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by oldgradstudent 1957 days ago
> A Windows replacement must be able to either run Windows applications / games

This was true even for Microsoft.

Windows NT/2000/XP was effectively a new operating system that was able to run Windows applications.

Microsoft worked very hard to reproduce old bugs and undefined behaviors so that old binaries will continue working on the new Windows.
1 comments
maxerickson 1957 days ago
Windows NT predated Windows 95 (95 being the first 32 bit consumer Windows).

I think Windows 2000 didn't have nearly as much compatibility work as XP.

I guess Windows 95 came out because NT was a lot for a 386 or 486? And also different priorities as far as compatibility.

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Arainach 1957 days ago
Windows 95 ran on machines with 4MB of RAM (8 recommended). NT 3.1 required 12 (16 recommended). That extra 8MB was a significant amount of money in 1995. NT 3.1 also required twice the hard drive (75MB vs 35MB). Windows 95 offered better support for direct DOS mode access, VxD, etc. Which was crucial at the time for games and multimedia applications in a manner that NT simply couldn't match.

Additional useful reading: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120102-00/?p=87...

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anthk 1957 days ago
It dependens, in w2k you had the compat mode from sp2? and beyond which enabled an xp like compat mode, and often games ran better than under xp.

You had to enable it with regsvr32 /enable slayerui.dll or something like that.

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