Jorpho wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

Windows 98FE = Okay, last one of the 9x line to officially support WinG for games.

What happens when you try to run a WinG game in 98SE? Is it just a matter of copying the appropriate DLLs?

In theory, yes it works. When I installed the WinG SDK on 98SE, the colour palette was different
in certain games (like the Win3.1 version of the Atari 2600 Action Pack)
and I got graphical glitches whenever dithering was used (like the cube demo). On XP or 3.1 however, all worked well.
Funny: In 98SE WinG dithering only worked in 16 or 256 colour mode, whereas on Win 3.1 it also worked in a higher colour depth.
Maybe that's just a palette issue or a drivers issue in 98SE. Then, maybe 3.1 drivers can fix this.
Anyway, I encountered that issue both on a VM and real hardware.

@Notsofossil Notsofossil, I hope you don't mind I've attached a few pictures.
I promise I won't add any more offtopic stuff to your thread..

DOS + Win3.1: Running on the Compaq Prolinea 4/33 (have owned since new). Started out with 3.1. Went to 95, 98SE, Freesco Linux (spent almost 10 years as a router), and now back to 3.1 😀. Announcements 5, Office 4.6 (I think), and of course all the MS entertainment pack games.

Win95B: OS of choice for the 386DX40 "ultimate" 386!

Win98SE: Running on the AMD x5, SS7 K6-2+ (dual booting), and soon to be on the Tualatin (build in progress). I spent my college years on 98SE. My favorite games run on 98SE. Personally, this is my favorite version of Windows.

ME: I've never used it on any of my computers and see no good reason to.

2000: This is an interesting one for me because I never really used it until I built a SS7 late 2015. I didn't want XP on this system, but I did want some of its functionality (I even ran 7 briefly, but that was more just to see if it could be done). After reading some reviews on 2K for SS7 systems, I bought a copy on eBay. I dual boot 98SE and 2K on this system, but find I'm using 2K most often to play Quake 2 and 3 and also to browse this forum. Also running PrimeGrid (http://www.primegrid.com/show_host_detail.php?hostid=513030) through BOINC 🤣 .

XP: I started using XP in 2006 when I went to optometry school (not a whole lot of PC gaming during those years) and was using it daily up until August 2015 when I retired my Thinkpad Pentium M from everyday activities. I still take the Thinkpad with me if I'm traveling, so I haven't completely stopped using XP yet. There are also some XP games that I'm planning to play through at some point.

Vista: See ME

7: Main OS for daily use on the home office PC. Zero desire to go to 8 or 10 here.

8/8.1: Main OS for dad's PC.

10: I do use 10 everyday on my HP Elitebook laptop. Not a big fan, but I like to be familiar with the current Windows offerings.

1.03-3.0 - Good for reminiscing about being a 1980s power user.
WFW 3.11 - Probably the easiest and smallest way of getting multitasking, graphical file management, and a complete network stack installed. IIRC, it actually pre-emptively multitasks DOS sessions.
95 - Essentially smaller lighter 98. Great for anything that doesn't require IE4.
98 FE - Don't bother.
98 SE - A really nice bridge between DOS compatibility and DirectX gaming.
ME - For those who inexplicably wish to hobble the features of 2000 (USB, better driver model, etc) with all of the bad parts of 9x.
2000 - Faster, lighter XP without activation schennanigans. Works surprisingly well on 9x through more modern applications and carries over the "It's your damn computer" mindset of DOS and 9x very well.
XP - Can run modern software and works with fairly recent hardware. Has probably the broadest software support of any operating system besides 9x.
Vista - Is very cheap used and, with SP1, provides performance close enough to 7. Flies on SSDs with sufficient RAM, and single-handedly forced PC manufacturers to actually catch up with hardware advances.
7 - Best candidate for becoming the next XP.
8- Half-assed phone OS that can be whipped into being pretty decent. With Classic Shell, it becomes Windows 7 with support for more modern hardware and processor technologies.
10 - Ugly side-grade compared to 7. In exchange for non-features like Cortana, you get to have a gimped start menu and graphics drawn by someone with poor understanding of BeOS. Don't forget the fact that its entire sales model puts it in perpetual beta mode.

From a gaming perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

1DirectX 8.0a - Last supported version for Windows 95 and last version to have software rendering support.
2DirectX 9 - The last build for Windows 98SE/Me is the redistributable from December 13, 2006. The last build for Windows 2000 is the redistributable from February 5, 2010.

