11–20 of 52 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What direction is its backwards compatability going ?
Worse. Windows 10 dropped 16-bit application support.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/ntvd...
Stop using a Mac. I still run Windows 95 apps on Windows 11 without issue.
But broadly speaking you are right. I run software today on Windows 11 that I first acquired in the 90s. Some of it console based that run under the command prompt.
While Windows is justly famous for backward compatibility though, there are some exceptions.
Firstly 16 bit programs don't run on 64 bit Windows. (Well, unless I fire up a 32 bit Windows in a VM.) This is not a train smash for me, although I did have to replace some -really- old programs.
Secondly, games. MS removed a cdrom driver which a lot of my old games used for copy protection. I'll need to dual boot those into win 7 if I wanted to play them. But the urge to even bother only strikes about once a year.
Regarding word processors, I used Word Perfect in the DOS days and Word since then, and everything still opens fine.
Obviously everyone's path is different, and their experience is different, but if long-term commitment to running existing, and past, software matters to you the maybe select an OS that prioritizes that over one that very much does not.
This post ignores the Lindy effect. Things that have been around for pretty long are likely to stick around for much longer. For example, Unix, Emacs, or Firefox (Netscape) are likely to be quite popular 10 or 20 years down the line. The OS or the editor du jour is not. This is a good rule of thumb for choosing what to invest your time in.
I always privately called it a "Legacy Tail". It was a factor in the selection of a lightweight markup language to support old-fashioned industry (aerospace), but I think it should be a factor in any software selection, to be honest.
Thanks for teaching me a thing!
Also; Visual Age for Java ; I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was much better that Eclipse. Seems there is 1 other person.
The author would genuinely benefit from redhats decade long support models provided his desired tooling works on Linux.
The real concerns are in the SaaS / Remote Resource / Online Activation Space.
eg software that won't wake up if it can't call home, software that has reduced or no functionality if it can't stream remote data, "apps" that are just webkits loading a pre-set url for a completely online service.
Stop using closed software. Anything open will be around forever and can be compiled using old or new compilers. Mostly natively but if not possible, inside emulators. Also; Visual Age for Java ; I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was much better that Eclipse. Seems there is 1 other person.
Word and LibreOffice work fine on MacOS.
Stop using closed software. Anything open will be around forever and can be compiled using old or new compilers. Mostly natively but if not possible, inside emulators. Also; Visual Age for Java ; I thought I was the only person in the world who thought it was much better that Eclipse. Seems there is 1 other person.
Open software gets abandoned all the time, its not magically immune to this. Open and standardised file formats are the win.
The point is you can, while with closed software, you maybe can and sometimes with a lot of trouble.
If the source is open, the file format is also open.