A Windows 95-like shell for Windows 3.1x

http://www.calmira.net/

by notpushkin • 4 years ago

157 92 4 years ago

weikju3• 4 years ago

I used it back in 1995 when my PC couldn’t run Win95, and I had Win95-envy. It was really mind-blowing at the time to be able to change the UI of Windows like that.

A little bit later I downloaded 20 or so Slackware floppies and the rest is history…

rpastuszak• 4 years ago

I had Win95-envy

Ha, I know the pain, I remember being 10 and (literally) dreaming about 16mb or RAM so I could install it!

toast0• 4 years ago

I think minimum was 4mb, and it ran ok with 8mb, although expect swapping if you multitask. It certainly ran nicer with 16mb, but you didn't need it.

borissk2• 4 years ago

Did you run Slackware from DOS or did you install it properly with a bootloader?

weikju3• 4 years ago

Properly ran it with LILO as the boot loader. Shortly later the "boot from DOS" things started cropping up but I still preferred running them properly.

fmakunbound• 4 years ago

I hand totally forgotten about that. Wasn’t it called dosfs? It put metadata in files that would show up in DOS when you rebooted.

Narishma2• 4 years ago

I remember having to boot my first distro from DOS because my sound card (a weird thing that was a combination of modem and sound card) didn't have Linux drivers. I would first load the DOS drivers, then boot Linux from DOS and it would then recognize it as a Sound Blaster.

lathiat• 4 years ago

Me too :)

I remember that apparently for desktop applications icons to work it had to launch a process just to be each icon so was quite memory intensive. I seem to recall it also requiring “win32s”

My machine would throw a text mode confirmation prompt over the win95 graphical installer when it tried to write the boot sector as boot sector virus protection and this would freeze the system so windows 95 installation never worked.

weikju3• 4 years ago

ohhh win32s... that's another memory from ages past lol

_dmg_• 4 years ago

Me too! Calmira, the Q-Basic manual, a trackball, Commander Keen, and tons of a few really worn out floppy disks of shareware.

Gordonjcp• 4 years ago

Same but I got Slackware off a Computer Shopper cover CD ;-)

sedatk7• 4 years ago

I wrote a similar shell that ran on DOS in 1994. It was called Baston. It won the 1st place award in a programming contest organized by Microsoft and PC World Magazine in Turkey. I was 18 back then. Here are a couple screenshots:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/241217/159136746-e...

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/241217/159136763-e...

hvs• 4 years ago

Nice. A Motif-style DOS shell. Looks good.

sedatk7• 4 years ago

Thanks! I didn't know it was called Motif, I'd only seen screenshots of workstations in UnixWorld magazine, and I'd loved the Motif style the most. There were also OpenLook and NextSTEP screenshots in the issues I had :)

e-_pusher• 4 years ago

The design really looks solid - do you remember where you drew inspirations from?

Cok guzel, helal olsun :)

sedatk7• 4 years ago

Yes, a couple issues of UnixWorld magazine my brother had given me. I saw the workstation screenshots and was so enamored with them that I was obsessed with writing a GUI library. That was how FatalVision was born very briefly. I was specifically impressed with how cool OSF/Motif windows looked hence the look I picked here. https://github.com/ssg/fatalvision

ve tesekkurler :)

therein• 4 years ago

Nice to see `ssg` here. :)

- Another Turkish expat living in the same city as you do

sedatk7• 4 years ago

:wave: :)

ksaj2• 4 years ago

I was looking through the Windows 95-like desktop screenshots and it reminded me of everything I hated about Windows and why I exclusively used Linux during that time.

I still mostly do, but the laptop I'm using right now has Windows 10 on it (for now), and I don't even mind.

Anyway, I wish I knew about your project back then. The Motif look is so much nicer. It doesn't have those garish strong colours all over the place. And the widgets are more familiar.

Modern desktops are still better than either option (you even basically say as much on Github) but your project was certainly solid, and an alternative that is so much easier on the eyes.

usrn2• 4 years ago

Modern desktops are still better than either option

If I hadn't found CWM I'd probably still be on FVWM2 (with the mwm theme.) IDK if that counts as a "modern desktop" but I'm certainly a fan.

sedatk7• 4 years ago

Thanks! Interestingly, Motif was based on Windows 3.x look, more precisely "Presentation Manager" look designed for OS/2 and Windows. You can see the similarities in how resize corners and close buttons etc are laid out on windows.

