Please do not confuse OS with shell. Different devices mandate different shells, but the same OS gives you the same underlying features and technologies and allows for a lot of cross device functionality.

consider yourselves having been collectively patted in the back. While I don't have intentions of using windows 10, ongoing support is cool, and you never know what may happen in live so it's good to have options.

Not updating my OS until I know my games are compatible with Win10. Hoping for the best!

My question wasn't clear enough, sorry about that: I was asking about dropping XP support for classic games. So if I understand you correctly no change of GOG's policy in this area?

So you are saying that MS should basically relinquish control of an OS that will power so many millions of devices that we can barely fathom. Makes sense. Let's tell that to all the millions of people out there that rely on a system to simply work. There is no way that will ever work. Microsoft has been streamlining this process for 30 years now. They finally have a system that is going to work for the vast majority. If you want more control, then you can pay for it. For the rest of mankind, there are two simple paths they can choose now. The fast ring, or the slow one. Nice and easy, and simple.

Done.

Now they can take those resources and focus on bigger and better things.

What's great is seeing just how many get Linux support on release day or at some point after that these days compared to say 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago for that matter, plus just how many more will work well with DOSbox, Scummvm, wine or similar solutions. It definitely seems to be on the incline and accelerating over time now anyway.

I too hope that by 2020 all or at least the majority of games are either available as native Linux binaries or are easily made to run with compatibility infrastructure of some sort and with as little consumer mucking around configuring as possible. It seems quite likely we'll be in good shape by then though for a large portion of games anyway if one extrapolates current numbers outward.

I hope to be able to "upgrade" my Windows 7 gaming platform by then to Linux and have as much as possible work with the least effort by then.

(For the record I've been using Linux since 1994 and experimenting with gaming on it ever since on and off over the years with varying degrees of success that increase over time.)

This is good and all, but there are plenty of games not even supported on Windows 8(.1) yet...

They've already commented publicly on that in other threads previously stating that they have no plan to drop XP support on existing games that claim to support XP as long as they're easily able to continue to support it. If supporting a game took up half of their resources to support XP then I imagine they'd rethink that for that one game, but that's very highly unlikely to be the case for games that have worked all along generally since XP isn't changing anymore and at least the majority of older XP compatible games likely aren't changing anymore either and if they are by the developer then they'll have to support XP too if they've claimed to support it all along.

In short XP users shouldn't generally have to worry about existing games that have listed XP support all along losing support any time soon as supporting it presumably takes very little resources at the moment, so that makes sense.

Is this a case of the developer/publisher does not provide support for the game on Windows 8.x, or a case of the developer supports Windows 8.x and GOG does not list it as supported for that game?

If it is the former, then it makes a lot of sense, unless GOG has been able to test the game with Windows 8.x themselves directly and decided to advertise support feeling that the game is stable and reliable enough on WIndows 8.x that they can assume the support overload themselves fully. The risk in doing so though is that the game developer could release a patch for the game that causes the game to not work on Windows 8.x later on to which GOG is unable to fix themselves and if the developer doesn't offer to fix it even though they don't claim to support it - GOG is left holding the bag with an upset customer. They may or may not be willing to take on that risk, and it will potentially vary from game to game depending on how old or new it is and gauging the liklihood of a risky situation occurring like that.

In general I would expect GOG to offer to support games only on the platforms that the developer claims are officially supported, and not offer support on ones that the developer does not claim support for because any additional platforms they list as supported - they end up taking on full responsibility for and may end up in the situation where a game patch breaks the game on a platform they chose to support which is "officially" not supported. They may however feel quite confident about some game too and decide to support it anyway. I'm sure the decision will end up being very game specific and decided based on actually testing the game on that platform and feeling quite confident about it before claiming support. So if they don't claim to support 8.x on some game, most likely the game is known to have problems that are big enough that they don't feel confident in over-claiming support for.

Yeah, this is exactly why I'm skeptical about all of this. If you filter the GOG catalogue by WIndows 7 and Windows 8 support, you'll see that there are about 50 games which don't work on Windows 8, two of them being Desperados and Gangsters. I don't think I'll ever upgrade to Windows 8/10 if it means I'll lose part of my games library. Windows 7 is perfectly fine the way it is.

Happy for those that trust Microsoft or just are happy to work with whatever they give them. After the crap OS of windows 8 I am not about to upgrade my Windows 7. Linux is looking like the far more likely option when it is time to change OS's. Just hope Microsoft gets their crap together and starts realizing that most computer users want choices and every time they try to restrict it, whether making Metro something you have to use when you are on a desktop or restricting choices on updates (because everyone trusts corporations not to screw you over when you can't say no right?), to farming you for data, just makes people so angry that well their is a reason Linux is growing a lot faster these last few years.

M$ can shove their new OS up their ass. I tend to limit killing my software with Windows to the minimum. I hate this "streamlining" bullshit. I think Win7 will be my last Windows and I will switch to linux when it'll stop being supported. By that time there should be plenty of old games supported on linux and with how PC gaming market is (that is to say, crap and doesn't look like it will be much better) there probably won't be worthwhile PC exclusives. So really, there is like zero reasons to upgrade.

Hey buddy, you want to be a Microsoft shill in this thread fine, those of us who don't want to be lapdogs, because their is such a thing as the power of choice will continue to make our own. If Microsoft makes it a worthy OS we will switch to it, but mostly they have just been pissing off their customers and we won't support them if they continue to do so.

Hey, I am not yelling, or using anything but the facts here. I am telling it like it is. And BTW, this thread is dedicated to the fact that GOG is supporting Windows 10, so excuse me for trying to help people understand why this is a good thing. You don't like it, that's fine.

Given that there's still no word on what happened to 9, I'm leery.
But I'm going to start transitioning over to Linux. . . eventually. At least then I won't have to use the registry to disable software.