If it's so easy to port a C++ program to Windows 95, why are people currently only supporting Windows 10 and newer? It feels like it would be an amazing idea to have your software running on old hardware if it can. Is everyone just lazy or think there aren't people who are still on XP to this day?>inb4 nobody uses old hardware!!1!Current RAM prices will only go higher.
Also with enough effort even Windows 3.11 support isn't a problem.
Windows 95 lost almost all hardware support by like 2000. There's nothing running Windows 95 on metal that could run any modern intense programs. It's like trying to port Boeing 737 software to a Ford Focus, even if you could get it to work what's the point?
>>108894403I was using the ease of porting stuff to Windows 95 as an example, I was asking why are people willing to support ONLY Windows 10/11.
>>108894415Because developers are lazy, jeeted, and rely on libraries.
>>108894369Its not so simple. The windows api has holes, missing functionality. Each version of windows they drip feed a handful of useful features that are impossible to implement yourself. As such once a programmer gets used to these new features, the architecture of their applications grows around said new features and there is basically no way to port the application back, not without massive reworking.And you might accuse programmers of being lazy. But its not. Programmers don't comprehend how they lived without these features, and have no idea how to implement the same functionality without them.
>>108894369it's easy only if you own the entire stack, down to language runtime. once a single component requires a higher version of windows, you're cooked.
but then of course on the other side there is stuff like python, which is trivially patched to work on windows 7 but they refuse to do it.
>>108894415>why is software targetting only the OS that people useit’s a mystery
>>108894415you were given a very good reason, thoughbeitpeople aren't making a decision to not support older windows versions, they're just making software for the operating system they use with the tools that are available to themyou're not using those operating systems either. you messed around with a toy application and got it to run in operating systems no one is actually using and got the autistic compulsion to come to 4chan to yell to the void that "people" are lazy. does that make you feel better about your shitty life, anon?
That's not how it works. The program has to be written at some point against windows APIs. Windows APIs have changed over time. If you're programming against win95 APIs, they will hardly work on win10+. If you programmed against the win10 APIs, you'll have to rewrite for win95. Furthermore, many software relies on bullshit nowadays (e.g. electron) which isn't going to work without rewriting the whole thing yourself. Think also about things like dx version support.
>>108894942There are multiple problems with your answer:People still use Windows 7, and it's support was deliberately cut, despite that.>people aren't making a decision to not support older windows versions, they're just making software for the operating system they use with the tools that are available to themAll tools are available to them, yet they still only target Windows 10+.>you're not using those operating systems eitherI have a computer so old it has a floppy drive cutout in it's case.>you messed around with a toy application and got it to run in operating systems no one is actually usingSo, why can't they do it with a slightly bigger application, especially given their resources?
>>108895004>backwards compatibility is something microsoft actually does well,My fucking sides
>>108895010>People still use Windows 7Nobody cares about a few brazilians and russiansEither you’re a windog who’s on 11, a coping windog who’s on 10 or you fucked off to linux or macoswin7 is dead>I have a computer so old it has a floppy drive cutout in it's case.Cool, nobody else does
>>108895010Older versions of windows are missing functionality that cannot be emulated using any combination of other existing apis. The general cycle for dropping older versions of windows is you come up against a hard blocker. There being no practical way of implementing some specific functionality with the apis available. Other times it comes from code refactoring, where the limitations of an older windows version imposed severe constraints on the design of the code, and dropping the older version could greatly simplify and improve the code. Various parts of the windows api have been quite lacking and required extremely ugly and fragile hacks to implement various application features. Newer windows versions addressed some of these pain points greatly simplifying some code.
Since when is using the win api easy?
>>108894909Backwards. Lots of people, maybe even most would still be using windows 7 if software support hadn't been dropped. People don't need to replace their computers every 3-5 years (or didn't even have one and were buying new) like they did when Microsoft took over the world. Hardware just hasn't improved that much in the last decade.
>>108895307Since wxWidgets became a thing.
>>108895324That still exists?
>>108894369People who care about backwards compatibility switched to Linux long ago.
