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Windows 95 Turns 15
An anonymous reader writes "15 years ago on this day, Microsoft's then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today's 'social desktop,' I'd much rather have the simpler and more sparse (pre-Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials." I fondly recall downloading build after build and installing them. But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux.
Are we specifically referring to dos, or just the concept of cli file manager? Because frankly, to this day I run most of my linux boxes without a gui.
I'm not quite sure Archaic is the right word for something as useful as the cli.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Yes, but OS/2 was still way better than Win95. Win95 was 32-bit "OS" bolted on DOS. OS/2 was 32-bit from the ground up. The Windows of today has more in common with OS/2 than it has with Windows 95.
I think one of my favorite things about Windows 95 was the music video for Weezer's Buddy Holly on the install disc.
This sig is in another castle.
While I could imagine using this sort of anthropomorphisation for a product that was still active, I think Windows 95 is dead.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Ahh shit I remember winnuke. Took out WIndows NT 4 & 3.1 too. I used to moderate an IRC channel and had a mirc macro that if anyone tried to start shit I could right click and *boom* disconnect.
Good times.
It's not so much teacup pissing as herding cats.. It's hard to build a top-down integrated solution without people on (the same) payroll. The only thing that saved it for the back end is the fact that everyone generally agreed to do things the *nix way.
Your buddy was right and you still are clueless.
OS/2 was a much better OS than Windows 95. It had a better UI, it was a lot more stable, and was really a very modern OS.
There are still some knowledgeable companies that are just now migrating the last of their systems off of OS/2
Windows 95 was cheap. That was it's only real benefit. I hate to say it but the terms arrogant and ass would seem to bet apply to you and not your friend.
That and Microsoft got the hardware manufactures to install it. Had IBM gotten everybody on board with OS/2 it would have one. In this case it was all marketing and you bought it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Oh noes, we're not taking over the world, our evil plan is foiled!
Surely, you don't really think that's what it's all about, do you? Who cares if Windows has more market share? The purpose of free software projects is to produce quality free software, and as long as we continue to do that we could care less whether more people are using it than the proprietary alternative.
Oh, trust me we did work hard with OS/2 preloads to try to convince people that it was a good platform, but ultimately we lost out to a better, meaner, more willing to do the unethical and probably illegal, marketing machine.
I see Vista on a lot of machines with only 512mb of ram. That is one major reason a lot of people hated Vista. It was a memory hog. With 1gb it becomes mostly usable. I remember back in the early pentium days, I maxed out the ram and bought the backside cache stick for my machine. Made win98 run circles around matlab and ansys. Just amazes me how people would rather have dual graphics cards, but only 1gb of ram.
Windows 95 was cheap. That was it's only real benefit.
Yeah, apart from the single most important one - it ran more things that people wanted to run.
It might be time to look into running a virtual machine for that legacy tool. You also can get modern motherboards with serial ports, or even USB to serial port adapters.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Study what makes an OS popular? It's already been done. Those exclusive contracts that Bill Gates got from all the vendors did it. One doesn't even need to look at any other of Gates unfair trade practices. There came a point where any vendor HAD to be able to offer MS - and Gates insisted that if they sold MS, they could ONLY sell MS.
A few other little tricks reinforced those exclusive contracts - like donating a few million computers to high schools and colleges, so that students were indoctrinated into the Microsoft way of doing things. But, those contracts are the numero uno prime reason for MS "popularity".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
What was wrong with DOS as the bootloader? The upside is that single user DOS mode could be used as a recovery console, even allowing you to run DOS based applications without loading the full Windows.
This space for rent.
I was a big fan of OS/2 hence why I'm reading this. I worked in Waldensoftware in the early 90s and I have to tell you, when Windows 3.1 upgrade came up individuals lined up around the store to get it. The popularity of Microsoft is not just monopolistic contracts (though those helped a lot), the popularity is that other vendors don't want to support huge chunks of the market.
Apple doesn't want the corporate market
IBM couldn't even get it together with OS/2 but they didn't want the home market
Linux doesn't want the computer incompetent
>>>It's necessary to study what makes an OS popular to gather some more share from Microsoft.
Easy. The same thing that killed off the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and the Apple Macintosh (almost). Offices. They picked the IBM PC as their preferred platform in the early 80s, and it just continued steadily from there. And consumers of course bought what they had in the office, because it was familiar to them.
TRS-80 was the #1 selling computer in the late 70s. Atari 400/800 held the mantle in 1982, followed by the mass-produced Commodore 64 (30 million units sold). But by 1987 IBM PC was the #1 machine and nobody else could touch it. The competition was driven into bankruptcy by the mid-90s (or in the case of Apple - almost bankrupted).
And because IBM PC was successful, so too were PCDOS, MS-DOS and MS-windows, by default. See the chart for yourself:
http://media.arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.media/marketshare.jpg
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>OS/2 didn't get "very few users". It was a very mainstream operating system at its peak.
Ha. The Commodore Amiga OS in the early 90s sold more units than IBM OS/2 during the same period, and yet nobody here would call the AmigaOS "mainstream". Both were minority OSes.
As for ease of use, I copy this from a website as example: "Take the process required to install and configure a printer. Under Windows it was a simple two step process. Under OS/2 1.2 it required the user to perform unnatural acts:
1. Install the device drivers.
2. Set up a printer queue.
3. Create a printer object.
4. Associate the device driver with the printer object.
5. Associate the print queue with the printer object.
6. Set up the COM port configuration for a serial printer.
7. Use the SPOOL command to redirect printer output to the desired port.
8. Specify optional printer settings.
"No wonder people thought OS/2 was difficult!" - http://www.databook.bz/?page_id=223
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
At the time may career as a NetWare sysadmin was just taking off, so it was another six years before I made the switch to Linux, but for me Win95 marked the beginning of the end of my belief in proprietary software.