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Comment by mdavid626 | Hacker News Reader

I extracted out notepad.exe, calc.exe and mspaint.exe from Windows 7. I use them on Windows 11. They work perfectly.

For those of you on macOS who still want to benefit from arguably the best drawing application ever conceived, https://jspaint.app/ is THE way. Use it all the time when editing screenshots.

Bonus point: that Windows 95 style "error" beep when pasting too large image. Always sends the shiver down the spine and confuses the coworkers around (we're an all-Mac shop).

my favorite "easter egg" hidden behind File -> Exit menu item of jspaint.app... I still remember how it blew my mind the first time I saw it!

This wet my eyes. The times...

Kind of a weird feeling that in order to get the better Windows 11 experience one requires programs from four operating system versions earlier.

Windows 11 also takes a huge amount of time to get working as i intend. I have to remove a lot of 'features' and heavily optimize some processes. It's stable and it works, but i'm getting more and more annoyed by it that upcoming updates sometimes destroy all my effort.

Kinda wish i could run everything my family wants on Debian. I know i could do that right now, but the wife and kids will never get used to that if they have to use Microsoft products in their working and school life.

I’d wish to use Linux.

But some things just don’t run there (properly).

Like Assetto Corsa EVO or SimHub.

When was the last time you tried it? Assetto Corsa EVO has a Gold rating on ProtonDB[1] and apparently SimHub also works fine, according to the SimHub forums[2].

[1] https://www.protondb.com/app/3058630 [2] https://www.simhubdash.com/community-2/simhub-support/guide-...

Yes, I know that they might work just fine on Linux.

But… ACC EVO is alpha at the moment. It barely runs without bugs on Windows. It’s just less hassle on Windows.

The alpha stage is the best time to test if it also works via Wine or Proton -- while you can still give feedback to the devs about it.

Probably the only good thing about Google Docs becoming so popular in school/education use... All you need is a current Chromium based browser mostly.

The Web versions of Office, err MS 365, err CoPilot App.. (OMG!>!!>) ... aren't so bad to use in a Linux browser either.

> All you need is a current Chromium based browser mostly.

Google Docs works fine for me in Firefox as well.

> Kinda wish i could run everything my family wants on Debian. I know i could do that right now, but the wife and kids will never get used to that if they have to use Microsoft products in their working and school life.

You won't know until you try. My mum used all versions of Windows from 3.1 till Windows 7. She hated Windows 8, and that's when I decided to switch her to Linux (with XFCE) - and she felt the UI was a lot more familiar to her than Windows 8. I recently showed her a few screenshots of Windows 11, and she finds her current desktop (now on KDE) a lot more familiar than Windows 11. Same with Office, she prefers the older style toolbar of LibreOffice than the ribbon UI of modern versions Office.

So maybe install it on a spare device as a trial and see how they like it?

Might as well just use Windows 7 if the security surface is this bad on later windows.

Windows 7 market share was actually growing for a while according to:

https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...

Not sure what caused the inflection point in December 2025.

wonder if it was dumping off windows 10 machines or lay offs that did it.

I have the mspaint.exe from the same version too :P. It complains about registry stuff on launch but other than that it works fine. There's no spray can in the modern paint!

I like paint shop pro, I use 4.12.

I need to just break down and find an old version of that... from before the Jasc sellout. IIRC, it ran via Wine without issue too.

I try to use Pinta/Paint.Net, but it's not quite as good as I remember psp being. I don't even hate the newer MS Paint... thought I'm only on windows for my work environment and even then.

Aside: I've been using my personal computer more, so I can work on a limited surface with docker and ai agent, then just bring in the components I'm working on when ready. My work environment is really locked down, no wsl, no docker... and it's like working in 2002 to some extent... It's literally easier for me to create stand-alone projects, work on a given feature in complete isolation... AI agent mostly to boilerplate the environment and most of the automated sanity tests, then I can focus on just what I'm working on.

If you don't mind using a browser, Photopea is pretty awesome: https://www.photopea.com/

They also added strange hacked on half-support for alpha-transparency in modern MS Paint. Meaning there is an alpha layer, and imported staff may utilize it, but if you need to do anything with that layer, you're basically SOL.

Better to have no alpha-transparency than whatever this is. At least old Paint just turned it white, and you could manipulate the white layer, with this working with the alpha layer is a nightmare.

Why does it show registry error?

I copied out mspaint.exe and some resource files as well were needed.

It runs for me without error.

No idea. Probably because I'm on a work machine and need admin permission to make registry changes or something

There used to be a website that has these installable.

Update - it's just the games; I thought it had notepad and calc as well

I feel bad for anyone at MS who thought these applications needed anything more than bugfixes. Welcome to the Notepad team, the entire world would be better off it you did nothing at all!

I just don't get why they didn't just add these features to WordPad, where it would at least make more sense.

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