Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Running Windows 98 in the Browser

copy.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 161 posts

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#131

Post by pjmlp »

deaddodo wrote: post #111
galangalalgol wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memory footprint of workbench was incredibly low. A base alpine image with no support for any graphics is several times that size. What are we doing?

Workbench had a very limited hardware it supported. Linux Kernel supports 1000x as many pieces of hardware from different CPU configurations, all the way to the most random USB/Firewire devices. Like, software bloat is totally a thing, but comparing Workbench to the Linux Kernel (let alone the entire GNU/Linux environment) is ridiculously naive.

I remember when Linux kernel came in floppies, and a plain CD-ROM would give me basically the same what many kids now use on their text terminals with tmux.

Or since the subject is Amiga.

A 500 wouldn't make, but a A3000UX would.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#132

Post by wvenable »

LorenDB wrote: post #62

Wow, we live in a time where I can run Windows 98 in my browser on my phone . Technology has really come a long way since the olden days. (And I wasn't even there for the olden days!)

I was able to fire up Windows 3.11 briefly on a browser on my wrist watch. And that was my old watch -- I haven't even tried on the new one.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#133

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

reddalo wrote: post #52
steve1977 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I’m still using a couple of MFC or Win32 apps and using them is pure joy on a modern computer.

I agree. I love native Win32 apps, they're so light and quick. But nowadays everyone is using shitty solutions such as Electron.

Their binary sizes are also tiny. A full-fledged GUI app in a few hundred kB or less, that runs completely native code—truly a wonder.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#134

Post by winrid »

kilroy123 wrote: post #128
dosshell wrote: post #26

Oh, there are more OSes one can use at the parent page: https://copy.sh/v86/ My highlights: - First version of Windows (1.01) - SerenityOS - and even ReactOS

DSL. Now there's a name I have not heard in a very long time.

"FireFox is already running", ah, I almost forgot that. how far we've come :)

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#135

Post by avlevy-ms »

I tried out the bootchess implementation on the website, and while it is very impressive to fit a chess-playing program in under 512 bytes, fair warning that it is not a complete implementation of chess. I tried castling and it didn't work, then found this comment explaining more: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64962#c715279

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#136

Post by p3n1s »

calamari4065 wrote: post #122
userbinator wrote: post #97

Run a DOS box inside that, and you actually have a VM running inside that VM. Win9x (and I believe it started with Windows/386) are based on a hypervisor architecture with minimal protections. The Win32 environment is essentially a protected-mode DOS application that also runs its own application format, and is itself a VM, along with each "DOS box" that gets created.

95 and prior were literally running on top of DOS. If you exited the Windows environment, you were left on a real DOS shell. 98 is when they changed to what you're describing, AFAIK

>> The Win32 environment is essentially a protected-mode DOS application"

> 95 and prior were literally running on top of DOS.

Not sure how you're gathering that the GP is contradicting this. Windows 95, 98 and Me are all architecturally the same: a protected-mode DOS app.

Running DOS from within the Windows shell is not the same as exiting or skipping the boot of the Windows graphical shell, and is running in VM86 mode (which as the GP points out existed in Windows/386 / Windows 3.0 Enhanced 386 mode) See Virtual 8086 mode for some more overview.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#137

Post by rafram »

pjmlp wrote: post #56
rafram wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the software that existed then has become an order of magnitude more capable. Try running 2023 Emacs or Microsoft Word on a 90s PC…

As I watch many people using their UNIX like computers, as if time has stood still in 1980's terminals, I would say it that 2023 Emacs would do just fine. Really, entering in some coffe shop coding sessions, is hardly any different from an IBM X Windows terminal into a DG/UX session in the university computer lab, now they are using a laptop and something else instead of twm or an ambar based text terminal.

My point is that the software we run now is significantly more resource intensive, even if its name hasn't changed. Emacs is slow on 2023 hardware. It would likely be unusable on 90s hardware.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#138

Post by rahen »

calamari4065 wrote: post #122
userbinator wrote: post #97

Run a DOS box inside that, and you actually have a VM running inside that VM. Win9x (and I believe it started with Windows/386) are based on a hypervisor architecture with minimal protections. The Win32 environment is essentially a protected-mode DOS application that also runs its own application format, and is itself a VM, along with each "DOS box" that gets created.

95 and prior were literally running on top of DOS. If you exited the Windows environment, you were left on a real DOS shell. 98 is when they changed to what you're describing, AFAIK

You're right, but this shell still ran in a 32 bit VM on top of DOS (16 bit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Architecture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_9x#Virtual_Machine_Man...

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#139

Post by p3n1s »

rahen wrote: post #138
calamari4065 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 and prior were literally running on top of DOS. If you exited the Windows environment, you were left on a real DOS shell. 98 is when they changed to what you're describing, AFAIK

You're right, but this shell still ran in a 32 bit VM on top of DOS (16 bit). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_9x#Virtual_Machine_Man...

No, what they are referring to: you could actually just exit Windows entirely, or just skip booting into it and what you would be left at is a plain real mode DOS environment.

From your own reference: To end-users, MS-DOS appears as an underlying component of Windows 95. For example, it is possible to prevent the loading of the graphical user interface and boot the system into a real-mode MS-DOS environment.

You can even try this in the linked VM: Shutdown and Restart in MS-DOS mode. That is a real mode DOS without any Windows running. This was often necessary for games and other heavyweight protected mode DOS applications like CAD/CAM at the time that would not tolerate running in the VM86 environment.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#140

Post by creshal »

moron4hire wrote: post #123
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how is it surprising that an old OS built for late 90's hardware runs fast on 2020's hardware? I'm failing to see the surprise. Isn't it a a given that old SW runs faster on modern HW when you factor in how far HW evolved since then.

I think the big question everyone has in mind when they make comments about old OSes running fast on modern hardware is, "what is the juice that we are getting for the squeeze?" It's not just that Win98 runs faster on modern hardware. It's that it does the same--or at least similar, as far as the user is concerned--tasks as Win11, but faster. That leaves a gaping hole of "what was so important to add to the OS that i…

Some of the causes for bloat apply to both commercial and floss projects:

- heavier use of serialized I/O means much lower risk of pointer corruption or related threats, but adds overhead

- so do simple safety/sanity/security checks - each by itself is harmless, but over 10-20 years they add up

- more abstraction layers and more bookkeeping to handle much more complicated hardware setups, or just the passage of time (a Y2K secure date field takes two more bytes, a 64-bit time_t takes 4 more bytes than a 32-bit one, etc.)

- userspace devs are as lazy as they can be. Gnome these days is mostly Javascript to make the constant pointless rewrites faster, something that would've been unheard of 20 years ago. (The *box WMs meanwhile are still as fast as before.)

Post reply on HN