
Run Windows 2000 in your browser - waivek
https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=https://bellard.org/jslinux/win2k.cfg&mem=192&graphic=1&w=1024&h=768
======
Maakuth
Windows 2000 was a great OS, I preferred it over XP for as long as it was
feasible. Back when Windows XP was released, activation was considered quite
intrusive in privacy sense and Windows 2000 was the last release without it.
Oh have times changed.

~~~
m0skit0
Actually XP was a slight modification over 2000, specially graphically. Hence
the version naming 5.0 and 5.1.

~~~
josteink
I remember Microsoft held back updates to Windows 2000 to force people to
upgrade.

I remember USB and wifi support in particular being painful. When I finally
had to cave in, I was not happy.

How times have changed indeed :)

~~~
m0skit0
Still Windows 2000 was more oriented to servers (which btw was the main
business for the NT line until XP). You could easily mistake an XP for 2000 if
you removed the skinning.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I removed all the graphical changes for performance reasons on older boxes.
People thought it was Windows 2000 as you said.

------
Aardwolf
FYI: internet actually works in it. If you start IE in it, you get the network
connection wizard, choose lan and let it auto configure, and it works. IE will
go to a default msn.com page that it will be unable to actually render, but
google.com works. But wikipedia over https not for some reason

~~~
cesarb
That's because MSIE uses an operating system component for SSL/TLS, and the
version of that component on Windows 2000 has only insecure or weak ciphers,
and none of them is accepted by Wikipedia's servers. According to qualys
([https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewClient.html?name=IE&vers...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewClient.html?name=IE&version=6&platform=XP&key=18)),
even on Windows XP it knows only insecure ciphers (small key size or the
broken RC4 cipher) and weak ciphers (3DES has a small block size, which is now
considered insecure).

------
taspeotis
Also note there's plenty of other interesting stuff on the site, too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=bellard.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=bellard.org)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard)

~~~
z3t4
Looks like he's working with business coaching/consulting ... I found this
video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu241uoLJSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu241uoLJSQ)
The audio quality is bad, but there's some nice stuff in there like what
successful businesses does right and vice versa.

~~~
interfixus
I somehow do not believe this is _the_ Fabrice Bellard.

~~~
razakel
The title and description say "Fabrice Beillard", so, no.

------
sebazzz
This is amazing. Even the web browser works. I wonder how that works since
cross-domain AJAX calls are usually not possible.

~~~
larrykwg
From the FAQ:
[https://bellard.org/jslinux/faq.html](https://bellard.org/jslinux/faq.html)

> Can I access to the network from the virtual machine ?

> Yes it is possible. It uses the websocket VPN offered by Benjamin Burns (see
> his blog[1]). The bandwidth is capped to 40 kB/s and at most two connections
> are allowed per public IP address. Please don't abuse the service.

[1] [http://www.benjamincburns.com/2013/11/10/jor1k-ethmac-
suppor...](http://www.benjamincburns.com/2013/11/10/jor1k-ethmac-support.html)

------
FRex
There's a few in browsers OSes on [http://copy.sh/v86/](http://copy.sh/v86/)
too, it seems to be an independent effort.

~~~
Fnoord
The one linked here is based on JSLinux [1]. All done by Fabrice Bellard of
QEMU fame. If you look at the list, this is the first Microsoft Windows
version running in JSLinux. Heck, its the first time a proprietary OS runs in
JSLinux. Before, it was only Linux and FreeDOS.

What you linked is also based on QEMU btw.

[1]
[https://bellard.org/jslinux/index.html](https://bellard.org/jslinux/index.html)

~~~
FRex
This is why I said it's (seemingly) an independent effort. I've seen JSLinux
before and heard of Fabrice Bellard before due to QEMU, TCC and FFmpeg. The
one in my comment is done by another person named Fabian Hemmer. I'm not sure
what your point here is while I just linked a similar project.

Where did you take the information that what I linked is "based on" QEMU? Its
readme only mentions using QEMU's (and KVM's) tests/test cases and sounds like
an original work with regards to the emulator itself:
[https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/Readme.md](https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/Readme.md)

~~~
Fnoord
You're right, it seems not to be based on QEMU code (which is programmed in C)
but a full-blown JavaScript implementation of x86-32.

~~~
FRex
Thanks for clearing that up.

------
hultner
Would this possibly run Windows ME? Well, as much ME ever ran at least.

~~~
unixhero
To be fair, ME was an abberation. Win2000, WinXP SP2/3 and Win7 were good
releases.

