Was DOS based Windows any good?

antix has icewm which is basically an exact clone of windows 95

tiling window managers are better anyways

Windows 95/98/ME weren't just a GUI to DOS. They provided 32bit drivers for hardware.

What those Windows did well was have a usable GUI with very little system requirements. The GUI wasn't nearly as pretty, but it was far snappier than by modern standards.

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You're a moron, user. FWIW, I'm in my 40s and actually wrote DOS TSR software that would run while 3.11 was active.

I stayed away from that shit on my personal machines and stuck with OS-9 Level II until '95 when I finally built a 486 box and installed Slackware.

learn to read you fuckwit

you'll be hard pressed to convince anyone here that windows 10 flat GRID and its UX™ poz loads are in any way pretty.

Win95 GUI is the best gui ever made. The default grey would have been fine, but they even built in the option to change up the fonts and color schemes, which means that an artfag or anyone with a sense of aesthetics could customize it to make it look how they preferred. Try to make windows 10 look like less of a pajeet millenianigger shitfest, you fucking can't.

that's why you use linux, you can make it look like anything :)

If only all of the big projects didn't feel that they needed to look exactly like whatever cancer MS happens to be shilling in the current year.

and 3/4 of the window managers/themes/whatever look like some grade school bullshit. Linux customization is similar to how faggots 'customized' mom's 4-door, 4-speed automatic civic in the early 2000s. I still remember some distro I tried would by default pulse a colored glow under the cursor every time you clicked the mouse. Lots of different colors to choose from, no option to choose a cursor that wasn't HIV positive unless you downloaded it from the repo.

what are you talking about exactly?
people these days...

You should have seen the enlightenment era in the '90s where everyone's Linux desktop was pure absolute cancer. I was part of the cancer, I had that swirly color block screensaver running in the root window behind pseudo-transparent enlightment windows. I didn't have to worry about people watching my screen as they'd have immediately seized.

The word you're looking for is niggers, user. Most linux distributions are are preconfigured to look like jamal's Chrysler 300s with chrome rimz and stick on chrome-plated plastic nigger accoutrements.

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When you're comparing it to Windows 10, that's very fair. Windows 7 has a lot of flourishes and flairs that are very pretty, but still stupid window dressing. Windows 7 doesn't look like Windows 3.1 after taking acid, which is very generous for the shitty aesthetic that the Windows 10 team went for.

I just find it sad that Windows 95 running in a shitty emulator has better performance than the Windows 7 that the emulator runs in.

I'm so sorry that I don't have the time to write a Windows 95 themed window manager for X, that will be ignored when running KDE programs.

i want pics of that
please

...

pottery

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Windows 95 was fantastic and Microsoft really did their research when they made the GUI. So yes, 95 was great.

Windows 98's biggest issue was the retarded IE4 shell they forced on everyone, but they still improved key aspects of the OS such as pressing up would eventually bring you to the desktop, instead of a stupid error message in 95. Also Quick Launch was great addition here. Active Desktop was nice if you had things like weather maps or stock quotes on your desktop back in 1998.

2000 brought Windows to perfection. They added tons of shortcuts that have become second nature today, it was a really good merger of the NT and 9X line.

XP wasn't much different than 2000, it was just a friendly version of 2000, but also allowed you to change the Window Decorations to something less gray.

Recent versions of Windows have lost what made the GUI revolutionary at a time when GUIs were a new thing. Windows 7 often gets in the way. Windows 8 had the Metro disaster. And we all know how Windows 10 turned out.

Agreed. The 9x GUI was the best GUI ever made. Many other DEs (KDE, Gnome2/Mate) have borrowed concepts from it REEE all you want, it's true. Simply put, for desktop computing they made a well thought out GUI.

No, no OS without cube desktops was ever good. This is why GNU/Linux is still the best.

That doesn't really say anything tbh fam. Hard to get worse, even if you really tried.

Holy shit, kill yourself, loser.

underrated post
KDE, I'm looking at you.

You forgot to say how essential wobbly windows are faggot.

