Calmira Reborn – a Windows 9x-inspired shell for Windows 3.1 | Hacker News Reader

Calmira Reborn – a Windows 9x-inspired shell for Windows 3.1

huntertur.net

107 pointsnetworked76 comments

Took me a while to find the link, so here are some screenshots for you: http://calmira.net/screenshots/index.htm

Gosh, the first screenshot took me back. The MIDI player was part of a set of apps that came with the SoundBlaster 16 that stacked together like hifi separates. There was a CD player and a WAV player as well. Haven't seen them in, oooh, 25 years.

http://calmira.net/screenshots/andrew.htm

A CD player, a Wav player... and a remote! They came also with later Creative SoundBlaster cards, I had that on my AWE 64 driver disc.

Somehow, your first sentence sounds to me like: "An iPod, a Phone and an Internet Communicator!" - gosh, already more than 15 years. I'm getting old.

And yeah, I also remember the SoundBlaster cards. I really like them.

The remote! How could I forget the remote!

Oh my god, memory unlocked for me as well. I remember playing around with all the instruments. I must have been no older than 4 or 5.

The Chrios screenshot is interesting.

> Sorry for my Bad English i am a 14 Years old Boy who loved old OS's!

That's actually amazing. You have to wonder what the story is. How did he end up even hearing about/using Calmira? And he's got his hands on an old laptop as well, apparently.

It's stuff like this that makes you appreciate that the internet is just as quirky as it always was. Curious people are still using it to learn and explore. It's great.

Today with Mirc if you connected that to Bitlbee servers you could chat even against Steam, Telegram and newer IRC protocols (IRC+SSL).

Also, there are good Gopher clients for DOS/Win 3.1, so gopher://hngopher.com would still work.

Nice; back in the day "grey" was Win95 and the new thing all the themes look like Win95.

It would be interesting to see the start menu etc but in a more native Windows 3.1 style.

It wasn‘t necessarily gray:

http://calmira.net/screenshots/josiah.htm

http://calmira.net/screenshots/david_b.htm

http://calmira.net/screenshots/mike_g.htm

Back when Windows supported real color theming.

The first look close to my IcemWM+GTK2/3 theme with Chicago 95 icons.

Unexpectedly, it also runs on a PSP: http://calmira.net/screenshots/sinan.htm

So is there a light, Windows 9x-like (so really really fast and responsive) shell for Windows 10?

I cannot believe how unresponsive Windows 10 is, the menus, windows, all opening with so huge delays, it's a disgrace.

If know of things from the UNIX world, like Blackbox for Windows.

I don't know, with 64GB 6000mhz RAM and Ryzen 9 7950X processor, things are instant for me on Windows 11, and even faster on Windows 10. Surely nobody runs on Windows on any lesser system?

Get Virtualbox. Install Windows 2000 or XP or an old Linux with KDE 3.15 on it.

Notice the lack of latency, notice how it flies and there's no delay on displaying the widgets and typing on a text editor or a word processor.

Yes, that's exactly the feel I'd like to have with a modern operating system also!

KDE 3.15 was forked to Trinity Desktop and is still actively developed - it's also a default desktop for Q4OS Trinity, EXE GNU/Linux and PCLinuxOS:

https://trinitydesktop.org/

I hate to say it to you, but there a VERY BIG latency on anything newer than Win95! VERY BIG.

The Win95 Explorer is the last that doesn't have Internet Explorer embedded in it. It keeps the whole start menu in memory. Starting with Win98 (or was it Win95OSR2? - can't remebember) they added IE into everything. From then on, opening the start menu requires a disk read.

Also, you can't really experience the no-latency speed of Win95 if you use virtualization. You probably got used to Win7/10/11 latency so much, that even WinXP with virtualisation feels fast. Trust me: that isn't fast.

w98 could be debloated, the same with w95 without that sp.

On XP, well, with the classic theme it can run pretty fast.

But I woudn't use propietary OSes today except for nostalgia experiments on secluded VM's.

jeeeesus, do you dump old beer and banana peels into that thing or does it take unleaded?

unleaded? That thing needs bunker fuel to keep it running.

The souls of environmentalists.

Did you recently install? Wait a year.

I'm a linux home user, does Windows still do that slow-down-gradually thing?

Honestly no clue, built this machine a few months ago, and built it with the thought that even an inefficient OS would not be able to get slow anytime soon.

> I'm a linux home user, does Windows still do that slow-down-gradually thing?

Not in my experience. My installs go years without a reformat and reboots are usually only due to updates.

Back when I was forced to use windows, I used ClassicShell[0], but it looks like it's abandoned now. The spiritual successor seems to be OpenShell [1].

I can't remember if the shell was enough, but I remember that all the store apps were disabled, search in the start menu didn't search online, no cortana stuff, it was actually quite usable.

