Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I built my site as a Windows 95 experience (2025)
After years in the back burner I finally invested some decent time in materializing the idea. I still have a lot I want to add, but this is the opposite of a minimalist project, and I had to draw the release line somewhere. Built with SolidJS, Astro and tRPC, because why not.
This is a nostalgic Windows 95 experience built as an interactive website. The main attraction is a playable disk defragmenter, the classic utility that defined an era of personal computing. It's designed for anyone… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1IR
Years ago I stumbled across a basic version of this concept and it stuck with me. I knew if I was ever going to take on such a project, it would need to be flawless, but without coding experience it was just another idea that would never happen. By the end of 2024, as AI coding tools exploded everywhere, I finally had a way to make it real. I started from zero knowledge and spent months collaborating with AI agents as a learning experience. Every pixel and every function went through me. The AI translated what I asked for into code, but every decision was human. I didn't use existing OS…
2025 · mitchivin.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Defrag the Game▲326Hi, A while ago, I came across this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR3TbL3Tl6M on YouTube showing 8 hours of defragmenting a hard drive. For some reason, it inspired me to create this small game. Have fun :)
2024 · defrag-game.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Windows 95▲405Windows 95 app that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha. I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API. This…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6IR
After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…
2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →
- 7MP
link: https://kaibelmo.vercel.app github repo: https://github.com/KaiBelmo/kai-belmo Your thoughts and recommendations are highly appreciated :)
2023 · kaibelmo.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 8
Hi all, 1995 was a simpler time. There was no react, SSR, component libraries, and developers only had 4MB of RAM to work with. If you ask me, UIs have only gone downhill since then. So I created windows95jobs.com so people can experience the joy of simpler software while looking for a new SWE job. Repo: https://github.com/KyleMoore1/Win95Jobs (Built with react lol)
2025 · windows95jobs.com · its alternatives →
- 9
FreeUpMyMac▲110Hey HN Ex YC/Google engineer turned indie maker here - excited to share something I just shipped. The System Data in my Mac was taking up 300GB and it took me months to figure out how to clear the old cache, logs, junk and more. And CleanMyMac is a subscription - I refuse to pay subscription fees for Mac apps that run locally. So I built FreeUpMyMac an offline, lifetime Mac cleaner that clear junk with 1 click. And helps you visualize your storage with TreeMap/Sunburst. Hope it’s helpful to you as it is for me. Would love your feedback Tunde
Jan 2026 · freeupmymac.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Desktop Neo, rethinking the desktop UI and Dribble Playbook
2016 · layout.fm · its alternatives →
- 11WX
I geek out on any UI from the 2000s, so I built my personal site to look and feel like Windows XP. Made this two years ago to get better at React. My goal was to fool my dad into thinking he was actually using Windows XP and it seemed to work. No mobile version (yet) :( If you think it's cool you can check out the somewhat outdated code: https://github.com/SohailSayed/winxp-personal-website
2025 · sohailsayed.com · its alternatives →
- 12IW
2021 · mdw.la · its alternatives →
- 13IU
2014 · cartegram.com · its alternatives →
- 14MW
http://imagestash.org/ Kind of like Instapaper for images. While surfing at home one evening I found the perfect desktop background ... for my work machine. I got to pondering the quickest way to save a random image so I could get to it on all of my devices, got a wee bit carried away with the technical possibilities, and this was the result. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
2011 · imagestash.org · its alternatives →
- 15IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
- 16
Hey HN! This is a fun/educational project I built to learn OS programming. I started working on it right after graduating high school last year and have been working on it on and off during my first year of university. It features a TCP/IP stack, an HTTP server, a RAM file system, a BIOS bootloader, paging and memory management, and concurrent tasks based on cooperative scheduling, along with a custom library. It's written in a C programming style focused on safety (based on a custom library of core abstractions) that's inspired by the writing of Chris Wellons (nullprogram.com).…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17AW
Hi all! I was recently doing a live stream session at Build and created the start of a tool called Flashback. I wanted a way for agents to look through the history of popular design so you could reference different trends throughout time. I didn’t finish on the stream, but I kept coming back to the idea so ended up shipping it as a GitHub pages powered Skill and human browsable web site. I think it’s really interesting to see how design has evolved since 1900, and I learned a lot in this process. The repo is here: https://github.com/toby/flashback And the original stream…
Jul 2026 · toby.github.io · its alternatives →
- 18
Hi HN, I’m one of the devs behind StarDesk, a P2P-first remote desktop we’ve been building for ~1 year. We started this partly out of frustration: some popular RDP tools haven’t seen meaningful updates in a long time, and long-standing issues are often left unaddressed. As devs, we really dislike software that stagnates once it “works well enough”. StarDesk is our attempt to do it differently. What we focus on: -P2P by default (relay as fallback) -Low RTT + low jitter > chasing max bitrate -Encoder / input path tuned for real-time interaction -Modern E2EE (TLS/DTLS) UX-wise, setup…
Jan 2026 · stardesk.net · its alternatives →
- 19E
Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!
2024 · excalihub.dev · its alternatives →
- 20VN
2020 · vistaserv.net · its alternatives →
- 21AM
For the past few months, I’ve been hacking together Hive: a retro-style virtual workspace for devs who love building in public. It’s a bit rough but already has some cool features: - AI-powered presence to represent you when you’re offline. - Live video streaming to showcase your work in real time. - VS Code integration to broadcast your status live. - GraphQL API for full customization and hackability (such as using your own agents) - Web3 donations to support and get support from other builders. In this demo, you can claim a desk by walking up to it and pressing E, then personalize it with…
2024 · joinhive.devmode.digital · its alternatives →
- 22AF
Another Sunday afternoon project: add some pizzaz to your boring bare metal or virtual machine consoles! Written as a single Go binary; no dependencies. https://github.com/Fusion/modernfbv As usual, feedback please!
2022 · its alternatives →
- 23IH
Hello HN, I had some christmas free time over the last two weeks (Merry Christmas btw ;-)) and used that time to completely recreate the website of my app[1]. I used all the fancy new tools. I didn't know some of them when I started. What was my goal? * Pretty website * Blazing fast * Mobile first * SSR * Webp support * Generally all the best website practices (high lighthouse score) What did I use? * Tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com/) * Tailwind Components (https://tailwindui.com/) * React (https://reactjs.org/) * ViteJs…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 24IV
Hi HN, I’ve launched the website for my upcoming side business - a little Windows desktop application that I developed to scratch a personal itch. This is a significant milestone for me as it's both my first ever website and side business. The website itself is built using Tailwind CSS with plain JavaScript and some PHP scripts to handle the sign-up forms. I used a lot of ChatGPT for all of it. It's hosted on the the Hetzner level 1 webhosting plan costing EUR 1.90 per month and put behind Cloudflare. I am actually quite curious how this setting will hold up against the traffic from this…
2024 · iconpainter.io · its alternatives →
Also compare
- I recreated Windows XP as my portfolio alternatives
- Defrag the Game alternatives
- My self-written hobby OS is finally running on my vintage IBM ThinkPad alternatives
- Windows 95 alternatives
- I made a Doom-like game fit inside a QR code alternatives
- I recreated 90s Mode X demoscene effects in JavaScript and Canvas alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →