[HN Gopher] Exploring Windows XP on macOS ARM64
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       Exploring Windows XP on macOS ARM64
        
       Author : milen
       Score  : 55 points
       Date   : 2023-08-23 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (milen.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (milen.me)
        
       | asadm wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | irusensei wrote:
       | > If you're feeling similarly nostalgic, definitely check out
       | SerenityOS
       | 
       | Then from SerenityOS FAQ:
       | 
       | > Where are the ISO images?
       | 
       | > There are no ISO images. This project does not cater to non-
       | technical users.
       | 
       | Not that its impossible but from their project info it requires a
       | bit of effort to read the docs and compile the project assuming
       | everything goes alright without hitches.
       | 
       | Having said that I would gladly watch some SerenityOS based
       | content. Maybe NCommander wrecking his brains while trying to
       | build and port something to this OS? Would be cool.
        
         | aslilac wrote:
         | You do have to build it from source, but the documentation for
         | how to do so is luckily quite good, and there's a dedicated
         | channel in the Discord server for helping people with build
         | issues if you run into any problems.
         | 
         | You're obviously not obligated, but I'd encourage you to try
         | building it if you're interested!
        
         | accrual wrote:
         | For what it's worth, Andreas does post a lot of SerenityOS
         | development content on his YouTube channel:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling
        
           | leonheld wrote:
           | I feel like it's pretty great that people /don't/ know about
           | Andreas' YouTube channel nowadays. Shows how much the project
           | grew.
        
       | mschuster91 wrote:
       | > I couldn't get directory sharing to work using SPICE tools, so
       | instead I ended up creating an .iso with Firefox and all
       | additional software I needed.
       | 
       | Yeah, I've run into the same issue with Win7 x64 recently. _None_
       | of the QEMU guest utility drivers is running on Windows at the
       | moment - I have no idea why.
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | The nostalgia from those images was more than I expected. XP was
       | "Windows" for me by and large. I used Windows 7 (skipped Vista
       | after trying early versions) a little bit but most of my Windows
       | knowledge came from messing around with XP. I reinstalled XP more
       | times than I can count both for myself and for friends/family and
       | I'll always look fondly back on it.
        
         | antegamisou wrote:
         | Similar experience here. Nostalgia from XP days is so strong I
         | forget the monstrosity the OS became from every release from
         | 8.1 onwards.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | The Visual C++ screenshot [0] took me back. The clean and clear
         | UI, much simpler times.
         | 
         | [0] https://milen.me/images/writings/windows-xp-on-macos-
         | arm64/v...
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | Oh, man, BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP _eye twitch_
        
           | tomjen3 wrote:
           | What I love is that Winamp has not changed _one_ bit for the
           | version that is on my Windows laptop.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | By the way, I loved that movable "toolbar menu" design. It
           | seems to have been forgotten in the move to "modern" but
           | think it was the best one so far.
           | 
           | You could put it inline with other toolbars so it didn't
           | waste vertical space. The full menu was very discoverable,
           | like a table of contents for a featureful app. It could even
           | be hidden completely if wanted.
           | 
           | None of the newer designs--obliterate in favor of titlebar
           | buttons, or hamburger, are a such a great combo of power and
           | friendliness. The traditional permanent menu is not very
           | flexible.
        
             | jwells89 wrote:
             | Toolbar customization (ability to modify their contents)
             | was nice too. Firefox still has it (for now) and you still
             | find the occasional Mac app that has the old native
             | customizable toolbar intact but even those are becoming
             | uncommon.
             | 
             | The first place I saw both fixed toolbars and hamburger
             | menus in desktop apps I think was probably in Chrome, which
             | due to its popularity no doubt had a strong normalizing
             | effect on both.
        
               | xp84 wrote:
               | So true, that was once something you could count on from
               | any mature application that had much of any UI to speak
               | of. We took for granted that _because it was a computer,
               | of course almost everything can be customized._ That was
               | a lot of what was exciting about computers.
               | 
               | Today everything (web, mobile app, desktop) is converging
               | toward "One lazy UI, optimized for aesthetics, riddled
               | with junk drawers ( *** buttons) and static" -- except
               | not really static since the whole UI is ripped and
               | replaced every 18 months or so to capitalize on some
               | trend or because a new "UX designer" came to power.
        