You might need the non-home edition to do some of the those things, I think group policies were involved. It's been a long time though, I've been using Linux for everything ever since Proton became good enough for gaming.

[0] http://www.classicshell.net/ (not https) [1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

This looks like a step in the right direction, I haven't tried them though, must check them out, I hope they don't bring just the looks, but the performance and latency characteristics of those old systems as well!

In addition to OpenShell, I am also using RamMichael's "7+ Taskbar Tweaker".

https://tweaker.ramensoftware.com/

It is working on Win 10, but not supported om Win 11 anymore.

The lightweight app lets me define the taskbar behavior.

Using Windows 10 with the 6th Gen 6700 HQ, 16 GB ram and an SSD. There are some annoying lags here and there.

Like the login screen, for example. Lock the PC (Windows Key + L) followed by CTRL key to activate the password prompt, and immediately put in my password ... then the 1st one or two characters from my password won't usually make it into the password input.

This is one of the long living bugs in Win 10 which won't be fixed.

modern software which does this is soooo infuriating, when you have the muscle memory of typing entire sets of commands before the UI even showed up and it just registered them all and did them perfectly

My Mac does the same.

Somehow related: Windows NT 3.51 looks pretty much exactly like Windows 3.11. However at a later point where customers able to try the "new shell" beta which added Windows NT 4.0 / Windows 95 UI on top of Windows NT 3.51.

You can see the transformation on youtube: https://youtu.be/lTeeml8RULM?t=793

NT 3.51 had some interesting things that didn't make it across because things got overwritten by Windows 95 versions.

Progman.exe actually allowed nested program groups. Winfile.exe supported long filenames.

These both seem to have been overwritten by the versions from Windows 95 (with their Windows 3.1 ancestry) so lost those functions going forward.

Not that it matters much, but winfile.exe with long filename support lives on and can be installed from the Store even on Windows 10. https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/windows-file-manager...

Those were still included in Windows NT 4.0 as optional features (similarly to the Win 3.1 tools on Windows 95).

Somewhat related article: Why wasn't the Windows 95 shell prototyped on Windows NT?

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

I'd rather have a good (all I've seen are grotesquely low-quality gimmick) Windows3x/9x/XP shell for modern OSes.

IMHO what we need to preserve is retro UX seamlessly integrated into the modern world (e.g. a pixel-perfect Win3x-like DE based on all the modern libraries/kernels and this way capable of interacting with modern web and peripherals).

But it's definitely nice to see people are developing anything cool for Windows 3.11. I would certainly install it if my Windows 3.11 PC was not left in another country.

Any screenshots BTW?

I mean you can install CDE on a modern system.

And SerenetyOS tries to re-create the look and feel of that era.

There's also Trinity Desktop (fork of KDE 3):

https://trinitydesktop.org/

Chicago 95 does it well with XFCE. And B00merang has almost 1:1 theme clones for 3.11.

I've tried out Chicago95 and it probably does the best job it possibly could, but it's not all there.

Things like the "start menu" and buttons are weirdly proportioned because of the conflicting design style between the underlying desktop environment and the clear Win9x era design vision Microsoft employed.

The closest thing to an old style desktop interface that I know of must be SerenityOS. All of its applications and UI elements are actually designed from the ground up to work with the classic theme.

I actually prefer it to the real old Windows style because it adheres to the old clear design standards but also takes advantage of modern display resolutions and colour support.

It's nowhere near a workable operating system yet, but it's an interesting take on OS design nonetheless.

If only there was a screenshot in the site...

While I don't have anything to point to for what this version (Calmira Reborn) specifically looks like, I know that a number of YouTubers have done walkthroughs/reviews of previous iterations of the project. (One such review, of Calmira II 3.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMeIwShY434.) I don't expect this new iteration differs much from the previous release; my impression is that this is just a resumption of maintenance and bug-fixing by a different author, so the UX should be the same.

(Also, I can't really blame them for not providing screenshots; it's likely a deliberate choice. If you're using the kind of retro-computing setup that the target audience of this shell uses, you're probably connected to the web through Trumpet WinSock on a 28.8kbps modem — not the ideal environment for loading screenshots! Sure, you could first visit this page on another, faster computer; but you might have to eventually visit the page on your retro-computer to actually download the software onto it. At that time, you'll be very glad that this page doesn't have any screenshots on it!)

The screenshots don't need to be in the main page, there can be links to them as it used to be done in the past.

I suppose it looks like Windows 95/98, and if you don't already know what that looks like, it's probably not a product you're interested in anyway.

Some here: http://toastytech.com/guis/cal.html

I used to use this in the olden days, when Netscape Communicator ruled the Internet and the webby company I worked for had their servers in my mate's kitchen in the flat upstairs, with a whopping 128kbps leased line.

