Last Updated on February 3, 2022 by Dave Farquhar
I was watching a YouTube video where someone was talking about his new acquisition, and he commented that he thought the operating system might be too new for that PC. So I thought maybe a list of recommended operating systems for vintage PCs might be helpful.
A definitive guide to the sort of thing would be difficult. Consider this some general guidelines of what we ran on each generation of machine. And it is possible that some machines you find in the wild deviate from this. A lot of machines have long service lives, and some machines ended up as test benches running stuff they didn’t have much business running, but got pressed into duty for lack of anything else to use.
And sometimes people just like to push limits. If XP on a slow Pentium or DOS on a Pentium 4 is fun for you, it’s not my place to tell you you’re wrong. These are just guidelines for what we would have run when these machines were in their heyday. My goal is to provide a list of operating systems that run well and are reasonably period correct.
8088, 8086, XT
The sweet spot for XT class machines is of course some sort of DOS. Ideally PC DOS for true blue IBM’s, and MS DOS for compatibles. Early on, many brand name PCs came with their own slightly custom MS-DOS builds that may have included the computer manufacturers branding, and possibly even some customizations specific to those machines.
The DOS these machines ran in their heyday will generally be something older than version 4. DOS 3.31 is a nice choice as it has a low memory footprint but supports larger drives.
These versions are fairly low on memory and disk space requirements. Of course, they are also light on functionality, so many of these machines did end up running some flavor of DOS 5 or DOS 6 to get the nicer text editor, command history, boot menus, and other niceties.
If you want the semi-modern amenities of a newer DOS and a lighter memory footprint, consider PC DOS 2000. This version came super late in the game, but was optimized for memory usage so it runs rather nicely on machines it seems like it shouldn’t.
Recommended operating systems for 286
The 286 is tricky. It sits awkwardly in between XTs and newer PCs in capability. It also had a rather long service life, but that time on market came to an abrupt end in the early 90s as Windows caught on. A 286 can run Windows 3.0 and even Windows 3.1, but not all that well. You can do it, and some people did, and I have Windows 3.0 on my 286, but it’s more of a curiosity than a great experience.
A 286 may have shipped with anything from DOS 3.0 to potentially even DOS 6.0 at the very end. A 286 can take advantage of some of the enhanced memory management in DOS 5 and DOS 6, so there is every reason to run one of these later versions on a 286. PC DOS 2000 also runs nicely on a 286.
Recommended operating systems for 386
Early 386 systems could have shipped with something as old as DOS 3.3, but there is every reason to run at least DOS 5 on a 386. While 386 PCs were getting a bit dated by the time DOS 6 came out, plenty of 386 PCs ended up running some version of DOS 6, including DOS 6.22. One of the key selling points of DOS 5 and newer was the enhanced memory management for 386 systems. DOS 5 was made for the 386, so it would be a shame not to use it. And 6.22 runs fine as well and had better utilities included.
The other question is what version of Windows to load on it. A 386 was the ideal machine for Windows 3.0, as 486 PCs were still very new and expensive in 1990. You can run Windows 3.1 or Windows 3.11 on a 386, but really Windows 3.0 or 3.1 is more ideal.
Technically, Windows 95 works on these machines, but it is a long way from ideal. I did load Windows 95 on something as little as a 16 megahertz 386 SX, but I told the person it wasn’t a great idea. After I was finished, he saw why.
Recommended operating systems for 486
The 486 had a very long service life, and this can be a bit tricky because there is quite a bit of difference in performance between an early 20 megahertz 486 SX and the last 486 CPUs, which ran at 120 or 133 megahertz. A very late 486 runs Windows 95 pretty happily, while I can’t say the same for an early 20 megahertz model.
You can’t go wrong with DOS 6.22 (or IBM PC DOS 6.3) and Windows 3.1 or Windows 3.11 on a 486 PC. They were made for each other. If you want to be contrarian like I was, you can always load OS/2 Warp 3.0 on a 486. It ran pretty nicely as long as you had 16 MB of RAM.
The 486 was the mainstream CPU at the time Windows 95 came out. I like it a lot better on 66 megahertz or faster machines, and be sure to max out the memory. Once you get to around 100 megahertz, Windows 3.1 or even 3.11 seem to hit a wall. They certainly work, but you don’t notice much speed improvement over a 66 megahertz machine. Here’s a tip for slimming down Win95 that helps performance on middling 486s.
Keep in mind that these versions of Windows definitely were prone to OS rot over time, so if you find one of these windows versions running poorly on a system you found in the wild, it may need a fresh install.
