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?
there is nothing to doIf 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!
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
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.
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.
Removed by mod
Wine is the most stable ABI on Linux 😂
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.
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.
- “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.
Linux gang has entered the chat
Linux:
User: Can you install this 50 year old program?
Linux: it’s already installed
User: Linux can you install this software from this ancient obscure operating system?
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.
Have you heard to Good Word of our Lord and Savior, AppImage?
Grep is from 1973 so yeah.
Tfw compatibility for some old Windows programs and games is better in Wine than in modern Windows
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?
In my experience, Windows can install a 25 year old program, but it won’t work
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
Do current Windows versions even start anything that was compiled for pre-Vista? I thought they don’t?
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…
Yes, you can start almost all 32 bit software in Windows 11.
deleted by creator
More like “Installing… Do you want avast or X or Y installed along with it?” No thanks, I very much prefer Linux package managers.
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
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
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.
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?
Sadly exactly that is the reason that windows is just a bunch of spaghetti code XD
And yet, Linux tools are even older and the kernel better written than either Windows or OSX.
Do you have a source for the second half of your statement?
Before flatpak Linux backwards compatibility was rough.
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.
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 😅
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.
And yet somehow, it’s also complete garbage. I’ve tried installing win10 while having 11 drives connected to my system. Guess what, the win10 installer can’t count past 10, so instead of installing to drive 11 like it should have, it installed to drive 1. Because no one would ever use more than 10 drives in their system I guess. Drive 1 was my current OS and got nuked hard, even my backups couldn’t get it to work again.
Yeah Windows compatibility is both amazingly impressive and complete garbage.
Need to run something from 1992? Sure! No problem!
Need to run something from 2021? Sorry, no compatibility for that old API.
