from Hacker News

Why does part of the Windows 98 Setup program look older than the rest? (2020)

by xeeeeeeeeeeenu on 4/10/24, 12:10 AM with 245 comments

  • by vbezhenar on 4/10/24, 5:41 AM

    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Chenmunka May 26, 2020 at 16:59

    chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/... : Page not found

    This is really wrong. I wanted to read that discussion.

  • by timetraveller26 on 4/10/24, 1:57 AM

    Windows XP installation process seemed something similar.

    I remember I was blown away the first time I installed from an ubuntu live cd.

  • by afavour on 4/10/24, 12:39 AM

    Interesting! Makes a lot of sense, too: if you’re offering the ability to upgrade from 3.1 you’re going to need to support it anyway, so why not use it as a setup bootstrap?

  • by kapitanjakc on 4/10/24, 5:47 AM

    I was somehow able to change my mouse processing animation to red running horse.

    That was the highlight of my year and I showed it to all my schoolmates.

  • by qingcharles on 4/10/24, 5:07 AM

    What is the official name of this minimal Windows 3 system? I know it used to have a name. It was used for other purposes too, but I can't for the life of me remember what.

  • by nerdo on 4/10/24, 4:07 AM

    Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

  • by rl3 on 4/10/24, 2:52 AM

    Windows Millennium Edition was much flashier, although I particularly liked the blue background and white text.

  • by schnable on 4/10/24, 10:49 AM

    I am so tired of clicking through cookie acknowledgements on every freakin StackExchange subdomain. Somebody please make it stop.

  • by grzeshru on 4/10/24, 1:32 AM

    New Old Thing goes in-depth about the windows under windows.

  • by anacrolix on 4/11/24, 3:13 AM

    SE/SO has been a tire fire since 2014.

  • by ivanjermakov on 4/10/24, 1:28 AM

    Why every file name is uppercase? Is there any reason for that convention, perhaps better readability on low res display?

  • by 1970-01-01 on 4/10/24, 12:42 AM

    The peak of mouse-driven GUI was Windows 98. The icon designs, the customization, and the animation is unmatched even today.

    https://alexmeub.com/old-windows-icons/

  • by koyote on 4/10/24, 2:20 AM

    I used to only own 'upgrade' versions of Windows (cheaper).

    Whenever I had to reinstall Windows (which was frequent back in Win98 days), I had to first install DOS from floppy, then Win 3.11 from floppy, then a CD-ROM driver, then Win95 from CD until I could finally install Win98. (at one point I acquired a non-upgrade version of Win95 but it came on 20+ floppies, so the installation was not really much faster).

    The end-result was a Win98 installation with a lot of old software lying around as the 'upgrade' installers did not always remove all of the existing items.

  • by CommieBobDole on 4/10/24, 1:32 AM

    There's a whole list of weird Windows UI remnants from previous versions on github:

    https://github.com/Lentern/windows-11-inconsistencies

  • by Dalewyn on 4/10/24, 12:28 AM

    The Windows 11 installer is basically Windows 7 for the first part too, though this might be changing soon.