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Home windows 95 was a tremendous working system that will ceaselessly remodel the world of dwelling computing, setting the usual for person interplay on a desktop and fairly probably was the OS which had the longest queue of individuals lining up on launch day to snag a boxed copy. This raises the query of why we nonetheless don’t write software program for this superb OS, as a result of ignoring the minor quibbles of ‘safety patches’ and ‘fashionable {hardware} compatibility’, it’s nonetheless has just about the identical Win32 API as supported in Home windows 11, plus it doesn’t even spy on you, or present you adverts. This line of reasoning led [MattKC] not too long ago to take a look at straightforward methods to port fashionable purposes to Home windows 95.
Within the video, the obtainable choices are ticked off, beginning with straight Win32 API. After all, no one writes for the Win32 API for enjoyable or to enhance their psychological well-being, and frameworks like WxWidgets and QuteQt have dropped help for Home windows 9x and customarily something pre-Win2k for years now. The simplest possibility subsequently could be Microsoft’s .NET framework, which in its (nonetheless supported) 2.0 iteration truly helps Home windows 98 SE, or principally inside spitting distance of operating it on the unique Win95.
An attention-grabbing level right here is that .NET was by no means launched for Home windows 95 by Microsoft, which raises the query of whether or not there’s such an important distinction between Home windows 95 and 98 that will stop the .NET framework from operating on the previous. As [Matt] finds out throughout his investigation, the reply appears to be largely that Microsoft by no means bothered to completely take a look at .NET on Win95 because of the low marketshare of Win95, ergo this simply throws up an error message about an unsupported OS.
To be able to get round this, [Matt] needed to write his personal .NET installer, which first led him down a maddening rabbit gap of the internals of the .NET runtime and its installer. That resolved operating the customized installer on Home windows 98, however even with customized perform wrappers [Matt] was left with a collection of exceptions to debug and resolve, together with an SSE2-related one because of lack of SSE2 help in Home windows 95. All of this with out entry to the JIT debugger that’d exist on Win98 and newer.
Finally he did get it working, nonetheless, with the outcomes obtainable on the GitHub mission web page. Since backporting .NET 2.0 was a lot enjoyable, he subsequent launched into backporting .NET Framework model 3.5 as properly, opening one other collection of .NET purposes for operating on an OS that’s now practically thirty years outdated. Even when a sensible use case is difficult to make, it’s completely an enchanting in-depth take a look at what has modified over the previous a long time, and what we could have gained, and misplaced.
Because of [Jonathan Dziok] for the tip.
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