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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?

>>108894403
I 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.

>>108894415
Because developers are lazy, jeeted, and rely on libraries.

>>108894369 (OP)
Its 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.

>>108894369 (OP)
it'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 use
it’s a mystery

>>108894415
you were given a very good reason, thoughbeit
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 them
you'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.

>>108894942
There 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 them
All tools are available to them, yet they still only target Windows 10+.
>you're not using those operating systems either
I 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 using
So, 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 7
Nobody cares about a few brazilians and russians
Either you’re a windog who’s on 11, a coping windog who’s on 10 or you fucked off to linux or macos
win7 is dead
>I have a computer so old it has a floppy drive cutout in it's case.
Cool, nobody else does

>>108895010
Older 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?

>>108894909
Backwards. 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.

>>108895307
Since wxWidgets became a thing.

>>108895324
That still exists?

>>108894369 (OP)
People who care about backwards compatibility switched to Linux long ago.

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>>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 churn
lolno. 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

>>108894369 (OP)
the windows api and compiler toolchain is such complete shit its a wonder any programs were ever written for the OS

>>108894369 (OP)
it would be limited to the classic windows ui, that modern people will instantly call ugly/boring

>>108895613
i hate winshit, but i want my uis to be as practical and boring as possible

>>108894415
that'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

>>108895627
That's what I think as well.

>>108894369 (OP)
>why are people currently only supporting Windows 10 and newer
To use newer system calls.

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>>108895586
>Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI
q: why
a: poetteringware. should of used x athena widgets

>>108894369 (OP)
ROI is bad. Just because you can doesn't mean you should

>>108895586
You are retarded. You don't know shit about computers.

>>108895586
The Linux kernel can load ELFs from the early '90s. You're a terminally online nocoder who does nothing but parrot memes.

>>108895586
I agree, linux is even worse deprecating stuff faster than even windows, a shame for the internet culture

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>>108895798
>The Linux kernel can load ELFs from the early '90s

>>108894369 (OP)
>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 Cox

https://aput.net/~jheiss/aout_redhat.shtml
Can 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 today
Its a 64bit issue not a windows version issue. 32bit windows 10 can run dos applications.

>>108896443
Couldn't be further from the truth.

>>108895586
>>108894369 (OP)
I 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 run
but 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?

>>108894369 (OP)
What 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?

>>108896628
Windows 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.

>>108896685
What 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 32bit
In 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.

>>108896685
Windows has not had backward compatibility with DOS since windows 98, dumb lying shill.

>>108894369 (OP)
>>108894415
according 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

OP

This 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 pussy
Ironically, 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.

>>108896746
I am pretty sure this is an LLM

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>>108896821
>0.07%

>>108896983
Pretty sure it's not. He's right, Windows carries around a ton of debt and bloat for almost zero purpose. Windows is dying.

>>108897049
Windows is dying for reasons unrelated to any baggage it might be carrying. The new stuff is what is doing the damage.

>>108897092
The 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 (OP)
>c++98
oh no no no no

>>108897271
Would 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.

>>108894415
Because 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.

>>108896583
troonix requires online to download dependencies, so this is impossible to do