Pi Lab has released RaspbianXP Professional. That is a skin that gives Raspberry Pi operating system Raspbian the appearance of Windows XP, including start menu, icons and sounds. Windows 98 is also present in a virtual machine.
Pi Lab shows on YouTube the similarities of RaspbianXP Professional with Windows XP. For example, in addition to the familiar wallpaper of Windows XP, the OS contains a similar start menu with search function and even the browser carries the Internet Explorer icon.
The variant of Raspbian cannot run Windows applications by default, but Box86 is present, for example, an emulator to run x86 code on ARM. Also, Pi Lab has installed qemu. In his video, the YouTuber, who has no further relationship with the Pi Foundation, shows how to boot Windows 98 via this virtual machine.
The maker promises to add new features and fix issues. RaspbianXP Professional only runs on a Raspberry Pi 4. Pi Labs previously made Raspian95, which gives the operating system for the small computing board the appearance of Windows 95.
Developers regularly create skins for operating systems that give them the appearance of another OS. Usually that’s for nostalgic reasons, but Kali Linux, for example, includes a Windows 10 mode to stay undercover, while in the past a Chinese XP variant of Ubuntu appeared, which is said to be the reason Microsoft took action against piracy of its software.