Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 424 posts

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

#401

Post by olddustytrail »

bitwize wrote: post #266
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

How dare the Asahi folks not do a huge amount of free work to support you? Don't they know how important you are?!

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

#402

Post by martinald »

e40 wrote: post #142
martinald wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is ACLs, which are enabled by default on NTFS but not (afiak) on most linux distros using ext4.

Extended attributes are definitely turned on in my ext4 filesystems and to my knowledge I didn't do anything to turn them on.

Hmm that's true but I don't think much makes use of them? As in they are not set with anything. On NTFS they are used for everything.

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

#403

Post by tinus_hn »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #398
tinus_hn wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be because it’s an incentive to create a new, up-to-date app.

This is basically the defense of bad deeds: bad deeds inspire others to do good deeds.

No, the absence of a bad thing creates room for a good thing.

Because an old, out of date application is not available, there is a viable market for a new, up-to-date application that serves the same purpose.

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

#404

Post by memefrog »

59nadir wrote: post #397
memefrog wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linux is absolutely terrible with this, it sits on the "extremely unlikely" end whereas Windows sits on the other in terms of backwards compatibility. It's not surprising either because the entire ecosystem runs on the myth that shared libraries are desirable when any serious look into them shows that almost no space is saved, almost none of them are actually shared by a meaningful amount of apps, almost no actual se…

I have never had any issue running old programs.

Shared libraries have nothing to do with Linux. They are an entirely userspace concept.

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

#405

Post by rbanffy »

nani8ot wrote: post #392
matheusmoreira wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they have to do is upstream their drivers into the kernel instead of shipping proprietary blobs. Why is this so hard?

Because the Linux kernel has stringent guidelines how a driver should be written and work. Companies don't want to put in the work (i.e. pay someone with experience) to upstream their drivers. Whether this makes sense monetarily isn't really relevant to many decision makers. At least that's how I explain why Nvidia and Broadcom don't upstream their drivers.

> Because the Linux kernel has stringent guidelines how a driver should be written and work

Preventing poorly-written software to be added to the kernel is a Good Thing. The system is working as planned.

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

#406

Post by rbanffy »

babypuncher wrote: post #271
rbanffy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux is no better with no stable ABI. I’m confused. Linus has repeatedly stated that the ABI should be stable, “we don't break user space”. There are exceptions, but any proposal that makes a breaking change to the kernel’s external symbols is very hard to push through. I don’t remember anything breaking because of a new kernel version except device drivers, which are part of the kernel anyway and should be compil…

The kernel userspace APIs are pretty stable, the APIs provided by the rest of what constitutes a complete Linux "operating system" are not. I've ended up using a lot of hacks and tricks to get some early Linux games running on modern systems. Some applications designed for X still have broken features in Wayland, and likely won't be fixed without new versions of said apps because making Wayland compatible would break…

> The real problem children, across all operating systems, is proprietary video games.

They can be distributed packaged with the requirements (Wayland and X still would be an issue) but things like snaps of flatpacks solve that.

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

#407

Post by bitwize »

olddustytrail wrote: post #401
bitwize wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How dare the Asahi folks not do a huge amount of free work to support you? Don't they know how important you are?!

Yes, you're right, how arrogant of me not to expect kernel-level active sabotage of still widely used software, in a kernel where "don't break user space" is a guiding law of development.

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

#408

Post by 59nadir »

memefrog wrote: post #404
59nadir wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is absolutely terrible with this, it sits on the "extremely unlikely" end whereas Windows sits on the other in terms of backwards compatibility. It's not surprising either because the entire ecosystem runs on the myth that shared libraries are desirable when any serious look into them shows that almost no space is saved, almost none of them are actually shared by a meaningful amount of apps, almost no actual se…

I have never had any issue running old programs. Shared libraries have nothing to do with Linux. They are an entirely userspace concept.

That would be a great point were it not for the fact that virtually all Linux distros run everything on shared libraries. I like Linux but this is one aspect of it that has never done it any favors. It was probably a decent choice at one point but it has ceased being one. I reckon it has held back the Linux application ecosystem for over a decade for no reason at this point.

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

#409

Post by memefrog »

59nadir wrote: post #408
memefrog wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had any issue running old programs. Shared libraries have nothing to do with Linux. They are an entirely userspace concept.

That would be a great point were it not for the fact that virtually all Linux distros run everything on shared libraries. I like Linux but this is one aspect of it that has never done it any favors. It was probably a decent choice at one point but it has ceased being one. I reckon it has held back the Linux application ecosystem for over a decade for no reason at this point.

There is nothing wrong with shared libraries. If you want to run an old program, you need to also run old libraries, and old network services it communicates with, and maybe old hardware too. Libraries are no different.

In practice it just isn't an issue, because competent application developers don't tie themselves to particular versions of libraries, and competent library developers don't make gratuitous backwards-incompatible changes.

Nobody is forcing you to depend on incompetently-written malware like GTK+.

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

#410

Post by account42 »

I fail to see why 30 years should be considered extraordinary when in the physical world we have standards that ensure compatibility for much much longer than that.

If anything, software has it easier: you can layer emulation layer on emulation layer and then only have to adapt the outer layer for whatever pointless changes you are making to the current system.

Post reply on HN