~~~
m0skit0
ME was the last installment of the 9x kernel series (not a surprise the 9x
line died...), while 2000 and follow ups were NT kernel.

~~~
digi_owl
ME was some kind of weird hybrid as best i recall. No that i dealt with it
much beyond trying to rescue some failing installs.The main thing i recall was
that it booted all the way to the UI layer before getting scandisk going...

~~~
my123
ME had the new (from NT) WDM driver model, which caused quite a bit of issues
when mixed with older drivers. It was an end-of-the-road hybrid.

------
Fnoord
How does this work with the licensing? It runs in your browser, so you need a
valid license and not the host?

~~~
toyg
Can you even get a license for Win2000 anymore... ? I expect no license from
that era would consider a scenario like this anyway.

~~~
taspeotis
It's a bit of a clusterfuck [1] but you can buy a license to a newer version
of Windows and exercise downgrade rights if you've got your old Windows 2000
media and product keys around, or something:

> It is also important to understand that although Microsoft grants downgrade
> rights we do not necessarily provide the means (media and product keys) to
> downgrade. So what does this mean? In order to downgrade software you will
> need the bits of the earlier version or edition and a product key. Microsoft
> only supplies bits and product keys to Volume License customers and only for
> certain versions and editions of the software. Volume Licensing customers
> have access to the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) where they will
> have access to the current version and the prior version of the software
> they have licensed. We refer to the current version of software as version
> “n” and the prior version of the software as n-1. There are also certain
> core Microsoft products that we provide n-2 and occasionally n-3 versions of
> the software via the VLSC. Software titles where n-2 and n-3 versions are
> available can be viewed here. If you have legally obtained physical media
> for earlier Microsoft products that your organization is currently licensed
> to use through downgrade rights, you may use that media for downgrades.

And in fact, despite it being Windows _Server_ 2000 you can exercise downgrade
rights from Windows 10 Pro [2]. All the way back to Windows NT 3.51!

[1]
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/licensing/2013/02/06/dow...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/licensing/2013/02/06/downgrade-
rights-explained/)

[2]
[https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-...](https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-4a6d-aed9-f2c1f8f23e14/downgrade_rights.pdf)

~~~
cesarb
Isn't Windows 2000 the only one where Microsoft doesn't distribute the media
anywhere, because of Java?

~~~
jenscow
Right. When I last checked, you can get as low as Windows 3.1 from MSDN.. but
not 2000.

------
caiob
I wonder if there's ever gonna be a day when we'll see Vista running in the
browser.

------
ape4
Anyone know how this works?

~~~
baobrien
It's a full blown x86 emulator written in javascript.

------
bigp3t3
ntoskernal missing...

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Maybe your ad blocker is breaking things?

The server also appears to be under very heavy load right now.

~~~
netsharc
"I can boot the OS because an ad-blocker prevented download of the kernel."

I guess we really do live in the future.

Insert joke about EA going into the OS business and asking for money to
download USB 3.1 drivers here.

Then again, we already had
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service)

~~~
52-6F-62
Hey that's not fair. They would also give you the option of unlocking it
yourself by gaining enough points by accomplishing arbitrary challenges. You
only have to pay if you don't want to play along, silly.

------
peki
how about Netscape 3.01 in a browser?

------
nl
Every time I doubt the myth of the 10x programmer I go look at Fabrice
Bellard's site.

Just look at his 2001 winning International Obfuscated C Code Contest self-
hosting C compiler:
[http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2001/bellard.hint](http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2001/bellard.hint)

He won the year before too, with a program which found the largest known prime
number.

In 2009 he wrote a program which he used to calculated Pi to the most digits
ever (at that point), on a desktop PC. He broke the previous record _which was
set on a 640 nodes supercomputer_.

(Oh yes, original author of QEMU and FFMPEG too)

~~~
duggan
I've always been under the impression that the dismissal of the "myth of the
10x programmer" was more about its use as a general hiring filter rather than
whether there exist prolific programmers (examples of whom seem readily
available).

~~~
candiodari
Perhaps we should split up the myths:

1) myth of the 10x programmer - true

2) "we hire 10x programmers" \- look at salaries - false (even for companies
like Google and Facebook, who hire -at best- 1.5x programmers)

~~~
Consultant32452
Price's Law suggests that the square root of the number of workers in a
particular domain constitute half the productivity. This means if a particular
office has 100 coders, 10 of them make up half the total productivity. So the
top performers are doing ~5% of the total work each, while the regular
performers, on average, are doing 0.5%. So statistically every place with 100
developers has ten 10x coders whether that's Google or anywhere else.