>>108895064>Nobody cares about a few brazilians and russians:)>>108895343>People who care about backwards compatibility switched to Linux>switched to Linux>the OS where applications that are just a few years old can become unusable because of newer glibc versions (or even kernel upgrades) breaking shit, distro maintainers dropping older APIs from their repos, most package managers making it impractical to have multiple versions of the same software on one system, and general library churnlolno. Nothing in the Linux ecosystem, not even something like Debian, comes even close to matching the insanely far-reaching support lifecycles and forward/backwards compatibility that legacy Windows provided, as shown by OP's posts, and "Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI" recently becoming a meme only cements that. Someone please prove me wrong by porting a modern graphical Linux app to Red Hat 6 from 1999 or something, it's fucking bleak out here
>>108894369the windows api and compiler toolchain is such complete shit its a wonder any programs were ever written for the OS
>>108894369it would be limited to the classic windows ui, that modern people will instantly call ugly/boring
>>108895613i hate winshit, but i want my uis to be as practical and boring as possible
>>108894415that's just a campaign against windows 7, most software still work doing minimal changes to trick it to think the host is a win10 machine
>>108895627That's what I think as well.
>>108894369>why are people currently only supporting Windows 10 and newerTo use newer system calls.
>>108895586>Win32 is the only stable Linux ABIq: whya: poetteringware. should of used x athena widgets
>>108894369ROI is bad. Just because you can doesn't mean you should
>>108895586You are retarded. You don't know shit about computers.
>>108895586The Linux kernel can load ELFs from the early '90s. You're a terminally online nocoder who does nothing but parrot memes.
>>108895586I agree, linux is even worse deprecating stuff faster than even windows, a shame for the internet culture
>>108895798>The Linux kernel can load ELFs from the early '90s
>>108894369>Current RAM prices will only go higher.Yeah so you make sure your software runs well on 2020 era hardware. Normies aren't keeping their Windows 95 computers around. Most people walking around were born after 95 released. You're old now.
>>108896232>"However it's not an Open Source disease its certain projects like Gnome disease - my 3.6rc kernel will still run a Rogue binary built in 1992. X is back compatible to apps far older than Linux."t. Alan Coxhttps://aput.net/~jheiss/aout_redhat.shtmlCan even run COFF binaries today. You can't run a DOS binary on any windows machine today. The last time that was possible was on win95 (maybe 98 but pretty sure that already didn't work anymore by then).Still true today with ELF-based adapters: https://lwn.net/Articles/888741/So the source is real life, while your source is your ass.Diablo 2 needed to be updated in 2016 to even run on windows 10+. It was broken without significant hoop jumping in win 7 as well.
>>108896415> You can't run a DOS binary on any windows machine todayIts a 64bit issue not a windows version issue. 32bit windows 10 can run dos applications.
>>108896443Couldn't be further from the truth.
>>108895586>>108894369I have a Windows XP, a Windows 7 and a Windows 11 LTSC IoT VM for software that was made during that time and that wouldn't run on newer Windows versions anymore.I know there is a samefag here who keeps shouting about how Windows is backwards compatible. But that is simply not true.He is trying to make you believe a lie by spamming it a lot.Windows XP software definitely does not run without issues on Windows 11. That's why Windows has those "compatibility modes", which do fucking nothing.Not a single time did i witness an old binary, that didn't work natively, to magically work in "compatibility mode".If you want to run old software, run an old OS that it was built for.Or only run Free Software, so you can simply compile it to whatever system you want to run it on... backwards compatibility isn't a problem if you have the source code, i do not have to run a 15 year old Debian VM.
>>108896443>can runbut HOW.If your requirement is "it launches somehow :D", but it keeps crashing and throwing the wildest errors during runtime.... what do you get from it?It is unusable. If it doesn't launch at all, or is broken to use, doesn't make a difference to me.People who want to run DOS applications, run Dosbox. They run an emulator.Why would they do that, if Windows is le backwards compatible, hurr durr?
>>108894369What is the monetary, social, or health benefit of porting your software to ancient outdated hardware only a handful of autists care about? How does this increase your capital, get you friends and pussy, or make you live longer and healthier?
>>108896628Windows has backwards compatibility with DOS. You want more than DOS, you want sound card emulation. DOS has nothing to do with sound cards. Windows provides a functional implementation of DOS and 16bit windows.
