Web based Windows XP desktop recreation, built with React
winxp.now.sh
winxp.now.sh
Modern js done right can provide top tier interfaces. So many frontend let performance go by the way side when making interactive web apps.
And performance can also be UX, how things appear and the flow of the loading. Things like placeholder boxes [1] with the same size so the load isn’t janky is one good hack. The sort of thing you don’t have to care about with native apps.
[1] I’m on the fence about the value of loading icons in each placeholder, they’ll figure out something is loaded soon enough. Not need for the distraction or highlighting loading times. Errors for components are another matter.
Although of course server side rendering of everything is the ideal initial state.
Going to save this one for the next time someone says React is slow.
This worked instantly for me (just like my website, I wonder if they are using Gatsby or something else for static pre-rendering).
Remind you that the requirements were: 233MHz CPU + 64MB RAM
Let's say you're running a late 2019 macbook pro 13". That's:
16384MB RAM, and 1400-3900 MHz cpu (x8 threads) with 8MB cache. Which includes branch etc etc.
All that aside, it looks pixel-perfect to me, and it behaves the same afaict :-)
Also, as far as hardware is concerned, I am comparing a 14 year gap between a desktop computer of 2001 to a 2015 iPhone 6s - a 5 year old phone that still runs on battery for about 6 hours.
But that has nothing to do with load time and why most websites today can’t load in under 1 second (or even 10 seconds).
I’ve heard many complain about React performance, yet I have seen React with ssr or static rendering perform amazingly well.
My site for example loads as fast as hacker news on first page load, and then faster because of static rendering and pre-fetching, yet it has unlimited interaction.
I imagine if I profiled the performance of this demo, it would be similar.
That’s faster than I can remember it loading in real windows xp on a desktop (and that was installed versus downloading additional code for that module).
Impressive!
Some of the most basic websites trigger a serious (and still unresolved after years...) bug where the rendering stutters to a halt until virt-manager and all my VM windows crash. Just basic landing pages with weird animated backgrounds, etc. Nothing rich.
This app? It works almost flawlessly with little jank and doesn't even stress my browser. And it has a much richer UX!
What VM configuration and guest OSes are you using?
Exactly what is crashing? I presume qemu itself, but can't tell if you're describing BSOD type events.
Can you reproduce the crashes using qemu-system-x86_64 directly?
I can reproduce the crashes by going to a number of websites. I always assumed it had something to do with OpenGL but lately it's happening on websites that I doubt are running any accelerated content. So it could be the browser's hardware acceleration.
But essentially it takes down virt-manager/virt-viewer and I have to launch another instance. The machine itself is fine but it becomes a race to close the tab before the window crashes again.
It's been a while since I tried debugging but I'm pretty sure that it happens whether or not hw acceleration is enabled in Firefox and it also doesn't matter whether the libvirt XML configuration enables OpenGL or not.
By directly, do you mean just running the virtual machine through the cli or actually setting all my configuration flags in the qemu-system-x86_64 command?
Does sound like a graphics acceleration problem, maybe also a remoting protocol issue.
I only tend to launch VMs via qemu-system-x86_64 directly, so I'm not familiar with how virt-manager works - and crashes :). It sounds like virt-manager can crash without taking down associated VMs...? I'm also interpreting "start another instance" as referring to virt-viewer, or do you mean you're starting a new copy of virt-manager over the same/old VM?
It's really perplexing this also happens with VNC.
I wonder what would happen if you enabled the normal GTK qemu window (which for reference can of course be run in Xvnc in headless scenarios, my personal Xvnc preference being TigerVNC). I also wonder what would happen if you enabled SPICE and/or VNC with the GTK window enabled.
A better start point likely to produce more interesting/orientating info might be to run Firefox inside eg an openbox session, making absolutely sure no compositors are running (including xcompmgr etc). If you still get crashes in that type of scenario something's very broken.
I'm curious what error messages appear in the virt-manager, virt-viewer and qemu error log files when these disconnects occur.