If you can't into cubes, you'll never master wobbly windows.

This.

>>>/reddit/
>>>/back/
>>>/auschwitz/
t. experienced software dev

can't argue with that

No, imageboards are for regular geeks, but it starts to get pathetic once you hit 25 or so.

I sadly lost all my old history in a simultaneous death of a RAID. I had pics of the billenium parties, too.

I don't understand why they would take that ability out. I tried changing ScrollBar color in registry editor and restarting, but nothing happens.

...

No, I mean, I just assumed you'd have a family and friends and shit. I come here for entertainment because I'm a student and have no money. I can only assume you come here for similar reasons.

I, too, am an old-oldfag. It starts off that way, but over the years you suddenly realize you have nothing in common with anyone in meatspace, so you just keep coming back here. This becomes extraordinarily clear at the point you stop watching television - every interaction becomes strange/trippy/foreign (bc the normalfag's whole personality is aping the latest TV program) and you realize you have nothing to ever say during conversation bc you don't watch sportsball or [insert most popular tv show here]. What do you say to someone when you're at the water cooler and they ask you "how's your team doing?" I know they're just trying to be nice; what do I say? how can I tell them they're a jewnigger lover and they should stop purchasing cableTV?

You realize your in a sad, sad state, but here's the kicker: you can't imagine going back. how could you with what you know now? can you re-learn banality?

No, no... I'm telling you this now: leave while you still can. Be blissfully ignorant. Love stupid shit. Your brain and hormones, not to mention society, will reward you. It's like Joseph Campbell said: The student of mythology learns great things, but at the price of never being able to be a part of anything. No particular religion/mythology will ever be "yours"; you'll never have an in-group. With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more vexation.

Save yourself. Believe in something. Don't leave the Matrix. "The Real" is a rotting corpse. Get out while you still can.

I posted . How do you still have the patience or motivation to effortpost? Maybe this isn't your experience but what you say about breaking from banality- I did too of course but I was never really immersed in it. I always chased it because i never felt like I was a part of it and wanted to (or rather thought that I should try to) fit in. My alienation has been a constant since early in my life. I've been down a few too many rabbit holes so I don't have the patience anymore. I can't fathom going into detail like you did anymore, hence the aggressive and succinct greentext. I applaud anons like you who take the time to effortpost to educate newfags, i wonder how many anons are like me and just lurk most of the time.

You failed to mention one other side effect though. This state of being permeates every layer. You either have a permanent scowl or a despondent look of sadness all day every day, and its easy for others to notice, and it doesn't do you any favors. It just cements you as an outsider.

If you ever did a myers-briggs test on most (legitimate/non-plebbit normalnigger) anons, you'd probably find most fall into the INTP/INTJ buckets. Those classifications are combined total of 4-5 percent of the total population, which is in line with my personal experience. 95% of the people I encounter might as well be a different species. You couple that with a lower IQ and it won't take long to reach this state. Imageboards just accelerate the process by making the juxtaposition vs the normie culture more jarring.

Unfortunately the basic needs are very real and most cannot ever be met given the above which all but seals our fate.

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After a quick Google search I've found some screenshots of hideous looking desktops. I'm not sure if this is what was referred to by

linuxfocus.org/English/July1998/article52.html
ironphoenix.org/fvwm/
step.polymtl.ca/~coyote/linux_desktops.html

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no. but there wer some good gaymes

that's about right and not even the most egregious example, it's fairly tame.

This is what I will always associate linux with and people talking about gay new pajeet codeshitter DEs with fucking retarded names muh wayland and all looking like a Win10 clone just further with a TOTES CY+3 COC GOYIM just cement my opinion that most linux distros are for tryhard faggots with no taste.

