[HN Gopher] Windows XP Professional
___________________________________________________________________
Windows XP Professional
Author : pentagrama
Score : 265 points
Date : 2025-08-07 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (win32.run)
(TXT) w3m dump (win32.run)
| kardianos wrote:
| Yes please. Can I please have a simple desktop that doesn't get
| in my way back?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Linux
| andrepd wrote:
| linuxmint.org :)
| saubeidl wrote:
| Get an Arch-based distro with KDE.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You mean xfce? KDE is bloated. Yes it's still bloated even if
| Valgrind says it has no memory leaks.
| saubeidl wrote:
| xfce is nice, too, but aren't they still on gtk3?
| kardianos wrote:
| I also run Linux using XFCE.
|
| But some of my Clients use windows and were just "forced"
| to upgrade their hardware and use Windows 11.
| reorder9695 wrote:
| KDE is bloated, but coming from Windows10 it feels very
| familiar but with all of Windows' extra shite
| (ads/tracking/sign in/fucking onedrive) chopped out. I
| couldn't be happier with it to be honest.
|
| [edit]: I forgot to mention as well, at least on arch you
| dont have to install the (I forget the package name
| exactly) kde applications package off pacman, if you don't
| install it you'll need to install dolphin and a few other
| things but it really cuts down the bloat.
| jasperry wrote:
| Yes, this. I'm a long time XFCE user but when I got a
| beefier machine I switched to KDE, and unlike XFCE it
| manages the hardware thoroughly enough
| (sleep/brightness/network/audio) that I don't have to
| manually hack anything. I tolerate the bloat for that
| reason. I disabled all the kwallet and pim stuff though,
| that was a mess.
| dartharva wrote:
| You mean Cinnamon? XFCE is ugly as hell and breaks a lot of
| things.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Does it matter when my current uptime is 51 days?
| int_19h wrote:
| It's bloated if you judge it by the standards of the WinXP
| era. And I'm not saying that's unfair, but realistically
| speaking, it's not an issue for any modern PC.
| ikari_pl wrote:
| or just KDE?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I prefer Budgie myself.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| I switched from Windows 10 to Fedora KDE 2 years ago and it's
| been good. Not great, but good. I do have the occasional
| problem with drivers and whatnot, but honestly Windows was just
| as bad, just with different stuff, and Windows was much less
| stable and much slower
| askonomm wrote:
| I also switched to KDE, and man, not needing an online
| account to use a operating system, not having any ads or
| constant spyware sending every click and keystroke to some ad
| partner is absolutely amazing. Sad that to get a decent user
| experience feels amazing, even though it's not really
| anything special, really goes to show how bad things have
| gotten.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| There is still Mate, the Gnome 2 fork.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm mostly a gnome 3 guy now, but mate is way underrated
| IMHO. I usually use it in VMs and the performance and
| usability is incredible. For those of us who grew up on this
| paradigm, it's a joy
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| There is still Trinity, the KDE 3 fork.
|
| https://www.trinitydesktop.org
| int_19h wrote:
| And Cinnamon, which is modern Gnome beaten into some sensible
| shape.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Insane how performant this is in the browser.
| elbac wrote:
| lol, I can't tell if you are serious or not, but it's a
| recreation in HTML/CSS.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I just assumed it was wasm
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Dragging 'Word' is rough on my setup... while 'Notepad' is
| fine, lol. More styling is expensive.
| tux3 wrote:
| This is a nice replication of the WinXP UI in JS (it is not a
| virtual machine running in your browser).
|
| https://docs.win32.run/
|
| https://github.com/ducbao414/win32.run
| rasengan wrote:
| It is slightly more than just a UI since all of the
| applications actually work (you can save and reload for example
| and still see your previous files too).
|
| It seems functional to me!
|
| Kudos to the author!
| jdougan wrote:
| but not command.com
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I was hoping this was emulation, like the windows 95 in js that
| exists, but its more of a simulator. The web browser doesnt work
| and the minesweeper game uses a text emoji instead of a picture
| for the face
| jasperry wrote:
| I also hoped it was actual emulation. I could tell it wasn't
| when I saw the bootup progress bar moving more smoothly than it
| ever did in real Windows :)
| personalityson wrote:
| I was able to create a vbs script (MsgBox "Test"), but it keeps
| opening in Notepad...