Windows 95 was a phenomenal success IMHO in terms of UI design, and it was partly based on Cairo which got a lot of inspiration from NextSTEP, but Win95 became so widespread that it became somewhat bland, so I agree in that sense. I strongly recommend the story about how Windows 95 team achieved excellence in the UI design, especially the "Start" button and Taskbar, the things that we take for granted today: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...

lproven2• 4 years ago

Very nice. Reminds me a lot of PC GEOS:

Version 1.2:

http://toastytech.com/guis/geos12.html

Version 2.0:

https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/gwe2

sedatk7• 4 years ago

Thanks! You're right, looks very similar indeed. I guess they based their looks on Motif too.

timbit42• 4 years ago

WPS4WIN is the OS/2 WorkPlace Shell for Windows 3.1x. Much nicer than the Win95 shell, in my opinion. It looks like this: http://toastytech.com/guis/wps.html

BobMcBob3• 4 years ago

As someone that ran it for over a year, before getting a Win95 box, I don't disagree. But at the end of the day, it was still Win3.1x under the hood. Win95 was bloated at the time, sure, but after the first service pack I thought it was a huge improvement.

hankman863• 4 years ago

I bought the Windows 95 update disk on the day of release. Only then to find that it made my Pentium 60 and 8 MB of RAM unbearably slow.

In hindsight, Windows 95 was the OS to skip, Windows 98 was the one to go for.

HeckFeck• 4 years ago

This looks to be quite the achievement, with numerous custom UI controls written just for the project. The author describes them here http://www.calmira.net/source/index.htm and offers them for anyone else to use. They include labels, paths, loading bars, even a Win95 style Pie chart.

There are also UI hooks and messaging components.

All this written in Delphi and designed to run atop the humble Windows 3.1 kernel! Source code is available should anyone wish to hack away.

game-of-throws• 4 years ago

If this could run on Windows 11, I'd install it in a heartbeat.

cmeacham98• 4 years ago

There are win95-esque themes for win10 at the very least. There's probably some for win11 too (or maybe there's enough in common the skins could work for both?)

seritools• 4 years ago

When it comes to the task bar, the closest to it might be RetroBar: https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar

72deluxe2• 4 years ago

Another alternative (to get a usable taskbar back without grouping of icons etc.) is https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher.

visiblink• 4 years ago

You can re-skin both the start button and taskbar with Classic Shell / Open-Shell too. My Windows 10 is skinned to look like the old Windows Embedded theme.

signaru2• 4 years ago

My bad for misunderstanding as "running directly" instead of porting. Anyway, I don't have Win 11 yet, but winedvm that runs 16bit apps on 64bit Windows might get you there. Although from what I remember running Calmira on 32bit Windows is a trippy experience.

mx7zysuj4xew• 4 years ago

How on god's green earth is a 30 year old operating system more customizable and user-friendly than any of the modern interfaces (that includes both windows 10 and gnome)

RedShift1• 4 years ago

God don't get me started, I've really come to hate how Windows 10 looks. I come from a time where 8 extra bits of color depth cost you an arm and a leg (1,5 arms and 2 legs adjusted for inflation) and you were willing to fight a war for 5 extra pixels of screen real estate. Anti-aliasing was just a dream.

Now we have full HD screens with 32 bit colors and HDR, powerful GPUs to draw edges as smooth AF and what did we decide to do with all of that? Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares.

I think the Windows 10 UI was created by a group of depressed people and it really shows.

grepfru_it• 4 years ago

Meanwhile I upgraded (downgraded?) from Neon to windows 11 on one of my laptops. On more than one occasion I assumed I was using KDE plasma. Firefox renders basically the same between the two, all of my apps run on windows and Linux (steam, VLC, etc).. it’s the nuance in notifications that threw me into uncanny valley. Also made me realize the two things that I need from a desktop are a solid notification system (kde is ok, I like how it’s done in windows 11 and on macOS) and a smooth mouse experience. Everything in the UI is just a skin and can be emulated or replaced

nikanj• 4 years ago

The Windows 11 UI is telling the same people ”now imagine everyone has a tablet”.

You’ll likely get some pushback along the lines of ”We already tried that with Windows 8 and everyone hated it”, but keep pushing - quote something about Henry Ford and horses if neccessary

SkeuomorphicBee• 4 years ago

Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares.

For me the worst of those is the prevalence of whitespace, and the loss of the grey background.