I dual-booted my 486DX4/120 between Windows 3.1 (Windows 95 was out but who could afford that much RAM?) and some early Slackware.

I remember Calmira, it allowed us to skip an upgrade cycle on some company laptops once.

I prefer the OS/2 Workplace Shell so I use WPS4WIN.zip which puts the OS/2 Workplace Shell on Windows 3.x.

Screenshots: http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html

The download is here: https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-workplace-shell/151

The app windows still have the Win3.x buttons so I use the button editor in MAKEOVER to make them look like OS/2 buttons. Download: https://archive.org/details/MAKEOVER_ZIP

I vaguely recall using an official-seeming OS/2 Workplace shell that was meant to be both productive, and remind you in various places that if you like this, you'll probably like OS/2.

I haven't seen any reminders in WPS4WIN.

Who uses these things productively as daily driver in 2023? No judgement, just curious.

I think those retro projects are mostly just for fun. There is nostalgia involved, but also those older systems tend to be easier to tinker with.

The copyright in the source code has a big jump from 2007 to 2022, so I guess possibly no-one, it's probably more entertainment/skills development for someone who finds modern always-on internet computers too distracting.

I sometimes used Calmira when I was in school until I switched to RedHat 5.1.

Do people have to be constantly productive all day every day? Maybe someone just has some old games they want to play, and they want a more modern shell to do it with.

But if productivity is the only thing you recognize, I recall reading that George R.R. Martin uses an incredibly old PC to write on. I think it was DOS or maybe Windows 3.1.

IIRC he uses a DOS machine with WordStar.

I remember stories of famous authors using one-off word processor devices (imagine: old LCD that can only show about 5 lines of text, and the device can hold a megabyte of crap in some sort of flash or something similar) from back in the day. Basically the minimal step up of computerization from the typewriter.

What else does a writer really need?

-A spell checker

- A dictionary/thesaurus

- Grep

- A few MB of public domain books in TXT format from Gutenberg to get inspired

I use a handful of modern projects on a Mac running System 7 for “productive” purposes. I don’t use the computer itself for work, but I program on it, manage my servers on it, keep my household information recorded on it (bills, budget, power usage, etc), write on it, etc.

Beyond being distraction free it doesn’t remind me of my work computer, which helps doing things on it not feel like an extension of my day job.

In all fairness I’m pretty weird in this regard. I don’t see it as a toy, or fun retro thing, and it’s not a nostalgia thing, it’s just a computer and experience that I enjoy using to accomplish things I would have had to do anyway.

Forget your i3s or dwms, this is the desktop environment we need.

I still have CalmiraXP on my childhood i386. It’s great lol

How do we download and install Windows 3.1 in 2023. I would like to install it on bootable USB stick.

I searched that FreeDos can now somehow run Windows 3.1 [0], but the article only shows it on QEMU. FreeDos might be able to boot on a USB stick [1]. As for downloads, there's WinWorldPC where you could also find 16 bit Delphi 1.x.

[0] https://virtuallyfun.com/2021/07/27/freedos-running-windows-...

[1] http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_Create_a_USB_B...

Edit: I deleted my previous dosbox answer as it missed the booting from USB part.

Remember that Windows 3.1 is a shell, not an operating system. You need to install DOS first.

https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/31

And your choice of DOS:

MS-DOS 6.22: https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/622 or, PC-DOS 2000: https://winworldpc.com/product/pc-dos/2000

A good choice for early PC emulation is 86Box: https://86box.net

DOSBox will do it fine and much faster than 86box.

EDIT: Ok, install. Well, using DOSBox in full screen would be pretty close to a screen of its era, save for being flat.

FreeDOS might be as better choice, since it has modern conveniences like USB support and (I think) TCP/IP drivers.

Windows 3.1 cannot run in 386 Enhanced Mode on FreeDOS, only on MS or PC DOS.

eXoWin has done most of it already for win3x games (borderline plug and play). But there is not much to it other than get dosbox and then get a win311 copy running by typing in win in the windows folder. DOSBox, with a couple of forked copies here and there for an oddball game, is pretty much what he used for all of it. Not sure what he is going to use for the 9x project.

Not sure about running it from a bootable USB stick, but DOSBox + Win 3.11 was fairly simple to set up on Mac, i.e. I have no internet, but MS Bob works like charm.

DOSBox-X has internet support with NE2000.

Thanks!

The idea of a UI revamp for Windows 3 reminds me of HP's Dashboard. I actually liked it.

Really is a sad thing, an entire generation brain damaged by M$.

There’s certainty a nostalgic emotional reaction when seeing these but it’s not strong enough to move me to prioritize trying out esoteric technology over the other million interesting or necessary things on my plate.

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