25 year old Windows programs work better in Linux with wine than in Windows ๐คฃ
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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it got so extreme i installed wine on wsl to run a few old programs because windows 11 dropped support for some libraries
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Wine is the most stable ABI on Linux ๐
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.
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 reported
SUDO Can I install this 20yo software?
Is already installed.
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how about this driver for an obscure 20yo laptop's touchpad?
already installed
Had this exact scenario with an old flatbed scanner. No win10 drivers and it never had mac drivers. Ran without issue in up to date Mint.
Actually once recently I had problems because the wifi driver (b43) for the Dell Latitude D505 (2004) wasn't in the live Boot environment (cause un-free).
huh. Did you end up using a ethernet cable then?
If you do echo "3 6 * p" | dc in a terminal it'll give you the result of 3x6, but the dc part of that is software that was written probably between 1969 and 1971.
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there is nothing to do
Old Linux software usually has to be completed from source anyway (uhh the effort) which essentially makes it future proof
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Linux gang has entered the chat
Linux:
User: Can you install this 50 year old program?
Linux: it's already installed
User: Linux can you install this software from this ancient obscure operating system?
No you can't because the dependency doesn't exit anymore.
Have you heard to Good Word of our Lord and Savior, AppImage?
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Tfw compatibility for some old Windows programs and games is better in Wine than in modern Windows
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- "Can you run on this 20 y/o piece of hardware?"
- Linux: "hold my beer!"
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In my experience, Windows can install a 25 year old program, but it won't work
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
More like "Installing... Do you want avast or X or Y installed along with it?" No thanks, I very much prefer Linux package managers.
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
Do current Windows versions even start anything that was compiled for pre-Vista? I thought they don't?
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...
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The third panel of that is LINUX: Can you install this 25 year old program?
It was already installed on there.
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.
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Linux, can you install this 70 year old program? It's already running, bro
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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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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Sadly exactly that is the reason that windows is just a bunch of spaghetti code XD
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