Grey was the greatest color for UI background, it wasn't overly bright, it won't burn your eyes like modern UIs that shine like a thousand suns, no need for separate "dark theme" because a grey theme is comfortable in all light conditions, it allowed the content color to go in two different directions (if your background is white then your content can only get darker, but if your background is grey your content can be darker or brighter than the background), and it has a clear visual separation between the grey app UI (menus, toolbars, ...) and the white content (E.G. document being edited).

sreekotay• 4 years ago

No concern for security helps a lot...

userbinator• 4 years ago

"Designers" happened. Also the trend of forcing users to fit the tool rather than the other way around.

pjerem2• 4 years ago

Holly sh..

Exactly this happens every time in my company. Designers and PMs wants to « educate » the user and force a strict workflow for them. They never take into account that power users exists.

Sure, most of our users are happy this way because our product replaces shitty and complex excel sheets. But I always wonder about the 1% who took the time to learn and master excel and were fast with their tool. For those people, our product must be a PITA, because their is no other (faster) way to work than the path PMs and designers decided.

viraptor2• 4 years ago

You can still do the same thing on modern windows. Alternative shells were a thing for quite a while. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for... for a list. Unfortunately people don't seem to be that interested anymore and the options that remain are Cairo https://cairoshell.com/ and blackbox.

But in theory: It's as customisable as you want. You "just" need to write it. The linked 3.11 project is not just a customisation - it's a whole shell just like Cairo.

pjerem2• 4 years ago

Isn’t blackbox dead ? The latest release on the website is from 2009 and is proudly announcing Vista compatibility.

90sguifan• 4 years ago

Gnome is disgustingly restrictive, and the general reddit trend of "ricing" unix windows managers is no better. It feels like we lost the plot on user-friendly expandable GUIs around the Vista era.

happymellon• 4 years ago

Isn't this the same as replacing Gnome with a different shell?

etaioinshrdlu• 4 years ago

I want to run it in Wine and use it as a daily driver. Apparently Wine does have support for Win16, but I doubt it works on modern systems for various reasons.

borissk2• 4 years ago

I remember running Netscape Navigator on W4WG 3.11. For some reason the 16 bit version was many times slower than the 32 bit one for Win NT.

dvhh• 4 years ago

There is a lot of workaround when you are working with segments of 64kb addressable memory space.

pugworthy• 4 years ago

Now if we only had a CP/M shell inside a Windows 95 shell running on Windows 3.1. Like an OS without PID to keep it from oscillating wildly.

BobMcBob3• 4 years ago

Back in the day, when I was but a young teen, sad that I couldn't afford Win95 when it first came out (or run it THAT well on a 486DX2/66mhz & 4MB RAM).

Stuck with Win3.11 I looked for other things I could run, that didn't involve me nuking the PC and installing Slackware or otherwise distrupt the "Family PC's" main use; running Lotus 123 for my mother's home accounting business.

So what I found was something that could mimic a "modern" OS, but that still offered 100% of the compatibility, that even an accounting parent could stomach.

IBM Workplace Shell for Windows 3.1x:

https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-workplace-shell/151

I found it on either the early web, or on a shareware BBS, but the purpose was the same; to convince someone to please, for the love of god, buy IBM OS/2 (not even OS/2 Warp!)

I sure as hell didn't care or want OS/2, but boy did it make my slowly falling behind Win3.11 PC look like the cool kids with their brand new spaceheater Pentiums.

I occasionally reflect back on that time and sorta miss those days, and that computer.. but then I remember it was a Packard Bell sunday flier special "package deal" purchased at Circuit City by a clueless parent in the early 90s, and I was lucky it lasted 4 years before the motherboard blew up and was sent to the recycler. Of course the 2 PSUs, and 3 HDDs dying in that time should have been a hint.

hankman863• 4 years ago

I remember this one. Must have been IBMs last ditch attempt to make people move over to OS/2.

santoshalper• 4 years ago

I think the 486/66 would probably have been ok for Windows 95, but the 4MB of ram would have been rough.

int_19h2• 4 years ago

For Win95, it was tolerable. Win98 with IE integration everywhere (remember "Active Desktop"?) was much more of a memory hog tho.

BobMcBob3• 4 years ago

I can tell you from first hand experience it was. 4mb was the minimum requirements and I can tell you, that legally MS was correct in that statement. When I eventually did get a copy of Win95 plus Update (SP1 basicly), I ran it for exactly 1 week before I scraped together enough money to purchase another 8mb of RAM from Fry's. After that it was fine, at least until it blew itself up.

watersb2• 4 years ago

I ran Windows NT 4.0 on a DX2/66 -- with 32GB of RAM.

