Windows 9x
No written verdict yet. Here is what commenters said.
Why people recommend it
“98SE/2000 is outrageously modern”
“if you want the real deal, you can run windows 95 in the browser quick”
Show 3 more
“My memories of windows 95 are very fond. I used to install it on Pentium 133 and boy it flew.”
“https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/osr-2”
“It's hard to imagine not being impressed by the step up from 3.1”
Caveats and dissent
“scroll-follows-mouse was not truly possible in Windows 95”
“the Windows 98 (lack of) security model doesn't work”
Show 2 more
“I highly doubt that Windows 95 on minimum requirements would be anything but endlessly frustrating”
“not worry about the system crashing on you every half an hour”
Often compared with
1 moved from Windows 9x to Windows NTWindows 74 comments mention bothWindows XP4 comments mention both
1 moved from Windows 9x to LinuxWindows 3.x3 comments mention bothmacOS3 comments mention bothNeXTSTEP2 comments mention both
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Windows 95 released August 24, 1995 7 mentions
- The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996) 4 mentions
- A 386 PC for Your RP2350 3 mentions
- Software may be getting worse, but it used to be horrible 2 mentions
- Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11 1 mention
- Why Windows 11 still ships with Windows 95's memory manager hidden inside it 1 mention
Also written as Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows 9x, Windows 98½. Data: windows-9x.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 40
“scroll-follows-mouse was not truly possible in Windows 95”
“The initial Windows 95 design had different buttons for different functionality.”
“98SE/2000 is outrageously modern”
> Also, the optimism just highlighted how out of touch they were, that they thought people would actually just rewrite everything in 5 years is bizarre and suggests a fundamental lack of understanding to me. Same thing with Wayland and GPLv3 to me. It is the fundamental difference in the developer's origin/experience in FOSS projects vs commercial software. However, there is an even bigger paradigm difference underne
“Windows 95 significantly overhauled the desktop GUI metaphor”
“functionally equivalent at the minimum to Windows 95”
“the Windows 98 (lack of) security model doesn't work”
“I still have a circa-1996 486 running Windows 95.”
“Windows 95 had a beta build for 286 systems”
“I highly doubt that Windows 95 on minimum requirements would be anything but endlessly frustrating”
“i used Win95 on an AMD 386DX with 4MB of RAM back in the 90s”
“if you want the real deal, you can run windows 95 in the browser quick”
“My memories of windows 95 are very fond. I used to install it on Pentium 133 and boy it flew.”
“not worry about the system crashing on you every half an hour”
“https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/osr-2”
“It's hard to imagine not being impressed by the step up from 3.1”
Related implication: the slow floppy formatting (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090102-00/?p=19623)
“The way Windows 95 could use DOS device drivers despite being 32-bit was fairly incredible.”
“For anyone interested in a celebratory flashback”
“Evidence-based UI design maxed out in 1995 with the release of Windows 95.”
“The mouse pointer judders!”
> When people make comparisons to clunky Model T cars in the 20’s and Win95, they aren’t far off. I think they are. Model T’s were clunky because they were minimalistic; Windows 95 was clunky because it tried to do impossible things. This is a fine example. In the Windows 95 architecture, it’s impossible to detect whether a program is an installer, but they tried anyways. Another example is Plug and Play. The origina
“the CD-burner that couldn't work under Windows 95 without dying”
“I think Windows 9x was peak Windows.”
“Windows 95 copied everything from them.”
“I had 98se on my first (handmedown) computer”
“to verify that Windows98SE was in 32-bit mode”
“I did later run Windows 98 on my kids' machine for games”
“Windows 98 was an unstable mess”
“Windows 95 was (if you believe Steven Sinofsky, who should know) heavily influenced by NeXT!”
“I love your Windows 98½ project”
“Windows 9x was able to run DOS, and that took no shortage of wizardry”
“Windows 95 would crash if you looked at it funny.”
“I use win95 emulator in the browser to play it.”
“I use a 27 year old Pentium 2 laptop with Windows 98 for a hobby project.”
“actually tried it on Windows 95”
“Windows 95 uses more or less the same window decorations as NeXTSTEP”
“I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/98/2000, Office 97, and Visual Basic 6.”
“I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI”
I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma