Thousands of applications have become compatible with Windows 95, the only question is why? – PCW

The Windows 95 and 98 operating systems appeared quite close to each other in time, so there are a lot of similarities between them – this is quite clear based on the external features, but there are quite a few related features under the hood as well. For example, the two systems are based on the same kernel. An important difference, however, is that the .NET framework is only supported by the latter – more correctly, when Microsoft finished it in 2002, it was released for this system (in addition to ME, XP, NT 4.0 and 2000), But not for Windows 95.

But what is .NET? A development environment that enables the quick and easy development of cross-platform (meaning, that works under different Windows versions) software (Microsoft started a fight against Java, initially with little success, later with great success). Of course, applications developed in the .NET environment also need .NET to run, so they were not compatible with Windows 95.

Well, now!

A YouTuber, a certain MattKC, reported in a rather long, but dynamic and interesting video that he managed to port the .NET framework to Windows 95 and thus – as he puts it – make thousands of applications compatible with the age-old system.

The video shows the most important stages of the entire process. Perhaps the maker himself does not know what this was necessary for; when a person is passionate about something, he often does not even understand what exactly feeds his feelings. The video details the obstacles that had to be overcome to make the backport work – it was necessary, among other things, to replace DLL files or a solution so that the framework simply does not deal with them, it was also necessary to redesign the error handling, and it was necessary to eliminate also the dependency on the SSE2 instruction set. Thanks to the finished version, Lego Island, for example, can also be run under Windows 95.

The case is an excellent example that if knowledge is combined with the right determination, then – almost – anything can be solved. At the same time, if we look behind the scenes, the whole thing is nothing more than a little interesting, it certainly has no practical use. The combined market share of Windows 95 and 98 is immeasurable, the number of those who would use the system natively for anything is negligible; if you need either Windows 95 or Windows 98 for whatever reason, a virtual machine is a better choice in every way.

But at least now we know that there is such a thing.