Linux, can you install this 70 year old program? It's already running, bro
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.
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.
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
.bin disk file, you must convert it to .iso.isosetup.exe to install Civilization III'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=4849
Mostly it boils down to copy the whole civ2 directory as-is.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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
Windows after launching the exe: Monitor flickers, mouse freezes and here is free blue screen!
free blue screen
i assume the non free blue screen displays ads before the system crashes
Are you sure you don't work for the Microsoft marketing and sales departments somewhere? This sounds like something they'd try.
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
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
Thaat can't possibly be secure... or can it?
That's... not great
Oh look, OP never used a Mac but he’s hating on it.