In my opinion the best choice for a programming environment if you want to reach the masses and get them coding would be Python and if the wxPython libraries came pre-loaded with the OS, fairly small redistributable programs could be easily passed around. There is the Boa Constructor IDE for wxPytho...

From what I understand, there is DOS\Win16, Win32 (Win 9x\ME), WIn32s (Win 2k\XP) and Win64.

Programs written in Win32 must go through a Win32s compatibility layer on 2k\XP machines so they will find what they expect.

just out of curosity why would you want to do this? Just for a hypothetical example, say a group of Mac enthusiasts got together and bundled a bunch of apps, alt-shell and hacked Dll's etc with ROS. to create a distro that emulated the Mac OSX look and feel right out of the box and call it ROX... R...

A little off topic but... (and there's the unability to kill explorer.exe, and other small glitches, but it gives win9x its charm :)) You can get around this and a few other instability problems On Win98 by simply using a 3rd party replacment shell - dosn't solve the resource issues though. Now, bac...

Although I also voted no and agree that a notepad app should be just a basic editor w/o all those bells and whistles, there is something to be said about a notepad for the 21st century... I mean a tabbed multi document interface. 15 instances of notepad opened all over my desktop is not my idea of g...

What can I add that others have not already voiced except that I too look forward to the day that ROS becomes a a small yet stable platform for Windows multimedia production. The idea of using ROS for this purpose is what peaked my interest in the OS in the first place and, as I can see from the com...

OK, forgive me if this seems ignorant but why must the boot sector be written to at all? I mean, ROS uses a FAT32 file system right? So, why not just use a kernel loader program similar to loadlin.exe which can load a Linux kernel from a DOS partition (loadros.exe) instead? In this way, to prep the ...