4 ms·

20 year old Linux applications work just fine too, and it's still faster than NT.

cbd1984 11y ago
> (You'd guess that 40 year old Unix applications could work too without recompilation, though I've never tried it) 40 years takes you to 1976, at which point there's no longer any ISA-level compatibility between the hardware we have now and the hardware Unix ran on then. Basically, nothing we have looks like a PDP-11 to software, and Unix didn't run on much else in the mid-1970s. (Tidbit: 1976 is when the Lions book came out. Full source code, with apposite and useful comments, for Sixth Edition Unix, passed around as samizdat long afterwords due to Bell Labs enforcing copyright on the Unix source code not long after.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...
- tkinom 11y ago
  With DOS, win98, linux all running in asm.js inside browser, it should be long before PDP11 code or to run in here too? BTW, I love to use original Lotus 123 with DOS inside asm.js if someone can use their supper power to make that materialized. I still remember those "/FS" keystrokes after so many years.
  - david-given 11y ago
    Your wish is my command; preloaded with V6 Unix. http://pdp11.aiju.de/ http://pdp11.aiju.de/
- david-given 11y ago
  Just the other day I got Bourne's original Bourne shell running on a modern system (as part of Fuzix development). I don't know which version, but it's badged as coming from V7. I kept finding places which needed adjustment for a modern architecture... and then I looked more closer and saw that they were actually fine. About the only thing I needed to do in the end was fix some headers, rename a symbol which was clashing with a modern utility function, and change the directory reading stuff to use opendir() instead of read(). Everything else just worked on a modern 64-bit system. (It had already been converted from K&R to ANSI C in an earlier pass by someone else.) Good grief, that code is clean. Incomprehensible, but clean.
cgh 11y ago
So you are saying I can install a modern Linux distribution, let's say Ubuntu, and run KDE 2 and Gnome 1.0 applications right away, say by copying over the binary? I don't think so. These won't even run with a recompile, unless you can find the appropriate kdelibs or whatever and even then, I'm guessing it will fail hard. If you're just referring to eg the gnu tools or whatever, then you'll still need to recompile.
- sbierwagen 11y ago
  If the binary depends on userland libraries, then duh of course it'll fail, you're not copying over the entire application. But if it only makes syscalls then it should still work.
  - pmelendez 11y ago
    OC is making a point of one of Windows' strength, there are a lot of binaries from 20 years ago that will still run just fine in Win 10
- cyphar 11y ago
  Linux binaries will still run. There's a question of whether or not X has changed their API, but I doubt it given how old a lot of X applications are. So I guess that it should be possible with minimal tinkering.

cbd1984 11y ago

> (You'd guess that 40 year old Unix applications could work too without recompilation, though I've never tried it) 40 years takes you to 1976, at which point there's no longer any ISA-level compatibility between the hardware we have now and the hardware Unix ran on then. Basically, nothing we have looks like a PDP-11 to software, and Unix didn't run on much else in the mid-1970s. (Tidbit: 1976 is when the Lions book came out. Full source code, with apposite and useful comments, for Sixth Edition Unix, passed around as samizdat long afterwords due to Bell Labs enforcing copyright on the Unix source code not long after.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...

tkinom 11y ago
With DOS, win98, linux all running in asm.js inside browser, it should be long before PDP11 code or to run in here too? BTW, I love to use original Lotus 123 with DOS inside asm.js if someone can use their supper power to make that materialized. I still remember those "/FS" keystrokes after so many years.
- david-given 11y ago
  Your wish is my command; preloaded with V6 Unix. http://pdp11.aiju.de/ http://pdp11.aiju.de/
david-given 11y ago
Just the other day I got Bourne's original Bourne shell running on a modern system (as part of Fuzix development). I don't know which version, but it's badged as coming from V7. I kept finding places which needed adjustment for a modern architecture... and then I looked more closer and saw that they were actually fine. About the only thing I needed to do in the end was fix some headers, rename a symbol which was clashing with a modern utility function, and change the directory reading stuff to use opendir() instead of read(). Everything else just worked on a modern 64-bit system. (It had already been converted from K&R to ANSI C in an earlier pass by someone else.) Good grief, that code is clean. Incomprehensible, but clean.

cgh 11y ago

So you are saying I can install a modern Linux distribution, let's say Ubuntu, and run KDE 2 and Gnome 1.0 applications right away, say by copying over the binary? I don't think so. These won't even run with a recompile, unless you can find the appropriate kdelibs or whatever and even then, I'm guessing it will fail hard. If you're just referring to eg the gnu tools or whatever, then you'll still need to recompile.

sbierwagen 11y ago
If the binary depends on userland libraries, then duh of course it'll fail, you're not copying over the entire application. But if it only makes syscalls then it should still work.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  OC is making a point of one of Windows' strength, there are a lot of binaries from 20 years ago that will still run just fine in Win 10
cyphar 11y ago
Linux binaries will still run. There's a question of whether or not X has changed their API, but I doubt it given how old a lot of X applications are. So I guess that it should be possible with minimal tinkering.