it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
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Every time I talked to the Windows team, I was told that backwards compatibility was the reason that they couldn't do refactorings to improve security / performance / programmer model.
Then I'd go home and run old Windows apps on my Mac under WINE that failed to start under Windows 10.
@david_chisnall @davidgerard backwards compatibility is very much a sacred cow when it comes to Windows. There are huge customers that can move the revenue needle, who still need OLE32. There are thousands of applications that are still in use that need OLE32.
And they've always essentially promised that things will always be backwards compatible. If it worked on Windows 3.11, then it will basically keep working, forever. Which is no small feat to begin with.
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@davidgerard
Microsoft don't realise how bad their experience truely is when compared to linux. They need to ship with drivers built in and decent software options from the get go, and they can't and won't.
I can rebuild my daily runner from bare drives and a usb key in under an hour. Never ever have i been able to do that with Windows.@bloognoo @davidgerard In the last few years, they managed to make Calculator, Notepad, and the Taskbar feel unreliable and janky. I don't think they know what 'quality' is, so it's hard to imagine that they can achieve it.
IMO, Windows is long overdue for a deep refactor. Keep the kernel, but break-up the various runtimes for different eras of the OS into immutable and separated blobs, and then run apps on those. I don't mind waiting a few seconds for legacy apps to fire-up a legacy runtime if it means my system won't consume 11GB RAM just to get to a desktop.
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@david_chisnall @davidgerard backwards compatibility is very much a sacred cow when it comes to Windows. There are huge customers that can move the revenue needle, who still need OLE32. There are thousands of applications that are still in use that need OLE32.
And they've always essentially promised that things will always be backwards compatible. If it worked on Windows 3.11, then it will basically keep working, forever. Which is no small feat to begin with.
@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard Win 3 (16-bit) applications don't work on Win 11 anyway. For all the rest of legacy applications (from Win 2000 to Win 10) they can always ask Copilot to vibe code something like WINE for them, assuming it's not busy converting all C++ code to Rust.
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@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard Win 3 (16-bit) applications don't work on Win 11 anyway. For all the rest of legacy applications (from Win 2000 to Win 10) they can always ask Copilot to vibe code something like WINE for them, assuming it's not busy converting all C++ code to Rust.
@dukeboitans @david_chisnall @davidgerard oh, no, that's just flat out wrong. The old 16-bit stuff still works more or less perfectly with the compatibility shims. That's what NTVDM is for. It's why OTVDM is a thing and works even though it's "obsolete" technology.
It's impressive and terrifying at the same time. Especially when you consider that in theory, you can in-place upgrade from Windows 3.11 all the way to 11.
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it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
no really, Microsoft is literally using SteamOS as its benchmark and working hard to catch up to it in performance, this is not a drill
@davidgerard It's actually funnier than that: it isn't 'Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance', it's 'Windows might catch up to Linux *running Windows games, pretending to be Windows* in gaming performance'.
It says a lot when emulating something is quicker than running the thing natively.
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@dukeboitans @david_chisnall @davidgerard oh, no, that's just flat out wrong. The old 16-bit stuff still works more or less perfectly with the compatibility shims. That's what NTVDM is for. It's why OTVDM is a thing and works even though it's "obsolete" technology.
It's impressive and terrifying at the same time. Especially when you consider that in theory, you can in-place upgrade from Windows 3.11 all the way to 11.
@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard idk, at microsoft they don't seem to know this, you tell them. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/application-management/x64-windows-not-support-16-bit-programs
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@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard idk, at microsoft they don't seem to know this, you tell them. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/application-management/x64-windows-not-support-16-bit-programs
@dukeboitans @david_chisnall @davidgerard that's the official policy; nothing that old is "officially" supported. But like all things with Microsoft, enough money changes it.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/ntvdm-and-16-bit-app-support
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@dukeboitans @david_chisnall @davidgerard that's the official policy; nothing that old is "officially" supported. But like all things with Microsoft, enough money changes it.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/ntvdm-and-16-bit-app-support
@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard It's right at the start: "for all IA-32 editions of the Windows NT family (not included with 64-bit versions of the OS)." I don't know what sorcery is required to make it run on Win 11, but whatever it is it's not official, I don't think it can be considered as a promise of any kind. I think it's time to drop this mythological backward compatibility.
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it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
no really, Microsoft is literally using SteamOS as its benchmark and working hard to catch up to it in performance, this is not a drill
As long as Microsoft ties itself to fossil fuel funded AI, no thanks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-google-hand-dissident-data-to-saudi-arabia-activists-say-2023-7https://datacentremagazine.com/news/when-will-microsoft-saudi-data-centre-region-go-live
Aligning themselves with fascists like Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel & #PrinceBonesaw
Fund a Fascist & Find Out.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/microsoft-market-cap-earnings.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
They deserve their consequences, they've earned them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/technology/amazon-google-persian-gulf-war.htmlhttps://www.fool.com/investing/2026/04/23/why-oracle-stock-just-dropped/
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@rootwyrm @david_chisnall @davidgerard It's right at the start: "for all IA-32 editions of the Windows NT family (not included with 64-bit versions of the OS)." I don't know what sorcery is required to make it run on Win 11, but whatever it is it's not official, I don't think it can be considered as a promise of any kind. I think it's time to drop this mythological backward compatibility.
@dukeboitans @rootwyrm @davidgerard
There's also the note below:
NTVDM is a Feature on Demand and only supported on the x86 version of Windows. It is not supported on x64 and ARM versions of Windows, which do not support 16-bit x86 code of any kind, including DOS programs.
Note that the first use of x86 is Windows terminology, meaning x86-32, the second means x86. The middle one where they say x64 means x86-64.
As I recall, this was because there's no mechanism to jump to 16-bit mode from long mode on x86. There are some ways of making it work, but they're very clunky. And, given how fast DOSBox is on modern hardware, it's usually simpler to run Win16 in an emulator than try.
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it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
no really, Microsoft is literally using SteamOS as its benchmark and working hard to catch up to it in performance, this is not a drill
@davidgerard@circumstances.run I have been saying for years that a lot (not all, but a lot) of AAA windows games run better on wine/proton, but especially lately I've noticed some things like 1% frame times and graphics stutter being better on linux, which makes the games feel nicer too lol
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it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
no really, Microsoft is literally using SteamOS as its benchmark and working hard to catch up to it in performance, this is not a drill
@davidgerard LOL, also LMAO
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it's possible that one day Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance
no really, Microsoft is literally using SteamOS as its benchmark and working hard to catch up to it in performance, this is not a drill
LMAO,
Save microsoft or any other bully corporation who over-thew the Peoples Gov, should never, ever, happen.
Eat the bully rich arseholes! Make them pay! on so many levels or scales.
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@davidgerard It's actually funnier than that: it isn't 'Windows might catch up to Linux in gaming performance', it's 'Windows might catch up to Linux *running Windows games, pretending to be Windows* in gaming performance'.
It says a lot when emulating something is quicker than running the thing natively.
@dickon @davidgerard how the turntables
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@davidgerard
Took them long enough to admit that stock Windows 11 is noticeably worse than stock Win10.@moses_izumi @davidgerard I was excited when it first came out cos it looked nicer to me visually. Then I saw the new right click menu. It then went downhill from there...
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