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Why a Linux User Is Using Windows 3.1
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?"
Try to setup and use OS/2 Warp 3.0.
THE BEST environment to run Win16 and Win32s Applications I ever had.
This beast used to run CorelDraw WITHOUT A SINGLE CRASH for hours. Honest.
(I still have my very own original Box, witth the CDs and the instructions about how to use GOPHER to fetch that fantastic Nescape 3.0 for OS/2!)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Why is colinneagle so important that Adobe was willing to dig up 17 year old software for him to help out on something that is impractical and only has a "Gee whiz" factor going for it? I'm hardly an Adobe expert, but my limited experience is that like any normal software vendor they are trying to get people on the latest and greatest, not make stuff from 17 years ago still work. I guess it's fantastic for him that this works, but given how hard it would be for John Q. Public to find Windows 3.1 and probably also to find an ancient copy of Photoshop, this is starting to sound like a bit of a taunt on how he was able to do something that almost nobody else will be able to do.
It's a pity Slashdot doesn't let you delete comments when you realize how badly you goofed :)
Well, sort of. You can hex-edit the COMMAND.COM from a Windows 95B or higher boot floppy, replace the "Windows 95(c)" or whatever tag's in there with "MS-DOS 7.xx," partition and format C:\, do a quick install to the hard drive's boot record from the floppy, copy over files from the old C:\Windows\COMMAND directory into C:\DOS, roll your own autoexec.bat and config.sys with proper path setting, reboot, and have a functional DOS install with FAT32 support. Then Windows 3.1 can run on top of it and take advantage of some of the functionality, but applications within Win3.1 may still try to warn you away from long filenames just because they were an unknown quantity at the time of development. Finding a functional defragmenter may also be tricky. At that point you could have a very large FAT32 volume, but above a certain size threshold your cluster size would balloon to 16KB or so, and you'd still be hobbled by the ~4GB filesize limit... to say nothing of memory addressing issues, or the large size of the COMMAND.COM in conventional memory. Some, or all, of these things could be circumvented by using FreeDOS, but I haven't really tried that. YMMV.
Wow... these comments make up a lot of assumptions about my character. What's with all the hostility? One guy called me a cunt! What's next, threats?
Look, you can cobble together a solution for yourself, nothing is wrong with that. I wasn't intending to make it sounds like that was a bad thing.
I'm just saying, pay attention to when you have to do it and you'll see some room for potential invention. The old tablets were a solution looking for a problem - we wern't ready for them yet, and they wern't really good enough for us yet. Now that we're getting used to tablets with the new, cheap consumer oriented models, we're looking for something with more power. We're cobling together our own solutions. I recognize the Surface Pro because I really want one (fuck me right?), it has a pressure sensitive stylus, the same HD4000 from the Mac Mini's, and a real version of Windows that can run both the new and old style of programs. I believe now is the time for just such a device, and the field is wide open on that platform as far as applications are concerned.
You guys can downvote me if you want, it doesn't bother me because I know it's a knee jerk reaction against M$ and capitalists or whatever and I wasn't even thinking about it like that.