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General discussionPlease add support of Windows XP\2003 into GOG Galaxy!(166 posts)(166 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 15, 2015
It makes sense to not purposefully remove features/functionality to cause an application to no longer function on an older OS like Windows XP unless there is a lot to be gained by introducing such changes. For the most part that's not likely to be the case for something like this though.

What a lot of people may not realize though too is that software development teams have finite resources both financial and manpower relted, as do quality assurance testing teams, technical support teams and other aspects of the whole software R&D and support ecosphere. As such every software company has to look at the goals they wish to achieve and how the may best allocate their resources to do so, and when it comes to backwards compatibility related issues of this nature then the percentage of affected customers needs to also be taken into account when making decisions of this sort of nature.

The problem with Windows XP is not only that it is no longer supported by Microsoft officially (regardless of whether there are unofficial ways to still get updates for it through trickery), but that the number of users still using Windows XP is on a sharp declining trajectory and any efforts expended in manpower to maintain or develop new support for it in existing products and upcoming features end up having a larget and larger burden on finite resources compared to the amount of people that benefit from the results. This will only continue to be more pronounced as time goes on too as people will end up needing to move off of XP more and more quickly moving forward due to a number of technical shortcomings of the OS.

One such example is that the web is very quickly moving forward with mass encryption adoption, and while it's only at a slow trickle right now, projects like the lets-encrypt project hope to work towards an always-encrypted Internet for all sites and services. That wont happen overnight of course, but it is certainly starting now, and the entire premise is backed by industry giants including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, Akamai, and many others, a number of whom are directly supporting the letsencrypt project and other efforts underway.

"How does this affect Windows XP?" one might ask. Well, the problem is that the SSL/TLS stack in Windows XP is very ancient and does not support new encryption ciphers that are becoming increasingly common online now, it does not support SHA256 SSL certificates and the entire web is moving away from SHA1 completely. Within less than a year Firefox, Chrome, IE and other major browsers and mobile devices will no longer support SHA1 and that frees websites and other service operators from having to continue supporting this insecure solution. In addition to this, the majority of current generation and several generation old operating systems, web browsers, mobile devices and other software all support SNI, which is a web server/browser feature that allows many websites to be served on a single webserver with one IP address over SSL. SNI has been around forever now but has not really been able to be used due to lack of support for it in Windows XP, old versions of Java and old mobile devices and other ancient software/hardware, but that is changing quickly now and many websites are now rolling out SSL-only and using SNI because the number of people accessing those sites using Windows XP and other legacy technologies that do not support these features are sufficiently small enough that they're able to write them off now. That varies from site to site, the nature of the site and its business model (if any) and the particular types of users that particular site receives and isn't a blanket statement. It just means that SNI is becoming a more widely accepted technology and it is being rolled out there for real now, and that means those sites will not be easily available to Windows XP users.

What does this all have to do with GOG Galaxy? Well it's simple, everyone uses the web and relies upon it, and when important websites are no longer usable in your web browser such as for example because you are using IE6 on Windows XP, then you have no real other option than to upgrade to an OS/software combination that allows you to still do online banking and other functions you need to do. Since this is going to become much more common in the next 12 months as the 3 major browser vendors remove support for SHA1 and website operators roll out sites using SNI in order to fit more websites on a single IP address due to IPv4 being currently exhausted, we can expect that the majority of people using XP will have no choice but to upgrade one way or another whether they like it or not, or else have a non-functional Internet experience.

There are other technologies aside from those I've mentioned here which likewise Windows XP is unable to deal with. Some of these limitations are just inherent in the OS itself, while others are just limitations of Internet Explorer. In some cases, using 3rd party software might allow someone to work around an issue, but in a lot of cases the 3rd party software alternatives no longer support XP either and one would have to use software that itself is insecure. Either way, everyone using XP is being funneled to upgrade to something newer as soon as possible due to its extreme obsolescence that will become more and more visible to users still using it over time.

While the users of these systems are not always aware of this level of technical detail, and probably wouldn't understand it for the most part if it is explained to them, the problems are real and the momentum is underway and can't really be stopped. Companies that design software know all of this, and they realize that come a year and a half from now, the percentage of people still using XP is likely to be incredibly small, probably less than 1% globally if not a magnitude smaller than that. It just does not make sense to commit any serious amount of engineering manpower or financial investment into developing for an unsupported legacy system that barely has a pulse left and more or less just got told that it has terminal cancer figuratively speaking.

