Fred Langa bids farewell to Win95 and Win 3x, two operating systems that literally changed the world but will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
It’s Curtains For Windows 95
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Patches for Windows 3.1 will still be easy to obtain, all you have to do is go to http://www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk and click on thier Windows 3.1x section. You can also get most of the patches at google.com just by searching. As fpr Windows 95, it has not been supported activly by MS since the release date of Windows XP. Now the downloads are just going to get yanked for it. Oh well, I have every Windows 95 update stored to a CD.
Windows 3.1 was not an operating system, on a technical note, but a graphical environment to DOS. Windows 95 was a synthesis of the GUI and the OS.
The best thing about Win95 was the Weezer video that came with it.
Still rocks.
“OSNews.com – Exploring the Future of Computing”
This is the past, why is it here?
> This is the past, why is it here?
It has been the future at some point
And this being stopped will force ppl to use the newer version, that will enslave them more with their s*cky EULAs.
On a technical note, Win95 wasn’t either.
Only win2k and WinXP which are really NT 5.1 and NT 5.2 are free of DOS. Win98 and ME still had it hidden.
Don’t try to FUD us on how long M$ used this dinosaur
Windows 3.1 was not an operating system, on a technical note, but a graphical environment to DOS. Windows 95 was a synthesis of the GUI and the OS.
Kinda like Gnome and KDE are to Linux? Where’s our Windows 95?
The good thing about Windows 3.1 was, you could exit and still be in DOS. No “restart in MS-DOS mode”, just alt-F4 until the cursor starts blinking… then type “cd wolf”, “wolf3d”.
It was much more fun than Windows 9x, or NT. You had a true choice there: run WP directly from the DOS shell, or run it windowed (and create smashing graphics in 16 colours with Paint, and get coffee while switching between applications).
And if I wanted music while typing, I turned on my stereo.
Somewhere along the line, Windows lost that cozy feel. Especially the NT family’s booting, screaming “see? this isn’t dos – you never see white text in a black shell anymore!”
Enter Linux.
Funny how the article bashes MacOS. I tend to agree with the author though that win3.1 and win95 brought the PC market to where it is today.
I remember using Win95 in 1995 and was really impressed by it. The interface was well designed (looked a bit like NextStep) and everything was very responsive compared to Win3.11. Compared to Win3.11 it was also much more stable, if you can call a system crash every 2-3 hours doing real work stable 🙂 Nowadays I can run Win2k without rebooting for weeks…
Another interesting question is if Linux would exist without Windows. After all Linux was programmed for x86 boxes designed to run Microsoft’s operating systems.
Win95 was the first OS to make my computer truly usable. I ran it for 3 years without any major problems. If you run decent stable drivers and dont install unneeded crap (system tuning utilities,on-access virus scanners,anything from symantec) you can run win9x pretty stable.
Ive actually had more crashes with win2000 and Linux than i ever had with win95.
Some new games will still run under it.
After using an Apple Mac, RiscOS was the first useable GUI I ever owned, and certainly the most affordable. Windows 3.xx was used as a glorified DOS program launcher by most people, and there was no way the PC’s VGA graphics could compete with the A3000. Just at the point where the Wintel platform seems to becoming equally useable it looks like it will be obsoleted by Linux and/or consoles (in the long term). I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Yes, those days of wolf3d, descent 1 and a host of other apogee games. WAAh.
I don’t think one can assume that today’s market of high-performance, low-cost hardware is a result of Windows. If Microsoft had not come out with a reasonable GUI OS for x86 hardware, someone else would have (and did – remember OS/2?). It is ludicrous to state, as I have sometimes heard, that “if it wasn’t for Windows, we would all be staring at a DOS prompt”. Microsoft was in the right place at the right time. Windows became so hugely popular because of Microsoft’s one true innovation – the bundling of Windows with commodity PCs. By 1992 it was virtually impossible to buy a PC without Windows, a situation that persists to this day. I don’t think either Win 3.1 or Win95 revolutionized computing – they were products that rode the wave of rapidly advancing hardware and falling prices, and if Microsoft hadn’t been there, the same thing would have happened with some other operating system.
It is have more than 3 years since Microsoft broke support for Windows 3.x, and was already 1 year when Microsoft broke support for 95. In a short while, Windows 98 is heading that way, next year. While in 2005, bye bye to Windows 2000 and Me.
Actually, there is no NT 5.2. Windows 2k is NT 5.0, while XP is 5.1.
// By 1992 it was virtually impossible to buy a PC without Windows, a situation that persists to this day.//
It’s “virtually impossible” to purchase parts and build your own PC?
Ever hear of Global Computer?
Ever hear of CompUSA? (*plenty* o’ PC kits there)
Ever hear of CDW?
Ever hear of WalMart?
Ever hear of Apple, if you don’t want to build one?
Stop the FUD, and take your ritalyn.
How legal will it be to distribute Windows 3.x and 95 for free now?
Other than that this news doesn’t make a big difference since I haven’t seen any patches for 3.x and 95 for some time.