Recommended operating systems for Pentium PCs
Like the 486, the Pentium crossed operating system generations. Some of them shipped with Windows 3.1 of course, but they are overkill. I was selling computers at retail at the time, and lots of people were curious about those machines, but they were a hard sell. There wasn’t much of anything preloaded on the machines that ran any better on a Pentium than it did on the 486 next to it on the shelf.
Windows 95 was the operating system that made the Pentium mainstream. They are ideal for each other.
Windows 98 will run on Pentium systems, but it does need more memory to run well. It is also more demanding CPU wise.
Windows 95 definitely is prone to OS rot, so a rebuild isn’t a bad idea on a system you find in the wild.
Recommended operating systems for Pentium 2 and 3
Windows 98 is certainly nicer on a Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 system, or its AMD equivalents. There is little reason to run Windows ME, and these systems do not have the heft for Windows XP. Some people did it, but it wasn’t ideal. I run Win98 on my 266 MHz Pentium II. Just keep this memory hack in mind to avoid errors if you use a really high-end system and max out the memory.
Recommended operating systems for Pentium 4 and newer
The Pentium 4 is in a bit of an awkward spot. The early models weren’t any faster than a Pentium 3, but being the last of the single core processors, they weren’t Windows XP powerhouses.
That said, they are the earliest processors that run Windows XP reasonably well. I would still rather have an early dual core system for an XP rig, but I do have a P4 running XP for the occasions when I need XP.
If you want a really nice experience with Windows XP, you can go newer. Theoretically, an i7 4770 based system is just old enough to have drivers for XP. You’ll just need to make sure any video card you want to use will also have XP drivers. I have a hard time thinking of these systems as retro, given these systems are perfectly capable of running Windows 10, but to some extent, retro is what you want it to be. And systems of this generation are still easy to find and cheap.
And even if you are not very nostalgic for Windows XP, having an XP system of a certain age can be very useful. This was the era when floppy drives started to disappear. But XP has good support for floppy drives, USB, and networks with older versions of Windows without complaining much, while also networking with current versions of Windows without complaining much. Having a Windows XP machine around that you can power up when you need it can make getting data to your older PC much easier in some cases.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
I like Windows fine and am not a zealot, but “Linux” is also a good answer for many of these questions. When you take gaming out of the picture (noone is gaming on these devices, are they?)… Linux looks very performant and attractive.
Also, notwithstanding your homeip.net address, your site seems to be having trouble recording comments from Google addresses, or filled in addresses. I don’t know if you will see this. If I try to comment with Google, I get a never-ending “Connecting to Google” thing. I don’t use Twatter or Crapbook, so I can’t speak to those.
The comments issue is probably due to caching. It gets the comments but doesn’t always update the cache right away. The cache speeds up the site overall but can delay comments appearing.
Also yes, people do frequently run old games on these systems, which is why I didn’t mention Linux. But of course you can run Linux on any 386 or later system. Gaming on the old systems comes with caveats but if you match the time period it works well.
Yes and no about running Linux on a 386. Current distributions generally won’t work because the kernel has been built to require a newer processor. You can tell by the name of the kernel; if it has “486” in the name it requires that processor or higher, “586” requires a Pentium, and “686” requires a Pentium II. It’s so the kernel can take advantage of instructions that were added in the newer CPUs and also be correctly optimized for them. (Some special code sequences that were used back in the 8088 days to speed up code, for example, are SLOWER than more straightforward code on newer x86 CPUs.) Some distros don’t even offer 32 bit versions any more, and the only processors mentioned here that will run a 64 bit kernel are a few of the later Pentium 4 processors, and the Core processors that were mentioned in passing.
The RAM requirements of a current distro (aside from one that is very pared down to run on embedded systems or the like, and that will have no GUI) will be too large for a 386 anyway. A retro version of Linux is likely to be a better choice; in the early days there were Linux distros that were designed to run well on systems with 16 or 32 megabytes of RAM.
Unless your retro Windows system is extremely resource limited, I would recommend Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It’s the best of the pre-95 versions, and the only one that includes networking out of the box.
Similarly, I’d recommend Windows 98 SE for most Windows systems from the pre-Windows 2000 era. More refined and less buggy. You will need more RAM than for Windows 95, so it might be better to stick with 95 on some of the earlier systems.
Windows 2000 was actually a very nice OS in its day, which was concurrent with the availability of Windows Me. (Windows Me went to the DOS-based well once too often; it was worse than Windows 98 SE.) it was more solid than any of the DOS-based versions of Windows. But unless you have a system that will run it but not run XP (if any exist) there isn’t much reason to run it now.
If you want to be -really- contrarian then you can install BeOS on a Pentium or Pentium II/III.