I'm going to go ahead and say operating systems that don't work this way are the exception. Running a 30 year old binary isn't all that big a deal. Pretty much every mainstream system does so every day in its day to day operation.
Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
51–60 of 424 posts
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something that confuses me is that this states it's running a binary compiled 30years ago. How is this not 16bit? I'm aware of win32s, I used to run it but still it seems unlikely this is a win32 console app unless there's an incredibly unlikely set of circumstances behind this. Or perhaps it was simply recompiled after all despite what the Twitter post states?
9x wasn't the only Windows OS. The path contains the phrase "ntbin". It was compiled for NT.
My guess is this is a PE format type windows application. Though I suppose you could get a NE format file to work correctly if the binary was compiled as 32 bit. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this but I think you did have the option to compile either way.
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#53XP games don't work on Win7. Doubt they fixed it for Win10 or whatever the current version is.
That is very hit or miss. Out of the 1200 or so I own I have maybe 20 or so that do not run because the game did something weird with the APIs (or starforce).
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#54And that's why Microsoft will dominate corporate PC market for the foreseeable future.
Eh. More and more native software is being replaced by web versions (or versions that run inside a web view ). I’d argue that is going to be the more important compatibility test in the coming years.
Even so, a lot of those corporate web applications rely on .net frameworks for integrating with shared point, ad, and many other established enterprises services and applications so they’re still stuck to windows. An example, all my partners medical software is through a browser but requires multiple system frameworks to function. Also they’re all using Remote Desktop to Amazon workspaces that are running windows.
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#55See 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…
Nice. OpenBSD does something similar, with the difference being that there are no exemptions for specific software—they expect developers to fix their broken programs.
you had me
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#56Non crap link http://farside.link/twitter.com/mikko/status/169250324959558...
Nitter hasn't been working for me since a few days ago. Is it just me or did X break it?
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#57So much so that even only linux, the most stable API arguably is win32 through wine. Atleast for desktop related tasks.
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s not a DOS app, it’s a Win32 console app. DOS apps (16-bit or 32-bit) or Win16 apps would not run natively.
That depends on if they are using 64 bit or not. The 16bit VDM was deprecated on that move from 32 to 64. Which is the majority of most installs these days. What is kind of neat is every windows application/dll is a valid DOS application. The first part of all of them is a valid MZ DOS 16 EXEcutable. Windows just treats it as a skippable header and reads the real header that is about 100 bytes in and then decides whi…
If that was a Windows 10 screenshot then yes there would have been the possibility of it being the 32-bit edition running a DOS app through NTVDM. But the poster says Windows 11, which does not have a 32-bit edition.
I’m not aware of 64-bit Windows being able to run 32-bit DPMI DOS apps natively, I think those still required NTVDM.
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#59And that's why Microsoft will dominate corporate PC market for the foreseeable future.
Not really, the average user doesn't give a shit about backwards compatibility, they care about being able to create slideshows and send emails. Windows will dominate for the foreseeable future because of deals with manufacturers.
Corporate IT cares about managing all of the devices inside an organization. If a sizable portion of the workforce needs windows for access to platform specific programs then having non-Windows systems for other users that achieve what Windows can do is just overhead for IT and can see pushback.
Re: Windows 11 will happily execute a binary compiled 30 years ago
#60Is it? Maybe insane in a bad way. Right click on windows desktop had what now 3 different menus that might show depending on what you want to do. Oh. And let’s not talk about how much of what you see just covers the stuff up from 1998. Still rendering the old stuff only to have a slightly larger menu render right on top of it.
Agreed. I would say backwards compatibility at this point hinders development and it shows in windows when you're looking at 5 different UI's. I have a 4k monitor, and the installers all look blurry because they can't scale up. We can't even get decent looking icons that were created in the last decade. Honestly, I think a barebones, absolute minimist windows OS would be something that interest a lot of technical use…
> ...absolute minimist windows OS...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-and-w...