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userbinator · 2 years ago

    Full installation of Windows 95 - ~64MB
    sol.exe - 167KB

    jre-9.0.4_windows-x64_bin.exe - 96.6MB (compressed)
    Solitaire.jar - 463KB
It seems that even a VM containing all of Windows 95 would be smaller than a JRE and this version of Solitaire.

samuell · 2 years ago
Not to complain too much on a praise worthy effort, but it would have been so nice if this was coded in FreePascal with Lazarus. Then we would have tiny native binaries for all the desktop platforms, which would feel even more native.
qingcharles · 2 years ago
I saw a launcher in Task Manager today using 96MB of RAM. Its only job is to launch another app.

For a couple of years I programmed on a device where ALL the apps combined had to total less than 8KB.

lionkor · 2 years ago
Can we explain what this memory does? Is it just abstractions ontop of abstractions etc?
rpigab · 2 years ago
That's right, but we have to remember it's not really useful to optimize for binary size or RAM usage for a software that does not need multiple instances on servers, it's an end user app that you only need one of.

I think Java is a nice choice for a Solitaire game. If you're looking for efficiency, take a look at my command-line Solitaire that you can play in Gitlab pages or in a terminal : https://gitlab.com/rpigab/solitaire-cli

It's written in Rust so by design, it should be blazingly fast wink wink. Well there are many ways to shrink the binary, I didn't try to yet, the WebAssembly part too is way bigger that it would need to, but still, it's smaller and there's less colors, shapes and animations to display.

trallnag · 2 years ago
Instead you end up with 20 Java microservices each taking up a gig of memory
tjoff · 2 years ago
... that sentiment is how we ended up requiring 1GB of ram for sending text...
qwerty456127 · 2 years ago
Nevertheless it's just such a delightful gulp of fresh air to open the repo of a GUI app and see it's not in JavaScript :-) An Electron instance with the same would probably take even more memory, wouldn't it?
wolletd · 2 years ago
I recently build some internal app with Qt. Unfortunately, building Qt apps on Windows is somewhat complex.

Also I didn't find a way to install Qt on Windows without later receiving E-Mails from Trolltech (or The Qt Company, nowadays) trying to sell Qt to me.

ktosobcy · 2 years ago
Developer should have used jlink to get smaller distribution package, alas it would still be bigger.

OTOH - I wonder what the size of native binary would be

raverbashing · 2 years ago
It would be an interesting exercise to try the port using WxWindows or something similar
widge · 2 years ago
wxWindows?
pjmlp · 2 years ago
That is because they haven't bothered to use jlink.

Shipping JRE isn't a thing since Java 9, other than for folks stuck in old Java ways.

throwawayyy9237 · 2 years ago
Imagine an Adobe version of this. 64Gb at least.
39Wc · 2 years ago
Seems the entire game engine is missing from the source code, instead it comes bundled with a jar file in the classpath called "mead.jar".

I wonder why the author thought that was a good idea. I was actually looking forward to studying the game engine itself.

Deleted Comment

LeFantome · 2 years ago
Unless he took steps to obscure it. you still have the source code. Java is trivial to decompile.
39Wc · 2 years ago
Why not release the source code as an open source project then, and add a proper maven dependency instead of bundling a jar file?
bitwize · 2 years ago
Microsoft has added premium subscriptions to modern Windows Solitaire, because it's 2024 and God has forsaken us. So this is a welcome project.
appstorelottery · 2 years ago
At first I thought you were joking; however a quick search reveals that indeed God has forsaken us.

https://microsoftcasualgames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1...

The OS is now "free" and Solitaire is now paid product? Is this the pure definition of irony?

OP: You've done a wonderful job with this!

wiktor-k · 2 years ago
I had to use Windows machine to test an app recently and the amount of ads and other annoyances there is just mindblowing. I wanted to show Solitaire to my kids but it's so ad-ridden it's painful to play.

I'm strongly considering just reformatting the drive and putting Linux in there.

ctippett · 2 years ago
All credit goes to the original creator, I just posted the link :-)
bitwize · 2 years ago
Consider Windows a live-service, free-to-play OS.
AndrewDavis · 2 years ago
I carry those old games from old windows installs. They won't run "natively" on modern windows, however someone ported a subset of WINE, winevdm, to windows called otvdm.

I was playing Chips Challenge yesterday!

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

LeFantome · 2 years ago
$2 a month for solitaire?!?!
leighleighleigh · 2 years ago
Hell yes, I just spent half a day theming my Linux box with Chicago95! I've already got Space Cadet pinball from Flatpak, and now I've got Solitaire - nostalgia levels are off the charts right now B-)
verve_rat · 2 years ago
I'd like to try this out at some stage. Any tips? Any thing that caught you out?
jwrallie · 2 years ago
I also recently tried chicago95, it seems to have some issues with the latest Xfce version, so if you see your notification area icons have squares around them, there is a workaround on the GitHub issues page of the project.

When I used the workaround, the taskbar lost its 3D border effect, so I recovered that by using a background image that is 1 pixel wide and has the correct colors to have the 3D effect. It’s better if you use something like Xubuntu 22.04 first to see how it should look like without this bug.

ctippett · 2 years ago
I came across this project after seeing a mod for the game Balatro [1] that used the artwork from the original Solitaire sourced from this repo.

The README was so wholesome I thought. The developer obviously put a lot of care and attention into creating something they're proud of and hoped others would enjoy. I hope the person who created this notices the influx of attention its now getting and gets a kick out of it.

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=32237...

LeoPanthera · 2 years ago
A wonderful preservation effort, but I thought Solitaire originated with Windows 3.1. Are there any significant differences to the Windows 95 version?
o11c · 2 years ago
Windows 3.0 according to Wikipedia, which mentions no changes until Windows 2000.

A little googling shows screenshots, obviously the widgets look a little different but no meaningful differences are apparent at a glance.

chungy · 2 years ago
Indeed; Windows 2000 changed the card backgrounds, but it otherwise remained virtually unchanged from 1990 until 2007 when Vista changed it to be Direct3D accelerated and new graphics.
matttproud · 2 years ago
Indeed. I never played it on Windows 95, but I spent a lot of time playing it on Windows 3.1 (and probably 3.0). This looks essentially like the Windows 3.x version.
squarefoot · 2 years ago
Hijacking the thread to ask if anyone could explain why Aisleriot, an otherwise quite good Linux solitaire game, seems to poorly randomize cards, at least when playing the classic Klondike.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Aisleriot (no need to run Gnome to play it)

The apparent bug was already reported 4 and 2 years ago on different games.

Dwedit · 2 years ago
Does that mean it has the ending animation that plays way too fast? They fixed that in Windows 2000.
jamiek88 · 2 years ago
Ha! It wasn’t supposed to be like that crazy flinging of cards?!

Nice to learn trivia about key memories from your youth.