Practically every old Microsoft operating system is available online through a DOSBox environment or something similar. In recent years we have visited Windows 1.0, Windows 95 and Windows 98, and beyond performance, the truth is they are not bad implementations. However, a developer named Felix Rieseberg decided to go a step further, and created an Electron wrapper to turn Windows 95 into a standalone app.
Windows 95 turned 23 years old yesterday. It's hard to believe that many of us were still struggling with 386 computers and only a couple of megabytes of RAM, but those were the rules back then. Today, only a handful of enthusiasts bother to run Windows 95 in a real environment, simply because that retro hardware is increasingly difficult to obtain. Between blown capacitors and batteries spewing poison, old systems require a lot of patience and maintenance. The direct alternative is to bet on x86 virtualizers and emulators. Current hardware can compensate for any performance loss with brute force, but there is also another option… which is to turn the entire operating system into an app.
That's exactly what developer Felix Rieseberg did. "Windows 95 as an App" is based on Electron, the framework of open source maintained by GitHub and used today by programs like Discord and WhatsApp. As expected, it's not the fastest reproduction on the planet, and it comes with some technical quirks. First, Internet Explorer doesn't work (we didn't expect much from that browser anyway), and second, it tends to hang quite a bit. One way to improve its performance is to reduce the resolution and color palette, getting an experience worthy of the year 1995. (?)
If you're interested in downloading the app or collaborating on its code, I recommend you hurry. After all, there's a complete and functional copy of Windows 95 inside, and we know very well that Microsoft gets nervous about such things. Now, if you want a Windows 95 environment without relying on Electron, I recommend making the effort (you'll need to know a little DOS) and carrying out an installation inside VirtualBox.
