GNU/Linux:
- Can I install this 20yo software?
- Is already installed.
Can I install this 20yo software?
user is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reportedSUDO Can I install this 20yo software?
Is already installed.You guys are awesome!
how about this driver for an obscure 20yo laptop's touchpad?
already installed
If you do
echo "3 6 * p" | dcin a terminal it'll give you the result of 3x6, but thedcpart of that is software that was written probably between 1969 and 1971.That is crazy and cool! Thanks!
there is nothing to doI know it’s a même but Linux isn’t that good for running old app that have a user interface. Old command line interface works perfectly but that’s mostly for developer.
windows make it available to everyone.
It’s one of the few things windows does better, might as well recognize it.
Old Linux software usually has to be completed from source anyway (uhh the effort) which essentially makes it future proof
Well, unfortunately there are sw inside windows that are even older
Not my experience. I've had multiple old games and an old printer that just straight up didn't work under Windows. On Linux however (using wine for the windows exe's) it usually does run. Sometimes it does require some googling, but there's usually someone who tried it before.
Games are actually the hardcore compatibility test. They are much less compatible than the average piece of software. That's due to them using much more of the hardware/low-level-APIs of the OS, but also due to DRM and Anti-Cheat-Software (where applicable).
And printers are also (for some reason) super difficult. Probably because they are cheap, planned-obsolescence pieses of crap hardware, which are chock-full of DRM.
Shouldn't window's compatibility mode solve most of those?
Should, yes, but I find it often doesn't.
- "Can you run on this 20 y/o piece of hardware?"
- "Linux: hold my beer!"
Only if you use 15 years old distribution. Linux actually drops support of older hardware faster than Windows, it just doesn't happen consistently. Old drivers are maintained by volunteers so if someone wants to spend their free time on a driver for 25 years old hardware then it will work. But the moment that single developer disappears or stops caring then this driver is booted from the kernel fast. Supporting old hardware isn't the goal of Linux unless someone make it their goal (and core developers don't care either way as long as it's not their job).
I mean, tons of old drivers are on the repositories of major distros, you just have to install them. Just because it's not in the kernel as pre-configured doesn't mean you can't just add it.
That's never been my experience in the slightest.
Ah, jeez, it was just a joke.
25 year old Windows programs work better in Linux with wine than in Windows 🤣
Wine is the most stable ABI on Linux 😂
It's the year of win32 on a linux desktop!
it got so extreme i installed wine on wsl to run a few old programs because windows 11 dropped support for some libraries
That's absolutely hilarious and I don't doubt it for a second.
Linux gang has entered the chat
Tfw compatibility for some old Windows programs and games is better in Wine than in modern Windows
The sad thing is that its not entirely true. The kernel Fries to keep conpability but user space fucks it up sometimes for example glibc
Most people will need internet connection to Google specific commands to run or install the most trivial things, and it won't always work depending on what distro you're using. Oh you're using MX Linux? Goodluck downloading a Plex client installer and just clicking it to install. Maybe use Snap but then good luck creating a shortcut with just a right click.
Limux won't replace Windows anytime soon, not if even enthusiasts need to Google almost everything.
Bold of you to think I'd install a Plex client when I can just stream video in my terminal with mplayer in glorious ASCII.
And why would you search the internet when there's a manual built right in?
What a fuckin lie. Can't play some Windows 7 games on Windows 10 or above but on Linux it works.
I will always remember Battle For Middle Earth working first try on Linux after spending hours fighting with it on Windows
That game is a classic.
it entirely depends. i installed an abandonware game from 2003 the other day, worked perfectly fine once i installed the patch and no cd crack. that being said, it's very common for older games to be nowhere near as stable.
The third panel of that is LINUX: Can you install this 25 year old program?
It was already installed on there.
Cat is so old it should be dead by now... Guess it's got nine lives 😅
Dont you jinx me ricky bobby!
A while back I needed to install a niche amateur radio program from the early 1990s on an arm SBC from a defunct company. No problem. No modem? Emulate one. Interface it with a new piece of audio hardware over an interface that hadn't existed when the software was written? I needed to modify 2 lines in a text file for that. Add support for tcpip? Sure, pipe it over ax.25? OK, I'll install it... Already installed. SSH into another computer over that strung together heap of crap, two hand held radios, and some badly spliced audio cables? You betcha.
Windows is def better than Mac for backwards compatibility, but nah dude it's not even close to perfect. Ive had better luck using wine for old windows programs
Gonna be honest, this isn't my experience, a lot of stuff just doesn't work on Windows anymore
I can get those same programs to work fairly easily on linux though using Wine/Proton
Windows no longer supports 16-bit software, and Intel has hinted at dropping 32-bit support from its future CPUs.
I tried to install Civilization 2 from a CD on Windows 10. It didn't work.
there's workaround but it's a pain in the ass... https://www.myabandonware.com/game/sid-meier-s-civilization-ii-453
basically
- the game use old
.bindisk file, you must convert it to.iso - mount the
.iso - run the
setup.exeto install Civilization II
I'm unsure if this is doable with Windows, but when using wine there's a simple workaround for this:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=4849Mostly it boils down to copy the whole civ2 directory as-is.