It I were serious about fixing this my first step would be building everything from source, one component at a time, verifying the issue is still present at each step; then, if everything's still crashing, pulling out good ol' printf. Ideally something obvious emerges before you get to that point :)
Me too. I'll report back within a few days.
> A better start point likely to produce more interesting/orientating info might be to run Firefox inside eg an openbox session, making absolutely sure no compositors are running (including xcompmgr etc). If you still get crashes in that type of scenario something's very broken.
I can look into this, too. And I'll provide virt-viewer logs but they haven't been helpful. I'll see what the other virt-related logs are saying.
> It I were serious about fixing this my first step would be building everything from source, one component at a time, verifying the issue is still present at each step; then, if everything's still crashing, pulling out good ol' printf
This was the advice given to me before from someone involved in the virt stack, and I started to do this but it turned into a lot of work just familiarizing myself with some things and I got sidetracked and eventually shelved it and just hoped it would eventually piss someone else off enough.
Sure. I'll try to check this thread so often or so.
while (!website_crashes) {
add_more_tracking()
add_more_adds()
}That's a lot more work than a quick easter egg, I'm just impressed it's as complete as it is. And a lot of the places where it's not (Antivirus popup) are funnier by not being implemented.
I always had fond memories of Win2k and WinXP and I wanted to know if my feelings today would match what I remembered, or if I was just seeing the past through rose-coloured glasses.
I couldn't get IE to co-operate with modern browsing bar a few websites, I'm assuming this was to do with SSL. I did get Firefox 41 .0 working a few minutes ago and immediately went to HN to test it (as an easy https-enabled text-based website) only to find this to be the top post.
For those curious, clicking Help -> Is this copy of Windows legal? goes to a 404 [0] page in IE.
To answer my own question: Windows XP feels incredibly more user-friendly and accessible than the version of Windows 10 that I bailed from to Linux. I don't know how much of that is familiarity and how much is actual difference, though I did use Windows 10 far longer than I did Windows XP before finally deciding it's not working for me.
Why are there two control panels? Why do I have to move the mouse all over the screen to click something because the OS uses a weird mix of desktop-oriented and touchscreen-oriented design? Why do I have to dive into the guts of the system to disable the invasive features that track me and send my information to Microsoft?
Opening Windows Media Player prompted me with some privacy options such as obtaining licensing info and sending diagnostics back to Microsoft, each of which were clearly explained and had to be toggled on/off in the setup. It was so clearly out of the norm at the time that they went out of their way to make it visible. I feel like today it would not even warrant a mention, bar locales where that's required by law.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but with WinXP it feels like I own the system. The customer-merchant relationship is clear. I paid Microsoft money, they provided me with software and now I am using it. 15 years ago I never would have though to consider that a company whose software I use would be selling my personal data to figure out exactly what kind of ads I should see.
Using Windows 10 now feels like a constant battle between me and the company that sold me the software ("do you want to enable Cortana? can we send your keyboard input to our servers? can we update your system without permission unless you have an enterprise account? can we, can we, can we...")
I'm not RMS. I don't care if companies use binary blobs to distribute drivers or collect basic usage info without full disclosure. Yet I still feel the pendulum has swung too far and its momentum continues to push it in the same direction. In both UI design and privacy.
I'm glad that there are still a vocal group of enthusiastic people that are keeping the spirit of FOSS alive, but I'm concerned about the commoditization of our information.
Phew, sorry, I got really bloody off-topic. Great website! It didn't work on my WinXP VM under Firefox or IE but it did work on my Linux system. Congrats!
Windows 10 will ask you questions about many privacy/diagnostics/tracking-related options during setup. Here’s a YouTube video of someone picking the wrong answers for all the questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvgL2NI22Ks
That extra detail made it very realistic.
As soon as it popped up, I was like; oh, shit, yup - there it is.