Nobody likes to embrace death, but even software dies sometimes and needs to be replaced. It is not always a pleasant experience, and I don't personally favour being forced to do it myself either, but it is a necessity from time to time nonetheless. So I empathize with those who don't want to see XP just drop dead on them, but unfortunately the writing is on the wall and nothing can stop it from happening. Clinging onto it with both hands in a death grip wont save XP, and wont convince any software companies to continue to support it in perpetuity. It's just not viable. I know this may be painful for many to read, but the truth is sometimes not easy to swallow. I had to go through this process myself moving from XP to Windows 7 3 years ago roughly, but once it ended up being relatively painless in the end and worth the change. People shouldn't feel they have to upgrade unnecessarily either, but in this case specifically it really is necessary and will become more apparent to everyone with every month that passes leading through 2016.

Sometimes embracing change is a lot less painful than holding on to it forever, and IMHO this is one of those times.
Posted December 16, 2015
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Buenro-games: *snip*
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Huinehtar: I didn't want to be rude, I am sorry.

Since Microsoft themselves won't update Windows XP anymore, I believe that security breaches won't be corrected in the foreseen future, so for a computer which uses Windows XP for a online use, it could be dangerous for the user.

I never said previously that people should stop using Windows XP when discussions appeared right after Microsoft announced ending support. Because I believe that computers can work fine, but to avoid malwares, for a full offline use now.

But, here we are discussing about GOG Galaxy, an online software. That's why I thought that for that use, maybe Windows XP is too old and not supported by their own developpers anymore. Nothing wrong to download with another OS to play with Windows XP for instance.
Curious what security breaches are you referring to? Most people would be using some sort of software/hardware firewall and any program that attempts to run will query the user if it has permission to access the internet. Even using the Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer stopped all the hijacking caused by redirected pop up sites. And let's assume you somehow got infected because you naively clicked on an email file attachment and decided because it came from your relative it was okay to run. That's user error and any operating system would be vulnerable in that situation.

Assuming you have the technical knowledge the best course of action is to ghost your OS when it is clean and uninfected and has all the drivers installed and any necessary software applications. Then if you were infected you'd reboot and restore the image back onto your OS wiping out the problem. Of course if there are any saved files you want you should have redirected the save location to another partition other than your OS partition so that anything wiped would not be your data.

Gog Galaxy is just software. All you need is the proper programmers who know how to develop programs in the appropriate OS. Windows XP 32-bit and Vista 64-bit are different creatures just like Linux and MAC OS. So as long as they have the correct programmers for the OS it can happen.

Programming support is not dependent on the OS creator Microsoft. Microsoft has nothing to do with with GOG or GOG Galaxy.

Any software publisher can make a game for any OS they want as long as they have the people who know how to do it.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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QC: XP is so old at this point that not even Microsoft is willing to support it. I'm not sure it could handle Galaxy with the general hardware that XP is designed to manage.
WHAT?

XP is not supported by Microsoft because they want money plain and simple. People not upgrading to a newer OS version every 2-3 years means share holders getting pissed.

Is GOG Galaxy not just a user interface to chat with other GOG Galaxy users and network games?

Why would the requirements be that high? Is it not similar to the Steam user interface?

It is the game that would most CPU and GPU intensive.

And just to point out my hardware.

I am running XP Pro on an Ivy Bridge Quad core CPU
32GB of RAM

Graphics card you can use anything up to PCIe 3.0.

nVidia 900 Series still has XP graphics drivers.

Up to GTX 950/960

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/96076

GeForce Game Ready Driver
Version 359.06
Release Date Tue Dec 01, 2015
Operating System Windows XP
Language English (US)
File Size 207.48 MB


Also there is an unofficial way to get security updates since the Banking POS use XP Embedded which keeps getting updates for another 5 years till 2019.

It's not really a hack but changing the registry key to report what version of XP you are using. XP Pro is way more advanced than XP Embedded so whatever patches it should have XP Pro should be able to use it.

I never had to use any new security updates myself and just use plain old SP3 with some good internet connection blocking software.

However if you're really power hungry, there is an XP SP3 PAE patch that allows you to use up to 64GB of RAM.

Apparently Microsoft found a way to use 36-bit code to access over 4GB on 32-bit OS. In fact XP SP1 still had support for over 4GB of memory until they patched this in SP2 and SP3 because XP Pro shared the similar code as Windows 2003 Server. Most people probably didn't know this because at the time motherboards had 1.5GB or 2GB limit and not many people would have seen memory beyond 4GB to realize its potential before SP2 and SP3 came out.

Windows Server 2003 32-bit can do 64GB of memory that's how people figured out it was a software based limitation. XP 32-bit does not have a 4GB limit as originally thought.

Because of this, XP may get another 5 years of life since it will be another 5 years before the common user would have 64GB of memory installed on consumer motherboards.

For most people who want to play the oldest and newest Windows games I suggest a
XP / Windows 10 dual boot setup.