Windows NT4 allows for DirectX 3 gaming, although some games with higher directx levels are compatible with it. After Windows 2000, it depends on the hardware used more than potential uses.

Prior to Win95, Win311 provides support for Windows applications but very limited access to Windows gaming.

Practically, Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows XP are excellent choices for gaming. Windows 98SE provides additional compatibility for games and is also a very good choice given feature-rich hardware is available.

my recommended range:
win3.1: 386s and early 486s
win95(osr2 preferable): late 486s to early 586s, anything since mid-586 era shall turn to win98 instead.
win98(se): anything faster than pentium-133 till mid-pentium4s(533fsb) and athlonxp.
winme: never recommended. for anything that can run it, use win98 instead.
winnt4: same as win95, use it only if you want to squeeze last bit of performance from a 486 or early 586. any rigs faster than pentium-133 and with 256mb ram shall turn to win2k for better compatibility.
win2k: same as win98
winxp: from late pentium3s to core2quads
win7/8: core2 and anything newer.

Interesting replies. Some predictable, some less so.

Especially interesting is, of course, the mention of the "bastard children" that Microsoft would very much like to be forgotten - WinME and Vista.

People who have heard of both, but used neither, usually think that both are terrible buggy awful turds that will eat your children if you try to install them. Among people with a bit more experience, the more common opinion is that Vista is not as bad as people make it, but WinME is quite as bad. However:

Because it was the final installment in the Win9x branch, WinME still has some merits in use cases where you target specifically 9x software (and don't care about pure DOS). WinME did manage to include some features from Win2K, which are not present natively in Win98 SE, and these may be useful.

Vista, on the other hand, while objectively, in itself, being quite a good OS, was really rendered useless with the release of Win7, because Win7 superseded it entirely. It includes all of Vista's useful features, and then some.

So really, Vista is only useful as an exercise in sociology. That is, if you want to do some research on skewed opinions, or difference between impression and actuality, or crowd brainwashing, or the power of first impression, or something along these lines, you can learn something from the story of Vista.

dr_st wrote:

Interesting replies. Some predictable, some less so. […]
Show full quote

Interesting replies. Some predictable, some less so.

Especially interesting is, of course, the mention of the "bastard children" that Microsoft would very much like to be forgotten - WinME and Vista.

People who have heard of both, but used neither, usually think that both are terrible buggy awful turds that will eat your children if you try to install them. Among people with a bit more experience, the more common opinion is that Vista is not as bad as people make it, but WinME is quite as bad. However:

Because it was the final installment in the Win9x branch, WinME still has some merits in use cases where you target specifically 9x software (and don't care about pure DOS). WinME did manage to include some features from Win2K, which are not present natively in Win98 SE, and these may be useful.

WinME is not much worse then win98 - and let's get real - compared to winXP, a win98 installation is EXTREMELY easy to ruin just by installing a wrong driver or piece of software. Win9X based operating systems are extremely fragile. My problem with winME is that microsoft tried to hide DOS, witch I was still using at the time - as opposed to winME's extra features witch were of absolutely no use to me - and consider I stuck with Win98 until I bought my first socket A rig - in autumn 2002! Dial-up internet worked fine with my k6 machine and win98, all browsers worked perfectly, and my K6 had a whopping amount of ram for the time period (1x128mb + 2x64mb !) Lots of users tough as I did, and skipped winME and 2K altogether. I tried both of course, but as none had proper underlying DOS, I had no use for them and reverted to 98. Even worse, I remember I had trouble running some older games on win2k.

dr_st wrote:

Vista, on the other hand, while objectively, in itself, being quite a good OS, was really rendered useless with the release of Win7, because Win7 superseded it entirely. It includes all of Vista's useful features, and then some.

So really, Vista is only useful as an exercise in sociology. That is, if you want to do some research on skewed opinions, or difference between impression and actuality, or crowd brainwashing, or the power of first impression, or something along these lines, you can learn something from the story of Vista.

I really liked windows Vista. It looked great and was a LOT more stable and secure then winXP. It's only issue is that it was extremely resource hungry. At the time I had 4GB of ram on my machine, and ran XP64. I installed Vista on a whim and never looked back. In fact I kept it until win7 matured a bit, then upgraded. In fact I'm doing the exact same thing right now with win8.1 -> win10

I have 3.1, 3.11 WfWG, 95, 98, 98SE, NT4, 2000, XP-32, Vista-64, 7/8/8.1/10. That seems to be enough to find something good enough for all of my needs, and have some left over.

