[HN Gopher] A Windows 95-like shell for Windows 3.1x
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A Windows 95-like shell for Windows 3.1x
Author : notpushkin
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-07-13 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.calmira.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.calmira.net)
| HeckFeck wrote:
| This looks to be quite the achievement, with numerous custom UI
| controls written just for the project. The author describes them
| here http://www.calmira.net/source/index.htm and offers them for
| anyone else to use. They include labels, paths, loading bars,
| even a Win95 style Pie chart.
|
| There are also UI hooks and messaging components.
|
| All this written in Delphi and designed to run atop the humble
| Windows 3.1 kernel! Source code is available should anyone wish
| to hack away.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| If this could run on Windows 11, I'd install it in a heartbeat.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| There are win95-esque themes for win10 at the very least.
| There's probably some for win11 too (or maybe there's enough in
| common the skins could work for both?)
| mx7zysuj4xew wrote:
| How on god's green earth is a 30 year old operating system more
| customizable and user-friendly than any of the modern interfaces
| (that includes both windows 10 and gnome)
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I want to run it in Wine and use it as a daily driver. Apparently
| Wine does have support for Win16, but I doubt it works on modern
| systems for various reasons.
| sedatk wrote:
| I wrote a similar shell that ran on DOS in 1994. It was called
| Baston. It won the 1st place award in a programming contest
| organized by Microsoft and PC World Magazine in Turkey. I was 18
| back then. Here are a couple screenshots:
|
| https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/241217/159136746-e...
|
| https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/241217/159136763-e...
| hvs wrote:
| Nice. A Motif-style DOS shell. Looks good.
| sedatk wrote:
| Thanks! I didn't know it was called Motif, I'd only seen
| screenshots of workstations in UnixWorld magazine, and I'd
| loved the Motif style the most. There were also OpenLook and
| NextSTEP screenshots in the issues I had :)
| timbit42 wrote:
| WPS4WIN is the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell for Windows 3.1x. Much nicer
| than the Win95 shell, in my opinion. It looks like this:
| http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html
| borissk wrote:
| I remember running Netscape Navigator on W4WG 3.11. For some
| reason the 16 bit version was many times slower than the 32 bit
| one for Win NT.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Now if we only had a CP/M shell inside a Windows 95 shell running
| on Windows 3.1. Like an OS without PID to keep it from
| oscillating wildly.
| weikju wrote:
| I used it back in 1995 when my PC couldn't run Win95, and I had
| Win95-envy. It was really mind-blowing at the time to be able to
| change the UI of Windows like that.
|
| A little bit later I downloaded 20 or so Slackware floppies and
| the rest is history...
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > I had Win95-envy
|
| Ha, I know the pain, I remember being 10 and (literally)
| dreaming about 16mb or RAM so I could install it!
| toast0 wrote:
| I think minimum was 4mb, and it ran ok with 8mb, although
| expect swapping if you multitask. It certainly ran nicer with
| 16mb, but you didn't need it.
| function_seven wrote:
| I installed it on a 486 (DX2!!) with 4MB of RAM. It...
| worked, kinda. I reverted back to 3.1 a couple days later.
| The machine was just too slow.
|
| It would be another two years before I could afford
| something that could run 95. I think I went straight to 98
| IIRC.
| borissk wrote:
| Did you run Slackware from DOS or did you install it properly
| with a bootloader?
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(page generated 2022-07-13 23:00 UTC)