The Joys of KernelEx - Part 2 - Modernish Apps
7Where part 1 looked at games, this looks at other stuff you can run with KernelEx. Basically, this part's all about running modern applications, like modern-day web surfing and image editing. This part actually took a long time to do because of the many, many programs I tested. There were a few things I knew would run mostly fine under KernelEx, Opera 12.02 and Flash Player 11.9 being among those. Being an older browser, Opera 12.02 and its Presto engine (still kinda mad about them jettisoning Presto for Chromium - has anybody gotten Chrome or one of its derivatives working under Win98SE/KernelEx, by the way?) renders a few websites kinda funky, as shown in the video. The latest version of the VLC media player works perfectly fine, provided you stick MSVCR71.DLL (I think) in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder and rename it MSVCRT.DLL. GIMP 2.6.6 does run but is kinda flaky. I didn't show it in this video, but OpenOffice 3.2 runs fine as well. Bear in mind that you might have to set some EXEs and DLLs to Windows 2000 SP4 compatibility mode or higher to get some stuff to run.
This is also the part where I really figured that something like a Pentium 4 would probably be the best option for a KernelEx setup (I'm using a PIII here), if only to maximize compatibility with newer programs. I know a few things I tried demanded a CPU with SSE2. I don't know if such a system would be fine for daily use, but it's still interesting to see what works and what doesn't work. The next KernelEx video I upload will showcase things imploding in spectacular fashion.