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Running Windows 98 in the Browser

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Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#21

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

creshal wrote: post #6
nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

The main downside is that those OSes were also really quick to hack, and the smallest problem bluescreen'd the system and lost all your work. But you can get a reasonably close experience with Linux or the BSDs and a simple GUI environment like the *box window managers. They're modern and snappy even on things like older generation RasPis.

Windows 2000 was memory protected, and still had very modest hardware requirements. IMO the pinnacle of Windows UX, everything after that was downhill.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#22

Post by [deleted] »

bzzzt wrote: post #16
tonoto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still, during the time of Windows 95/98 I could hardly play even a 128kbps MP3 with WinAmp in my Pentium 133MHz with 12MB of Ram where I had got rid of lots of bloatware. At the same time I could play it smoothly in Linux with a full blown desktop environment (Window Maker) running. So it was a bad performer in comparison even back then.

Strange. I used a dual boot configuration back in the day and found the Windows experience a lot more efficient than the Linux desktop then. It was less stable and secure of course, but Linux drivers were not really optimized and if you wanted a comparable desktop feel you needed something like KDE which needed a lot more memory and felt sluggish compared to Windows. Also, there was rapid development in MP3 decoders…

[deleted]

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#23

Post by paulmooreparks »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8
creshal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic desktop interaction is the same as 22 years ago, yet modern desktop environments are orders of magnitude slower at performing those same basic tasks.

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.

What is striking is the fact that the interactions are the same between old and new shells/applications/syscalls/whatever, but modern software on modern hardware feels so much slower. The only reason for this is that modern software is doing a lot more stuff in the nooks and crannies of those interactions that it didn't used to do. Perhaps some of that stuff is useful, but some of it has to be code that is just less efficient or was just shoveled in because the CPU was faster and the RAM was more spacious.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#24

Post by bluetomcat »

nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

The core OS APIs still allow writing fast and snappy applications, but most apps nowadays are not written this way. Apps are using generic libraries that bring "the gorilla and the jungle" with them, browsers are relying on a JIT to draw their own UI, etc.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#25

Post by signal11 »

gwervc wrote: post #20
nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

Even functionally it's very comical because of how we were able to do on Win98 (even 95) almost everything we are doing today: editing documents, browsing the web (with images), playing games, watching videos, printing documents, listening to music. The only functional improvements I can note over two decades are: Unicode support, higher resolution of everything (from hardware to content), and system reliability than…

Higher resolutions (and the accompanying resource sizes) would be hell for 32-bit OSes though.

Also, it’s kind of amazing that many web pages these days are larger than Doom shareware’s zip size.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#27

Post by blowski »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #5
nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

>but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware. Why is it surprising that an old OS built for late 90's hardware runs "comically fast" on 2020's hardware? Just look at XP system requirements: - Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) - At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is reco…

Things I didn't use my 1998 PC for:

* realtime collaborative spreadsheet editing

* 28 inch high definition monitor

* watching movies in HD

* playing almost lifelike games

* browsing an extremely hostile internet

* live backing up all my files

* Running large complex scripts on the same machine I can easily carry in one hand

* Running an IDE like JetBrains

I could go on. We are only doing the "same tasks" if you ignore a lot of the details.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#28

Post by revskill »

nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

Because when you add more functionalities, the efficiency will eventually break.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#29

Post by AshamedCaptain »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #5
nippoo wrote: post #3

The thing that always strikes me with these kinds of demos is how absurdly efficient old OSs were / had to be. It's obviously not an apples to apples comparison, as modern operating systems have to handle a lot more, but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware.

>but even Windows XP (which handled a lot of the same basic Internet browsing tasks as I still use now!) is almost comically fast on modern hardware. Why is it surprising that an old OS built for late 90's hardware runs "comically fast" on 2020's hardware? Just look at XP system requirements: - Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) - At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is reco…

> How would anyone expect that not to be much faster on a modern quad+ core, 4GHz system with 8GB+ RAM?

It's not a given.

For example, Windows XP may boot faster than 98 or 2K on the same hardware, because XP parallelizes and shortens some hardware initialization steps. (e.g. anything related to the network).

Win98 with file sharing spends almost a minute during boot (even from an SSD) just squeaking netbios frames.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#30

Post by numpad0 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8
creshal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic desktop interaction is the same as 22 years ago, yet modern desktop environments are orders of magnitude slower at performing those same basic tasks.

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.

Surprise is modern OS runs slower in comparison without much perceptible improvements, inviting such a conclusion through rosy glasses that purported improvements since "then" must be nothing more than extreme amount of software bloat.
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