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Comment by slavapestov

6 months ago

> In 2025 you can run apps targeting W95 just fine (and many 16-bit apps with some effort)

FWIW, Windows running on a 64-bit host no longer runs 16-bit binaries.

Yes. Still, there are ways to do it anyway, from Dosbox to WineVDM. Unlike MacOS where having even 32 bit app (e.g. half of Steam games that supported Macos to begin with) means you're fucked

  • You can use dosbox and x86 virtual machines just fine in macOS (with the expected performance loss) right now, without Rosetta. macOS is still Turing complete.

    • Technically speaking, you can run anything on anything since stuff Turing complete. Practically speaking however....

      E.g. i have half of macos games in my steam library as a 32-bit mac binaries. I don't know a way to launch them at any reasonable speed. Best way to do it is to ditch macos version altogether and emulate win32 version of the game (witch will run at reasonable speed via wine forks). Somehow Win32 api is THE most stable ABI layer for linux & mac

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>Windows running on a 64-bit host no longer runs 16-bit binaries.

Which isn't an issue since Windows 95 was not a 16-bit OS, that was MS-DOS. For 16-bit DOS apps there's virtualization things like DOSbox or even HW emulators.