Still have an OEM copy of it but I’d rather run Warp 4 when
I feel like firing up the old Borland C++ 4.5 compiler. Was
it all copies of Win95 or just the OEM ones that came with
systems like Packard Hells that seemed to crash hard and
often? I know the version that I have did a lot. But, yeah,
it was an improvement on Windows 3.1 in some ways. Just not
necessarily stability.
I shudder when I think of the 9x/ME line. Drop support for all of them, I say.
Windows 1.0 wasn’t released in 1983, it was announced then. It came out in 1985. That’s like saying Windows 2000 came out in 1997(or 98?) since that’s when when NT 5.0(2000 eventually) was anounced. The guy doesn’t seem to like Apple either. It almost sounds like Bill Gates himself is telling the story.
I don’t think I need a catalog, and I’m not sure what the “ritalyn” comment referred to. At least spell it right (Ritalin).
OK, “virtually impossible” may be too strong a statement, but not by much. Still, try going as an individual consumer to Dell, or Gateway, or CompUSA, and see what fraction of the x86 machines available to you have Windows on them. If it isn’t 100%, it isn’t far off. A few years ago, it was even harder to get an assembled PC without Windows pre-loaded. Put it this way, if I asked my wife (a non-tech type) to go buy non-Apple computer, the likelyhood of it having Windows preinstalled is vanishingly close to 100%.
My point was that Microsoft’s bundling deals with OEMs were what gave Windows such a huge market share. I don’t think Windows 3.1 (the version when Windows really got entrenched as a desktop standard) was revolutionary in any technical sense.
>>Actually, there is no NT 5.2. Windows 2k is NT 5.0, while XP is 5.1.<<
Actually, there is an NT 5.2 – Windows.Net Server 2003 – currently at RC2 build 3718
Does this mean wild rumors about the death of MS-Windows will swarm the internet?
Sorry. I’m an OS/2 user that’s used to that kind of thing happening.
Oh I, and many others, could only hope for that.
However, I will fondly remember the endless days of classic gaming when games were built to play well as they couldn’t look good.
The King’s Quest series and other great Sierra games, Ultima Underworld and the other great Origin games… there were so many.
Now we just get bombarded with the same crap over and over again, just slightly glorified.
Compare Dune 3 to it’s 10 years older predecessor, Dune 2, and to all the C&C games inbetween. Identical, other than slightly glorified and marginally less buggy.
In case you think I’m off topic, think laterally, think analogically.
rockwell: Ever hear of Apple, if you don’t want to build one?
They are a PC maker?
As for WalMart, prior to this century, I don’t recall them making their own computers. Even now, they get Microtel to do it for them. And again, prior to this century, I don’t remember CompUSA having non-Windows PCs. I’m not so sure about Global Computing and CDW.
Z_God: How legal will it be to distribute Windows 3.x and 95 for free now?
No, you have to wait till it is 30 years old, when it falls into public domain.
kreechah: I shudder when I think of the 9x/ME line. Drop support for all of them, I say.
Yeah, I agree, who cares about half the desktop computing world that actually uses it?
FH: Actually, there is an NT 5.2 – Windows.Net Server 2003 – currently at RC2 build 3718
Is it available for customer use? Nope. *sigh*
kreechah: I shudder when I think of the 9x/ME line. Drop support for all of them, I say.
Yeah, I agree, who cares about half the desktop computing world that actually uses it?
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Only you could take that literally and take the time to answer it, rajan. Only you.
Win 3.x + DOS is indeed an operating system. Think about it – by saying Win 3.x is “just” a graphical display manager is like saying that, command.com and ksh are “just” command line user interfaces? No shit right? So now that we’ve removed input devices from our operating system, let’s see it operate! An OS, by practical definition, includes the UI layer.
The author claims that Windows 95 was the first consumer 32-bit OS. That’s bollocks. AmigaOS has been 32-bit since day one. Even that exercise in user limitation, MacOS (or System as it was known in the day) was 32-bit clean from the IIci onward, AFAIK.
Actually, Mac OS’s first 32-bit OS was System 7, IIRC (and that too used a lot of 68k emulation). And OS X was the first pure 32-bit Mac OS. As for Amiga OS, while it has a lot of 32-bit features, using a 16-bit architecture gave Microsoft the lead. But anyway, Amiga was more 32-bit then Windows 95.
Besides, I wouldn’t really count Amiga OS as a consumer OS. Its usage was mainly at corporate and creative markets.
System 7 was released around the time of the IIci, IIRC. I remember a test of it in 1992, and that was in an Amiga magazine, so it might have been released a while before that.
System 7 was a 68k OS. The first PPC version was 7.5, and that was undoubtedly full of emulated code, but I was referring to the pre-PPC systems in any case.
As for the Amiga not being a consumer OS, I resent that opinion. Even I could afford an Amiga, whereas only people with an income could afford a PC. Corporate use was what established the PC in all other markets. The Amiga has never had a corporate market worth mentioning.