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I found a copy of the win98 (I believe) notepad.exe a while back, and it works perfectly on windows 11 (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 v
by voidUpdate 8mo ago
I found a copy of the win98 (I believe) notepad.exe a while back, and it works perfectly on windows 11 (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??). I can write text into it, save it, and load text again. What more does notepad need? And it has a very nostalgic font too
- cubefox 8mo agoIt needs far more features apparently. Tons more. That's why Notepad++ is popular. Which also had a severe security vulnerability recently. Which was actively exploited by some state actor like China.
- leduyquang753 8mo agoThat recent Notepad++ incident was a supply chain attack, not a vulnerability in the original program.
- SPICLK2 8mo agoStrictly, no. But it was a vulnerability in the design of Notepad++, key elements here being the featureset that requires frequent updates and the lack of integrity checks during the upgrade process. This has prompted me to move on from Notepad++ - it's sad, because I've used it for many years, but this is too much.
- IsTom 8mo ago> in the design of Notepad++ One could argue it's an issue with windows where you can't just pull updates using a package manager/app store.
- RobotToaster 8mo agoPretty sure winget does let you do that.
- voidUpdate 8mo agoYou can if you use the windows store. It's just that you usually install things outside of that, unlike in linuxes where you generally use the package manager that can handle updates for you
- delaminator 8mo agoPlus Windows Store is not supported on all version of Windows particularly Datacenter versions - your most valuable assets !!
- tracker1 8mo agoYou can jump through a couple hoops to get WinGet working in Windows Server environments without much issue. IIRC, there's a single PS1 script you can run to do it, followed by a reboot.
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoThere’s a real problem trying to use the store with command line tools as they don’t use Windows standards for installing things but create GUID folders under your profile instead, which means your path has to be full of garbage or you have to create a lot of aliases.
- SPICLK2 8mo agoI'm not sure who I trust less to handle package integrity, the 3rd party hosting provider that Notepad++ used, or Microsoft.
- IsTom 8mo agoA little tongue-in-cheek, but it's also an issue with windows, that it's owned by an untrustworthy company.
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoThe third party hosting provider had nothing to do with package integrity, that was under Notepad++ control and basically they had none. The real issue is every company or application creating their own Internet update system.
- ampersandwhich 8mo agoRecently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Microsoft Store has a built-in CLI with that exact functionality. You just run `store updates` to check for updates to store-managed apps, and you can target specific items with `store update <update-id>`. Of course, there's also winget for non-store applications (`winget upgrade`). I find them pretty handy as I have become quite used to managing my Linux installations with pacman over the past year or so. I discovered the store CLI completely by accident. It's not widely advertised.
- gchamonlive 8mo agoI am driving an Ubuntu installation because it's what's my current employer mandates and coming from arch it feels like going back to Windows. Oh-my-zsh, opencode, gemini-cli, bun, pyenv, nvm... All installed with curl | bash which is not as bad as a .exe or .msi -- those are scripts you can still easily inspect -- but it's also bypassing the pkg manager. But I guess that's what you get when you fragment your ecosystem in apt, snap and gnome extension manager. I need to master nix asap.
- tracker1 8mo agoYou mean like WinGet? or the Windows Store?
- conductr 8mo agoThe OS provided option can be bare bones, stable, secure and just utilitarian. This promotes having people choose their own tools for the features they want and not really expecting much other than reliability from the OS version. They didn’t need to mess with a good thing. Ok, tabs, I do like the tabs.
- mdavid626 8mo agoI extracted out notepad.exe, calc.exe and mspaint.exe from Windows 7. I use them on Windows 11. They work perfectly.
- dgxyz 8mo agoMight as well just use Windows 7 if the security surface is this bad on later windows.
- omoikane 8mo agoWindows 7 market share was actually growing for a while according to: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk... Not sure what caused the inflection point in December 2025.
- dgxyz 8mo agowonder if it was dumping off windows 10 machines or lay offs that did it.
- voidUpdate 8mo agoI have the mspaint.exe from the same version too :P. It complains about registry stuff on launch but other than that it works fine. There's no spray can in the modern paint!
- tomNth 8mo agoI like paint shop pro, I use 4.12.
- tracker1 8mo agoI need to just break down and find an old version of that... from before the Jasc sellout. IIRC, it ran via Wine without issue too. I try to use Pinta/Paint.Net, but it's not quite as good as I remember psp being. I don't even hate the newer MS Paint... thought I'm only on windows for my work environment and even then. Aside: I've been using my personal computer more, so I can work on a limited surface with docker and ai agent, then just bring in the components I'm working on when ready. My work environment is really locked down, no wsl, no docker... and it's like working in 2002 to some extent... It's literally easier for me to create stand-alone projects, work on a given feature in complete isolation... AI agent mostly to boilerplate the environment and most of the automated sanity tests, then I can focus on just what I'm working on.
