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Building Principia for Windows XP

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Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#11

Post by ndiddy »

accrual wrote: post #4

This is super cool! I admire those who make the effort to keep their software running on old unsupported OSs. There's a thriving community of new and existing XP users and I don't see it going away despite it being out of support for over a decade. It's one of the last great Windows versions and its long life ensured a huge software catalog is available for exploring, now including Principia.

What do people use XP for these days? I found it frustrating to use when it was new because of how often the system would lock up even on decent hardware (although being able to draw pictures with the frozen windows was sometimes fun). When 7 came out, I found that it usually ran better and froze less than XP even on XP era computers, although you'd have to upgrade your RAM.

Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#12

Post by ndiddy »

ROllerozxa wrote: post #10
BoxOfRain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not used Windows in a very long time so forgive my ignorance, but I always heard that it was a bad idea to connect an XP machine to the internet because of the amount of malware sloshing about. In practice is that much of a problem for modern-day XP enthusiasts?

The kind of passive infection that is shown in popular videos like this one ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uSVVCmOH5w ) tend to only happen if you hook up an XP machine to be directly accessible to the Internet. Like, if you connect your XP machine to your router sitting in the middle of your Internet connection and don't forward every port, you should be fine in that regard at least. There is also Supermium whic…

Yeah it was more of a problem back in the day when dial-up and DSL were more common, and home users would often have their computers directly connected to the internet if they didn't have multiple computers and a router. This was especially problematic before XP SP2 came out with the firewall enabled by default.

Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#15

Post by vik0 »

ndiddy wrote: post #11
accrual wrote: post #4

This is super cool! I admire those who make the effort to keep their software running on old unsupported OSs. There's a thriving community of new and existing XP users and I don't see it going away despite it being out of support for over a decade. It's one of the last great Windows versions and its long life ensured a huge software catalog is available for exploring, now including Principia.

What do people use XP for these days? I found it frustrating to use when it was new because of how often the system would lock up even on decent hardware (although being able to draw pictures with the frozen windows was sometimes fun). When 7 came out, I found that it usually ran better and froze less than XP even on XP era computers, although you'd have to upgrade your RAM.

I assume most people who use XP (which by default means non-hobbyists) are using it to run some software that was made to run only on it and the people who made said software never bothered to update the software for another OS. Something like a software application to manage prices in some family-run grocery store or warehouse in a former socialist country or what have you. The people using XP don't know they're even using an old OS, and they're oftentimes not very technical people (to say the least). They're using it because it's their job and they don't care particularly about it. It's usually not connected to the internet

Recently I went to the dentist, and while they weren't using XP, they were using Windows 7 to run some in-house software (I assume) to check my insurance

Yes, im from a former socialist country

Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#18

Post by Aerocatia »

FYI if you have the MSVC redistributable 14.27.29114 you can use UCRT executables built with modern Mingw-W64 on Windows XP, and curl 8.18.0 will work too (microsoft removed the link but I found it on the PC gaming wiki). I never had to deal with GetDynamicTimeZoneInformation() for my stuff, but maybe it only is a problem if you use the related code and don't static link libstdc++?

Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#19

Post by ROllerozxa »

Aerocatia wrote: post #18

FYI if you have the MSVC redistributable 14.27.29114 you can use UCRT executables built with modern Mingw-W64 on Windows XP, and curl 8.18.0 will work too (microsoft removed the link but I found it on the PC gaming wiki). I never had to deal with GetDynamicTimeZoneInformation() for my stuff, but maybe it only is a problem if you use the related code and don't static link libstdc++?

Yes! I have heard there is a redistributable for getting UCRT installed onto Windows XP, but it seems like quite an obscure update. The idea was to basically make a version that would work on a relatively up to date SP3 version at the very least without system changes, so going with msvcrt instead sounded like the best idea. Otherwise I've heard there are other community-made patches that basically turn XP into more like Windows 7 compatibility wise (One Core API?), albeit with some caveats - I haven't tested whether the modern Principia Windows builds would work under such a setup.

As for GetDynamicTimeZoneInformation, yes it probably would disappear when doing static linking as Principia does not use it. However initially I was building the game with all the dependencies and libstdc++ as DLLs, but ended up linking it all statically after I had to statically link libcurl with mbedtls anyways.

Re: Building Principia for Windows XP

#20

Post by accrual »

ndiddy wrote: post #11
accrual wrote: post #4

This is super cool! I admire those who make the effort to keep their software running on old unsupported OSs. There's a thriving community of new and existing XP users and I don't see it going away despite it being out of support for over a decade. It's one of the last great Windows versions and its long life ensured a huge software catalog is available for exploring, now including Principia.

What do people use XP for these days? I found it frustrating to use when it was new because of how often the system would lock up even on decent hardware (although being able to draw pictures with the frozen windows was sometimes fun). When 7 came out, I found that it usually ran better and froze less than XP even on XP era computers, although you'd have to upgrade your RAM.

I've seen some recent examples of XP in the wild, they pop-up occasionally in old ATMs, bus route displays, small stores running a PoS, etc. Not a recommended configuration of course but still happens nevertheless.

For me I enjoy it as a fun/hobby OS. I can install all my favorite tools and games and boot it up whenever. It's also fun to see what modern work can still be done on old OSs. Recent versions of PuTTY work so I can in theory sit on my XP box and drive LLM agents with Winamp playing in the background, chat on MSN with Escargot, etc.

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