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Yeah I was gonna navigate to the website and try to recurse :(
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| I was able to get the "browser" to work by opening the Flash
| Player and clicking the link to the Ruffle website. It's just
| an embedded view so some sites don't work (I think dependent on
| your browser settings.)
| sunaookami wrote:
| Vast majority of sites disallow embedding nowadays.
| twalichiewicz wrote:
| Turns out you can just click and drag to select everything in
| Minesweeper, and it reveals all the hidden numbers. There's
| even a sneaky little "debug" text in the bottom-left corner
| that shows where all the bombs are.
| DustinBrett wrote:
| Seems like v86 will be the king of this for a while longer.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Cool example, however yet another "runs best on IE" sites, ah
| sorry it is Chrome nowadays.
| simondotau wrote:
| It must be using ActiveX, ah sorry I mean some feature that
| Google has unilaterally decided is part of the official web
| standard, soon to be known as the Chrome Platform standard.
| mohamez wrote:
| The bootup sound brought a flood of old memories.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Both the OS and Word 2003 run smoothly. It's quite a show. I
| think I might want to keep an old 16GB RAM laptop to run Windows
| 7, MS Office 2010 and VS 2012. I'll cut off as much Internet as
| possible and concentrate on my projects.
|
| _Edit_ : Just realized that this is not a VM, just a replicate.
| No wonder Word 2003 looks weird.
| accrual wrote:
| It is still nice to use old versions of Office. I think 2003
| was my favorite. Simple, usable, no usage-based UI, no pop-ups
| like "look at this new feature we silently installed!" while
| you're trying to write.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Yeah 2003 is probably good enough for me too. I only need it
| to write my CV.
| gia_ferrari wrote:
| On a whim a few years ago I wrote an engineering proposal on
| my Pentium MMX using Word 2003. It opened within 2 seconds
| via the aging hard disk. Today even LibreOffice feels a bit
| overwrought. I've found AbiWord delightful recently - it's
| the WordPad analog of LibreOffice.
| gmaster1440 wrote:
| No Pinball :(
| zamadatix wrote:
| Fear not! https://98.js.org/programs/pinball/space-cadet.html
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Also on web, Android and iOS:
| https://ksylvestre.itch.io/space-cadet-pinball
| kmarc wrote:
| Oh my, thanks for this. Quickly made 1.5M
|
| Used to spend lot of time when I was a kid (I didn't even see
| a real pinball machine before)
| accrual wrote:
| _Pinball music plays in head..._
| mmastrac wrote:
| How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-
| implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the
| Send To menu after letting it pop up. If the send-to menu closes
| as you mouse over the item into the submenu, it's a clone. If the
| menu stays up even if you brush over another menu item, it's
| either real or a Good Clone. :)
|
| For the fun history, @DonHopkins had a thread a few years back:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404345
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Google has not learned this lesson
| maplant wrote:
| I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three
| blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.
| jkingsman wrote:
| Yup, and on just about every system I used there was a
| stutter in it about 75% of the way through.
| wibbily wrote:
| Man nothing drives me further up the wall than when a nice
| progress indicator with discrete segments gets animated with
| a lazy `to { rotate(360deg); }` etc[1]. It is my molehill to
| die on
|
| [1] https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/origina
| l-8...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| you just don't like how it looks, or is there something
| else wrong with it?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It's just moving, it gives no actual indication of
| progress.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| this reminds me of a tool at work that uses a progress
| bar but the software doesn't calculate the job size so it
| just fills up quickly and then goes back down again, and
| repeats endlessly.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't have the time to research where I heard this, but
| I recall a UI focus group study that found pretty much
| equal user satisfaction between accurate linear progress
| bars and random progress bars, but universal
| dissatisfaction with progress bars that "reset". My own
| feelings mirror this finding.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I called those Congress bars, con being the antonym of
| pro.
| saltcured wrote:
| Back in the dark ages, "idiot dots" or "idiot marks" was
| a phrase I heard for the various text terminal
| equivalents.
|
| It would cycle through a small number of text values with
| some kind of backspace/overwrite to keep things localized
| to where the cursor ought to be.
|
| One version was a variable length ellipses: . .. ... that
| would grow and reset in place.
|
| Another was an expanding "dot": . o O that would cycle in
| place as one character.
|
| And the early "spinner" was: - \ | / that would cycle in
| place as one character. Hmm, not sure this will render
| properly on HN but it is hyphen, backslash, pipe, forward
| slash.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| You know talking about progress bars, it takes a lot of
| confidence to program a linear progress bar. You think you
| know when loading will be complete and think you know can
| break down the incremental progress made during loading.
