Namrok wrote on Yesterday, 14:21:

So, I did run into a real world case of this just gaming. I tried to play an older game, Harvest: Massive Encounter. It apparently had a Linux native version. It attempted to install a batch of binaries that were no longer supported in Mint 22.1, and so it completely failed to run. It actually ended up working better running the Windows version through Proton than trying to get the Linux version working properly. I have to admit, it was unexpected. As I continue down this path, I wonder if I'll find Linux has better compatibility with 10-20 year old Windows software thanks to heavy development into Wine/Proton than it has with 10-20 year old Linux software.

This is not a linux issue.

The issue here is the distro is not supplying version latest-1 of libfoo, and the game dev or you aren't supplying it. The difference to the Wine project, is that it seems everyone is being tricked into installing it which happens to provide all the necessary 20 year old ABIs in the name of getting to play their games, in a massive package that is a re-implementation of the WinAPI that won't be changing for an app that's 20 years old anyway. So of course it works.

There are runtimes people have assembled similar to what Wine provides to get WinAPI support, but for the older/other libs that Linux executable format games use from back in the day. They just aren't getting attention because, people focus on the narrative blasting linux as sucking for backwards compatibility, and people then never look. The libs never went away.

Flatpak was never really needed to solve this. For the people talking about 10 year support, I have worked in both open source and closed source (commercial) and we support multiple distros, and go back 10 years often with customers. Any competent application developer knows what to do to support the users.

Is Windows 10 really that loved people don't want to upgrade? or is it just the stricter hardware requirements?

I find Windows 10 does the job but I don't love it. Been using 11 for over a year now and for me its about the same. It does the job but that's it.
If MS want to give me a free upgrade to yet another mediocre for free then fine.

Anything that can't upgrade I'll run it unsupported till it breaks, that's what I've done previous times without issue.

chinny22 wrote on Today, 02:37:

Is Windows 10 really that loved people don't want to upgrade? or is it just the stricter hardware requirements?

No, it's just that people just don't want to upgrade (especially if it is perceived as forced), period.
So each time a new version of Windows comes - it's the same old tune - sucks, old one was so much better, I'm staying with it.
3-5 years later a good portion of people moves, finds out it is not so bad, gets used to it, then the next one arrives, and it all repeats.

chinny22 wrote on Today, 02:37:

Anything that can't upgrade I'll run it unsupported till it breaks, that's what I've done previous times without issue.

Indeed.

keenmaster486 wrote on Yesterday, 06:05:

I'm serious - standardization is here. Debian, apt, that whole ecosystem... it's the Windows of Linux, in a good way.

I'm not convinced.
Debian release cycle is 2 years.
RHEL - 3 years, and they seem to actually care about binary compatibility.

RHEL 10 just got released - current "el10" RPM packages should work with future 10.x releases, probably until 2028.
For how long can we expect current DEB packages to work?

eM-!3 wrote on Yesterday, 08:21:

The same issue exist in Windows when new MSVC or .NET is released and you get a binary file without dependencies.

But for Windows, I hardly ever get a binary file without dependencies.

During the last 10 years, only TWO major Windows versions got released.
For a third-party vendor, this means: only TWO testing environments.
Do a clean install of Win10, test everything, do a clean install of Win11, test again - and the product is ready to ship!

Really, it's hard for a software vendor not to notice missing dependencies.

the3dfxdude wrote on Yesterday, 21:12:

This is not a linux issue.

Indeed - Linux is just the kernel.
But this is a HUGE issue of all Linux-based operating systems.

The issue here is the distro is not supplying version latest-1 of libfoo

Or the fact that the latest version API isn't compatible with latest-1.

[sarcasm] Just put everything in flatpaks [/sarcarm]

How well is the Wayland support right now compared to X11?

I see a lot of mentions about X being obsolete, however I have heard of a lot of glitches and stability issues on WLand

dr_st wrote on Today, 04:46:

No, it's just that people just don't want to upgrade (especially if it is perceived as forced), period.
So each time a new version of Windows comes - it's the same old tune - sucks, old one was so much better, I'm staying with it.
3-5 years later a good portion of people moves, finds out it is not so bad, gets used to it, then the next one arrives, and it all repeats.

