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The Importance of OS Backwards Compatibility

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the keeping-the-past-alive dept.

gbjbaanb writes "Raymond Chen (of ancient Microsoft heritage) has a blog where he describes some of the things he's worked on, as well as oddments of obscure code and design decisions in Windows. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Windows, it is informative and often thought-provoking. Recently, Raymond posted an entry about backwards compatibility, and why it is such a big deal for large corporations. Something that I have read about on Slashdot regularly (where Windows is criticized for bothering with it at all), I thought readers would be interested in exactly why Microsoft spends so much effort on backwards compatibility, and by inference, why it is an important topic for getting Linux adopted by big business."

9 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Compatibility freak? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Funny

    Compatibility freak?
    Retro chic
    Tweak the hardware
    Old-school sleek
    Burma Shave

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  2. Re:Windows Backward Compat? by lymond01 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I put my CD in backwards and it worked just great in Windows. What needs some hard core journalistic investigation is Windows Upside-Down compatibility.

  3. Re:Windows Backward Compat? by LordSnooty · · Score: 3, Funny

    torrent plz

  4. Re:Omelette? by Monokeros · · Score: 4, Funny

    (+1 Yum.)

    --
    The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
  5. Re:billions at stake by clickclickdrone · · Score: 2, Funny

    >While MS is still the 800-lb Guerrilla
    Please tell me you meant gorilla?

    --
    I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
  6. Re:Windows Backward Compat? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Funny

    Lost the source, did you? ;)

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  7. Re:Blog's interesting;submission gave me a WTF mom by brunascle · · Score: 2, Funny
    #!/bin/sh
    echo "Hello, World"
    what do i win?
  8. Re:With open source the same problem exists by Arker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not possible - no one supports that old version. If there are any important fixes (not just security, anything) they are always for the latest version. Open source people don't bother supporting older versions... ;-)

    Nonsense. Just use Debian.

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  9. Re:Omelette? by thc69 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe they were 16 bit ISA analogy moderators. The PCI analogy bus is 32 bits and not backwards compatible...

    --
    Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.