I don't use 3.1, 95 or NT4 these days. I don't have any hardware and/or application that I think would benefit.

I used WfWG when I had a 386, but not any more. Useful for networking a mainly-DOS machine.

I use 98 and 98SE on my Athlon machines, for DOS, glide, dx6 games. No reason to use 95 and I have bad memories of 95's flakiness.

I use XP as a secondary OS on both my main machines, to give me proper EAX and/or to run software that isn't guaranteed to run beyond XP.

I use Vista 64 and 10 as the primary OSes on my main 2 desktop machines. 10 because I want one machine up to date, plus it seems faster than 7 was. I use W10Privacy, which I hope does something. I use Vista 64 because I got the licence cheap, it seems similar to 7 [if anything a bit further from XP than 7 seemed], it doesn't nag about 10 and there's no free upgrade path anyway.

I use 10 on my laptop as I didn't like 8/8.1 and the laptop's touchscreen capability died anyway. I use an MS account on this, no W10privacy either. Nice to have something "connected".

I use 2000 on my P4 because it's easy to install [no activation issues] and there are drivers for my hardware that seem to work fine. As I fairly often dismantle, put away and later rebuild a machine of this era, the lack of activation hassle is good to me.

I suppose my overall philosophy is around an OS being "good enough" and "least hassle", and "the best OS is the one you have the CD for".

Win 1, up to and including 3.0:
Ugly, not fun. I prefer Dos instead.

3.1:
Usefull for fast 286 systems and 386 systems. On 386's I prefer 3.11

3.11:
Belongs in the era of 386 and 486's. It is a fun little GUI for Dos.
Great for setting up an internal message system, that are not connected to the internet.
Back in 1995, I did that with an 386, acting as the server. Was fun.

Win95 (All OSR versions):
Can run on 486dx2 systems. Perhaps usefull for very few Win9X games.
Though it is decent for productivity stuff.

Win98:
Good for really early SS7 and late S7 stuff. Never use it anymore.

Win98SE:
The (for me) best retro OS for post-Dos pre-XP era.

WinME:
I really dislike it. It's a freak. Looking like Win2000, wanting to be Win98. 🤣

WinNT (3.51 to 4.0):
Don't know what it is good for. Never used it. Did install it back then and deleted it when
discovering that I had no real NT software. Never looked back.
NT 4.0 are actually something that I would consider installing on an Alpha or something
just like that. Especially after having watched The computer chronicles, covering the
release of WinNT-4.0

Win2000:
Good for dual CPU setup within the P3/K6-II/III era.

WinXP:
Good for playing games of that era. Nothing more. Real work is best left for 7 or Vista.

Win Vista:
Now this is a strange bet-fellow. This OS have by far the most awesomme GUI of them all, when
looking at all the features there are. Need a fast Computer and the latest service pack.
As the hardware is getting older and faster, this OS is for me, the king of office suite or other
productivity tasks. Need good and stable drivers. Not fun for gaming or any other retro related stuff.
With a fast computer, I think that it is one of the most awesomme Look-N-Feel of all Windows.

Win7:
By far the best OS of them all, for regulair work.
Not usefull for retro yet. Perhaps in 2020/25.

Win8, 8.1 and 10:
Not my cup of tea... I think it looks hidious, and I really don't like the feel of them.
Too much attention on socalled "notifications" wich I refer to as annoyance's.
It's an operating system for desktop computers, NOT a telephone! (thank you very much MS)
I rather use Vista or Linux. Even WinME.

dr_st wrote:

People who have heard of both, but used neither, usually think that both are terrible buggy awful turds that will eat your children if you try to install them. Among people with a bit more experience, the more common opinion is that Vista is not as bad as people make it, but WinME is quite as bad.

...

Vista, on the other hand, while objectively, in itself, being quite a good OS, was really rendered useless with the release of Win7, because Win7 superseded it entirely. It includes all of Vista's useful features, and then some.

Vista was essentially beta software which was foisted on the masses before it was really ready. It was also massively underwhelming compared to the original Longhorn design. By the time all the patches were in place and Vista was okay as an OS, Windows 7 was released.

It's not really Windows (except it kind of is, an extension at least), but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the grandpappy of awful Microsoft releases, MS Bob.

Windows NT 4.0 works well with OpenGL games: the Quakes, RTCW, Alice and Half-Life all run well on it.

Windows 1-Vista: masochism
Windows Longhorn: dorky internet braggery
Windows 7: computer use
Windows 8-10: sadomasochism