Did the Windows 95 setup team forget that MS-DOS can do graphics?

One thing I didn&#x27;t see mentioned was that the resolution of text mode was typically higher than that of graphics mode. This is possible because it uses less RAM on the video card.<p>80x25 uses 720x400, whereas the default graphics modes were 640x480@4bpp or 320x200@8bpp.<p>Nothing wrong with text mode. Also, see some amazing uses of text mode in Scream Tracker 3 [1] or text-mode demos or intros, such as Yo! by The Future Crew [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Scream_Tracker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Scream_Tracker</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=A8S4-H_8ZA8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=A8S4-H_8ZA8</a>

If you look at the Microsoft &quot;developer blogs&quot;, almost all of them just post product updates. Not so Raymond Chen. He actually blogs.

I absolutely understand this. However, was there any particular reason why 9x used 3.1 as it&#x27;s preinstallation environment, as opposed to booting 9x directly? AFAIK, this imposed a lot of very specific restrictions on filename lengths because the preinstall environment didn&#x27;t understand FAT32 LFN extensions.<p>In comparison, the preinstall environment for the NT line was always just NT. Same for Linux and Mac OS[0].<p>[0] OS 9&#x27;s install media was actually a live CD, funnily enough, mainly because that OS was about as technically sophisticated as Windows 3.x.

I need dialog boxes, yes.<p>Do I really need character input? Username and such could be done in the final setup stage that already uses the new install.<p>The &quot;fancy new controls&quot; work sounds like it happened anyway.<p>Those simple animations don&#x27;t sound like they need a real scheduler, and I&#x27;m very skeptical of the idea that the above won&#x27;t fit into 640KB.<p>I&#x27;m not saying a 3.1 runtime is the wrong choice, but I think the article might be exaggerating the amount of work by a lot.

&gt; What if I told you that Microsoft already had an operating system that did all the things you are trying to do, and it’s fully debugged, with video drivers, a graphics library, a dialog manager, a scheduler, a protected mode manager, and input methods. And it has a fully staffed support team.<p>I thought this was going a different place. Surely if you want to run an operating system, running Windows 95 itself would make more sense - then you could e.g. use the same drivers for setup that you&#x27;re going to use in the real system.

It is curious that you can upgrade all versions of Windows in a sequence and it does work.

There&#x27;s nothing wrong in principle with the text interface installer.<p>I liked it, back then.

I&#x27;d definitely prefer drawing dialogs manually using some basic graphics library (e.g. BGI for Turbo Pascal and C) over Windows 3.1.

&gt; Now take a step back and look at what you’re doing. You’re writing an operating system.<p>Whoa whoa whoa, buddy. I&#x27;m a software developer. I don&#x27;t take a step back and look at what I&#x27;m doing. I don&#x27;t even know what I&#x27;m doing half the time.

&gt; Windows setup still follows this pattern of installing a miniature operating system to bootstrap the setup program. But today, the miniature operating system is Windows PE, the Windows Preinstallation Environment.<p>So, 30 years later, Microsoft followed the approach the article mocks?

I need a saw to make a saw.