XP would cover the DirectX 9.0C and lower 32-bit games and Windows 10 should cover DirectX 10.0 - 12.0 games.
Posted December 16, 2015
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skeletonbow: It makes sense to not purposefully remove features/functionality to cause an application to no longer function on an older OS like Windows XP unless there is a lot to be gained by introducing such changes. For the most part that's not likely to be the case for something like this though.

What a lot of people may not realize though too is that software development teams have finite resources both financial and manpower relted, as do quality assurance testing teams, technical support teams and other aspects of the whole software R&D and support ecosphere. As such every software company has to look at the goals they wish to achieve and how the may best allocate their resources to do so, and when it comes to backwards compatibility related issues of this nature then the percentage of affected customers needs to also be taken into account when making decisions of this sort of nature.

The problem with Windows XP is not only that it is no longer supported by Microsoft officially (regardless of whether there are unofficial ways to still get updates for it through trickery), but that the number of users still using Windows XP is on a sharp declining trajectory and any efforts expended in manpower to maintain or develop new support for it in existing products and upcoming features end up having a larget and larger burden on finite resources compared to the amount of people that benefit from the results. This will only continue to be more pronounced as time goes on too as people will end up needing to move off of XP more and more quickly moving forward due to a number of technical shortcomings of the OS.

One such example is that the web is very quickly moving forward with mass encryption adoption, and while it's only at a slow trickle right now, projects like the lets-encrypt project hope to work towards an always-encrypted Internet for all sites and services. That wont happen overnight of course, but it is certainly starting now, and the entire premise is backed by industry giants including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, Akamai, and many others, a number of whom are directly supporting the letsencrypt project and other efforts underway.

"How does this affect Windows XP?" one might ask. Well, the problem is that the SSL/TLS stack in Windows XP is very ancient and does not support new encryption ciphers that are becoming increasingly common online now, it does not support SHA256 SSL certificates and the entire web is moving away from SHA1 completely. Within less than a year Firefox, Chrome, IE and other major browsers and mobile devices will no longer support SHA1 and that frees websites and other service operators from having to continue supporting this insecure solution. In addition to this, the majority of current generation and several generation old operating systems, web browsers, mobile devices and other software all support SNI, which is a web server/browser feature that allows many websites to be served on a single webserver with one IP address over SSL. SNI has been around forever now but has not really been able to be used due to lack of support for it in Windows XP, old versions of Java and old mobile devices and other ancient software/hardware, but that is changing quickly now and many websites are now rolling out SSL-only and using SNI because the number of people accessing those sites using Windows XP and other legacy technologies that do not support these features are sufficiently small enough that they're able to write them off now. That varies from site to site, the nature of the site and its business model (if any) and the particular types of users that particular site receives and isn't a blanket statement. It just means that SNI is becoming a more widely accepted technology and it is being rolled out there for real now, and that means those sites will not be easily available to Windows XP users.

What does this all have to do with GOG Galaxy? Well it's simple, everyone uses the web and relies upon it, and when important websites are no longer usable in your web browser such as for example because you are using IE6 on Windows XP, then you have no real other option than to upgrade to an OS/software combination that allows you to still do online banking and other functions you need to do. Since this is going to become much more common in the next 12 months as the 3 major browser vendors remove support for SHA1 and website operators roll out sites using SNI in order to fit more websites on a single IP address due to IPv4 being currently exhausted, we can expect that the majority of people using XP will have no choice but to upgrade one way or another whether they like it or not, or else have a non-functional Internet experience.

There are other technologies aside from those I've mentioned here which likewise Windows XP is unable to deal with. Some of these limitations are just inherent in the OS itself, while others are just limitations of Internet Explorer. In some cases, using 3rd party software might allow someone to work around an issue, but in a lot of cases the 3rd party software alternatives no longer support XP either and one would have to use software that itself is insecure. Either way, everyone using XP is being funneled to upgrade to something newer as soon as possible due to its extreme obsolescence that will become more and more visible to users still using it over time.

While the users of these systems are not always aware of this level of technical detail, and probably wouldn't understand it for the most part if it is explained to them, the problems are real and the momentum is underway and can't really be stopped. Companies that design software know all of this, and they realize that come a year and a half from now, the percentage of people still using XP is likely to be incredibly small, probably less than 1% globally if not a magnitude smaller than that. It just does not make sense to commit any serious amount of engineering manpower or financial investment into developing for an unsupported legacy system that barely has a pulse left and more or less just got told that it has terminal cancer figuratively speaking.

Nobody likes to embrace death, but even software dies sometimes and needs to be replaced. It is not always a pleasant experience, and I don't personally favour being forced to do it myself either, but it is a necessity from time to time nonetheless. So I empathize with those who don't want to see XP just drop dead on them, but unfortunately the writing is on the wall and nothing can stop it from happening. Clinging onto it with both hands in a death grip wont save XP, and wont convince any software companies to continue to support it in perpetuity. It's just not viable. I know this may be painful for many to read, but the truth is sometimes not easy to swallow. I had to go through this process myself moving from XP to Windows 7 3 years ago roughly, but once it ended up being relatively painless in the end and worth the change. People shouldn't feel they have to upgrade unnecessarily either, but in this case specifically it really is necessary and will become more apparent to everyone with every month that passes leading through 2016.

