Thousands of apps ported back to Windows 95 twenty-eight years later — .NET Framework port enables backward compatibility for modern software

MattKC's demo of a functioning click-and-drag screenshot tool in Win95 after his changes are made.

YouTuber MattKC, in his own words, ported "thousands of apps" to Windows 95 by painstakingly porting Windows 98's most prominent feature, the .NET Framework, back to old 95. The main restriction of Windows 95 compared to 98, after all, is the lack of the .NET Framework— in most other ways, Windows 98 is astonishingly close to its predecessor in design and function. But why did he do this?

The 51-minute video we watched a few times over mostly reveals genuine enthusiasm for that era of hardware and software, as one would imagine if he were willing to make a film about expanding Windows 95 28 years after its release. The original video, embedded below, also has several amusing live-action tangents that set the tone and character, including a few beautifully shot intermissions.