays of the day.
- x0054 9y agoDoes anyone read the damn article any more??? A lot of the comments here are arguing about weather or not it's a good idea to literally switch to Windows 95 as your main OS in 2018. Hint, that's NOT what the article is about, despite the title.
- spydum 9y agoI wonder if many comments these days are bots just trying to farm karma, so they can sell astroturfing campaigns later. They all take turns upvoting themselves.. Or maybe I'm paranoid
- rmrfrmrf 9y agoThat happens on Reddit already, so no surprise it would happen here sooner or later.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoJust take a look at /new with showdead on. There are spam bots on there offering “free serial key” sprinkled with some Unicode characters. I’m sure dang and the mod team have some automated way of detecting bots and voting rings.
- viraptor 9y agoWhy would they do that? Karma is not visible on posts and you don't gain any extra rights apart from downvoting. You could just use new accounts for this.
- drdeca 9y agoDoesn't having negative karma result in one's comments being more easily killed? Or am I remembering wrong?
- flattone 9y agoLanding pages feel so heavy, involved. Usually I comments only to try to extract the "educated gist" of what's going on + discussion. If this happens successfully I feel like I've won time and experience. There's a lot of outlier scenario here, for me. Bottom line problem is I'm avoiding images+videos etc.even just made a personal log entry about how my internet consumption would feel improved if text only...
- liveoneggs 9y agoI was hoping for updates from this guy: https://youtu.be/PH1BKPSGcxQ https://youtu.be/PH1BKPSGcxQ
- lerie82 9y agoI bet Windows 95 runs like a beast with the memory we have these days.
- freehunter 9y agoWindows 95 actually had a soft limit of 512MB of RAM, but if you modified some config files you could get it to recognize up to 2GB in some cases... but it would cause pretty significant system instability. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/304943/computer-may-reboot-continuously-with-more-than-1-5-gb-of-ram https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/304943/computer-may...
- gambiting 9y agoAnd it wouldn't run at all if you had more than 1 CPU. I remember disabling one core in a Pentium D processor to keep running Windows 98.
- anonymfus 9y agoSo what would happen if you run win31.exe on other Windows versions? OSR2? 98? ME? NT4? ...10 (32 bit)?
- anonymfus 9y agoPatched version on Windows 7 x86 IE8 virtual machine from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...: --------------------------- Application Error --------------------------- WIN31 caused a General Protection Fault in module WIN31.EXE at 0001:01FE. Choose close. WIN31 will close. --------------------------- Close ---------------------------
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoPerhaps the closest thing to this remaining in 95 is that the setup lets you choose the “Windows 3.1” GUI, which means the old Program Manager is the shell instead of Explorer. Quite a different experience though.
- ashleyn 9y agoThe installer also uses a pared-down version of Windows 3.1. If you look carefully, you can notice the older Win 3.x window styles.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoYes, I think this remained the case up through Windows ME. It's interesting they didn't use a pared-down 95. Maybe they were worried about Protected Mode causing trouble?
- dfox 9y agoWindows 3.1 always runs in some kind of protected mode, either in 16-bit PM on 286 or as a process inside 32b hypervisor-ish layer on 386 and up.
- iforgotpassword 9y agoThat was also used when compressing the drive with DoubleSpace or whatever it was called on 95. Windows would reboot into a mode where the windows had win3.11 style and perform the drive conversion.
- yuhong 9y agoDriveSpace. And yes, something similar to Windows 3.1 standard mode was used for both, often called mini-Windows.
- jboles 9y agoIf I remember correctly it was called DoubleSpace in Windows 3.1/DOS 6.2 and then due to some patent or licencing issue was renamed (and the compression algorithm modified) to DriveSpace in Windows for Workgroups 3.11/DOS 6.22.
- agumonkey 9y agoI found a p3 box with win95 on it. Booting on a 64M of ram I missed nothing. I seriously thought, with a security layer and a lisp editor (and driver isolation I know) I'd use that everyday.
- orf 9y agoUntil you need to do anything modern that is
- mhd 9y agoI actually remember a few people using OS/2 because it felt easier integrating some Win 3.1 programs. And Warp generally being a better system than 95. Although personally they both crashed on me a lot back then, which is why I bought one of these new-fangled "Linux" distributions back then.
- squarefoot 9y agoI used OS/2 2.1 and 3 Warp extensively back in the day to develop DOS db software in Clipper. Turned out that two or more DOS windows opened on OS/2's desktop could perfectly emulate a DOS client-server situation with two or more machines on a LAN, speeding up development a lot. Attempting the same on Windows would not work, or was very crash prone.
- sehugg 9y agoYep. I did this too, testing the network component of my Windows 3.1 game with virtual environments.
- orionblastar 9y agoDOS based BBSes used OS/2 because it multitasked DOS Virtual machines better than Win 3.1 and 95.
- hapless 9y agoConfusingly there was also a windows 95/nt compatibility environment released for win 3.1 -- the win32s subsystem. Many, if not most, applications written for win95 or NT 3.x APIs could run on windows 3.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s Microsoft has always been laser-focused on forwards- and backwards- compatibility, whether it makes sense to the rest of us or not.
- wryun 9y agoMy (possibly faulty) memory of win32s is that it was came out before Windows 95, and that it would not run most of the programs that were later released for Windows 95. I'd call it a 'Win32 API for Windows 3.1' rather than a compatibility environment for Windows 3.1.
- yuhong 9y agoYea, old anti-trust exhibits mentioned so-called 32-bit Windows extenders, which had many limitations compared to say OS/2 2.0. For example, I think all Win32s apps ran in a single global address space, not to mention the lack of multi-threading etc.
- ashleyn 9y agoCorrect. Win32s was a brief stopgap between home/low-cost user support for 32-bit APIs and the release of Windows 95.
- stormbrew 9y agoWhile this was part of it, I think the main reason it existed was more for smaller developers who couldn't use/afford windows NT (at the time really really expensive) a win32 development environment before win95 came out so there'd be more software (of the shareware variety) for it when it came out.
- digi_owl 9y agoYep, i recall trying to get a game demo going that required Win32s and WinG installed. Ended up taking up so much of the old HDD that i barely could get the game going, and it crawled.
- emersonrsantos 9y agoWindows 3.1 shell and software run under OS/2 as a user-mode system inside a virtual DOS machine (VDM). Also the Windows 3.1 shell is "Flat 2.0" in the 90's.
- digi_owl 9y agoOne thing i liked about Win9x was that i could move the C drive between motherboards and things would boot just fine. These days if it does not balk about missing drivers it will be some kind of DRM check that fails. BTW, i could have sworn that at least the UI layer of Win3.x was found inside Win95 in the form of Progman.exe.
- Izkata 9y agoIt was definitely in Win98. You could edit system.ini and change the shell from explorer to progman; I did this once when explorer got corrupted somehow and me and my brothers just wanted to play games while waiting for it to be fixed.