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posted by martyb on Sunday August 26 2018, @05:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-make-it-BSOD? dept.

Running Windows 95 in an "app" is a dumb stunt that makes a good point: Software piracy remains an important part of preserving our digital heritage.

A silly new app has been doing the rounds this week: Windows 95 as a standalone application. Running on Windows, macOS, and Linux, the Windows 95 "app" combines Electron (a framework for building desktop applications using JavaScript and other Web technology) with an existing x86 emulator written in JavaScript. The emulator can run a bunch of operating systems: for the app, it's preloaded with Windows 95.

This is, of course, software piracy. The developer of the app has no rights to distribute Windows 95 like this, and I'm a little surprised that the app hasn't been yanked from GitHub yet. And for now, the app is just a toy; there's no real reason to run Windows 95 like this, other than the novelty factor of it actually working.

But Windows 95 (and software that runs on or requires Windows 95) was an important piece of computing history. I think a case could be made that it's Microsoft's most important Windows release of all time, and its influence continues to be felt today. Not only was it technically important as an essential stepping stone from the world of 16-bit DOS and Windows 3.x to 32-bit Windows NT, and not only did it introduce a user interface that's largely stayed with us for more than 20 years—Windows 95 was also a major consumer event as people lined up to buy the thing as soon as it was available. A full understanding of the computing landscape today can't really be had without running, using, and understanding Windows 95.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:26PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:26PM (#726651)

    It will get 'yanked', because copyright. Unless MS decides it is cool and not worth bothering with (doubtful). I have several dozen copies of that OS laying around with the licenses. So I am probably fine using it. But not everyone hordes data like I do. Usually when I install it I put in one of the keys that just work everywhere. All 7's was always a favorite.

    Javascript is a Turing complete language. Attach that to a framework/ISA that has graphics capabilities and you can emulate any other Turing complete machine/language. That is in the proof of being Turing complete.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Monday August 27 2018, @08:22AM (1 child)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Monday August 27 2018, @08:22AM (#726821)

    There are no Turing complete languages. Turing completeness is defined as a "computational system" with a finite "instruction set" and an infinite memory band that can produce the same output as any other turing machine. By definition, turing complete systems therefore cannot exist physically, only conceptually.

    Arguably, javascript is a try to make them exist as the memory use of javascript programs increases super-exponentially (see your web browser) and therefore quickly approaches infinity.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @05:52PM (#727025)

      Languages are conceptual things, implementations on the other hand ...