Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11
50 points by technetium
50 points by technetium
I wrote a bunch of programs for Windows 3.1 that used Win32s, so I imagine they'd likely still run if I had them around still.
This is one of those moments you are surprised to learn when someone has discovered something you just knew.
Freecell was the demo app in Win32s for Windows 3. It is thus several years older than NT as a retail OS.
I have downloaded Win32s and extracted Freecell from it, just to play the game on Win10 LTSC and Win11. Probably more than once in fact.
I have downloaded Win32s and extracted Freecell from it, just to play the game on Win10 LTSC and Win11. Probably more than once in fact.
My dad did the same. There must be dozens of you, dozens!
Now the most pressing question for me is how old minesweeper is.
And why I had forgotten the name FreeCell - maybe it was always called that in the English version of Win 3.11 and 95/98, but (I could be wrong) I was sure the German version displayed "Solitaire" and maybe I never really dug deeper.
Windows games from the pre-DirectX era use WinG, which is not supported out of the box on Win11. But I'm guessing FreeCell uses WinForms instead, which IIRC is.
Almost certainly raw Win32 API to draw the form and some BitBlt calls to move around the pictures.