top 95 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 167 points 9 months ago (26 children)

macOS, can I install this 2 year old program?

No, the architecture is no longer supported in this version of macOS

  • source
  • hideshow 26 child comments
  • [–] 105 points 9 months ago (25 children)

    "no because the dev hasn't paid us to certify it as safe so you'll have to jump through 37 hoops in order to allow you to right click, hold options, and click open. THEN we'll give you an option to install it"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 25 child comments
  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Is this a LibreWolf on Mac reference, because I hate this so much about LibreWolf on Mac lol.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Not so much a librewolf reference as much as a "any app you download from the Internet" reference lol

    I'll have to try installing librewolf when I'm feeling frisky though

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    I mean, macOS has a lot of issues but the one hoop needed to run any unsigned app is "right-click app icon, click open".

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Sometimes it won't let you even get to that step without going into the settings and finding a secret security notification that it blocked it from opening

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    What version are you running? I just tried on Ventura, worked fine on both a .dmg package and some terminal script, both unsigned, and both would need the settings thing if I simply double clicked to open. You still get a prompt, but you have an “open anyways” option.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    I'm on the latest version right now, but can't remember a time I've actually installed something on this version. On at least the previous version I believe I had a mix of annoying and the "open anyways" prompt, and then before that just annoyance. I can't remember exactly what I was installing off the top of my head though, sorry

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    Wait, you guys can right click now?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    Are you still taking about macs? Because that's Windows.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Is it? The only hoop I can remember jumping through is the (usually) singular UAC popup

    Unless you're Ubisoft and pop up 5-8 of them every time you open Ubisoft connect 🫩

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] -5 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    Windows will block any software that isn't popular. Unless the developer pays Microsoft.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    I think I've seen this before, very rarely though. If I remember correctly you can continue to open it from the popup, right?

    "Windows Smartscreen has blocked this app from running"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 108 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (11 children)

    Windows, can I run this 25 year old software I just installed?

  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • [–] 28 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    In the early 2000s there was this website called dll-files.com or something like that, and every time that error popped up (which happened a lot in the 90s and 2000s), you'd go to that website, download the missing file, and 99% of the time it would fix the problem. These days I'd advise against obtaining random DLL files from the internet but back then it was like magic.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Legit, at my current workplace one of the first things i did was update the very neglected hardware.

    The IDRAC on the core server was so old i had to spin up an xp vm just to get a browser that would accept it so i could upgrade.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, stuff like that continues to be the best use-case for windows virtualization. Sounds a lot like trying to upgrade the BIOS or Firmware on an older PC; often the installer is some binary that only runs on Windows of the same vintage.

    Backwards-compatibility with older web browsers so engineers can build websites for them, is another. I've also heard of industrial automation (e.g. CNC machines) being married to Win2k or WinXP, so being able to run an old OS on new hardware is crucial.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    A lot of pieces of medical and industrial hardware have their controlling software written in VB and if you're lucky it's VB6...(and usually heavily dependent on openGL libraries)

    Banking? That's all COBOL and BASIC.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Lots of windows apps behind Remote Desktop vms at my workplace too.

    Do you have to maintain licenses for Windows XP and such? What a sorry state of affairs.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 45 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    As a programmer, it's pretty wild how much of Windows under the hood has remained completely unchanged. I started writing software synthesizer applications back in the late '90s, using a part of the Win95 API called "winOutX". The functions are kind of clunky to use but they allow you to programmatically create your own audio buffer arrays filled with whatever sounds you're up to creating and dump them into the playback stream for seamless audio. This shit has remained in place, working pretty much perfectly, for the last 30 years. It was even there in WinCE/Windows Mobile, which allowed me to write software synthesis applications for early smartphones circa 2005. And it's still all there today.

    I like to rip on MS as much as the next guy (not least for them completely dropping the fucking ball as far as smartphones were concerned), but sometimes their incredibly long-term conservatism can work to your benefit.

