You can download Felix’s Windows 95 Electron app and run it on Windows, macOS or major Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora.Īll you need to download is download the ~100MB runtime from GitHub: Missing/broken features, including network.Can be quickly reset from the boot screen.You also can’t “reboot” the system, add new users, copy/paste between app and host OS, or make any major configuration changes without seriously stressing the poor thing out.īut Felix says, as this is all open source, he’s open to pull requests.įor me, I can’t complain this is 22 year old legacy OS running through javascript virtualisation on a modern system. Oh, and launching the MS-DOS prompt did nothing other than freeze my session (blub). Once I got my bearings I did manage to get some some apps open, twiddle a few settings, and play around in minesweeper.Ī couple features didn’t work (at least, not on my system) including network connections, display resizing, and pointer speed control. This made it difficult to accurately navigate my way around, move app windows, and access buttons. I found the mouse sensitivity inside the virtualised window to be a little off. JavaScript, man: is there anything it can’t do (other than run efficiently)? How well does it work?įirst thing first: booting is instant: you launch the app, tap esc, and the whole desktop is there, right in front of you, ready to go. What I found interesting (other than checking in on older versions of apps I haven’t used for the best part of a decade) is similar successive releases of Windows are to this formative version.

Playing around with old versions of any operating system is always a hoot, even if you lack the “nostalgia” factor of having sampled it first time around.įor instance, I hadn’t ever used Windows 95 until I installed this app. But I have to admit that it runs far better than it probably should!

Felix says 99.999% of his “joke” effort is down to their work.Īdmittedly Felix’s Windows 95 electron app is more of a novelty showcase than a practical way to run the old school software. Wondering how it’s possible to package and run an entire OS inside an Electron app? All props go to the v86 project, which promises “x86 virtualization in JavaScript, running in your browser and NodeJS”.

Windows 95 emulator virtualbox