>>108896685What your marketing department says is not representing reality, anon.Windows backwards compatibility is atrocious, and this post hit it well: >>108896443>64bit Windows can't run 32bitIn theory, the Microsoft marketing department will tell you that there is WoW64 to support 32bit binaries on 64bit Windows.In practice, it performs so bad that the general recommendation is: "Don't expect this to work. Don't waste your time. Get an emulator or VM."So Microsoft carries around bloat, just to claim a fake backwards compatibility. Literally just marketing.
>>108896685Windows has not had backward compatibility with DOS since windows 98, dumb lying shill.
>>108894369>>108894415according to steam hardware survey>99.93% of users are using Windows 10 or 11>0.07% of users are using windows 7>less than 0.005% are using an earlier version of Windows (not even listed on the survey)supporting older Windows versions means you have to add additional testing and possibly cut out features that aren't backwards compatible. doing that for less than 0.005% of users makes no sense. it would be smarter to support GNU/Linux or OSX instead
OPThis board is a cesspool of negativity where old cranks (anonymously) dismiss actual interesting ideas and discussions. With AI, this could be extremely viable. Anything that revives old HW from becoming ewaste is a worthwhile pursuit. Keep hacking.
>>108896675>How does this get you friends and pussyIronically, being somewhat misguided, stubborn, or uncompromising in areas of life that don't overlap too badly with normie redlines (politics, $CURRENT_THING, etc), can get you friends and pussy because you can become interesting. I knew a guy who was deep into weird old philosophy, only used MSDOS edit.com and typewriters scattered throughout his place, who slept on a couch and burned haunted house levels of candles. He got a lot of pussy.
>>108896746I am pretty sure this is an LLM
>>108896821>0.07%
>>108896983Pretty sure it's not. He's right, Windows carries around a ton of debt and bloat for almost zero purpose. Windows is dying.
>>108897049Windows is dying for reasons unrelated to any baggage it might be carrying. The new stuff is what is doing the damage.
>>108897092The enormous accumulated attack surface means there will never again be a skipped patch Tuesday, and the ill will accumulated now means adversaries are releasing 0 days just after updates drop to inflict maximum damage. Jeet vibecoded buggy patches, stacked to the moon, mean patches need patching and on and on. Rather than fixing anything, they're doubling down on things nobody wanted, so yeah, in a way I agree it's the "new stuff" but also really not new, it's that the ground has shifted underneath their feet, and what might have been survivable due to in-house retained expertise is now completely gone.
>>108894369>c++98oh no no no no
>>108897271Would have been fine if they left shit well alone. They have been shitting up the codebase for 25 years. Damage stacked on top of damage.
>>108894415Because of default compiler options. This was a big problem right around a decade ago, when the Phenom II platform was still relevant but the default compiler options for Visual C++ had dropped support for it. So many games that should've by all means supported it, were instead compiled with requirements for instructions it didn't have and thus needed to be patched later for support. Same thing happened way earlier with pre-P4 32-bit x86 CPUs.Another issue is deprecated Windows features, as using the Windows 95-era Win32 API would result in modern Windows versions running the program via backwards compatibility, it'd introduce various limitations and performance issues on newer platforms.