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    Wait until you hear about SDL. I have two music apps on my Android phone that also work the same on the three desktop platforms. And one of them, Sunvox, also existed twenty years ago on Palm and WinCE. The UI's reaction to my actions in both apps is so snappy it's unsettling after using other apps.

    The downside is that all the dialogs and controls are drawn by the apps and SDL, with their peculiar interaction. Though there's some leeway to that, like calling the system's file picker.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Sunvox is a masterpiece. Perfect for small size audio. It's strange that it isn't more widely used in game development or even webpages. Not just because of small sizes, but because it's also possible to interact with the music, while it's being generated. I have no idea of how to classify this as a piece of software but it's mind boggling powerfull and it still runs perfectly on any potato.

    It would be nice to have better recording options than using the sampler, but I guess that defies the purpose of it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    how to classify this as a piece of software

    It's a tracker combined with a modular synth in the style of Max/MSP, but also with a sequencer. Modular stuff in this vein is generally fit for live fiddling, like Reactable for example.

    Unfortunately, I have a better experience with trackers in Renoise, which has dozens of decent samples out of the box, through which I can click and listen; and its effects like distortion are also much more pronounced. Sunvox seems more tailored to ‘beep boop’ synth sounds, and I'm not good with those.

    would be nice to have better recording options than using the sampler

    Ironically the other SDL music app, Caustic 3, has functionality for recording sounds and even a built-in audio editor. It's a very neat mobile DAW, but alas it's not being developed anymore — and its longstanding problem of only having two effects per instrument won't be fixed.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    It sounds like the app you wrote is doing 99% of the work. And I'm guessing it was written in C, which means it's an x86 binary and could theoretically run on any x86 system.

    Modern Windows actually has a lot of problems running older software. In some cases, the only way to get those applications working again is using Wine on Linux.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    It was originally written as a C DLL utilized by a Visual Basic front end. The C DLL used the Win95 API, though, so it wouldn't have worked on anything but Windows 95 and onwards. I subsequently ported the entire thing to C# but still using the same API to do the actual playing of the audio (I experimented with using DirectSound instead but that was really not appropriate for an application doing its own audio mixing). Now I'm working on an iOS version and I couldn't give two fucks about Windows at this point.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    it wouldn't have worked on anything but Windows 95 and onwards

    I know what you mean. All I was saying is that the binary would execute on an x86 processor regardless of the OS. Now the OS knowing what to do with it is another matter.

    This is actually what Wine does, it's a translation layer that intercepts the Win APIs and converts it to a Linux API and vice versa. The actual binary runs on the processor just the same.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 221 points 9 months ago (22 children)

    Windows 11 won't install those 25 year old programs anymore. Wine will.

  • source
  • hideshow 22 child comments
  • [–] 128 points 9 months ago* (13 children)

    I’m really sorry to do this, but 25 years ago was 2001.

    Now that the painful part is out of the way, 32-bit software from 2001 should work in Windows 11.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [–] 64 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Oh, it should work and it will if you put all the files in the right places yourself by say installing it on wine and copying the changes to the wine system directories over, but starting in Windows 11 running the installer gets a deliberate "this program isn't meant for this version of Windows" error.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Run the installer in compatibility mode, then run the application in compatibility mode?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 20 points 9 months ago

    Didn't work. Application doesn't even need compatibility mode to run. Running the app copied by someone else from their previous Windows 10 computer sorta works but didn't find files installed to system directories. Windows 11 just deliberately refuses to execute the installer probably based on recognizing the old family of installer programs specifically.

    The users wanted a new Linux laptop. I installed LMDE, showed them how to run the installer with wine. It made a menu item. Drag and drop from whatever the cinnamon file manager is doesn't work, and there was no file association to open the program's files. I added one that just opens them with wine and lets it figure it out. I also showed them where their wine c drive was.