|
| Instead we get these spinning wheels that are like "maybe
| in the future this wheel will stop and we will have a
| return value." No confidence whatsoever.
|
| I know this is true because Apple tries to implement
| progress bars in IOS like real chads. But their progress
| bars are just fake. They are a cheap animation all the way
| up to 90% and just stop moving until the progress is
| actually complete which could be 5 seconds of 90% and 40
| seconds of the last 10%. So they think they are chad but
| lie.
| rzzzt wrote:
| There's also the "Achilles and the tortoise" solution
| where the progress bar consumes the remaining 80% of
| unclaimed space in each iteration.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I would imagine that progress bars generally represent
| the progression of the task state and not time, for that
| very reason. Or is that not the case in practice?
| int_19h wrote:
| It is, but traditionally progress bars were often paired
| with labels showing estimated remaining time.
|
| That said, back in DOS era, this kind of thing was much
| more straightforward because most operations that would
| warrant a progress bar involved some kind of disk I/O,
| which - if you amortize it - is fairly linear, so one can
| estimate the completion time relatively well. In more
| complicated cases - e.g. Win95 installer doing things
| like hardware detection - those estimates were often
| wildly off.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I think the most common operations a user will see is
| stuff like CRUD, which means you're waiting on a remote
| database and a network round trip
|
| Hard drives and networks are both so fast that you rarely
| are waiting for data to stream, you're just waiting for
| the stream to begin
| nickt wrote:
| Old, but good mandatory xkcd
|
| https://xkcd.com/612/
| DustinBrett wrote:
| On my website daedalOS it does indeed have a delay when your
| mouse leaves a sub menu. I didn't know people looked for that
| though.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I believe that anyone who isn't explicitly looking for it is
| subconsciously frustrated by the lack of it and they just
| don't know why the UI is "annoying".
| stronglikedan wrote:
| If you have another option with a submenu on either side of
| Send To, the Send To menu will close. It closes as soon as you
| move over any item with a submenu. But it just so happens that
| Send To is typically by itself, so it's a good test regardless.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| I must be a freak then because one of the first tweaks I do to
| any Windows install since possibly Win98 days is to set menu
| delay to 0ms. I like the snappy precise feel and have no
| problems not taking shortcuts across menu items.
| rayiner wrote:
| Crazy how much UI still fails this test.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried,
| which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird
| and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it
| either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't
| even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down
| menus a certain way?
|
| Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh
| System OS, and how you have to hold the mouse button down to
| keep menus open. It doesn't take much to throw everything off.
| randunel wrote:
| Ugh, all the links in that comment are dead, imgur and
| microsoft alike :(
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| A classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem,
| not mentioned in the linked thread:
|
| https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
| rao-v wrote:
| Lovely and simple ... you'd think it would have become the
| best practice in most libraries by now
| webstrand wrote:
| It also fails the "hold right click" test, Windows didn't
| popover context menus until right click was released. Instead,
| for file, it did a kind of "contextual drag and drop".
| self_awareness wrote:
| Padding of buttons and around text usually immediately tells
| that it's a reimplementation.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I love reading about old UI interface guidelines, and how much
| research was done to make it useful to the user.
|
| Now it's all about how to make it useful to the company.
|
| <YOUR FILES ARE NOT BACKED UP, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN ON
| ONEDRIVE?>
|
| <Yes> <Maybe later>
|
| Anyway, the links in that post have deteriorated.
|
| Here's the link to Raymond Chen's blog:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msd...
| (shame on MS for redirecting you to another page when showing
| you a 404, which make it harder to find the original URL).
|
| Updated link to Raymond Chen's blog, where the comments have
| been 'retired':
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21...
|
| And the 2 imgur links (same issue with the redirecting...):
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.c...
|
| and
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.c...
| jackero wrote:
| There was an economies of scale back then with OS-level UI
| components.
|
| If Microsoft spent money on UX research that improved its UI
| controls, it would benefit a lot of people. Essentially the
| cost of that research was bore by all application developers.
|
| The problem now? Every company is designing their own UI
| components. Every company has to bear the cost of UX research
| individually. It's a lot of wheel re-inventing. UX easily
| takes a backseat.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| As a side note: With the Internet (and myself) getting older
| and older, I appreciate the effort of the Internet Archive
| more and more. So many links I was able to revive thanks to a
| cached version. So many of my own works I was able to
| retrieve. It's a blessing, and not praised enough.
