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Why a Linux User Is Using Windows 3.1

Posted by samzenpus on from the because-he-can dept.

colinneagle writes "About two weeks back, I was using my Android tablet and looking for a good graphics editor. I wanted something with layers and good text drawing tools. That's when it hit me. We already have that. Photoshop used to run on Windows 3.1. And Windows 3.1 runs great under both DOSBox and QEMU, both of which are Open Source emulators available for Android and every other platform under the sun. So I promptly set to work digging up an old copy of Photoshop. The last version released for Windows 3.1 was back in 1996. And finding a working copy proved to be...challenging. Luckily, the good folks at Adobe dug around in their vaults and managed to get me up and running. And, after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with an astoundingly functional copy of Photoshop that I can now run on absolutely every device I own. And the entire environment (fonts, working files and all) are automatically backed up to the cloud and synced between systems. But what other applications (and, potentially, games) does this give me access to? How far can I take this?"

2 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I've done this with Dosbox too but... by hodet · · Score: 5, Informative

    So that's your solution? Buy a Surface Pro? He already has a tablet and used it to meet his needs by spending $0.

  2. Been there! by eggstasy · · Score: 5, Informative

    What an interesting question, I've done that before, mostly out of nostalgia. And, of course, frustration with the upgrade treadmill.
    There's essentially nothing you can't do with a 16-bit windows, it's what people worked with and played with, so there's a bit of everything .

    You should install Win32s, WinG, Video for Windows, Trumpet Winsock.

    Honestly I'm surprised you found it hard to track down old software, there's a pretty huge scene around it.
    You can get pretty much every OS and application here: http://winworldpc.com/library_m1.shtml
    This is also a great site to get old software: http://www.oldversion.com/
    Moar: http://wiki.oldos.org/Downloads/Windows3x
    http://gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm

    There are some surprisingly modern browsers available for 3.1, grab Opera 3.62 (also Netscape 4 and IE 5.5), and try Calmira for a Win9x type of GUI running under 3.1 - put the default XP wallpaper on that, and you will fool a lot of people :)
    I once hacked XP to natively run the NT 3.51 shell on startup, instead of Windows Explorer. It wasn't hard.

    DOSBox sucks for Windows, though, you should probably just run a VM, added performance. You can find some Windows games on abandonware sites, Civilization 2 was a good one :)
    http://www.gameswin.biz/gameen.php?id=379

    Let me know if you need anything else, would love to have a chat with a fellow enthusiast.