No, they really cannot.

yes, there surely exists a better way. The question remains: how much more time does it cost to implement and test that solution ? And is it worth it ?
In the end GOG is a business, you'll seldom will have the luxury to spend enough time to ship the most perfect product possible. You'll always operate under certain economic constraints.
And looking around how things go here, I have the feeling that GOG got their hands full with operating things.
Simply dropping XP support is imho an understandable decision.

The option is always there for XP users to band together and help each other to make things work again.
It works for wine users, no reason it can't work for them as well :)

thanks for the link.
But I don't think that addresses the problem of Galaxy.dll not working on WinXP.
(since galaxy.dll obviously does not exist on the steam build)

according to this post by vanchann the problem is due to Galaxy.dll using "QueryFullProcessImageName" which doesn't exists before Windows Vista.

However checking the Galaxy.dll shipped with RebelGalaxy it does not make use of that function.
Maybe it is still an older version ?
So I would assume that RebelGalaxy still works on XP despite using Galaxy.dll.

But don't have WinXP installed to verify that, so treat that as speculation ;)

GOG's version of Rebel Galaxy runs on Windows XP.
I assume the same. Galaxy dlls are not a new thing in GOG games, but I presume it's a new version, which is breaking XP compatibility.

Of course costs (time translates in cost too) have a major role in business. There are ways which could be even cheaper though. I think that things have gotten complicated due to Galaxy promotion.

Let's take the scenario of a game just received by GOG.

As they have already accepted, games come without Galaxy wrappers.
Also note that Galaxy downloads and installs the games uncompressed, which means they maintain a different serving pool for direct Galaxy installations than the one for offline installers.

They could just release offline installers clean of Galaxy, without even the hassle of applying wrappers to them. On the other hand they could keep things as of now or in any other way they think that benefits Galaxy users most.

In any case, let Galaxy applying its wrappers when a game is imported to it, installed through Galaxy or for the new to come installers provide wrappers as an option. No intrusive push of the client to users, while people opting in for Galaxy get the same experience or even better, as this way there would nothing troubling the users, who don't want to use it.

The real problem is about Galaxy promotion. GOG tries to push all their userbase to their client. GOG has been investing much on Galaxy, to accept that so many seasoned users have already opted out.

Anyway, as I have written again GOG will do what they feel better for them and customers will respond according to their own preferences.

No user here could make GOG's business plans and analysis. Every user has distinct preferences though and GOG could be facing the loss of (mostly seasoned) customers. I really don't know if financially worths keeping us (myself included) or just let us leave.

It's an unexplored territory. I'm sure they keep statistics and make decisions based on them, but since XP machines are in majority absolutely offline, they could only count a minimum number of XP users.

For example, I've been buying games based on their XP compatibility, in case Wine fails to run them. Windows XP games are also more compatible with Wine, than games designed for Vista and newer versions.
Users with similar trends could not be calculated by online services and maybe there are much for GOG to loose or not. Noone really knows.

In conclusion, the only thing unsatisfied users could do is saying "we are here and we don't like some things". It's up to GOG to decide if satisfying them worths it or not.

The real culprit is Windows' shitty architecture, which is so shitty it requires ceaseless, never-ending updates -- which presents even greater security risks, as MS is NOT a trustworthy publisher.

ALL OS SYSTEMS REQUIRE CONSTANT UPDATES. There is a reason all the major Linux distros have new versioning every what 6 months? I'm sure Debian 3.0 (same age as XP) is just a bundle of "security".

And all systems have security bugs: https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/most-serious-linux-privilege-escalation-bug-ever-is-under-active-exploit/

Security IS NOT a implement it and forget it thing, regardless of the system security is an active process. As exploits and tools evolve so to must the way security is handled in systems.

We wouldn't have such problems at all if MS would make their OS revisions backwards compatible which could be expected for the price.

M$ actually pours tons of money into backwards compat. They aren't going to overhaul XP to add latter features though, some of the things would assuredly break a lot of stuff. And that 100-200$ license from 15 years ago really isn't worth all that much.

How did you come to that conclusion?

Why did they have to drop support for all 16-bit games completely instead of at least making a wrapper or an emulator?
Why are they unable to make a wrapper for WinXP games?

