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Developer Releases Windows 95 OS as an App For Windows 10, macOS and Linux (betanews.com)
Mark Wycislik-Wilson, writing for BetaNews: Last year, developer Felix Rieseberg released Windows 95 as an Electron app to let 90s computer users relive their younger years. Now he's back with a second version of the Windows 95 app, and it's even better than ever -- gaming classics such as Doom and Wolfenstein3D are now included, for starters! Based on the Electron framework, Windows 95 2.0 is written in JavaScript, and is essentially a 500MB standalone virtual machine. The original release was lacking in a number of areas -- such as no sound or internet access. This second release is described as a "big update" and includes a web browser in the form of Netscape Navigator 2.0.
First, we have an OS that bounces back and forth between real and protected mode faster than Trump pounds out nonsense statements on Twitter.
It is also very much NOT designed with the modern internet in mind, and is no longer maintained for security updates, and has had assloads of malware, both from black hat groups and state intelligence agencies produced to turn it into their bitch.
And we are running it on the ELECTRON platform, which is a web browser hosted virtual machine environment... So we are basically putting the above horror show in direct contact with the internet...
AND incorporating content that might not be legally licensed to be bundled or distributed in this fashion.
What about this is a good idea again? I mean, I am practically speechless here.
Seriously, what are they thinking? There are so many good x86 emulator out there and they choose to make one in Javascript only to package it to run on desktops? That's a turducken of inefficiency and stupidity.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This was apparently worthwhile to them.
Or do you mean they should work on a project worthwhile to someone else?
Electron is the embodiment of every joke about programmers being lazy ever made. It is an abomination. It and similar frameworks like CEF are the opposite of the direction we should be going in. It used to be that programmers actually knew how their hardware worked. It used to be they knew how their code interacted with a system. Now they have no idea and to save their ignorance just throw extra layers of abstraction at it until their code only has to interact with some weird Fischer Price idea of what a computer looks like. Want to go a step further? Develop your electron apps with NPM. Because being dependent on the cloud for your dependencies is such a great idea. I'm not saying everyone should only develop in assembly or even C. But these super high level languages that run in VMs are being horribly abused. They are inefficient, insecure and often the lazy ignorant assholes who make them cant even be bothered to write their JS clean. I would be more lenient if they tried to write smart code in a stupid framework but its stupidity all the way down. With great power comes great responsibility. The dev community has shown they can exercise the wisdom of a five year old who found daddy's gun. I'm hoping some spectre level exploit comes to light that ruins the whole concept so we can go back to writing software the right way.
Imagine if you yourself focused your talent on something worthwhile instead of posting on Slashdot. Like feeding children in Africa.
....until somebody ports EMACS to it.
Well, at least we won't have to worry about it running too fast to play the games.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, they reported on the older version. The one the summary talks about the deficiencies of and how this version fixes them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You know what's a really nice, responsive, fast OS? A clean install of Win95 on a Pentium 100 with 32 MB RAM. Add a few basic apps and it's still fine. Sadly, it gets worse over time, after a few months and after installing many apps. But a fresh install felt better than XP on a 1 GHz PIII. But my personal favorite for power, features, and stability was Windows 2000. All the good stuff from Win95/98, the stability of NT, and none of the gunk of XP. I used that for as long as it was viable. (Which is to say, about 5 years longer than anyone else did.)
I had Win95 on a Compaq 3060 and it was unusually stable for Windows. I used a batch file to log boots and uptime was typically a month or more. It was on 24/7 and I just darkened the screen when not in use.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
definition of "should":
"used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions."
The OP was definitely criticizing and was obviously indicating a "more correct" course of action. Therefore- the word "should" was entirely appropriate to describe that comment.
Ironically, your comment starts by saying that the word "should" was inappropriate- but then you proceed to describe exactly why you agree that they should do something else.
We get it. You think it's a waste of time.
Thankfully, none of us nerds have to consider the internet's opinion when deciding what we are going to create.
This electron "app" uses v86 which is an x86 emulator inside the V8 javascript engine (which does 99% of the "work" here). If you want to see live demos, check out https://github.com/copy/v86/. They've got Windows 1.01, Windows 95 and Linux 3 demos that run right in your browser.