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Comment by BitwiseFool | Hacker News Reader

I was hoping Windows 11 would be substantially different under-the-hood and not just rounded corners. I know backwards compatibility is Windows' under-acknowledged killer feature, but there is a on of cruft and inefficiency that is included as a result. The typical Windows user is not going to need to run programs from the 90's and 2000's. Why not make Windows 10 the compatibility focused platform and make 11 the slimmed down version? I suppose a rough parallel would be how Apple transitioned to OS X.

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I concur. At this point, it's probably better to create some kind of virtual machine as a compatibility layer. That way it can be updated separately and it doesn't need to be part of the actual system. Alternatively, it could probably be a sub-system like WSL - and completely optional.

Interestingly enough, this has been done before!

Windows 7 introduced "Windows XP Mode" which was a container running a virtualized Windows XP for applications that didn't work correctly in 7. But since they also had the per-application compatibility settings, it wasn't the first pick for most users.

While it's a good idea on the surface, it still means they have to maintain compatibility code within that virtual system. Perhaps if they separate it well enough, and it has a dedicated team, while the core OS team can focus on a slimmed down, "current stuff only" version... but I suppose it's also hard to know where the line is drawn in the sand.

I ran the Windowx XP Virtual Machine (in Windows 7) for at least one LOB app - it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Fairly complex to setup.

I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

Windows 8 tried to isolate Win32 to a delayed loading sub-system and got lambasted for it. Admittedly, they hit the rough part of the chicken and egg gamble where they didn't have enough apps in the new/fresh/modern side with less compatibility cruft for enough people to see why it was worth it to delay load Win32.

Still a lot of reason to wonder if they had found a way to deliver the UWP platform earlier to Windows 7 ahead of 8's launch and got more applications up front of the transition if that attempt might have gone much smoother.

I think that is what they were trying to do with Windows 11 (especially given how much it resembles what they demoed of "10X" and that was 10X's plan to be a slimmer 10).

Unfortunately for them, most of my biggest complaints about Windows 11 are the places where they most broke backward compatibility and dropped "cruft" that I loved. The biggest example is that the inability to move the taskbar to a different side alone is a stupid removal that I'm sure removed a lot of ancient backwards compatibility cruft in the taskbar code, but that's something I've used on every machine under my control since Windows XP and its loss really doesn't make sense to me.

Careful what you wish for, old software had to perform well on very slow hardware, meaning it's blazingly fast on modern hardware. I doubt that (for instance) the NT kernel would magically become faster or better if it would be replaced with a "modern" rewrite, the opposite is much more likely.

>The typical Windows user is not going to need to run programs from the 90's and 2000's.

They very much do. Windows software use all sorts of legacy Win32 APIs, even if they have trendy new GUI on top. (and UWP is practially dead and not used by anyone)

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