I don't usually. But, that's fairly recent. I was able to keep from being too alienated too early by going to grad school. Lots of nerds. Also, I was basically chad before the mental breakdown, so that was nice.

this is me, usually. I don't know what happened. I used to have lots of fun shitposting and debating, but now its just not the same. idk, its sad

I didn't want to be that faggot that started talking about an hero, so I stopped short. In fact, that little spout of energy was probably just me defusing the overwhelming urge to

I keep thinking there is some way out, but I don't think there is. I dream (quite literally) of a land where it's different, only to wake up to that feeling of overwhelming anxiety/depression in my stomach. I've been thinking a lot about getting into lucid dreaming. It's the only time I actually feel alive and have normal emotions (while asleep). The daytime is just trying to stay occupied so I don't obsess over how sick I feel. After the breakdown, my whole everything was ruined, so now I have to sit on autismbux.

The sad thing is, everyone says they wish they had autismbux bc they would do all this stuff every day and learn this and whatnot. I know I should probably go run every day and get in good shape and maybe learn programming (though it sounds like even if I wasn't autistic and actually had a resume, I'd never get a job in that anyway), but once you fall into this sad state, you lose all motivation. I was thinking about getting myself put in jail. At least there I wouldn't have to worry about anything and family would send me books to read, and they wouldn't let me around any sharp things, so I wouldn't an hero. The hospitals won't take me. :-(

i used to have such a good and promising life. it really sucks

Windows 95/98/Mistake Edition were arguably still "DOS based", even if the DOS was effectively hidden.

They basically layered a minimal multitasking kernel (VMM) and API layer on top of DOS in order to support Win32 applications. It was a stop-gap until consumer-level hardware reached a level where it could run the NT system well enough.

Agreed. Windows XP with the UI switched back to "classic" (Win 95) mode was peak Windows. It was all downhill from there.

I think windows and dos was based enough to put it on my car. Picture related

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DOS-kernel Windows was monolithic and monolithic kernels are shit

Windows 95 did use a DOS kernel but with some Win32-specific extensions, although you could still use Windows 95s kernel as a standalone DOS still if you wanted too. By Windows ME though the DOS kernel was a horrible mutated mess

...

As opposed to a GUI for NT?

Windows/DOS was a distinct platform on DOS, complete with it's own libraries, drivers, and technologies.
Porting it to NT (Windows/NT) was merely a matter of transposing a few syscalls and some infrastructural changes (com.sys for example).

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It wasn't arguably DOS based as it was not DOS based. You couldn't write something to run in DOS and have it stay running like in Windows 3.11 (Windows 3.11 called out to DOS like a kernel) as Windows 95 entirely replaced it. DOS inside of Windows 95 was calling into Windows 95.

No, that's wrong. Windows was installed as a DOS program, although DOS didn't do much after you launched Windows.

It did not. You couldn't load B&W TCP and access it from Windows 95 because DOS was no longer present at that layer. They used vm86 callbacks to run 16 bit drivers as unlike Windows 3.11 IRQs were being handled at the 32 bit level by Windows rather than sent to DOS first then passed to Windows.

You are wrong. DOS was used as nothing more than a bootstrap, and then a second copy after 95 had control of the CPU was used as something akin to a virtualized environment for some driver compatibility via vm86.

Windows hasn't been a DE for DOS since 3.11

Windows 95 to Windows ME used a modified DOS kernel that wasn't entirely interoperable with normal DOS and Windows NT is a "hybrid" kernel with very little abstraction between kernel space and userspace NT is really more like a microkernel with ntoskrnl.exe itself being the low-level kernel image with literally everything else in System32 being a kernel module but Windows doesn't have any of the customization of a true microkernel because of its closed nature

Of course 9x/me were DOS-based. They ran on top of DOS 7.x/8.0. In 95/98 you could just boot into DOS 7 without loading the Windows GUI at all

Windows 2000 was never mainstream, it was a business/server OS. There was no "Windows 2000 Home", only Professional and Server (the latter in a few versions).
I supposed you mean either "to be not DOS-based" or "to be NT-based".

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You wouldn't even need DOS for that, retard.
It loaded DOS first because it needed DOS.

You sound like a gamer.