They have all the source, should be doable with a company with such an insane amount of employees and money, right?

DosBox wasn't made by them either but for free by OpenSource people because MS simply doesn't give a damn.

Well, aren't you the ignorant person? Do you expect that all corporations the world over should just stop with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-life_(product)]end-of-life[/url] as well? That would definitely guarantee that every single company under the sun would go bankrupt, if they needed to waste millions on supporting old products that less than 1% uses.

Ever thought of getting a job in economics? I think you'd be great for it.

Because the overwhelming bulk of software function on newer OSs and the are multiple compatibility options available.

1. Because they had to for 64bit.

"In an x86-64 CPU, virtual 8086 mode is available as a sub-mode only in its legacy mode (for running 16- and 32-bit operating systems), not in the native, 64-bit long mode.[14]" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine#cite_note-Intel_2013_Arch-Ref-15

2. Everytime MS starts getting all inclusive with software solutions built right in that get a slap on the hand by anti-trust litigation.

3. It's simply not in high enough demand to pour developmental resources into it when it's just going to be virtualization with fancy interface.

...Because they don't need to? XP games run fine under Win 10 64bit... MS has their own virtualization software, it's called Hyper-V.

Every goddamned day???

No, there's no such thing as a perfect OS -- or anything else, for that matter -- but Windows is far and away the worst. But since most peeps know little or nothing about computer security, it's not a problem for MS. MS nanny takes care of "everything" for you -- like hoovering up your PI -- and nobody has to be bothered by irritating annoyances like learning how to manage your system to your own advantage. MS nanny does it all!

If that is how often fixes and vulnerabilities are addressed. Yes. Security is an active process that never ends.

You know the irony of your little rants? Do you know why MS has been automating most stuff for the users and restricting full control solely to the higher licenses? It's because of groups like the XP stalwarts. People that never update no matter how vulnerable they are "because they are comfortable with it the way it is". As well as the idiots during the file-sharing era that would go out of their way to disable security so song.mp3.exe would "work".

It's a direct result of the failings of the users. They've spent the last 15 years pouring a lot of time and effort into strengthening the OS against the end-users and bolstering error-handling to pick up the slack in the majority of cases.

"frequent replacement"

*checks XP's end of life date*

2014-04-08...

Age of XP at that time? 12 years, 5 months, 14 days.

Time since then (aka today) ? 3 years, 2 months, 6 days.

"frequent replacement" you say? Well, clearly you're correct there in regards of XP and GOG. Let's all raise our pitchforks against Microsoft and GOG for ensuring that XP was possible to use for only 15 years before it needed to be replaced.

But wait, what's that you say? Every Linux distro under the sun has a shorter support life than the age of XP? Well, what are we waiting for, let's all raise our pitchforks against the whole Linux environment as well! Shame on them!

---

Honestly your posts are ridiculous to read. Microsoft didn't build XP to need frequent replacement. The OS suffers from some horrible design and security choices that at the time was common to do everywhere since developers simply didn't know better. The onslaught of the Internet, however, threw every insecure aspect into the spotlight over multiple of years, which is something that Microsoft have been fighting and correcting ever since they begun work on Vista.

And that work of theirs? Well, it was finally completed. After over a decade of fighting it. And you know what took them so long? Backwards compatibility and the sheer complexity of the massive undertaking they took on.

Either you have a completely broken and insecure system running on design aspects and components over a decade old (which every scriptkiddie under the sun can break in under a minute), or you actually move forward while still retaining backwards compatibility with as much as possible until you finally must make the decision to axe the damn thing.

Apparently the job in economics weren't your thing. Do you want to be a security advisor instead? It would probably result in a flood of ransomware similar to the scale of WannaCry every single year, but at least we'll keep the backwards compatibility to 100% instead of the current 80-95%.

Moving forward? What's that?! Bah, what a useless concept! Let's all stand still instead.

You have it backwards, kid. Windows was designed so that practically *anyone* could get online, as was AOL.

Funny story about AOL: their customer base largely consists of older people who don't understand that AOL is an ISP (an extremely shitty one), so many of them are paying for 2 connections.

Nice world we live in, eh kid?