- leduyquang753 8mo ago> (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??) It's because the program just calls a Windows API to display the version dialog of Windows itself.
- josh3736 8mo agoSpecifically, ShellAbout: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shellapi/nf-shellapi-shellabouta https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shellapi...
- seritools 8mo agoyou can also just uninstall the "new" notepad, at which point Windows will let you run the old one again (which is still shipped!). By using a version that is _that_ old you do lose out on some of the actually useful updates legacy nodepad received, such as LF line ending support.
- ptx 8mo agoWhat? Did they accidentally revert the improvements they already made to previously shipped versions of the old notepad program?
- TonyTrapp 8mo agoWin9x Notepad in particular can only load files up to 64KB in size (edit: and supports only ANSI encoding, no Unicode). There were some actually useful additions to it up until Windows 10 or so - for example being able to handle LF (in addition to CRLF) line endings. But yeah, everything added in Windows 11 is just pure bloat.
- pjmlp 8mo agoThe reason being it is a plain text edit component, with a window around it, hence the limitation.
- zabzonk 8mo agoYep. Back when I used to teach Windows programming in C commercially, the course exercise was to replicate notepad. It was surprising how many of its features you could implement in a week-long course, especially as many of our clients were no great shakes at C.
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoI think it is more surprising how many deeper features were hidden in Notepad (I did a complete re-implementation using MFC for Windows CE). Did you implement .LOG and Unicode support with BOM handling?
- zabzonk 8mo agoThis was on Windows 3.1. I don't think the version of notepad there had any Unicode support - certainly the one in our training course didn't; I didn't feel up to teaching C, the Windows API _and_ Unicode. It was just a slightly realistic exercise where our clients could implement as much or as little as they felt happy with, making use of standard windows controls as much as possible.
- SomeUserName432 8mo agoI find notepad useful for sanitising clipboard content. No bold text, italics, bullet points, invisible html.. Just get the text and can copy it to paste again somewhere else. Ala Cmd+Shift+V on Mac
- duskdozer 8mo agoHow do you edit notes using Microsoft Copilot 365 for Notepad Copilot using that version?
- sheiyei 8mo agoHow do you write without being able to read with that version?
- IshKebab 8mo agoSupport for Unix line endings at the very least.
- throwaway198846 8mo agoI feel vindicated by reverting to the old windows 10 notepad.exe
- szatkus 8mo ago> What more does notepad need? Most of the features that were added in later versions: unicode, tabs, auto-reload, support for large files. CTRL+S is also nice.
- gchamonlive 8mo ago> What more does notepad need? AI! It needs AI. Did I guess it right?
- b3lvedere 8mo agoAffermative. You have unlocked the following achievement: "Get a head start of 45 minutes when we start destroying humanity".
- gchamonlive 8mo agoSince there'll be nowhere to run, could I be one the first? Don't wanna have to deal with the hassle of having to watch my loved ones being chased down.
- b3lvedere 8mo agoAgreed. Your achievement has been revoked effective immediately.
- e12e 8mo agoApparently windows 11 still ships with classic notepad? https://github.com/christian-korneck/classic-windows-notepad https://github.com/christian-korneck/classic-windows-notepad
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Baerbeisser 8mo agoIf you go that far, metapad (from 98) is still better than notepad ever was. Also loads 100k lines files quickly.
- anthk 8mo agoGet notepad.exe from reactos' nightly ISO, it's in reactos.cab Extract both the ISO and reactos.cab wth 7zip.
- layer8 8mo agoWindows 11 still includes the old notepad.exe in its Windows directory [0]. Windows just “helpfully” redirects it to the new app if you try to run it. You have to turn that off in Settings under “App execution aliases”. Then you get the old Notepad. [0] In the unlikely case that it isn’t there, you can add it through System > Optional Features > Add an optional feature.
- layer8 8mo agoAlso, delete the key NoOpenWith under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Applications\notepad.exe to enable file associations.
- jameshart 8mo agoNotepad always used to be essentially the standard MFC multiline text editor control in a window. Wordpad was the same but a rich text editor control. There’s very little need for it to have ever become more.
- miffy900 8mo ago> though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason?? For many built in windows apps, the 'about this program' menu item just invokes a separate program, 'winver'. If you go Start -> Run and type in winver, it does the same thing.