Hacker News Reader

Comment by kalcode | Hacker News Reader

So for the sake of continuing to hold back technology we are held down by enterprises and DOSGaming.

In all seriousness we complain in the developer community that Internet Explorer and Edge holds back using more modern Javascript yet we make these excuses for OSes.

Almost all programs I use now have a 64-bit executable. If I am using something that needs to run legacy software then I probably don't want the latest version of something to run legacy stuff.

Also the article indicates you can still run 32-bit apps. Most older 32 bit games should run perfectly fine under virtualization. Even then it will be a few years before the majority of Steam user are even using Windows 10 as last I check over 50% were on Windows 7. So by the time gamers shift to Windows 10 i'd imagine their hardware will be more than adequate to handle virtualizing the 32-bit app, I can't imagine there will be much overhead to virtualizing 32-bit apps.

View on HN

You've misunderstood. Win32 isn't 32-bit architecture. Win32 is the non UWP windows API.

Photoshop, Visual Studio, Chrome.. you name it. Pretty much ALL executables fall into this category. Unless it's a UWP app.

Almost all modern games will fall into this category.

EDIT: To further explain, You still use Win32 for 64-bit processes. It's just a stupid name.

Well, the name made fine sense when it was introduced... Maybe it serves as a good warning to not include such things as dates and hardware versions in names at all.

Opps. Yah I messed up the naming, I meant exes, but just started typing 64 vs 32 which really is only a memory thing, if you simplify it.

Converting a Win32 exe using UWP Desktop Bridge is stupid easy though. Older exe with a lot of legacy dependencies may be more difficult or lack of source code. In which case they need a virtualization to run those legacy app.

So even though all games/apps fall into this category most companies could have a UWP build ready very quickly.

You do not understand how said "bridge" works...

It just wraps the app, but underneath still calls those same win32 APIs. If you remove the APIs, "bridged" apps won't work. Hence why TFA mentions that not all win32 API can be removed and it isn't clear which will be.

So "bridging" your win32 app will not somehow make it immune to win32 api going away.

Most DOS games were broken long ago just from clock speed changes. Many of them relied on things like spin loops for timing. Any person playing DOS games now is using DOSBox.

Thing is, in order to make this kind of cut over, you have to offer something in the new thing that the old thing doesn't have. In order for this to happen, Polaris will probably have to be much faster or MS will have to intentionally cripple regular Windows 10, if only by not supporting it with the same updates.

Exactly this. If one hand taketh away...the other better give something equally awesome.

Brb gonna go play more overwatch.

Polaris could also introduce new APIs (DX13, HoloLens 2.0, etc.) that will only work in the UWP layer and be inaccessible from Win32.

That would kill HoloLens and DX13.

Not if Microsoft buys Valve!

The more likely scenario is that nobody will end up using those APIs, especially if there are alternatives like Vulkan that work on older Windows versions.

I remember when everyone was supposed to go GNU/Linux because DX 10 was Vista only while OpenGL was everywhere, so yeah, right.

What are the stats on even DX12 penetration?

I still encounter a fair numver of new games that are built on DX9, not even DX11.

"...enterprises and DOSGaming." The only two legitimate uses for computers. Only slightly kidding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com