|
| (Only ignorant fools would start to fight it.)
| SkidanovAlex wrote:
| MS Paint though is "either real or a Good Clone :)", because
| you can zoom to 12x by clicking one-pixel-wide line below 8x.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| You can also right-click the desktop and choose 'Properties'.
| If the resulting window has a tab called 'Screesaver', it's a
| clone.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Or you can look at the start button. If it has an uppercase
| S, and the rest of the system is in English, it's a clone.
| Catbert59 wrote:
| Will call our IT support tomorrow and start this as a full
| screen.
|
| That will be fun in the office :-)
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| That's actually not a bad April Fool's prank.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| These are fun too - https://fakeupdate.net/
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| Have an automatic defibrillator ready just in case
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Design peaked here for OS's. Perfect balance of colors and
| functionality, and gloss. This was the top.
| ianhawes wrote:
| No, it's just nostalgic.
| Fergusonb wrote:
| I don't know, it's nice to have icons and buttons that
| actually look like what they're going to do instead of
| amorphous blobs.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I often have a hard time telling if I'm being nostalgic. For
| me, 7 was peak Windows, but Win2K/XP would rank pretty close
| as well. I suppose the question for me is what have
| subsequent releases given us; what can we actually do with
| more recent versions of Windows that we could not accomplish
| back then?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| XP or 7 in "classic", aka 2000 look. For practical reasons,
| like hardware-support, really working USB.
|
| If running in some isolated VM for some superspecial APP
| still supporting running on 2000, why not? Uses much less
| memory.
| int_19h wrote:
| I was one of those people who stuck to classic theme all
| the way up to Win7, but that was the version that finally
| made me switch because the fancy default theme in it
| actually looked pretty well after they made the glass
| effects of Vista more subtle. WinXP looked like some kind
| of cheap plastic horror in comparison.
|
| It's very funny to look at Apple progressing from "looks
| like Vista" to "looks like Win7" in its iOS 26 betas.
| brandon272 wrote:
| People love to dogmatically claim that any appreciation for
| past design can only be chalked up to nostalgia but the XP
| design is objectively an excellent balance between UI 'gloss'
| and very simple and clear, unambiguous functionality.
|
| People rarely complained that finding an application under
| the Start menu was difficult. In current versions of Windows,
| the Start menu is such a disaster, such a mess, that people
| don't even open it and rely much more on the search function.
| frozenseven wrote:
| Playing Age of War right now.
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| Real thing is possible on https://copy.sh/v86/ I think but need
| an XP disk image[1], not readily available at the moment
| (probably for copyright reasons?).
|
| [1]: https://github.com/copy/v86/issues/86
| yakz wrote:
| Windows 2000 in a JS VM is available:
| https://bellard.org/jslinux/
| zamadatix wrote:
| Windows 2000 is also available in the above (with more pre-
| installed apps).
| int_19h wrote:
| Better yet ditch the browser and get a proper emulator,
| preferably one that emulates all the period-accurate hardware
| such as https://86box.net.
| benbristow wrote:
| So close that Microsoft Edge's heuristics picked it up as a
| potential scam after being used for a bit!
| accrual wrote:
| Wow, did you get some kind of notification in Edge? Maybe
| they're trying to detect certain remote desktop sessions used
| in scams or something.
| benbristow wrote:
| Yes. It's the new AI powered Scareware blocker.
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/01/27/stand-up-
| to-s...
| netsharc wrote:
| I've been on a Teams call with a dev colleague, who just
| randomly clicked stuff and got web popups that were spoofing
| the Windows 11 UI...
| devnull3 wrote:
| Win XP remains my favourite OS till date. I was in college and
| getting hands on a pirated copy back then makes me so nostalgic.
|
| There was a cambrian explosion of tools to customize the look and
| feel. TweakXP pro is the one I remember. All pirated off-course.
| dijit wrote:
| I remember being extremely envious of the "Alienware theme"
| that you could only get with an actual Alienware machine.
|
| That was surprisingly short-lived though, such custom
| experiences are uncommon these days. Seems like nobody is
| theming Windows- they just fill it with crapware.
| accrual wrote:
| I remember those themes - the sleek "glowing" blue accents on
| shiny silver and black UI elements looked so fancy back then.
| There was a Windows Media Player skin too if I recall
| correctly.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I preferred the Media Center Edition theme myself... kept a
| copy of it for a long time to drop into XP and other windows
| flavors.