         | helf wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | RedShift1 wrote:
         | So. Many. Colors. I miss color so much, today's interfaces are
         | downright depressing to look at :-(
        
           | FirmwareBurner wrote:
           | But now you have dark mode and fancy flat design languages
           | that enhance your "corporate image". /s
        
       | drewg123 wrote:
       | How slow is this? I needed x86 windows for something just after I
       | got my M1 MBP in 2021. So I installed a copy of windows 10. I
       | don't recall which hypervisor I used, but it was super slow.
        
         | nebula8804 wrote:
         | Have you tried running your app on ARM Windows 10/11 and using
         | their translation layer? It runs so damn fast, the M1 Mac is
         | ironically the snappiest Windows machine I've ever used ha ha.
         | Its faster than this 2019 Core i9 Macbook Pro I got sitting
         | here running the same Windows app.
        
           | nick_ wrote:
           | Same here. Blown away how was Windows 11 for ARM is in a VM
           | on on M1 Mac.
        
         | wtallis wrote:
         | > I don't recall which hypervisor I used, but it was super
         | slow.
         | 
         | You didn't. You used an emulator rather than a hypervisor,
         | which is _why_ it was slow.
         | 
         | For most use cases, running x86 Windows applications is much
         | better either under ARM Windows 11 in a VM, or with a Wine-
         | based solution. But if you really need an x86 Windows kernel
         | running, it's going to be slow.
        
           | sidewndr46 wrote:
           | I thought the M1 could run x86 code via some sort of layer
           | they added?
        
             | LeoPanthera wrote:
             | It can run Intel Mac applications via translation, but this
             | doesn't extend to virtual machines. Your VM host (more
             | accurately, your emulation host) must perform the x86
             | emulation itself. UTM for example uses qemu for this.
        
         | top_sigrid wrote:
         | I recently had to use an x86 version of Linux on my M1Pro MBP,
         | hence using QEMU emulation instead of virtualization. The
         | system was barely usable, although I only had basic headless
         | server/SSH requirements. Researching a little showed that this
         | is basically what can be expected running x86 emulation and the
         | systems will just be wonky and slow, although it was running
         | flawlessly, just slow.
         | 
         | There seem to be ways to use Rosetta2 inside a VM [0] to then
         | translate binaries but I found no official support or
         | documentation (using UTM+QEMU that was), this would be such a
         | cool feature, at least there are discussions about it [1,2]
         | 
         | - [0] https://mybyways.com/blog/using-rosetta-in-a-utm-linux-
         | vm-wi...
         | 
         | - [1] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/4939
         | 
         | - [2] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/5460
        
       | rafaelturk wrote:
       | Tempting.. Windows XP, best OS ever created, in MacOS keyboard
       | combined with M2 legendary battery life....
        
         | eru wrote:
         | Do you just like Windows XP's UI, or do you really like the OS?
        
           | accrual wrote:
           | Not GP, but I think NT as a whole is great OS. It likely has
           | the largest and oldest software repository out there,
           | excluding phone app shovelware.
           | 
           | I think I'm not as fond of XP's UI as I am fond of the early
           | NT UI as a whole. The UI was relatively the stable from 95 to
           | Windows 7 with the classic theme. I adore this UI and I'm
           | glad to see it still carries on in modern projects like
           | SerenityOS.
           | 
           | But at the same time, we have high DPI displays now and the
           | classic UI doesn't scale well, so I'm happier to have a flat
           | high res UI than a tiny classic UI these days.
        
             | Schnitz wrote:
             | Windows 2000 was peak Windows, I agree 100%.
        
         | alberth wrote:
         | SP2 to be precise, was the best.
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | > with M2 legendary battery life....
         | 
         | Is this true when running non-MacOS? A lot of the things that
         | make a system blow through battery are OS-related things. XP
         | wasn't exactly designed with battery life in mind.
        
           | akx wrote:
           | Heh, I once wrote a script that disabled pretty much every
           | darn service I could get away with on XP, and ended up with
           | an estimated 7 hours (or so, it's been a while) of offline
           | battery life on an Eee PC 901...
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-23 23:00 UTC)