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Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

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Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#231

Post by lockhouse »

galleywest200 wrote: post #184
bartread wrote: post #74

All the people on that Twitter thread getting butthurt about it and complaining that Windows' backwards compatibility is a bad thing... WTF koolaid have they been drinking? I don't often sing Microsoft's praises but backwards compatibility is something they get absolutely right: something they've always got right. Everything doesn't have to be changing and breaking all the time and, to me, it's a mark of maturity whe…

I agree. As an example: The Xbox Series X, their newest flagship model, is fully backwards compatible with all of the Xbox physical CD games from all Xbox systems. Just pop the CD in and you are good to go.

It's actually not backwards compatible with all previous Xbox games. There's a compatibility list...

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backward-compatibility

However, that is an impressive amount of backwards compatibility that other game consoles don't have.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#232

Post by sedatk »

herpderperator wrote: post #185
snickerbockers wrote: post #116

That's cute and all, but it's fucking gzip. It doesn't have complex dependencies. Pretty sure Linux could run a 30 year old gzip binary too. I've never needed to do that with gzip but I have definitely run binaries of a similar vintage without issue. Windows backwards-compatibility fails miserably on non-trivial programs, you're generally pretty lucky if you can get something from the XP-era or older to work out of t…

Someone ran the gzip binary on Linux just fine: https://twitter.com/stderrdk/status/1692652013711221045

They used an older Debian. Wouldn't work on the latest.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#233

Post by predictabl3 »

BirAdam wrote: post #179
jmkni wrote: post #63

What I find so frustrating is that Windows, under the hood, is so solid. It's just the UI with Bing/Ads/telemetrics/etc integration is so crap, like they've ruined a solid OS with crappy surface level stuff.

This. I use Tiny11 for this reason. The UI is still super inconsistent, but otherwise it’s fine. Mac bothered me by likewise becoming inconsistent, but also soldering everything so the machine is bricked when an SSD or battery dies. In the Linux world the UI has never been consistent, but what really bothers me is that everything is constantly changing unless one uses enterprise Linux, but then I don’t get hardware s…

Imagine if a Linux user said this.

The bar is so vastly different for windows and Linux users and by and large I try to keep my mouth shut because I dual boot and I know DAMN WELL which OS needs more handholding and has required fuck-it-start-over handling. God forbid you ever try to login to Win11 with low disk space, you're totally FUBAR and there are countless reports online of this EXACT FKING SCENARIO. Imagine for one second if Linux became COMPLETELY BROKEN if you ran out of disk space, it would be A JOKE.

If manufacturer would consistently publish to LVFS, I would NEVER TOUCH WINDOWS AGAIN. And I play Halo every single day of my life. Sorry gaming on Linux is less of a complete pain in the ass than using windows. You paying attn MSFT? Your stock price is 80% of my life, so I sure hope so.

"Everything is constantly changing"?! Are you FUCKING kidding me? What has changed in Linux is the past 15 years other than Wayland, which, I've been running for 4+ years and know what is BS and what isn't (DM me and I'll screen share stream my desktop at arbitrary scale factors at 240hz). I can run Gnome2, I can run kde3 for gods sake. Meanwhile there's crapware discussed here weekly just trying to get a basic Start Menu back in Win11, or constant complaints about ads, or regressions or ON and ON; do y'all have ANY self respect?

Stockholm syndrome, laziness, take your pick, it's exhausting.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#234

Post by FirmwareBurner »

hobobaggins wrote: post #226
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Phone home telemetry and ads in OS ? MacOS also has telemetry. >For backend stuff it's almost implicit that you're running on Linux in prod and macos is well supported because it's fairly similar. Then Windows would be better than MacOS in this regard because WSL2 is exactly Linux, not just "fairly similar" to Linux. >stuff randomly breaking between updates What stuff broke for you between updates? Our entire DS tea…

> Maybe they know how to use a computer. Seems uncalled for.