    After a few weeks they wanted to print to pdf as well as their printer from wine and I had them install cups-pdf

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    You will run into a lot of old Library issues. Like elf binary missing, lack of 32 bit is starting to become a problem. If you have any old 2.4 kernel dependencies your probably gonna have a problem in Linux

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Oh cool, let me install this software, what, it won't install because it's missing quicktime? Oh it needs directx 8 runtime? That could be a problem. Let's advance the clock, 2004, that should be fine... What do you mean you can't run .NET 1.1 applications and so that won't run?

    Ironically, wine is more likely to have a path to easily run those programs under Linux, but if you had a Linux binary from that era you'd likely have a hard time getting that to run, probably harder than the microsoft scenario. So old Windows software is more likely to run under Linux than old Linux software...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    I ran into old software (for Windows XP), especially games not working even with compatibility mode used for the install and opening of the app. Now if the publisher or Steam or some party puts a tad bit of effort, then yes, those games can work, although I guess a big part of that is also hardware and driver related if talking about 3D games for instance.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago*

    Depends on the program. I've got a handful of that old on CDs that still install fine. Checked when I was backing them up to ISO. There's little bits of weirdness and unintended behavior while running them now, but they still install and run to a fairly acceptable degree.

    That experience varies wildly though. Wine tends to handle things better and more consistently.

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)
  • [–] [S] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    you're right, but Windows 7 had a space in our hearts, after that it's all a load of garbage

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I’ve tried getting Windows XP games to run both in windows 7/10/11 and wine with little success. However, I have gotten them to work in Windows XP virtual machines.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Some of my favorite PC games come from the Windows XP era. There is something about games from that time that seem to make them particularly difficult to get running these days.

    I’ve had the best luck in Linux via WINE/Proton, but it probably varies at lot from game to game.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    The problem I find with many games made for Win95/98/XP is that the game uses one or more third-party libraries that were only "valid" for a year or two. After that, updates to the OS closed loopholes that the poorly-written old versions of the libraries relied on, but the poorly-written newer versions of the libraries released to deal with those issues then break compatibility with the previously-released game, which was never updated or patched.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
    [–] 39 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    "Old tools" does not mean obsolete or bad. It means tested, hardened, and reliable. And crucially, probably runs in a couple megabytes of memory, which you might need if the cost of RAM suddenly quintuples for no reason.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    B-but don't you want AI in vi?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    AI in vim is actually often convenient.

    :set ai
    

    Cool, now it will keep track of my indentation.

    Now sometimes that gets in the way, and while you can:

    :set noai
    

    Usually it's best for me to:

    :set paste
    

    And that's my take on the utility of AI in vim. (that is what you meant right, there isn't some other AI people are thinking of right?)

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 28 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    I wanted to do the cool neofetch thing all the femboys in thigh highs are doing. Shits already installed on mint. My boring ass win98 clone is doing the femboy thing no questions asked.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Interesting. Neofetch has ceased development but fastfetch is here to take its place though.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 51 points 9 months ago (8 children)

    Nope, can't find this ancient version of libc!

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 47 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    You can still compile it against the modern version.

    And if it's static linked it will either run or you can ask Linus to murder someone for you.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago

    I was trying to compile the first version of SuperTuxKart just for fun, how naive I were... Nowadays it's like translating ancient runes and good luck finding those ancient libraries

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    If I may, is there a way to quickly and easily have a disposable/revertible environment for building? For Fedora specifically. It's annoying to install a whole suite of packages because I need them just this once and then either manually delete the ones I didn't manually install before and actually need or just live with a whole bunch of devel packages that'll never be used again

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    It's funny because that's true that an old Linux binary is likely to have issues under Linux, but an similarly old Windows application might work better under Wine on Linux than modern Windows.

    libc is actually relatively less likely, glibc is awfully conservative about changes, but there are a maze of likely service and library dependencies that were abandoned or didn't regard backwards compatibility with the same importance.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 20 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    WIndows will install it. Running it correctly... different story.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago*

    Initial release of dd was for Unix in 1974 and it's still updated for use in modern systems.

    I used it just the other day and it was already installed.

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›