| zveyaeyv3sfye wrote:
| > Seems like nobody is theming Windows
|
| We found more fun in ricing our linux desktops :)
| https://reddit.com/r/unixporn
| frantathefranta wrote:
| Specifically to look like Windows XP: https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/unixporn/comments/pdd4o6/xfce_windo...
| rayiner wrote:
| How was it better than Win2K?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Lots of relatively small UI improvements that all added up. I
| honestly never noticed them until years later when I had to
| use a slightly older machine and had an "oh wow" moment.
| devnull3 wrote:
| For me the look and feel of Win XP was breath of fresh air
| compared to Windows 98. WinXP was more user friendly and I
| was not a power user back then.
| carstenhag wrote:
| It had Pinball, Solitaire and other games we never really
| understood.
| whobre wrote:
| Multiple users on a same machine out of the box and way
| faster boot time.
|
| Didn't care for the UI, though - looked childish...
| int_19h wrote:
| Win2K did multiple users more or less the same, the only
| difference I remember from XP is the login screen that
| would list all accounts so you didn't have to type the
| username.
|
| As for UI, it was very easy to switch to classic mode.
| whobre wrote:
| > Win2K did multiple users more or less the same
|
| No, it didn't. You had to use some 3rd party software for
| that.
| int_19h wrote:
| Better hardware support.
|
| Taskbar grouping.
|
| ClearType.
|
| Remote Desktop.
|
| More games ran on it (mostly thanks to higher DirectX
| version).
|
| From developer perspective, XP was the first version of
| Windows with registration-free COM and side-by-side
| assemblies, which (if used properly by app devs) fully solved
| the "DLL hell" problem.
| floxy wrote:
| OS/2 is the nostalgic one for me.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Using this made me feel happy. I don't get that feeling from
| modern Windows.
| alex1138 wrote:
| The 1990s were very Information Superhighway (I get that's said
| in a mocking tone now for people who didn't actually know what
| the internet was, but I tend to use it unironically)
|
| It's just a shame about the antitrust stuff and the bugs and
| glitches that came with MS Windows
| ch_123 wrote:
| I feel slightly ashamed that I spent enough time using Windows XP
| that was able to spot that this was a clone based on the fonts
| and shadow effects alone.
|
| Nice effort though.
| accrual wrote:
| It could be a badge of honor! You used the system so much that
| clones can't fool you. To be fair, Windows text rendering does
| have a very specific look that's difficult to perfectly
| replicate without using the actual Windows APIs.
|
| I'm sure some here could look at a screenshot of the same text
| rendered on Windows, macOS, and Linux and tell them apart.
| jmkni wrote:
| So disappointed it doesn't include OG solitaire!
| easton wrote:
| If you want the real thing:
| https://lrusso.github.io/VirtualXP/VirtualXP.htm
|
| (takes less memory than Miro, at least in Firefox :D)
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Works great! Tested on Orion. Sad to see I couldn't delete
| system32.
| autoexec wrote:
| no spider.exe tho
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Crashes the tab on iOS.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Runs just fine on Firefox for Android. Display is stretched
| to a weird resolution in portrait mode, though.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Back when the Start Menu made sense. It wasn't rose colored
| glasses, it was functional.
| accrual wrote:
| Yep. No web search. No ads or news or weather or links to apps
| that aren't actually installed. Opens virtually instantly. Lots
| of stock customization options (icon size, icon order, pinned
| icons, classic vs XP style, all shortcuts toggleable).
|
| The only thing I miss is the search bar - I became quite used
| to that with Windows 7.
| sunaookami wrote:
| The Windows XP start menu sucked, no search function and it was
| common to have 3 columns full of shortcuts with folders inside
| folders. It only got better with Windows Vista.
| imafish wrote:
| You cannot drag & drop the Recycle Bin :(
| notpushkin wrote:
| See also: https://www.windows93.net/
| accrual wrote:
| I am viewing this post on a real Windows XP system on a 440BX
| platform from 1998. ;)
|
| The BIOS splash text loads and animates but not much else. I'm
| using Palemoon 25 (SSE1). Impressive that it loads at all!
| freedomben wrote:
| Sadly, accrual's system was just compromised so they're offline
| for now
| thecosmicfrog wrote:
| "WIN32.RUN might have unexpected behaviors on browsers that are
| NOT Chromium-based (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.)"
|
| What would be the reasons this wouldn't run on Firefox? Genuine
| question from a non-web developer.