The RAM cost about $750 from a Silicon Valley importer. 1994. That was during a crisis in worldwide memory availability, caused at least in part by a fire that destroyed the only factory that made a chemical required by the semiconductor industry.

Our current supply chain crisis seems worse, but it isn't the first.

jaclaz• 4 years ago

At the time we used Norton Desktop in the office:

http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html

But there was a leeser known shell that tried to mimic the Mac OS of the time (System 7/8), MCShell:

http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752

that was very good.

billybuckwheat• 4 years ago

Back in the late 90s, when I couldn't afford a newer computer and Linux wasn't an option for me, Calmira gave me an excuse to keep my PC running Windows 3.1 going. To be honest, I liked the combination of Calmira and Windows 3.1 better than Windows 95 and Windows 98.

Great computing memories ...

mysterydip• 4 years ago

I love that it went so long as to have an XP and even longhorn/vista variant.

poisonborz• 4 years ago

Well, guess what: https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsmodding/comments/ttm0nr/the_...

oxymoron• 4 years ago

Aside from the coolness of the actual thing, I love the early 00’s web site design. For a while, all sites looked like this.

72deluxe2• 4 years ago

I used this when I was running a donated 486 with only 8MB of RAM in about 1998? I was poor.

Fond memories.

realo• 4 years ago

Aaahhh... Motif!

This reminds me of the time when I replaced Solaris & Motif on my SUN workstation by Linux and KDE. KDE looked much nicer than Motif, to my young eyes.

The workstation felt faster after the switch, but maybe I was biased. :)

hankman863• 4 years ago

In retrospect, I think that much of the flatter Windows 3.x design is timeless whereas the pseudo 3D bevels of Windows 95 look dated by today’s standards.

The only practically useful UX novelties in Windows 95 were the start menu and combining the previously separate file and program manager paradigms.

usrn2• 4 years ago

I've seen some re-interpretations of phaux-3d rectilinear skeuomorphism that used a lot of light scattering effects and looked extremely modern. I thought around this year those would be common but everyone seems to be still hung up on flat design which is a bit disappointing (and then there's adwaita which is off in left field picking daisies as usual.)

int_19h2• 4 years ago

Win3.x had more prominent 3D bevels in places where it did have them - which was all the buttons.

I suspect that the main reason why it was generally flatter is because it supported monochrome displays. Win95, on the other hand, required VGA 640x480x16 (colors, not bits) as minimum. And of those 16 EGA colors, there were 4 different shades of grey! - a luxury they made full use of in the new 3D widgets.

Narishma2• 4 years ago

Small nitpick but those are CGA colors.

n3storm• 4 years ago

I used calmira back in the nineties :D

signaru2• 4 years ago

It was Calmira that made me aware of the existence of Delphi. I tried getting my hands on Delphi, but what I only had back then was VB3. Not everything was on the (dial-up) web back then, and I even scanned collections in physical shops where it was hard to find any software not for Win 9x.

Eventually I was able to program something in VB that would dock an "X close" button on the corner of active windows (since for me, that was the one glaring detail missing from the Win 9x experience, and the only other option was pay-ware). It was really messy hackish amateur teenager code, but it worked.

Fun old times.

jillesvangurp• 4 years ago

Ironically, both were shells for DOS.

Jaruzel• 4 years ago

Tangentially, this makes me wonder if it's worth building a lightweight desktop shell (i.e. app launcher, file explorer, dock, etc.) for the 'Validation OS' version of Windows 11:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

That way, you'd get all the nice security and hardware support of Windows 11, but without all the crap that Microsoft bundle on.

SixDouble5321• 4 years ago

This thing was so sick at the time. It really made 3.11 feel better to use. For me at least, Win95 needed a newer computer. It was minute before I could upgrade and this thing at least made me feel a lot better about not having the new hotness.

ausare• 4 years ago

Oh man I remember Calmira from back in the day! Thanks for the blast from the past.

IIRC it was written in Delphi which I was using majorly around the same time so had fun poking around its internals and customising it even further.

I believe it started out as something called Calypso...those memories are vague though.

llimos• 4 years ago

The funniest thing is that they tried to "provide welcome relief from the awkwardness of File Manager"... which Microsoft open-sourced a few years ago for those who still want it with win10/11[1], to much acclaim from its many fans[2]

[1] https://github.com/Microsoft/winfile

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790099

A Windows 95-like shell for Windows 3.1x

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