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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

#261

Post by xvilka »

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…

Fork and IO performance are major problems when porting *nix software to Windows. It's visibly slower, one of the reasons WSL1 was way too slow to be used for many things while technically being a clever solution.

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

#262

Post by the_only_law »

shortlived wrote: post #259
the_only_law wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I remember reading a while back that System/360 binaries can still run on modern Z/architecture mainframes.

Yup, that’s the example I cited above.

Oops, missed that, I came in from the comments link.

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

#263

Post by lazycouchpotato »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #90
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.

You forgot the mandatory MSFT accounts to sign in with no way around last I checked (a few months ago).

There is a way around it, for now.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-mi...

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

#264

Post by ukuina »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #249
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.

The issue is at that time updates for most shrink wrapped software were almost non existent and distribution even worse. Windows had an update facility and I bet you sim city for dos did not. So, either windows yielded and patched it’s behavior to run sim city or sim city users couldn’t run it under windows full stop until maxis distributed a new distribution on media. In todays world it looks like a ludicrous soluti…

People forget how every software developer had to spin up their own patch delivery infrastructure.

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

#265

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

Windows 11'a main sin is Edge IMO. The start menu junk is shitty, but can be dealt with in matters of minutes. On the dev part, WSL2 basically make the point moot, an actual debian is way easier to deal with than brew.

Now have you tried uninstalling Apple Music ? or found a way to disable it from launching everytime you press the play button on your headset with no media player running ?

In the last few years I've looked at every macos updates with more an more dread of things that will stop working and generic enshitification. Windows stays more "in your face" on the cheap marketing stuff, but it also brought in a lot more improvements than macos did in the last 10 years, so I don't as much difference in experience as in the past.

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

#266

Post by bitwize »

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…

Meanwhile, the Asahi Linux GPU driver checks to see if the first character of the process name is 'X', and simply nopes out if it is.

Because why are you still running Xorg, asshole? You should have switched to Wayland by now.

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110904454552941656

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

#267

Post by danbruc »

ukuina wrote: post #264
fnordpiglet wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is at that time updates for most shrink wrapped software were almost non existent and distribution even worse. Windows had an update facility and I bet you sim city for dos did not. So, either windows yielded and patched it’s behavior to run sim city or sim city users couldn’t run it under windows full stop until maxis distributed a new distribution on media. In todays world it looks like a ludicrous soluti…

People forget how every software developer had to spin up their own patch delivery infrastructure.

If the company even existed when a Windows update caused an issue. And given the number of Windows installations, even the most obscure software or setup is likely to affect a lot of people.

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

#268

Post by memefrog »

eternityforest wrote: post #111
blibble wrote: post #12

yes it can run things that don't use much of the API surface (just using libc? probably fine) however try running a game from the Windows 95/98 days and you've got a maybe 50/50 chance of it working e.g. they changed the return code from BitBlt from 95/98 -> XP, they used to return the number of scanlines but switched it to a boolean same with the heap management functions, directory traversal functions, etc

Try running something from only ONE year ago on Linux and it very often won't work, unless it's an Appimage or Flatpak, or you're on Nix, They might not break userland but Qt and GTK do the breaking for you. Python joined the party recently. Random DBus daemons might be missing, etc.

You can run binaries from decades ago on Linux too. This is about a DOS binary. Well, a command line program that just uses system calls is fine too.

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

#269

Post by wmf »

Luctct wrote: post #211
Asooka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux world would benefit strongly from having a much bigger commitment to backwards compatibility in foundational libraries. Obviously there is nobody who can force e.g. OpenSSL to keep supporting old versions or to provide them as wrappers over the latest version, or to force GTK to keep around working versions of libraries exposing all interfaces dating from GTK 1.0 onwards. But if we could have a project to d…

So many people dismiss Tcl as near garbage, but Tcl/Tk applications written more than 20 years ago still run as intended including GUI, and they run on Linux, Windows and Mac. You just install a new --or old, whatever-- version of Tcl/Tk and the scripts will run, agnostically. I have a few I made myself 15 to 20 years ago and at least with those I never have to worry about distro upgrades, repositories or libc versio…

Is that because Tcl/Tk never added modern features?

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

#270

Post by sys_64738 »

jdjehxhdb wrote: post #206
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.

And that’s why you stand where you are and Microsoft stand where it does. You’re thinking like an engineer. Microsoft is a business. Backwards compatible is its major core competency.

And why you don’t allow developers to make business decisions.
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