Fortunately a lot of early Windows shit runs in Wine, since the most stable Linux API is Win32. Anything older than that either works in 86box or was broken to begin with. Okay, that’s not fair - WineVDM is necessary to bridge the gap for the dozen Windows 3.1 programs that matter. I am never allowed to write those off when one of them is Castle Of The Winds.
What Intel learned with Itanium is that compatibility is god. They thought their big thing was good chip design and modern foundries. They were stupid. AMD understood that what kept Intel relevant was last year’s software running better this year. This was evident back in the 486 days, when AMD was kicking their ass in terms of cycles per operation, and it caused division-by-zero errors with network benchmarks taking less than one millisecond.
But software has won.
The open architecture of RISC-V is feasible mostly because architecture doesn’t fucking matter. People are running Steam on their goddamn phones. It’s not because ARM is amazing; it’s because machine code is irrelevant. Intermediate formats can be forced upon even proprietary native programs. Macs get one last gasp of custom bullshit, with Metal just barely predating Vulkan, and if they try anything unique after that then it’s a deliberate waste of everyone’s time. We are entering an era where all software for major platforms should Just Work.
Fortunately a lot of early Windows shit runs in Wine, since the most stable Linux API is Win32. Anything older than that either works in 86box or was broken to begin with. Okay, that’s not fair - WineVDM is necessary to bridge the gap for the dozen Windows 3.1 programs that matter. I am never allowed to write those off when one of them is Castle Of The Winds.
What Intel learned with Itanium is that compatibility is god. They thought their big thing was good chip design and modern foundries. They were stupid. AMD understood that what kept Intel relevant was last year’s software running better this year. This was evident back in the 486 days, when AMD was kicking their ass in terms of cycles per operation, and it caused division-by-zero errors with network benchmarks taking less than one millisecond.
But software has won.
The open architecture of RISC-V is feasible mostly because architecture doesn’t fucking matter. People are running Steam on their goddamn phones. It’s not because ARM is amazing; it’s because machine code is irrelevant. Intermediate formats can be forced upon even proprietary native programs. Macs get one last gasp of custom bullshit, with Metal just barely predating Vulkan, and if they try anything unique after that then it’s a deliberate waste of everyone’s time. We are entering an era where all software for major platforms should Just Work.