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Running Windows 98 in the Browser

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Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#31

Post by znpy »

liotier wrote: post #15
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.

Let's not exaggerate: Winamp .mp3 playback was just fine on any Pentium running Windows 9x - though I concede that even my Pentium 75 had 16 MB RAM and I have never seen a Pentium with less than that. On the other hand, extracting a CD and compressing it's .wav to .mp3 was a whole day of computing, and sending the files as attachments through SMTP was enough to elicit flowery vehement objections from my university's…

Ah the times when the netiquette dictated not to attach large files to emails directed to mailing lists, but to upload them to some ftp server and only paste the link…

The whole industry was had more attention to performance and resources consumption.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#32

Post by znpy »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #21
creshal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% agree, windows 2000 was the best windows ever.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#33

Post by jeremycarter »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #21
creshal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of my computer muscle memory is from Windows 2000. It was surprisingly accessible for it's time. Modern macOS still can't use the tab key correctly to tab focus between certain buttons, inputs and actions.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#34

Post by darksim905 »

tonoto wrote: post #11
herbst wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fair comparison IMO. There are Linux flavours still making my 15 year old hardware faster with every other update. And any standard flavor still works like a charm. There is no real reason OSes get more shitty with every version

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.

I call bullshit. Windows 95/98/2000 did not have any bloatware....

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#35

Post by dspillett »

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…

> I used a dual boot configuration back in the day and found the Windows experience a lot more efficient than the Linux desktop then.

That was often due to driver support, some hardware not performing as quickly (or sometimes not being as stable) under generic OSS drivers compared to their behaviour with the manufacturer's proprietary binaries (which were quite likely not available for Linux at all). It could be very hit-and-miss, with two otherwise very similar machines performing quite differently due to one controller on the motherboard. Sometimes it was due to the generic driver not knowing for sure that a given device supported faster modes well so erring on the side of caution, a not uncommon example being a drive/controller combination ending up running in PIO mode or an old DMA mode despite supporting something much faster, in which case you could get the performance back with a little “magic” configuration manually telling it to use that better mode.

Generic drives in Windows often had the same problems, but manufacturers tended to make device-specific drivers readily available (usually in the box) for those OSs.

Other times it came down to differing defaults for things like cache modes (write-through or write back, etc), power-saving options, and so forth, which again could be tweaked with config (though the discoverability of these config options was typically not very high).

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#37

Post by tonoto »

liotier wrote: post #15
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.

Let's not exaggerate: Winamp .mp3 playback was just fine on any Pentium running Windows 9x - though I concede that even my Pentium 75 had 16 MB RAM and I have never seen a Pentium with less than that. On the other hand, extracting a CD and compressing it's .wav to .mp3 was a whole day of computing, and sending the files as attachments through SMTP was enough to elicit flowery vehement objections from my university's…

Alright, it might be that the memory fades and that it was OGG that I were struggling with, nevertheless the music playback worked way better in Linux. My issue I had were modelines/vertical refresh rate and having the graphics card recognized as it were my first computer and as a newbie with no friends to ask it felt rather steep to understand XFree86.

But it was the IBM Aptiva K23 (basically this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhYumJiEbY ) with 12MB onboard. Later upgraded to the K6-2 (500?) with a real speed bump.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#38

Post by tonoto »

darksim905 wrote: post #34
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.

I call bullshit. Windows 95/98/2000 did not have any bloatware....

It got worse with Windows ME but yes I felt that Windows 98 had lots of stuff to be removed. I were impressed at first glance with Windows Memphis until I realized it was the same as Windows 95 and I started to explore different shells as alternative to explorer.exe and I believe it was Litestep with a simple skin I got my best performance from.. but as I, had a better experience in Linux (besides graphics resolution) which I hade newly explored I booted into Windows less, and less...

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#39

Post by sebtron »

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.

We software engineers took Moore's law as a free pass to make our software twice as shitty every 18 months.

Re: Running Windows 98 in the Browser

#40

Post by exitb »

darksim905 wrote: post #34
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.

I call bullshit. Windows 95/98/2000 did not have any bloatware....

I remember being able to watch bootleg movies on a Windows 2000, while Windows 98 was too slow on the same hardware. I suspect that had nothing to do with bloatware, but rather some internal inefficiencies while dealing with heavy CPU/memory/IO load.
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