- the game use old
i emulated it on macos just fine :)
In my experience, Windows can install a 25 year old program, but it won't work
Do current Windows versions even start anything that was compiled for pre-Vista? I thought they don't?
Yes, you can start almost all 32 bit software in Windows 11.
Yes. It's 16bit app support for win3.1/95 stuff that ran in the DOS layer that's depreciated, but even then they'll sometimes run.
We still have some ridiculous genetics algorithm running inside dosbox, of all things, in an App-V virtual environment deployed across a farm of hundreds of Citrix servers running inside various VMware hosts and published up to some geneticist freaks at the hospital I look after.
It's absolutely insane...
Sadly exactly that is the reason that windows is just a bunch of spaghetti code XD
microsoft has tried to move everyone to a modern framework only. when they successfully have a win32/x86 emulator runnong smoothly they will gut a lot
And yet, Linux tools are even older and the kernel better written than either Windows or OSX.
Before flatpak Linux backwards compatibility was rough.
Do you have a source for the second half of your statement?
What is spaghetti code? (Sorry am non coder)
Basically, spaghetti code is code that is poorly written or implemented.
Most of the time, companies can use newer technologies to replace or fix this bad code, but if the spaghetti code is still needed or in use, then it becomes too difficult or expensive to fix. So we end up with old, badly written and inefficient code and are stuck with it indefinitely.
Good example here being Windows. Some programs from over 20 years ago will still run on Windows 11, many companies rely on these older programs and Microsoft knows this. However, the systems written to allow these programs to run in Windows is usually seen as being bad code since it lacks a lot of the modern techniques programmers use to make things easier to work with and maintain over time. But these old systems cannot be changed or updated since they will then not work with those 20 year old programs that many companies rely on.
if that's the case why do I still have to support XP as some shop floor measurement device still uses software from that, and window 7 for the database of greases then the likilhood is the windows 10 to windows 11 project is taking 6months planning of impact assessments. (pretty sure if we had let them the tool planning dept would still be running their windows 3.1 lotus suite
Holy run-on sentence. Also it sounds like it's the measuring device that doesn't support newer the newer OS, not the other way around. Also migrating a database is possible, it just takes a ton of work.
I've seen a few maintenance contracts which not only require maintenance for the OS, but also for a very specific build of the OS too. Are you, by any chance, bound by any such contract?
More like "Installing... Do you want avast or X or Y installed along with it?" No thanks, I very much prefer Linux package managers.
I have to send files from my Mac to my PC in order to get them printed cause my old printer's driver won't work with the newer MacOS but they work fine on windows 11.
Printer support is hard mode for the IT support crew. An old printer is a minor miracle if you have working drivers.
This has been a great boon to me. Whenever Apple upgrades Mac OS, I check my regional equivalent to craigslist for cheap music gear that stops working. Has worked twice for me. I got a really nice 24 channel audio interface for 20 bucks.
My dosbox and multiple attempts to build VMs of windows 3.1 say this isn't completely true
Man, I hate to break it to you, but the Windows version from 25 years ago is... Windows 98.
I know, I know. I'm so sorry. I felt like that when I noticed, too.
What did I ever do to you for you to hurt me in this way?
Wait, that can't be true... Oh crap it is. I feel extra old now.
Win98 software also do not work reliably on modern Windows. Microsoft abandoned that kind of compatibility a while ago for a mix of both good and bad reasons.
You will have better odds of running it on ReactOS or Linux.
That's because somewhere deep inside every x64/x86 compatible processor is an 8086 from 1980. The architecture has more or less remained the same for 40 years with more and more shit piled on top.
You can literally still natively boot DOS from a floppy on a modern PC if you can get it to recognize and boot from a USB floppy drive and it has legacy boot enabled. You wont get very far without drivers for anything, but you'll get to the command prompt.
More than that tho, windows aims to preserve library compatibility with older software.
It's common for older games for Mac on the same architecture to break or become uninstallable on newer OS versions.
Edit: Fun rabbit hole time! Windows XP had a specific patch to allow Legoland to play with improper coding that was only removed in Windows 10 https://youtu.be/MToTEqoVv3I
Ideas for a new platform are still out there: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/envisioning-future-simplified-architecture.html
And yet somehow, it's also complete garbage. I've tried installing win10 while having 11 drives connected to my system. Guess what, the win10 installer can't count past 10, so instead of installing to drive 11 like it should have, it installed to drive 1. Because no one would ever use more than 10 drives in their system I guess. Drive 1 was my current OS and got nuked hard, even my backups couldn't get it to work again.
Yeah Windows compatibility is both amazingly impressive and complete garbage.
Need to run something from 1992? Sure! No problem!
Need to run something from 2021? Sorry, no compatibility for that old API.
