>you can still run Windows 3.11 or 98SE as well under emulation as on contemporary original hardware That's mostly how the backwards compatibility works anyway

>you can still run Windows 3.11 or 98SE as well under emulation as on contemporary original hardware That's mostly how the backwards compatibility works anyway, just under the hood. The OS is using all sorts of compatibility layers to make the older software sit on top of and work on the newer OS versions. It just mostly works flawlessly, so you don't think about it unless it doesn't work automatically and forces you to go into the properties and tinker with which compatibility layer to manually apply.