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Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

> The reason you need to run a 16 bit installer is the software isn't free or open source therefore a simple recompile with a newer version of debhelper or whatever isn't going to bring it up to modern packaging standards.

On the other hand, the old windows software in question will most likely actually run. Debhelper is irrelevant: confronted with a package of comparable age on Linux, you'll be digging up the source code and trying to make it build, not merely tweaking the package, with all its ancient dependencies.

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You make your linux binary executables future-proof by statically linking them. It's a rare event that it happens, but I've no problems with 15 year old a.out binaries on 64-bit systems.

As soon as they use for example, say, utmp, they will break. Worse, they might trash your utmp. The utmp format was changed with the transition from libc5 to glibc 2, to support IPv6. You might not care too much about utmp nowaways, but it's an example for something which changed.

Also, your 15 year old statically compiled binary will contain every little bug any of the linked in libraries had those 15 years ago.

And this is the trade off you make for not having the source, but it doesn't negate it as a method to keep things running for longer. If you should keep things running, without having the source, for that long, is another issue.

Okay, I can agree, it certainly beats "not running at all" 8)

Yeah, I am having the same issue trying to compile gcc on an emulated old MIPS. :-/

Actually, no: I've had a lot more luck getting old Linux software working than old Windows software, as the Windows software inevitably has DLL Hell written all over it.

> DLL Hell

An issue that was relevant on the Windows 3.x operating systems and, on an unusually bad day, Windows 95/98. It's irrelevant to what we are talking about here and also kind of a red flag for Linux fanboyism.

Not in my experience: The lack of versioned libraries is still a problem and trying to dismiss it by calling me a fanboy is not logically sound.

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