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
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" | 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 command line interface works perfectly but that’s mostly for developer.
No. I’m comfortable with command line tools, and I’m far from being a developer. People used DOS etc. as well without being developers.
True but time have changed. It’s like giving a diskette to a gen z, he doesn’t know what to do. People mostly aren’t used to terminal.
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
- “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.
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.
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
Linux:
User: Can you install this 50 year old program?
Linux: it’s already installed
No you can’t because the dependency doesn’t exit anymore.
Then compile it from the sources
Yes because that is more user friendly than running an executable through a built in compatibility layer… suure
Who tf wants usability when shit just has a solution no matter what. Additionally its an old program that a normal person wouldn’t even try.
On windows shit just doesn’t work and the solutions are most of the time not even existing.
On windows shit just doesn’t work and the solutions are most of the time not even existing.
You got it mixed up. Old Windows compatibility is much better than old Linux compatibility. Try running OpenOffice 1.0 on Debian 12
Meanwhile running Office 03 on Windows 11 is almost as simple as actually installing it
If you’re trying to get ancient software to work I think “user friendliness” is the least of your concerns. Especially compared to the alternative (Windows) where the answer is just, “No: That’s not going to work no matter what you do.”
As I said. Try a random Windows XP binary on Windows 11 vs Debian 4 binary on Debian 12.
Have you heard to Good Word of our Lord and Savior, AppImage?
Well given most diehard Linux fanboys despise any sort of containerized apps, aka AppImage, Flatpak or Snap (I personally only despise Snap), I’m going to say no.
Grep is from 1973 so yeah.
User: Linux can you install this software from this ancient obscure operating system?
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.
Windows after launching the exe: Monitor flickers, mouse freezes and here is free blue screen!
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Are you sure you don’t work for the Microsoft marketing and sales departments somewhere? This sounds like something they’d try.
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.
Oooh, I’m gonna have to try this later (I wish Kbin had a save button like lemmy does)
- 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…
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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.
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