Well yes but actually no, you need the 2+ hours of looking up graphics errors and crashes to get it somewhat working first.
also the reason you can still find a dialogue window from like Win95 lol, people often whine how Windows doesn't look as pretty as MacOS, but I think that's just the price for crazy backwards compatibility.
if they remove those old elements, I'd bet people are gonna rage about how their old games or software no longer work.
Mac has gone from PowerPC to Intel to ARM CPU's. They've changed architecture entirely multiple times. That's a pretty significant factor to their problem with backwards compatibility. Most of the old software on its own just isn't compatible with the newer hardware.
Windows, on the other hand, has been on consumer x86 hardware (and others) for nearly 40 years.
Actually, a lot of games arent really working that great on Windows either, Windows 7 games tend to not work at all sometimes.
A lot of companies still use Windows XP and 7 for their programs. Seems like Windows is really backward compatible (it isn't)
Yeah it sure can install these programs but thei'll either run like dogshit or not at all.
Linux, can you install this 70 year old program? It's already running, bro
Truth
Maybe so, but all that spaghetti code to ensure the backwards compatibility comes at a cost of endless Windows jank.
I use both Windows and Mac machines for my audio work and while everything is consistently just 'plug and play' on my Mac, on the PC side I'm constantly fighting a losing battle with Windows ASIO audio driver issues, multi-monitor issues, Microsoft constantly asking me to make an account every 3 days...
For gaming, I love Windows. Still yet to find anything it does better and with less fuss than MacOS in a work environment though.
I hear a lot about Windows backwards compatibilyty, but i don't think it has ever actualy worked for me. Every time i tried to install a program meant for anything older then win7/win10 i get some cryptic error and end up using a VM.
Yes, install your 25-year-old software on your 30-year-old NTFS filesystem (it's that old).
EDIT: I just looked it up and NTFS turns 30 on July 27th, 2023 LOL
Weren't they working on some database-like replacement for it a while ago?
While not confirmed (AFAIK), it's likely we went from Windows 8 straight to 10. With 95/98 being so similar, it wasn't rare for software to recognize it by looking for "Windows 9" in the OS name.
Maybe comeback when you can get Tripeaks from the BOWEP pack working on modern systems 😂
true lmao
Tell that to my copy of The Neverhood
Cries in Ubuntu
I'm playing first Doom (yeah that Doom from 1993) on my laptop with Win 10
To be fair a pc playing doom isn't that impressive. That game runs on litterally everything
Thinking like that is how I bricked my blender.
Oh look, OP never used a Mac but he’s hating on it.
Had a classmate last semester unable to use the software needed for the class on his mac cuz it wasn't compiled for the m chip. Woulda worked on an older Intel mac.
Downside of switching away from Intel and not going the "clone the machine code" route that AMD did.
I actually own an old iMac from late 2015 that I use for iOS emulation to test react native apps, I daily drive a Linux machine, and I have a laptop with windows that I occasionally use for diagnostics.
Also it's just a meme, I didn't make it
For real. We run windows server R 2008 or something at work, never update it. Works like a dream with our other less ancient servers
That's... not great
Microsoft has not been providing public updates for that platform for years, it needs to be retired. If it's a VM, take a snapshot and do an in-place upgrade, see what happens. Revert to snapshot if it doesn't work out.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-server-2008-r2
@printerjammed Simply put, this is bad for so many reasons. Since you're likely going to reject any direct reasons why this is bad, I'll give you an analogy.
I'm going to take "and never update it" almost literally and assume you guys haven't installed security patches since you first installed it, or stopped at some point long ago.
You're essentially driving a 15 year old car that hasn't had an oil change, brakes changed, or tires changed. There are known MAJOR safety recalls on the seat belts, airbags, and seats. You have refused to take your car in for free servicing under the recall and basically said, "It's working fine now. It's not worth the hassle scheduling an appointment at the mechanic. I'll take my chances."
But hey, "The car still gets me around and fits in my garage" you smugly think to yourself. "Why should I do anything different? It's MY car and I'm only endangering myself here."
Nope. Your car is endangering everyone else on the road. Bad brakes and tires are major risks for everyone around you. You can easily lose control and hurt or kill others on the road.
Bad seats, seat belts, and airbags means that occupants of your vehicle (your companies clients) can be injured or killed if they fail. Even if only YOURS fails, well...you're the driver. Also, if you do crash and your seat belt fails, you're now a projectile in the car and can injure or kill other passengers. I've seen this happen too many times as a firefighter and an EMT. Unseatbelted occupants are an enormous hazard.
Suffice to say your company is a vector for major attacks and vulnerabilities that not only will affect you, but your clients and potentially countless others who have nothing to do with your company since your server could be part of a botnet for all you know.
"bUt We HaVe OtHeR sEcUrItY cOnTrOlS aNd PrOpEr PrOtOcOlS fOr...." I'm going to cut you off here and straight up say: No. You don't. The fact you still have Windows Server 2008 installed and refuse to even update it tells me enough about your entire IT department and policies.
business doesnt spend money on IT. i'd love a new car
Thaat can't possibly be secure... or can it?
It'll depend entirely on whether it's connected to any kind of externally available network.
Even airgapped, it's just asking to be hacked.
