PowerToys (https://legacyupdate.net/download-center/powertoys) used to be on my "first software to install" list on a new machine. Between Tweak UI and Deskman, you could _almost_ get a minimal X Windows-like UI. Get those set up and add on LiteStep (http://litestep.net/) and you were pretty much good to go, with the exceptions of the kernel, network stack, and CLI toolset, of course.

The memories! Back in the day I couldn't install XP anywhere without bringing at lease TweakUI and CmdHere, and probalby some others I've forgotten.

Wow, somehow I entirely missed that Windows XP versions were made. I relied pretty heavily on the Windows 95 PowerToys when I used Win95.

Deskman seems like it'd be awesome.

They still make it. Tons of great utils for Win10/11 (I'm off of 11 cuz fuck that noise, but when I was on win10 I used it).

Here's the link to the current version for modern systems: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

This is great! But, it feels like it's only a matter of time before it changes ownership and everything is re-bundled with malware. It sucks that I can't get old downloads but it would be nice if they came from official sources. I don't have a solution. But looking for old drivers etc, mostly leads to bad sources.

Legacy Update has been well-supported for over 3 years and takes donations via Github (11 current, 61 past sponsors) and Patreon (where you can sponsor up to $80 to fuel Adam's 3D printing addiction). I recommend it to our PortableApps.com users who are on older operating systems and use it in my virtual machines for testing our releases. I'm hopeful it'll stay as is for a while.

Hey its awesome but regarding donations since I actually wanted to talk about it.

But can you please look at adding yourself/Download Center archive to liberapay too as I was hoping to find liberapay.

You mention having kofi being the lowest prices but I think Liberapay has no fees other than payment processing and is itself an non profit and funded via donations.

Maybe then you would have "too many options to donate" but I think liberapay can be a good option to have honestly imo and I am interested to hear your thoughts about it.

Also I wanted to download windows 7 iso to run a simpler thing on my pc but Microsoft being shitty removed the download link of it and everything so great to see your project, Going to bookmark it right now and thank you!

OpenCollective is another good alternative, that use the same means to fund themselves as they're offering projects to use, compared to the GitHub/Microsoft way of doing things.

Oh yea, forgot about OpenCollective but its good too and I think can give legal way to get fiscal sponsorship/basically be treated as a non profit/get legal donation method as well which can be nice for this project and all benefits that get with it. He can check out OpenCollective too!

Shouldn't the files be signed by Microsoft, with a timestamp signature? That should (barring somebody locating a relevant private key) still mark them as not having been modified.

Of course, how many people would know to check for the signature (especially in the case the site went malicious and therefore wouldn't tell you to do so) would be a different question…

Genuine question, not being sarcastic: why would someone want/need these downloads?

Installing Acid Pro 6 requires Visual Studio Redistributable packages the Microsoft no longer has available.

At least, last I checked.

There's a tool for blocking selected driver updates that still works on Windows 11. Very handy.

I have a legitimate need to replicate systems that are sometimes very legacy for security research (apps that sit on top, rather than the os itself). Building stuff like a base Windows XP image is easy enough, but sometimes system updates are required - even stuff like iirc tls1.2 isn’t supported in IE6