>>108896583troonix requires online to download dependencies, so this is impossible to do
>>108896415being the uneducated nocoder pleb that I am, I spent some time looking into this and I have no fucking idea what you're rambling about>https://aput.net/~jheiss/aout_redhat.shtmlthis is a 24 year old page, and I'm pretty sure the author conflated a.out with COFF when they're different formats>Can even run COFF binaries todayas far as I can tell, COFF never gained any traction on Linux (aside from whatever the fuck ECOFF on MIPS is)>You can't run a DOS binary on any windows machine today. The last time that was possible was on win95NTVDM and WoW16 persisted in 32-bit Windows for decades and they're still usable in x86 Win10>Still true today with ELF-based adaptersThis is technically true, but translation layers ≠ native support, and even then, I don't see how using some unmaintained a.out -> ELF wrapper is any different from using WineVDM to run Win16 apps. I'm also conveniently ignoring that a.out was so short-lived on Linux that the only example of it I've seen is the Atari Jaguar linker and that it isn't an "ELF from the early 90s">Diablo 2 needed to be updated in 2016 to even run on windows 10I know jackshit about Blizzard games, but it seems like Diablo 2 ran on Windows 10 with basic workarounds even before that update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgyw4rD87jo>So the source is real life, while your source is your asso-okay :(>>108896583>Windows XP software definitely does not run without issues on Windows 11Backwards compatibility on Windows has definitely gotten worse (especially since 24H2), and people tend to overexaggerate its quality, but I still think there's a difference between some 20+ year old games and programs needing unofficial tweaks, as opposed to shit on Linux outright breaking unless you recompile it for modern glibc/GTK/etc.while I was writing this, I remembered that I've seen people hack old Loki ports like SimCity 3000 into running on modern Linux, but doing that shouldn't be necessary in the first place
>>108897618>this is a 24 year old page, and I'm pretty sure the author conflated a.out with COFF when they're different formatsYou are confused.>as far as I can tell, COFF never gained any traction on Linux (aside from whatever the fuck ECOFF on MIPS is)It was the originally supported format before ELF. So the point is that the executables we can run are those that were made for linux before it was even possible to use ELF. That's roughly equivalent of being able to run DOS executables on Windows like was possible in windows 95.>NTVDM and WoW16 persisted in 32-bit Windows for decades and they're still usable in x86 Win10NTVDM/WoW16 is a wine-tier compat layer. Win95 is the last time it was possible to actually run 16bit executables on windows without extensive "emulation" of this type. It's also very limited and many subsystems were never available with it, which is why in practice, after win95, no 16 bit program actually worked. It's why GoG always had to package dos programs with dosbox (and why dosbox existed at all).>This is technically true, but translation layers ≠ native support,Ironic. The adapter is not a translation layer, it's just a format hoister.>Diablo 2 ran on Windows 10 with basic workarounds even before that update If you read the comments you'll see it only partially works and requires a patch that was released in 2010 to even get that far.>as opposed to shit on Linux outright breaking unless you recompile it for modern glibc/GTK/etc.Made-up nonsense. You're also comparing static/packaged and fully dynamic, nothing to do with what you're talking about at all, nothing to do with linux, purely app-side.
>>108897691> Win95 is the last time it was possible to actually run 16bit executables on windows without extensive "emulation" of this typeWin95 emulates dos as well.
>>108897709NTA, but Windows 95 used the Virtual 8086 mode from x86 CPUs (a kind of virtual machine) to run DOS programs on a window. When you restarted in DOS mode, that was true real mode MS-DOS. Some games only worked using the latter.
>>108897875> Windows 95 used the Virtual 8086 mode from x86 CPUs (a kind of virtual machine) to run DOS programs on a windowYes, exactly the same as NT does> When you restarted in DOS modeDOS mode is not really a mode, its just DOS. Its basically dual booting with an unconventional menu interface.
>>108897618>I don't see how using some unmaintained a.out -> ELF wrapper is any differentThat was a miserably shit executable format. ELF's just so much better in every way that matters that there's no point in trying to keep that old pile of a.out shit going. And it's been literally dead for decades.For Windows people, it's like wanting the old DOS .COM format to be kept going when the .EXE format family's been ruling the roost through the whole Windows era.
>>108898369to be fair the a.out/com format is a lot simpler and carries a lot fewer edge cases. they are basically statically linked binaries with fixed addresses (although with modern paging, that shouldn't really be an issue.)it might not be a bad thing to have the old, fully-featured path, but also have this dumb-but-nothing-fancy static binary opt-in for those who don't want surprises.i think elfs even had an exploit path via the 'interpreter' functionality, but i forget the details.
>>108896443>what is NTVDMYou are an utter fucking retard.
>>108894369how would you be able to use USB devices or more than 128MB of memory on there?
>>108898459do you even know what a COM file was?>artifact format carried over from CP/M>no header>64k max for all program data>segment registers all set to same value>execution starts at offset 100h
>>108897618>Backwards compatibility on Windows has definitely gotten worse (especially since 24H2), and people tend to overexaggerate its quality, but I still think there's a difference between some 20+ year old games and programs needing unofficial tweaksNo there isn't!It is unusable.It doesn't make a difference if something crashes all five minutes or doesn't launch in the first place! Both is not possible to be used.>...unless you recompileAnd then it works fine without issue.It is THE solution to backwards compatibility. Just give me the fucking source code, then i can run it on any future system. I can run software on Linux that is older than Linux itself.Backwards compatibility is ONLY an issue for corporate proprietary shitware.Free Software does not have this problem by design. There is no need to bloat a Linux system with WoW64, UAC shims and other idiotic bloatware to do a fruitless attempt of backwards compatibility, that doesn't work anyway, if you can just compile it.GIVE ME THE FUCKING SOURCE CODE YOU FUCKING FAGGOT.