| tetris11 wrote:
| it's not an emulator -- it's a (very realistic) re-
| implementation of the desktop using standard JS and CSS. Flash
| is run through Ruffle. Edge opens pages using native iframes.
|
| Essentially the browser split comes from the usual browser
| split: discrepancies in JS and CSS implementations
| pjc50 wrote:
| This means the developer hasn't tested it on Firefox. Platform
| compatibility is way better than it used to be but you still
| occasionally get differences in supported APIs or
| interpretation of the standard.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I ran it in icefox without an issue, even got a few games of
| minesweeper in.
|
| The only issue I had was the mobi reader wouldn't work, but
| that was fine with me.
| okincilleb wrote:
| This is awesome! I recreated Win XP for my personal website a few
| years ago (https://www.sohailsayed.com/), but this completely
| blows it out the water on functionality.
|
| I absolutely love just how much depth there is to the
| functionality in this (from being able to use apps like word, or
| being able to drag and move around icons on desktop).
|
| Brilliant!
| hard_times wrote:
| We get these cheap recreations semi-regularly on here. Why does
| stuff like this keep being spammed on here, besides the nostalgia
| factor?
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| Maybe this is the "running Doom" of the UI/UX crowd.
| int_19h wrote:
| Of web UI in particular.
|
| And this game is very old. I remember trying to get native-
| looking dropdown menus in IE6.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| People have been making these for a while. I used to see them
| on Flash game sites all the time as a kid. It'd be "Windows 96"
| or "Windows XD" or whatever else they decided to call it. They
| all had a start menu, notepad, maybe a calculator, and maybe a
| Minesweeper clone, and not much else.
|
| Judging by the amount of Windows startup sound compilation
| videos out there, "the kids yearn for desktop UIs" might just
| be a little more common than you think.
| bityard wrote:
| Not an authentic experience, it boots way too fast.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| wow it's one of the most nostalgic feelings I've ever felt. Like
| coming back home after leaving for many years. And you still know
| your way around even though you already forgot you knew.
| godot wrote:
| Little fun tidbit: I happen to use the WinXP wallpaper on my
| Macbook (just for fun nostalgia, and because I like it), so when
| I open this up on my browser the background blends:
| https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/70a66a71-3f6a-485...
| twwwt wrote:
| Strangely enough, the first thing that some subconscious forces
| brought me to was to listen to Beethoven's 9th symphony (the file
| in media sub folder in the home folder).
|
| Very well done...
| jp1016 wrote:
| This brings back so many memories I still remember having a cd
| with the serial key written right on it. Even now, that key is
| stuck in my mind qqwd7-8gr47-x9rcp-jjwh7-qpgqq
| eimrine wrote:
| Check margin/padding in filename input line of "save file as"
| menu. Ms Word is totally not real Main menu font should be
| monotype if I remember correctly Minesweeper has other fonts and
| pictures Browser in browser can not work by some browser policy.
| BTW the shot of nostalgy is MASSIVE My favorite video player from
| that times was LightAlloy and Winamp 2.
| dmpayton wrote:
| I went through the "Install Windows" option just to hear the
| Windows XP installation music again. That track is such a vibe, I
| have loved it since I was a 14 year-old installing a pirated copy
| of XP in 2001.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Any support for Direct3D?
| apatheticonion wrote:
| God I miss Windows XP. I feel like, with a few small changes, the
| Windows XP GUI would be the most solid desktop experience you
| could possibly have.
|
| Throw in POSIX compliance/bash, first party Linux compatibility
| (not WSL), window snapping, dark mode, maybe a spotlight-like
| search and a few enhancements to the file manager and you'd have
| a pretty much perfect desktop/productivity OS.
|
| Why can't we have nice things?
| XorNot wrote:
| Feels like you just want Cinnamon with maybe 1 or two more
| polished features?
| apatheticonion wrote:
| I daily drive Linux and deeply appreciate the fact that
| pretty much everything (at least in the DE space) is
| developed for free by people donating their time - so don't
| take this the wrong way.
|
| ...but I've yet to experience the level of DE stability you
| get from Windows XP/7
|
| That also applies to Windows 11 (low bar, I know) and MacOS.
|
| It is getting much better and that's happening very quickly -
| but there is always some jank.
|
| For instance, dragging a Chrome tab off the current window to
| create a new window. The various file managers in Linux
| (dolphin, files, thunar) fall short (also MacOS Finder is an
| actual joke).
|
| Also matching glibc versions when distributing software is a
| bit tedious
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