[timcobb]

I don't get it, I am sincerely sorry :(.

Why do we need Windows 11 to support old software when we can use an older version of Windows, in an emulator at that. Playing Quake doesn't require a secure, patched box, and if a secure environment is the point of extreme backwards compat, then it seems like endless backwards compatibility is not the best way to achieve that goal (sandboxing an old, emulated OS, for example, comes to mind as more reasonable).

Letting Microsoft play this backwards compatibility card feels not healthy for the evolution of software or the diversification of the industry.

[pjc50]

Breaking backwards compatibility is bad for diversity, because it "culls" a whole load of otherwise working software that is not being maintained. You can see the reverse of this on the app stores, which have mandatory update policies.

Regularly doing it basically forces developers into a limited-term license, subscription, or SaaS model, in order to pay for the upgrade churn required by the platform.

And a lot of it is just churn. Not evolution, not better, just .. different.

[timcobb]

> it "culls" a whole load of otherwise working software

It doesn't cull it, you can still run Windows 3.11 or 98SE as well under emulation as on contemporary original hardware.

If anything, breaking backwards compatibility forces you to run your old software in an "authentic" environment, versus say, on some hardware/software combination tens of generations removed. Like, why would you want to run SkiFree in Windows 11, it feels like an abomination to me, almost disrespectful to the game. I don't want to see my old programs in Windows 11...

[Suppafly]

>you can still run Windows 3.11 or 98SE as well under emulation as on contemporary original hardware

That's mostly how the backwards compatibility works anyway, just under the hood. The OS is using all sorts of compatibility layers to make the older software sit on top of and work on the newer OS versions. It just mostly works flawlessly, so you don't think about it unless it doesn't work automatically and forces you to go into the properties and tinker with which compatibility layer to manually apply.

[timcobb]

I didn't know that, but I would have assumed that. And that being the case, the difference seems to be whether you want to run your old program in a Windows 11 chrome or a Windows 3.11 chrome :shrug:

[rpdillon]

> not healthy for the evolution of software or the diversification of the industry.

Not good for evolution, but fantastic for diversification. Being able to write a program that solves a problem and be "done" with it is fantastic, but having the platform walk out from under you requires ongoing work. That ongoing work often demands payment...so platforms that constantly change tend to be highly commercialized.

Open source on Android suffers from this. So many "done" apps are no longer compatible.

And the changes to the underlying platform may not be benevolent. Android, for example, deprecated their API for filesystem access and introduced a scoped replacement that was two orders of magnitude slower. They then banned Syncthing, a file sharing tool, from the Play Store because it doesn't use the latest APIs (APIs are so slow that SyncThing is unusable...the opened bug hasn't been addressed in the intervening years).

The lesson is that any platform that is a moving target presents a risk to both the developer and the user, as that movement concentrates power with the platform owner in a way more more slow moving (or static) platform does not.

All that said, I use Linux 100x as much as I use Windows, because it gives me other kinds of control.

[eviks]

Because it's not limited to games, forcing updates cuts of a lot of apps that can't invest enough in updating.

Also the barrier to use you're suggesting with alternative install/emulator is pretty high for an average user. It also breaks integration with everything else (e.g., a simple alt-tab will show the VM instead of 2 apps running inside)

Also because a lot of progress is regression, so having an old way to opt out into is nice

[jasomill]

Integration is the biggest thing. While some desktop VM hosts provide various integration bits like file sharing and rootless window support, the experience is rarely seemless.

Drawing a few examples from an old Raymond Chen blog post[1], integrations required for seemless operation include

• Host files must be accessible in guest applications using host paths and vice versa. Obviously this can't apply to all files, but users will at least expect their document files to be accessible, including documents located on (possibly drive-letter-mapped) network shares.

• Cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop need to work between host and guest applications.

• Taskbar notification icons created by guest applications must appear on the host's taskbar.

• Keyboard layout changes must be synchronized between host and guest.

These are, at least to a useful degree, possible. Integrations that are effectively impossible in the general case:

• Using local IPC mechanisms between host and guest applications. Chen's examples are OLE, DDE, and SendMessage, but this extends to other mechanisms like named pipes, TCP/IP via the loopback adapter, and shared memory.

• Using plug-ins running in the guest OS in host applications and vice versa. At best, these could be implemented through some sort of shim mechanism on a case-by-case basis, assuming the plug-in mechanism isn't too heavily sandboxed, and that the shim mechanism doesn't introduce unacceptable overhead (e.g., latency in real-time A/V applications).

Finally, implementing these integrations without complicated (to implement and configure) safeguards would effectively eliminate most of the security benefits of virtualization.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051223213509/http://blogs.msdn...

[timcobb]

> forcing updates cuts of a lot of apps that can't invest enough in updating.

What about emulation?

[eviks]

emulation is addressed in the next sentence? Also see the sibling comment with more details on the list of issues if you "simulate" the OS instead of using the real one

[timcobb]

It wasn't before, when I asked. Yes now there is more here about emulation :).

[stonemetal12]

You don't necessarily "need" it but what feature of Win11 or OSX is worth the making all existing software inoperable? Can't say I have seen one outside of gets security updates.

[timcobb]

I don't know, you could do something totally wild like re-imagining the filesystem... I, for one, would love a flat blob store organized in some other way than folders or filenames. I think there's tons of interesting things that could and would be explored without backwards compatibility holding us back. That's how the original OS X came to be.

But what I really don't get, is why we need backwards compat when computers can run computers, and old operating systems hardly demand resources on a modern computer.