The beginning of that book is painful to read.
No. The processor starts in real mode by convention. Intel did this so that CP/M still boots with an i9 processor. BIOSes can run in protected or even long mode, but have to hand off the processor in real mode to the bootloader as part of the convention. This was removed in UEFI, and a UEFI BIOS can hand the processor off in whatever mode the operating system wants it in.
Wat? In ring 0, a program can, more or less, do whatever the fuck it wants. The only reason that real mode still exists is so that the guys at Intel can masturbate about CP/M and DOS 1.0 still running on an i9, which neither actually do because both of those operating systems assume that addresses wrap at 1 MB and the fucking keyboard controller is the piece of hardware that actually allows those old OSes to not shit all over themselves when run on modern CPUs.

RMS pls go

So the book is just bad and its author has no idea what he's talking about?

tbh i remember loving win98 personally, but that was back in the days before i know anything about software, so i believe my perspective may have been skewed over time...

It was great for the time. Although its better than 2018 windows too.

3.11 was incredibly fucking stable for DOS system,
95,98,Me were way more crash prone because of stupid emulation layers

NT was horrible until atleast XP SP3

95 and 98 were unstable. crashed all the time. NT4 and 2000 were much more stable, until you needed to install some shitty driver, which would eventually fuck up and kill the whole system.

Early windows real strength was having a fairly usable and intuitive UI and working decently well on the latest and greatest hardware. Those two things made all the bullshit not matter so much, to the point that people have largely forgotten the problems. Of course, it's also important to remember that for apple, everything before maxOS X was a slow, buggy, crashing piece of shit. Holy tiddy fucking christ they were bad. My school had a computer lab with those early macs, and everyone hated those vile things, and eventually started sabotaging them just to make them go away. Linux of course was a completely unusable parts bin that you'd have to assemble and problem solve yourself, if you had the fucking time for it. It was also largely incompatible with any sort of work a normal person wanted to accomplish, so it was a complete non option. You better be grateful for how far the whole linux ecosystem has come.

So was windows good? No. But in comparison, there really is no question why people who just wanted some to browse that internet thing, play some games, and write some documents and spreadsheets flocked to it and remember it fondly.

TL:DR
It was all shit. Aesthetics and nostalgia goggles are fine, but you don't ever want to go back.

It looked decent, it was mostly usable, it was a huge improvement over previous versions. But many other systems at the time also had perfectly usable interfaces: Macintosh, Amiga, OS/2, Irix, Nextstep, BeOS, RiscOS... You can look at screenshots of any of them, and think: "That looks okay, doesn't seem to be too complicated, I could probably get the hang of it pretty quickly." In this regard, Windows was nothing special.

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But NT4 and 2k had problems with games and multimedia stuff support. XP was the first mainstream OS based on NT, but for the first few years it too had its compatibility, stability and security problems, so it was not until XP SP2 in 2004 that there was for a first time a mainstream OS which had both good games/multimedia support and was stable.

Remember that, in the original release of Windows 95, you had to reboot the system to change the resolution?

You had to reboot quite a lot even in Windows 98SE. Also, basically any configuration change to any networking component resulted in the necessity to reinstall the complete networking stack.

Most importantly those older operating systems were not botnet. It was only with XP when shady things started to go on in the background, with programs like XPAntiSpy appearing to de-botnet it.

They were swiss cheese though.

98 was pozzed and we only found out about it because they goofed, 95 was probably pozzed too.

Has anyone tried running FreeDOS+an X11 implementation for DOS like Deskview and then just having it as a daily driver?

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is there an amd64 build of dos somewhere?
because i might try it...

FreeDOS is designed around DOS compatibility so I do not think there are any 64-bit builds anywhere. I suppose they could add functions to run 16-bit applications from longmode but that's not the scope of the project

WRONG

NT4 was incompatible with most games (it did run quite a few, but was limited to directx6 i think, but Quake , Half-Life and Starcraft worked fine so I really didn't give a shit about much else) but windows 2000 played nice with almost all of them. It also introduced win95/98 compatibility mode for the few games that didn't play nice. This was one of my main worries when I installed it and in practice it didn't really matter (I had a Pentium 120 for any dos games I wanted to play).