Why? If your only feedback is "stuff randomly breaks" and unable to provide more on-point technical specifics, maybe you're not qualified enough. No shame in that. If I tell my mechanic "something randomly breaks on my car" he'll also know I'm clueless, and that's alright, not everyone's a car mechanic.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#235

Post by itsmartapuntocm »

lamontcg wrote: post #149
knallfrosch wrote: post #20

See also https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Win…

From where I'm sitting this looks like an excellent argument for breaking backwards compatibility. All those bullshit hacks are a maintenance and debugging burden for someone and a tax on the whole rest of the operating system -- and I'd argue that it really shows.

Raymond Chen made a great point in his book “The Old New Thing”. If a hacky program suddenly doesn’t work when you upgrade to a new version of Windows, the user isn’t going to blame the program. They’re going to blame the OS because that’s what changed.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#236

Post by renonce »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #156
lamontcg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where I'm sitting this looks like an excellent argument for breaking backwards compatibility. All those bullshit hacks are a maintenance and debugging burden for someone and a tax on the whole rest of the operating system -- and I'd argue that it really shows.

You're sitting on the point of view of a software developer. Microsoft's point of view is that the underlying software doesn't matter. The user's software _has_ to run. The Application Compatibility Database ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/devnotes/app... ) is, overall, a relatively small component, and all it does is apply some shims if your executable is in that list. Performance issues in Windows…

> Performance issues in Windows do not stem from anywhere near the kernel.

I remember Windows uses a O(N^2) scheduler so the system slows down when it has a few thousand processes. Would that count as a performance issue in the kernel?

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#237

Post by alberth »

jmkni wrote: post #63

What I find so frustrating is that Windows, under the hood, is so solid. It's just the UI with Bing/Ads/telemetrics/etc integration is so crap, like they've ruined a solid OS with crappy surface level stuff.

Windows LTSC (no ads / bloatware) + SimpleClassicTheme + RetroBar is about as perfect as it gets.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1_7pqwf-gZM&feature=sharea

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#238

Post by blackoil »

moonchrome wrote: post #170
necovek wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only used MacOS for a year and only recently (maybe that matters), and I get all the same crappy inconsistent behaviour I do on Linux and did on Windows ~20 years ago when I last used it. Apple has the benefit of controlling both hw and sw and still manage to mess it up. Random crashes, slowdowns for long running sessions, crappy UI (eg those labels not checking their checkboxes in Settings), network weirdness (…

You haven't used Windows in quite a while have you ? Past Windows 7 it's been sliding downhill into bullshit UX, crapware, backend migration to Linux almost exclusively, etc. Random things on top of my head : MacOS doesn't come with candy crush, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify etc. prepopulating your start menu. Phone home telemetry and ads in OS ? Yummy Dealing with Windows dev environment is always a PITA eventually - u…

> MacOS is fairly visually consistent. Windows regularly has me in Windows XP era screens, reached through 3 inconsistent UX steps developed along the way.

I take that as a feature and is the whole crux of this discussion. I don't need ODBC or many such archaic features but if someday I need to use it, I trust it will be working.

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#239

Post by withinrafael »

Lots of Microsoft app compat success stories out there, but plenty of breakage too. One example: I had to create IndirectInput [1][2] to fix Myst on Windows. Microsoft refused (via private email thread with leadership) to take responsibility for what is clearly an appcompat bug and were borderline jerks to me about it too. Oh well.

[1] https://github.com/riverar/IndirectInput

[2] https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019256854-Myst-...

Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

#240

Post by sedatk »

snickerbockers wrote: post #116

That's cute and all, but it's fucking gzip. It doesn't have complex dependencies. Pretty sure Linux could run a 30 year old gzip binary too. I've never needed to do that with gzip but I have definitely run binaries of a similar vintage without issue. Windows backwards-compatibility fails miserably on non-trivial programs, you're generally pretty lucky if you can get something from the XP-era or older to work out of t…

> Pretty sure Linux could run a 30 year old gzip binary too

Not since Linux dropped a.out binary support completely in 5.18. Any newer kernel can't run it.

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