WinAmp and it's fantastically on-point UI-mockup and functionality was also a super nice touch.
tbh I still use Windows XP SP3 in my VM on my Mac for the occasional Windows utility I need. It's super no-cruft and lightweight - especially as a VM - compared to anything since - and is surprisingly compatible. Because it's in a VM, I'm not too worried about the security issues, and most of the Windows-only utilities I use are fairly archaic anyway. (In computer years)
Windows has become a 20+GB OS with a mess of dumbed down UIs. So yes, XP was effective and light by today's standards. That's partially because your current mobile phones are more powerful than the PCs that used to run XP.
Though, I'm not sure if I trust that OS since I see a tooltip telling me that I don't have AV installed :)
https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=win2k.cfg&mem=192&gr...
And Windows 95 in a browser:
https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows95
And Windows 3.1 in a browser:
Even today the default Raspbian LXDE could look less ugly if they could make taskbar-based launcher and tray icons slightly smaller (kind of like in Windows 95-XP) rather than 100% taskbar height, but they won't.
You didn't look enough then...
You can tweak size for icons and the taskbar in the panel settings, AIUI. It's relatively easy to give LXDE or Xfce that kind of "classic" look.
Whatever, IceWM looks awkward (I can see special charm in it and won't say "ugly" but many people would) anyway. It actually seems an example of what I mean under a rough parody to Windows. Whoever can't see the difference between this[1] and what does real Windows (even Windows 98, let alone styled XP) look like is kind of blind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceWM#/media/File:Icewmstartme...
nm-applet &
If you use wicd, you need to put "wicd-gtk -t &" instead.
Now add Excel or Word to it. Running it at full screen would be a nice "I'm working hard" wallpaper for the people peeping over your shoulder.
Well done on the visuals, though. Very impressive.
But, impressive and awesome :)
Do you mind me asking what you do that requires this?
And why windows XP? Well, the gcc binary is 16 bit...
Surely making a code change and recompiling would also change the binary?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised - it just treats it like a mouse - but it was neat to see.
It's missing one feature that's been in Windows since 1.0: closing an application by clicking the top left (icon) in the task bar.
[0]: https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=win2k.cfg&mem=192&gr...
That being said, the assets are spot on and visually it seems identical.
Maybe one day Microsoft will release it under the GPL (also would take the Mozilla Public License or the Eclipse Public License).
Of course, even if the code was released, getting the theme released is a different matter.
With React it seems like the logic should be simpler to implement (assuming there isn't much change to WinAmp and JSPaint).
Nice work ShizukuIchi!
Not sure who said that but I love that quote.
But wait... can't open any page on IE? And no cmd.exe?
:)
Other than that well done :)
If Bill were to start with a Windows XP sp3 base, here are a bakers dozen of tasks to get him and his new software team started. I am calling this new product Windows XP-TNG for now. Feel free to add to this list:
1. WinXP-TNG should be 64 bit only, at the same level of reliability or better as Win XP 32 bit. Support for disks larger than 2tb and main memory greater than 4gb.
2. USB 3 support.
3. Investigate if and how this 48 bit address business could be expanded to the full 64 bits.
4. DirectX 12 support
5. Directory printer option (like the best add-on utilities provide)
6. Print to PDF file print driver (better than the best add-on utilities provide)
7. Integrate the old Office 2003 into Windows XP-TNG without separate activation. Customers that really want a newer Office would buy a Cloud version or the Windows 10 native app.
8. Integrate a “cleaner” utility that would remove any malware from PDF, and, if needed, epub files.
9. Deleted file recovery (beyond restore points). Search entire disk and rebuild desired directory entries functionality (much better than the best add-on utilities provide).
10. One button setup of “classic” Win 95/2000 options and developer settings like View-Details.
11. Fix bug that causes large, say 1tb file transfers, with Copy-Paste to fail. Drag-and-Drop works ok.
12. Long-term bug fixing and cybersecurity support.
13. Option for automatic registry backups, user can delay and specify number of backups before recycling.