this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Yea, there's a lot of (well deserved) shitting on Windows, but it's backwards compatibility is second to none. Not even Linux can give you a >70% chance that a piece of software or game you need/want from 1995 will still run (provided it's not 16bit only or needs a proprietary driver lmao) on a modern version of the OS
Months ago I wanted to run a lot of my old childhood games (mostly between 94 and 2001 release dates) for my own kids and I found most of them still installed and ran right out of the box on fully updated Win10, a lot of the rest required some fiddling with compatibility settings and the rest just didn't work because they were 16 bit only (You can still get them working natively if you install 32 but Win10, but subjecting children to <4gb RAM is abuse) or some other weird issue so I fell back to ScummVM/DosBox for those
The comment you replied to says the opposite. It's a half-truth, but Linux+WINE does some backwards compatibility better than Windows.
First, Wine doesn't have an arbitrary limitation against running 16-bit executables AFAIK
Second, there is anecdotal evidence of some older games breaking to graphics driver updates on Windows, but running fine (or even faster!) on Linux thanks to a much more straightforward graphical stack (and the fact that DXVK is dark magic). Even something as simple as fullscreen mode support on old games can be a buggy and flickery pain in the ass, whereas on Linux the same binary will work flawlessly with any decent compositor.
The limitation isn't really arbitrary once you put a processor in in long mode (64 bit) it can't do Virtual 8086 Mode any more. One of those things AMD did when designing 64-bit mode to clean up that particular can of hysterical raisins.
...also, even back in the days processors were fast enough to run that old stuff under DOSEMU. Which you probably want to do anyway as you don't have a Roland MT-32.
Thanks for the info on V86! Interesting stuff!
I concur on Wayland being particularly great. The only downside is forced V-sync, I don't know if there is a (proposed) protocol extension to do direct framebuffer writes in fullscreen.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Roland MT-32
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I like to think of it like a defense mechanism. By ensuring old abandoned software won't work, you don't have to worry about it having a major security vulnerability. Any old software that still works probably isn't abandoned.
I see your point, but unfortunately, there's lots of proprietary old software that has been abandoned by the original company (Either because they went out of business or just moved on) that's still in active use and the source never released.
There was just an article on Lemmy a few weeks ago on how multi-million dollar research facilities still have to use ancient software to run critical scientific machines. Although in that particular case they had to maintain old PCs as well because of proprietary drivers
No offense, but that sounds a lot like apple and Microsoft arguing against freedom of the user.
"Installing an app from outside the app store could introduce a security vulnerability"
"We must have edge installed at all times to provide a good user experience. Replacing such a central part of the operating system could weaken the security of the device"
A lot of those old games have been repackaged for Windows as well on GoG or Steam, not all but a decent amount. Jazz Jackrabbit series I still play occasionally, there's a claymation point-and-click called The Neverhood (by the Earth Worm Jim guy) that works out of the box, and my personal favorite Battlezone 98 Redux which is a repackage of the game you can get on Steam, best multiplayer first person rts ever.