I think older versions have a different, almost relaxing vibe to them while newer are more raw, with bland color scheme and flat design / lack of skeuomorphism. I wonder if people working at Microsoft today ever visit the old versions (old PCs, emulators, virtual machines etc.). Oh, and no background processes firing on their own in the old versions unless you set some up yourself.

Hm, I did think of the default gray color scheme of pre-XP versions as a graveyard scheme, though I'm not sure what I'd pick today instead. Maybe some light blue? A least I think blue is one of the reasons I fancy Aero.

Is it possible that eg. in the 90s, people had more easygoing approach to computers? And maybe life in general. I don't know, maybe tensions were always this bad and wasn't really aware since I was just a kid.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 09:49:

I think older versions have a different, almost relaxing vibe to them while newer are more raw, with bland color scheme and flat design / lack of skeuomorphism.

It goes back and forth. Win8 was flat but overly colorful. Win10 relaxed the color scheme (too bland?) Win11 adds back some rounded UI elements compared to the flat and rectangular UI of Win10.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 09:49:

Oh, and no background processes firing on their own in the old versions unless you set some up yourself.

There are always background tasks. They can either be split into individual processes, or multiple tasks stuck inside the same process (svchost, anyone?) The end result may not be very different from user experience point of view.
With that said, the overall number of background tasks does increase, as the OS generally starts doing more things (which are claimed to improve user experience, but it is not always so).

MS wasn't entirely honest about its requirements - not in RAM and CPU, its fine - but more recent iterations practically require an SSD.

Windows support questions/forums are littered with complaints about how incredibly slow windows 10 is during updates of almost any kind (and the hopelessly 'by the book' robotic answers from MS people and MVP types that studiously and completely miss the point.....)

I have an older laptop that runs Win10 fine - but it has HDD not SSD, when a large update is happening the computer is almost unusable for some time, sometimes over an hour. Luckily it isn't a critical work machine and i have an almost "this cant be real" fascination with just how crippled win 10 becomes while updating, even after fine tuning.

and yet on a similar specced machine with an SSD, its all fine!

I'm guessing almost all new machines are sold with SSDs now, and have no idea how Win11 acts. I can say that Linux Mint seems fine - Linux updates all the time, almost daily, yet it handles it all ok on quite constrained systems with HDDs

gerry wrote on Today, 15:44:

MS wasn't entirely honest about its requirements - not in RAM and CPU, its fine - but more recent iterations practically require […]
Show full quote

MS wasn't entirely honest about its requirements - not in RAM and CPU, its fine - but more recent iterations practically require an SSD.

Windows support questions/forums are littered with complaints about how incredibly slow windows 10 is during updates of almost any kind (and the hopelessly 'by the book' robotic answers from MS people and MVP types that studiously and completely miss the point.....)

I have an older laptop that runs Win10 fine - but it has HDD not SSD, when a large update is happening the computer is almost unusable for some time, sometimes over an hour. Luckily it isn't a critical work machine and i have an almost "this cant be real" fascination with just how crippled win 10 becomes while updating, even after fine tuning.

and yet on a similar specced machine with an SSD, its all fine!

I'm guessing almost all new machines are sold with SSDs now, and have no idea how Win11 acts. I can say that Linux Mint seems fine - Linux updates all the time, almost daily, yet it handles it all ok on quite constrained systems with HDDs

I can say from my own experience, this is a thing that got progressively worse with Win10. My wife has an old laptop that gradually became completely unusable despite being perfectly fine when it (and Windows 10) were brand new. It was entirely down to the HDD being horribly thrashed whenever Win10 did updates. And unfortunately, my wife's usage pattern evolved into "Laptop is slow so I never use it, when I have to use I have to wait several hours for all the updates to finish, then I turn it off and avoid using it as long as possible because it's slow". After replacing the HDD with an SSD it was flawless. Later on upgrading the ram from I think 8GB to 16GB helped a lot too.

The relentless cruft constantly shitting up Win10 over a lifespan is just abominable.