Does not compute... what are you smoking?

It seeems to be indeed the case that galaxy.dll exists in many different versions. Probably only the newest ones are not WinXP compatibile. It also may be the case that only the file GalaxyWrp.dll is not WinXP compatibile.

GOG have most likely upgraded their internal development tools to newer versions of Visual Studio and Windows SDKs. This breaks XP and Vista compatibility due to the many changes that Microsoft have shipped in those newer versions, changes that Microsoft have not backported to end-of-life operating systems.

This is a fact of life. If GOG wants to use the latest and modern development tools to ensure that they provide the best possible products for their customers then obviously that will have certain caveats that nobody cares about, such as breaking support for non-supported operating systems.

This isn't rocket science. It's basic software development.

And yes, everyone here is asking GOG to restore compatibibility for an unsupported operating system, which most likely requires them to downgrade their internal development tools to an outdated version that is most likely not recommended and probably doesn't see much focus from Microsoft.

"Restoring" compatibility and "not breaking" compatibility are two different propositions.

In this case we're talking about a single file, and the workaround didn't require development tools, old or new.

It's called not being a corporate apologist. Try it some time, it's bold and aromatic. o.O

Don't know who you mean but farting anybody's back is not very polite isn't it?

Pffff, a pat on the head or full blown sexual encounters... it's all semantics :P.

Yes. Docker uses namespaces and cgroups under the hood, but my understanding is that while they are continuously making it better, a lot of that stuff is old news (Docker just put a nice friendly package around it and made it popular).

Except that we've been able to view videos on youtube for what? 12 years? How changes to the kernel in the not so distant past has significantly contributed to our video viewing experience?

Fair enough, power management is probably an area where the kernel advancements have contributed a lot in the not so distant past.

After all, I believe many of the innovations in Android were making the Linux kernel more power-efficient.

Exactly and I think there's an ever increasing disconnect between advancements to kernel and the typical user experience. Short of getting a brand new usage paradigm for computers that require a lot of optimization at the kernel-level, kernel advancements will yield ever diminishing returns.

Sure, it may make devs' lives easier (I'm personally always keeping an eye out for new features with containers) and contribute greatly to specialized uses (ex: GPU-based computations for deep-learning), but these things are increasingly remote to your typical user whose hard-earned cash Microsoft is trying to obtain with every new version of Windows.

That sort of thing is always going to change with the message of time. 8~ years ago games were still being made FOR XP.

I fail to see the connection here at all.

I was just thinking - if GOG breaks XP compatibility (because of Galaxy, bacause they change software for making installation packages etc.) for a game that I purchsed and doesn't provide previous (XP compatibile) version of a installer on my account - how does it look from legal point of view?

I think there is a big difference between using an OS and playing a game.
Using WinXP equivalent to playing Baldurs Gate ?
eh, probably not :p

You're still missing the point. It's only newer versions of the DLL file that breaks compatibility. Why? Because that newer version of the DLL (which includes stuff older versions doesn't include) have most likely been built with newer development tools. The only way of "restoring" compatibility would be to recompile that version of the DLL file using older development tools. Which means supporting and maintaining a completely separate development chain for an unsupported operating system.

You really don't know shit about software development.

Steam's DLL files will also hit this challenge eventually. It goes with the territory. And the more GOG must maintain separate development tools and chains to support unsupported operating system the more $$$$$$$$$ it costs.

I think this would be a fine compromise, as it would not intrude on the gog developer's time to maintain compatibility, and it would ensure that games would always be able to run on the OS they were originally designed for. In most cases, anyone with an intermediate knowledge of computers won't need a fancy gog installer anyway.

Nope, many here are asking gog they please should not break something. That WinXP is not working anymore is a symptom that something is going in the wrong direction, something that's not just a problem for people who want to run games in wine on other systems like mac and linux or using outdated operating systems like WinXP or Vista.

I bought many games here assuming that someday gog is gone and I need to fix the installers myself to run the games on coming operating system. In the past gog always tried to keep the games as close to the original as possible and mostly did not add any extra stuff. Only in rare cases they used fanpatches or mod, but that's because the original games were utterly broken. They did a great balancing act in supporting newer OSes without unnecessary breaking something, which gave most of us the freedom to use the installers for preservation and building up a big backlog, knowing someday in the future we have good chances to make these games playable on then modern OS. For that reason many people here are concerned about galaxy, they just want a basic installer without any additional stuff added that maybe can break something in the future, they want the installers exactly like gog did it before. And that's not against galaxy, it's more about how things are handled at the moment. Let galaxy patch all the online features after the installation into the games and try to keep the installers independent and compatible as possible. They are the main reason why many people came here in the first place and they please should not become to feeder for galaxy.

Nope, rollback feature is only available via Galaxy...
Oh, the irony.

The thing is, that some people (like me) are also here to get old games DRM-free for their old systems.
This group has been chased away by several things by now and most of those aren't posting here (anymore).
Now we get more Win10 fans every day.

I could just as well say "If you want to use Win10, then buy current games, duh!".
It would have about the same value as what I'm reading here these days.