Relive the sublime perfection of Windows 95 in your Linux desktop environment

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/24/relive-the-sublime-perfection.html

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Even better, you can try Windows93 in your browser: https://www.windows93.net/

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You make a grown man cry.

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I recall reading about xpde, but it seems the devs gave up on that years ago.
http://xpde.warbricktech.com/releases.php

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the sublime perfection of Windows 95

I was about to scoff but then I remembered there was a point in time when I tried to refuse Windows 98 on a new computer. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed.

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:musical_note:Memories :musical_note:

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I dunno. I always thought XP was the best.

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You’re probably joking, but I really haven’t moved far from the Win 95, or perhaps Win98 interface; each subsequent version allowed me to pretty much reproduce that look-and-feel, and now I use Classic Shell to hide the tiled Win10 interface.

It just works for me!

Incidentally, the mere fact that I’m still able to define my own interface is a major reason why I’m a PC, never a Mac.

ETA:

On reflection, you’re right; it’s Win98 I’ve largely stuck with.

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Sadly, it’s not good enough to let me run the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows or Microsoft Arcade or Microsoft Encarta 1994. (Well, they won’t run on Windows 10, so I have to keep some older hardware around.)

Win95 as perfection? I recall really liking Win98 over 95

Bah. It was all downhill after Win 3.11.

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Eh, this guy doesn’t even use non-anti-aliased MS screen fonts? Amateur.

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But does it crash to a blue screen of death at least once a day? Because that was definitely part of the “ineffable beauty” of win9x.

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How about installing updates with 30 floppy disks? (and having the last disk spit out an installation error and having to start back at disk 1)

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That would be too triggering for many, I think.

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Can’t Wine do that? It’s actually pretty good these days at running classic Windows software.

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But what does the BSOD look like? Perhaps we’ll never know…

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IMO, if I could only have Windows, then Windows 2000 was the One True Version (with 7 a very close second).

I won’t run Windows 10 on anything I own if I can help it. My main desktop these days is Xubuntu. I have a few Windows 7 setups (one desktop and a couple laptops, one dual-boot), and I’m not looking forward to when Win7 turns into a pumpkin in 2020.

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Win2K was the last version where you could look at the Task Manager and see at a glance if anything unnecessary or weird was running, where if something was using the network you could tell because the system tray icon would light up and it would never do that unless there was a specific reason for it.

Now everything in Windows is unnecessary and weird, and Windows Update uses your equipment as a P2P server without asking or even telling you about it.

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