can the games play on -win xp pro to win 10 pro? or even win 98

Well it kinda depends what game specifically are you talking about

cls

Who knows. More frankly, who cares. You're asking a wide, and far too broad variety of questions. Probably not in most cases. Besides, why would you want to inflict that on yourself? Maybe, but don't expect any realistic support or miracles. Besides, Windows 2000 is better and cooler. Yeah, yeh it might. I would suggest alternatives, though and leaving Microsoft behind.

As with many things, this is per-game and per-publisher, not a GOG thing. Most games likely not older than win 7.

brg!

(to others, I am just training the bot)

First of it really depends on GOG. Original devs pubs owners do nothing to bring old games here, all releases are repacks by GOG. And repacks include few DX(draw, input, dplay, winmm)/WinG/ipx wrapprers, emulators etc. And all that in setup files requires minimum a WinXP. Most of v3 installers (that no more labeled as 2.x.x.x builds) not compatible with WinXP.
Maybe most recent made to be incompatible with WinVista-7 (not really but artificial limit on purpose).

So first in general the whole GOG catalog are not compatible with Win9x and WinME. There is 3rd party extractors (read instruction carefully). And i suspect better use modern OS to install, inspect game folder tonerase excessive dll/etc files and move it as Portable to WinME.
DOS games here ALWAYS worst han Retail. Better what GOG sometimes provide is only disc image based releases. All DosBox and ScummVM releases here are screwed. Maybe very-very few exceptions... Warcraft I are good compared to usual releases, but somehow got incorrect GOGDOSBOXlauncher (miss options there) which is fixed only for Mac. In term of WinME pre-installed GOG Warcraft I are good to go. You no need DosBox anyway. Just copy it to alternate WinME drive, x/Games/Warcraft/
mount present disc image in last WinME compatible Alcohol or Daemon Tools (3.47, i forgot Alcohol build number, tr to google it) and launch
./WAR/war.exe.
Excessive files shouldn't interfere a thing in War1 case.

But that rare case. Rare case when DOS game present as fully patched and not ripped. Generally DOS games here are worst cases, for both DosBox and ScummVM releases.
ScummVM-GOG's builds here generally not compatible even with standard ScummVM, neither with any old OS. For ScummVM DOS game it is again not fully patched and ripped, just bare minimum to launch game in SfummVM. X-com even come as not fully patched entirely broken unplayable un-win-nable versions- GOG took only old patches for launch but not ingame fixing bug ptches. Maybe that was solved recently but i doubt (thereis still no x-com_win.exe and x-com_win_patched.exe that should be there for realy fully patched version and only gamebraking bugs free verson).

Instaling old Retail patched are sometimes required or advised to apply onto GOG. Can be useful. But they need to be found.


And ofc GOG Galaxy client are not your friend here.

Medieval Total War (+Viking Invasion) would like to have a word with you.

Why? Gold Edition. Slightly updated for modern system & widescreen support. On Steam people can play it fine using Win 10 +11.

However... this game is DRMed everywhere... so i got zero interest.

As far as i know, Sega is currently owning the publishing rights. Guess not impossible for GOG getting it, but as long as it is not here.. it can be gone.

Why is Windows 11 crap?

I am using Windows 10 and 11 side by side, and don't see much of difference between them. Is it only because Windows 11 requires at least one online account (other users can be local accounts)?

The recent Windows 11 2H24 feature update apparently broke many games (also on Steam), but besides that, it has been just as smooth sailing on 11 as it has been on 10.

I just generally find it odd someone would be fine with 10 and hate 11.... unless it is about that online account requirement.

As someone who has used all Windows starting from Vista, I never really got the Windows 11 hate either. Then again, I don't do much on my PC outside of general browsing, work, and gaming. Maybe more complex needs aren't supported? I don't know.

About the local account though, my current Windows 11 desktop is using a local account. Windows tries very hard to appear as though you have to log into a Microsoft account, but you can bypass it. Maybe it's the way Windows 11 tries to enforce certain features which gets hate.

Short version: If users require any step being online for any reason.

edit: As mentioned, plus I get Vogon vibes from Microsoft lol

Yes. The ones I'm thinking of can. Now you only have to figure out, which games I am thinking of.

Win 7 and 10 (and 8 I guess) should generally be safe. Anything below though can be risky. DosBox games are definitely safe, it's the games with wrappers or some modifications done to them by GOG to make them run on newer systems and such that can fall apart below Windows 7. Already encountered multiple games that didn't work on Windows XP from GOG while my retail copies worked without issues.

So in short, it depends. Mostly the games which released around the Win 95-98 up to the late Win XP era can have issues working on those systems when bought on GOG.