>>108894369No TLS or electron
>>108899202And EXE was always there since the beginning, it let you use multiple program segments and thus more than 64k.
>>108897618>and people tend to overexaggerate its qualityYou are trying a false compromise here.First you outright lied and claimed that Windows 11 could run DOS binaries. Then, when you got BTFO hard enough, you attempt this compromise of:>ok yes, i admit that Windows backwards compatibility is kinda bad sometimes, but muh Linux is just so bad muhNot falling for that.Either admit the simple reality that old Windows binaries are only able to be run reliably in emulators or VMs, or fuck off.I only accept the truth. Do not lie.
Because only a small percentage of the population suffers from autism.
>>108897691>It was the originally supported format before ELFjudging by various 30+ year old articles and documentation: https://www.linux.co.cr/free-unix-os/review/1995/04.htmlhttps://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1139https://web.mit.edu/linux/redhat/redhat-4.0.0/i386/doc/HTML/ldp/ELF-HOWTO-1.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20040713171954/http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/slackware/3.9/docs/ELF-HOWTO...Linux and libc (not glibc) started moving from a.out to ELF in 1995, and the switch was basically complete by '96, to the point where Slackware autists were doing fucking brain surgery just so they could use it first. I doubt COFF was ever considered (for i386, at least), since ELF had already replaced it in SysV 6 years prior. There's an obscure compatibility layer called iBCS that was last updated in 2023, and it can seemingly run SysV and SCO COFF binaries on Linux, but old Unix crap scares me, and if this counts as native ""COFF support"", then you might as well include Linux being able to boot from a EFI stub, or Wine being able to run Windows .exes>Win95 is the last time it was possible to actually run 16bit executables on windows without extensive "emulation" of this typeother anons already mentioned this, but Microsoft was using virtual 8086 mode and a VMM to run DOS applications in VDMs as early as Windows/386 2.01 in 1987, and IBM handled it similarly with MVDM. If you're so anal that you refuse to run DOS apps on Windows without any kind of virtualization, then you'd have to go back to Win1.0 or 2.0/286, which could only handle executing one DOS app at a time lmao>You're also comparing static/packaged and fully dynamicnone of this is even what I was originally bitching about, my beef is with glibc and UI frameworks/APIs regularly breaking shit to the point where something like OP compiling a Win95 program on Win10 is vastly more difficult than it should be. The kernel and old a.out binaries aren't really the issue here
>>108899234>There is no need to bloat a Linux system with WoW64, UAC shims and other idiotic bloatware ackshually you have to manually enable multilib/multiarch on distros like Arch and Debian if you want to natively run i386 applications on a 64-bit system>GIVE ME THE FUCKING SOURCE CODEsee this is all I really give a shit about. If Microsoft simply open sourced Windows 7 or 8.1 or something and a team of credible developers started maintaining it for eternity afterwards, then I wouldn't be having any of these arguments in the first place, but unfortunately we live in the gayest timeline possible, where nothing good is ever allowed to happen>>108899272>First you outright lied and claimed that Windows 11 could run DOS binariesno, you're putting words in my mouth; I said that DOS applications could run on 32-bit Windows 10 using NTVDM, which is factually correct. In fact, I completely forgot about this until now, but someone just straight up ported NTVDM to 64-bit Windows 11 like 3 years ago https://github.com/leecher1337/ntvdmx64.something tells me that even if I mentioned that you can still natively run a large portion of Win32 programs from 1993 on Windows 11 three decades after the fact, you wouldn't count it because WoW64 is technically a compatibility layer>Either admit the simple reality that old Windows binaries are only able to be run reliably in emulators or VMsyes, and nobody's going to give a shit or view this as some kind of massive own when Windows' backwards compatibility has been historically superior than every other consumer OS from the last 30 years thanks to virtualization and compatibility layers. The Linux schizos aren't sending their best :(
>>108895318>Lots of people, maybe even most would still be using windows 7 if software support hadn't been dropped.Bingo. They can't let that happen. Updooting is perhaps the biggest scam they shoved down our throats.
