Why a Linux User Is Using Windows 3.1

colinneagle writes "About two weeks back, I was using my Android tablet and looking for a good graphics editor. I wanted something with layers and good text drawing tools. That's when it hit me. We already have that. Photoshop used to run on Windows 3.1. And Windows 3.1 runs great under both DOSBox and QEMU, both of which are Open Source emulators available for Android and every other platform under the sun. So I promptly set to work digging up an old copy of Photoshop. The last version released for Windows 3.1 was back in 1996. And finding a working copy proved to be...challenging. Luckily, the good folks at Adobe dug around in their vaults and managed to get me up and running. And, after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with an astoundingly functional copy of Photoshop that I can now run on absolutely every device I own. And the entire environment (fonts, working files and all) are automatically backed up to the cloud and synced between systems. But what other applications (and, potentially, games) does this give me access to? How far can I take this?"

Re:I've done this with Dosbox too but...

[hodet]

So that's your solution? Buy a Surface Pro? He already has a tablet and used it to meet his needs by spending $0.

Re:Old software?

[Howitzer86]

The neat thing I remember about Paint Shop Pro 3 was that the trial didn't stop you from using the program. It was like Winzip used to be - you could keep using it. These days if an activation server goes out the company has to give you a non DRM version or you're just SOL. And even if they do it, it could still end up becoming confusing legal mess like it did for Adobe.

Re:Hardware, file formats, and Internet security

[flimflammer]

Try opening a modern PSD in the old Photoshop for Windows 3.1 and see what error message doesn't pop up.

Have you actually tried doing that before you said this? Because of all formats, the Photoshop file format is incredibly backward compatible. I know at the very least you can open CS6 documents saved in compatibility mode (which is the default mode) in Photoshop 5.0 which was released in 1998.

Been there!

[eggstasy]

What an interesting question, I've done that before, mostly out of nostalgia. And, of course, frustration with the upgrade treadmill.
There's essentially nothing you can't do with a 16-bit windows, it's what people worked with and played with, so there's a bit of everything .

You should install Win32s, WinG, Video for Windows, Trumpet Winsock.

Honestly I'm surprised you found it hard to track down old software, there's a pretty huge scene around it.
You can get pretty much every OS and application here: http://winworldpc.com/library_m1.shtml [winworldpc.com]
This is also a great site to get old software: http://www.oldversion.com/ [oldversion.com]
Moar: http://wiki.oldos.org/Downloads/Windows3x [oldos.org]
http://gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm [gaby.de]

There are some surprisingly modern browsers available for 3.1, grab Opera 3.62 (also Netscape 4 and IE 5.5), and try Calmira for a Win9x type of GUI running under 3.1 - put the default XP wallpaper on that, and you will fool a lot of people :)
I once hacked XP to natively run the NT 3.51 shell on startup, instead of Windows Explorer. It wasn't hard.

DOSBox sucks for Windows, though, you should probably just run a VM, added performance. You can find some Windows games on abandonware sites, Civilization 2 was a good one :)
http://www.gameswin.biz/gameen.php?id=379 [gameswin.biz]

Let me know if you need anything else, would love to have a chat with a fellow enthusiast.

Re:You can apparently get GIMP on Android

[oever]

Gimp is getting some good competition from Krita [krita.org] now. The image editing application that is part of Calligra Suite [calligra-suite.org] with a focus on painting is very active with many releases. It has CMYK support, tons of filters and brushes and an active community of artists [krita.org]. And there is a tablet version called Krita Sketch [krita.org].