I never considered 3.x "great". I stuck to DOS. Much more pretty. 😀

I never liked Windows 3.1, or the early Mac UIs, but I could see that their ideas had potential. Better UI design and more powerful computers made multitasking actually worth it.

Win 3.1 was what I started with; didn't really do anything CPU or memory-intensive back in the old days so it suited. But after using Windoze 7 for a while now and going back, using anything pre-Win2k feels quite clunky. But my point is, if you try to use Win 3.1 the same way you use your current computer now for multitasking, you will definitely see how screwed up it is under the hood. I can only imagine how large companies got by... or maybe they just stuck to WinNT or DOS.

Well - on the other hand I think we forget how far computer hardware has come. Windows 3.1 goes all the way back to the....... 386. Would anything any better run on a 386? Interesting question.....

Even the nest step up... win95.. requires a *much* more powerful computer. It would run on a 486, but is really better on a pentium.

I sort of had fund setting it up - a trip down memory lane, I suppose. I doubt I will really *use* it for anything. The computers were really meant for DOS.... old DOS games and programming languages

I only ever went into Windows 3.1 for games or applications (like Microsoft Works) that required it. I never thought it was particularly great especially since there was a myriad of graphical interfaces for pure DOS (my favourite was QuikMenu). I also used XTreeGold instead of File Manager.

It was quite crash-prone too as I remember particularly if you were using a 'multimedia' program (as was all the rage back then) that used Indeo or WinG or something.

Lack of or limited preemption/pre-emptive multitasking certainly reduces an OS's functionality where multitasking is required - serious problem for pre-Win95 (non-NT) based OSes. The way Win 3.1 works resembles function queue scheduling, which has disastrous results if just one application hangs or crashes. Even just browsing the Internet (while doing nothing else) can crash the system. But hey, if you really wanted to hide from almost every single virus/malware floating around, you might be in luck.

TrueType fonts were pretty cool!

With norton desktop it was quite useful and more like the later Windows 😉

ncmark wrote:

Well - on the other hand I think we forget how far computer hardware has come. Windows 3.1 goes all the way back to the....... 386. Would anything any better run on a 386? Interesting question.....

Yep. There are a few options for a 386, if you have enough ram: early 90's versions of Solaris x86 (1993), Linux (1991) and various BSD unices (NetBSD - 1992, FreeBSD - 1993, 386BSD - 1992, etc), you've also got OS/2. All of those have versions that pre-date Windows 95, were contemporary with Windows 3.1, and are proper multitasking systems that take full advantage of the 386+ features and protected mode.

If you have a 386DX, FPU and plenty of ram, there's no rtechnical reason why a modern version of Linux/BSD kernels won't run, as long as the software is not compiled with 486/Pentium optimisations. Of course, trying to use modern applications on top would be dreadfully slow, as libraries/toolkits/dlls have become huge in size 😀