>>108900758>Windows 11 Exclusions: Windows 11 introduces strict security mandates that exclude many older PCs capable of running Windows 7 or 10. It requires TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module), Secure Boot capability, and generally newer CPUs (typically Intel 8th Gen or newer, AMD Ryzen 2000 or newer) to support features like HVCI and modern driver standardsYour computer is not yours. You can't use Windows 7 on your computer although it can do everything you need, because in their computer they need support for the programs that they need to spy on you.
>>108895318Name three things that are genuinely better and a more user friendly experience in windows 7 vs windows 10.Hard mode: nothing that only matters to schizoids like "telemetry"
>>108895064This the answer.Not that hes correct, this demonstrates why. Sperge nudevs and consoomers have an absolute meltie when they're presented with a functional tool outside of their yearly "get into more debt for postmodernist" junk cycle. Its the same reason why a techbro absolutely needs his coffee pod iot preroaster and blower 5000 2026 edition.
>>108902345Better third party shell plugins, cohesive control panel, functional unregressed d3d11 debug layer, a memory management that actually clears read only file pages on demand, a swap manager that doesn't require 300000gb + initial swap file size+ ram capacity, working touchpad drivers unlike the modern synaptic win10+ exclusive winrt hybrid drivers, cohesive ui, do i have to continue?
>>108897467>troonix requires online to download dependenciesWhich YouTube influencer told you this?
>>108902345You didn't understand the point.It's you who needs to justify the benefits of win10/win11 without resorting to industry coercion. The premise is that people had no compelling need to upgrade. There were no features of new windows versions that were good enough for anyone to upgrade, except for a compulsive, irrational need for the latest fashion OR coercive practices like dropping support for essential tech like web browsers. IOW Microsoft bullied people to upgrade, win10 and win11 did not win in their merits.That is, you need to make the affirmative argument if you want to address the point that was made. If you are just here to drink your own cum and smear shit all over your face by all means continue this retarded line of argument.
>>108900745>ackshually you have to manually enable multilib/multiarch on distros like Arch and Debian if you want to natively run i386 applications on a 64-bit systemI wouldn't be surprised if it were because of Wine 99% of the time.
>>108902729reasons to have 32bit libs in linux:p̶c̶s̶x̶2̶ pcsx2 now has a 64bit version̶w̶i̶n̶e̶ wine's new wow64 support is complete and can run 32bit windows programs using 64bit linux librariessteamsomehow steam is still 32bit, in $(date +%Y)
>>108902927there is 64-bit steam beta, dunno how well that works tho
>average modern c++ programmer>calls new 3000 times to allocate 7GB of garbage on the heap>never call delete because "eh the os will clean it up on exit">port it to windows 95 with 8MB of ram
>>108903036Describing from experience?
this place has officially gone insanewe are now arguing the pros and cons of porting software to windows 95
>>108895778He's right.I'm a Linux user and have been for years but the unwillingness or inability to maintain a stable ABI (particularly in glibc and other core libraries) is a real and valid criticism.
>>108899190http://toastytech.com/files/cruzerwin95.htmlhttps://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2019/12/windows-9598me-ram-patch.htmlBut generally these are just for shits and giggles
>>108903491Yeah, experiencing jeetware from Microsoft employees like (You).
>>108894369I dont use latest win*dows why would i use one thats been dead for decades?
supporting old platforms is harmful, you need to nudge people into updating and supporting new spending
>>108894369Capitalism. No other reason.I am grateful that VxKex exists to combat most of those issues.
>>108897467only if you have net-install which as it says in the name (net) it downloads everything from net unless you download full installation and you have everything there.
>>108894369OP what does this "URL Viewer" do?You set it as the default HTTP/HTTPS URL handler and it displays a popup instead of opening a web browser?
>>108904324Yep, that's what I made it for. You can get it here:https://codeberg.org/MichaelAgarkov/URLViewer
>>108895586At this point, why not just write your own OS using W95 as a substrate?
