• tubbadu@lemmy.world
      311·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Jumuta
      18·
      1 year ago

      how about this driver for an obscure 20yo laptop’s touchpad?

      already installed

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
        5·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Aras@feddit.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        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).

    • Slartibartfast@kbin.social
      9·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Old Linux software usually has to be completed from source anyway (uhh the effort) which essentially makes it future proof

    • le_saucisson_masque@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      I 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.

      • dufkm@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
    331·
    1 year ago

    What a fuckin lie. Can’t play some Windows 7 games on Windows 10 or above but on Linux it works.

  • Engywuck@lemmy.ml
    24·
    1 year ago
    • “Can you run on this 20 y/o piece of hardware?”
    • Linux: “hold my beer!”
    • deadcream@kbin.social
      41·
      1 year ago

      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).

      • NightDice@feddit.de
        8·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • HoloPengin@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      Tfw compatibility for some old Windows programs and games is better in Wine than in modern Windows

    • tiltmachine@lemmy.world
      01·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • constantokra@lemmy.one
        1·
        1 year ago

        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?

  • gun@lemmy.ml
    13·
    1 year ago

    In my experience, Windows can install a 25 year old program, but it won’t work

  • CrownCrafter@lemmy.ml
    12·
    1 year ago

    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

  • AlexTheLost@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    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

  • Gerryflap@lemmy.world
    9·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Square Singer@feddit.de
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • flambonkscious
        1·
        1 year ago

        The spooler spanning userland a d kernel address space was never going to go well, either.

        To be fair, it went a lot worse than people thought, but that’s probably because printers were cheap to produce and beancounters find programmers expensive

        • Square Singer@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          The last point is probably the biggest issue. Even if for some reason a prodigy embedded dev ended up working on super cheap HP printers, they wouldn’t get the time and budget to actually push the drivers/software/firmware past a barely working state.

          And if there is more budget to burn, it will be allocated to DRM measures like blocking 3rd party ink.

  • Jon-H558@kbin.social
    8·
    1 year ago

    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

    • Shift_@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      Holy run-on sentence. Also it sounds like it’s the measuring device that doesn’t support newer the newer OS, not the other way around. Also migrating a database is possible, it just takes a ton of work.

    • rgb_leds_are_love@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’ve seen a few maintenance contracts which not only require maintenance for the OS, but also for a very specific build of the OS too. Are you, by any chance, bound by any such contract?

  • tarneo@lemmy.ml
    8·
    1 year ago

    More like “Installing… Do you want avast or X or Y installed along with it?” No thanks, I very much prefer Linux package managers.

    • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
      7·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • flambonkscious
        3·
        1 year ago

        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…

  • quazar@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    The third panel of that is LINUX: Can you install this 25 year old program?

    It was already installed on there.

      • FrankTheHealer@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.