Windows XP was a gay nigger UI on top of windows 2000 so normalfags could use it. They ruined the aesthetic but in addition to that tacked on a bunch of shit nobody needed or cared about and it slowed down the entire machine. SP2 / SP3 added a lot of shit to the OS but every added feature slowed down the OS further.

Didn't mind XP but Windows 2000 was the master race of microsoft products, and windows 95/NT were the master race of microsoft aesthetics.

Not him but cars are gay.

Actually, after looking into it, they finally gave up on the A20 line hack for Haswell. I used the i9 as an example of the latest POS that Intel has shat out.

If you want to do systems programming today, or 2009 for that matter, your best bet is writing a kernel driver (for Windows or Linux) or writing your own OS (like Terry). DOS can be used as a framework for what the bare minimums need to be, but so can TempleOS (which is a lot like a 64 bit DOS).

Really, the biggest problem would be that, as DOS exposes all of its services in 16 bit mode, going into and out of long mode for each system call would be a pain.

Windows 95 is incredibly stable, so long as you don't install any programs. The moment that you replace the system DLLs that ship with it, which installing nearly anything did, with newer versions is the moment it starts shitting all over itself, the floor, the ceiling, and the walls.

ever heard of MinWin
if only Microsoft would go all in on that

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Dependence_on_MS-DOS

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin
You mean Windows NT5 (aka Windows 2000).

Best OS they ever released, now it's this consumerist trash.

So FreeDOS is doomed to die soon with the deprecation of 32-bit x86 (and even more so with removing all BIOS support)?

That's a meme. Intel is just going to stop officially maintaining CSM in UEFI. That doesn't mean it's depreciated, it's still up to the motherboard manufacture to decide to implement it or not after 2020 and it's likely AMD will continue supporting it.

3.11 enabled WINFBB to really shine

How would it be better to trying to run Win9x as a daily driver?

What and where went so wrong? How could it have been averted?

Normalfags did use Win95/98 etc. before, so it's not exactly like the Luna theme was really needed. And it could be completely turned off very easily, basically leaving you with a Win2k-like UI (only with more "sleek"-styled icons, leaving the Win9x icon style behind). Also support for 2k was dropped everywhere as soon as the late 00s, so it would be much more difficult to hang on to it than it would be to hang on to XP/2k3 which still have some software support to this day.

That's a pretty nice E theme. I played around with lots of WMs and themes in the 90's, but eventually just settled into boring old twm without even a wallpaper.

Good idea tbh. I tried Desqview/X in the mid 90's, when I found it on a WaReZ site, but it was pointless since I didn't have any other computers to network with, much less Unix ones (except through a plain old dialup shell account). I ended up mostly running normal Desqview in DOS, and sometimes Screen on the ISP side. As for Windows, I never much bothered with v3.x (often didn't even have it installed) and upgraded to Slackware instead of Win95.

complete bullshit, they literally talked about how they probably would never get it fixed until a tiny company created bugtesting tools they needed and bought that out
WIN2000 IS TRASH.

MinWin is kernel and few core components.
Whats under Win7 that was fine tuned to max stability.

Nostalgia you fucking nigger. Pic related should remind you of the actual Windows experience. I liked DOS, but Windows 9X was a crash-prone mess.

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The reason why Windows 9x Bluescreened constantly is because bluescreens were used by virtual devices to report errors instead of normal dialogue boxes so a bluescreen error ranged from a minor annoyance such as a broken .dll to a fatal error requiring a restard

No. It never was and it still isn't. The major flaw is that Windows 9x, Windows NT, and MS-DOS are *all* user subjugating proprietary software, not to mention it was half-assed and hardly functional.

This led to some very interesting Googling, user. Apparently, 95 ran a bunch of DOS interrupts in Virtual 8086 mode. But, it was still calling down into the DOS kernel when it did things as trivial as starting a program. From what I read, the DOS Program Segment Prefix was fundamental in how 95 identified programs to manage them in the window system, because the window system was mostly 16 bit code.

idk why but even seeing the old BSOD is bittersweet
life was so much simpler back then

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