Sometimes embracing change is a lot less painful than holding on to it forever, and IMHO this is one of those times.
I liked what you had to say regarding XP because you thought out and provided some facts regarding your own issues.

However it is true there is a decline of XP being used but I don't agree that it would vanish within a year and a half.

Assuming Windows 10 64-bit is a true successor of Windows 7 64-bit I expect a mass migration from both Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 64-bit users to upgrade to Windows 10 64-bit for free.

Most hardcore XP 32-bit users are using it because it does everything exceptionally well and the user interface is unbeatable. If I could show you a side by side of XP 32-bit next to Windows 7 64-bit and show you the differences between the two on a modern computer in my case a Quad Core Ivy Bridge with 32GB of RAM and if you apply the PAE patch you can access up to 64GB of memory.

As for browsers you obviously were using the wrong internet browser when you were on XP. No one in the right mind would be using IE6-IE8 unless they loved getting infected or hijacked by malware on a constant basis.

There are many 3rd party browser alternatives. Opera and Firefox being the top two I like the most because its features beat Google Chrome in my opinion. There is also Seamonkey and even Safari if you like Apple. Google Chrome is still an option if you like that look but they don't provide stand alone installers and force downloading off their server to install.

Firefox supports XP and it will be a long time before companies like Amazon and eBay plain up say screw XP because the IP4 limit or force buyers to upgrade their computers in order to purchase items via Paypal.

I'm currently using XP and I can tell you for a fact I tested all versions up to Firefox 36.0.4 as I look for ones with the most security patches.

So if you were stuck on Internet Explorer 6.0-8.0 the whole time I can see why you felt obligated to upgrade to Windows 7 out of necessity.

Also if you were on IE6-IE8 that long I'm surprised your computer wasn't infected when it went to a non stop popup website and hijacked your computer. I think the fact you stuck with IE6-IE8 for so long you got brainwashed into thinking you had no alternatives but to upgrade to Windows 7. Let's be clear XP SP3 has no problem with this issue of SHA256 SSL certificates.


It is not true that XP will no longer be supported on websites going forward as you can read these sites.

https://support.globalsign.com/customer/portal/articles/1499561-sha-256-compatibility

http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/11/SHA-1

https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/sha1-deprecation-what-you-need-to-know
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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skeletonbow:
About SNI being a problem with XP:
Problem solved a long time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or later

Opera 8.0 (2005) or later (the TLS 1.1 protocol must be enabled)[8]

As for your concern regarding XP not having IP6 and stuck on IP4 also unfounded.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2478747

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_ip_v6_pro_inst.mspx?mfr=true

I just checked on mine and I can add Microsoft TCP/IP version 6 if I wanted as it a protocol you must manually add. It might have come with one of the Service Packs 1-3. I don't have a XP vanilla install to confirm if it is there.

Again you brought up some good points and it seems like you are well versed in the internet protocols but I think there was another group of people who loved XP that thought way ahead of you and now that we are approaching the death of SHA1 your fears are now unwarranted as they were anticipated ages ago.

I was once where you were at pondering the jump to Vista and later. But once Sandy Bridge came out I was curious would XP work on newer technology. I spent the time and got it to work. Most people who approach this job might be frustrated at first getting the BSOD error code 0x0000007B.

This initial issue baffled me for awhile until I figured out this was due to SATA hard drives not being supported by the Vanilla XP because it was before its time. By installing the appropriate Intel AHCI driver either using a slipstreamed XP CD or using a USB floppy drive and using the F6 option you can add the support during XP installation set up. Once this driver is installed the XP setup runs perfectly to completion. If you don't have access to a USB floppy drive then you can use nLite and slipstream the appropriate Intel AHCI SATA driver corresponding to your motherboard's chipset to fix the problem.

Now an easy way to avoid this error via the BIOS is look under the SATA Configuration and see if you have IDE Compatibility mode. If you choose this you will not need an Intel AHCI driver to be preinstalled during set up.

Obviously Vista and later you will not have this problem installing onto SATA hard drives so you will not encounter this BSOD problem.

If you were an employee at Microsoft I'd say you did a good job trying to push people to consider upgrading from XP to Vista or later if they wanted to continue using the internet due to the push for more security encryption. Congrats on the effort!
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: Google Chrome at 31% is also supported on XP.
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BKGaming: Not for long...

http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/10/google-will-stop-supporting-chrome-for-windows-xp-vista-and-older-versions-of-os-x-by-april-2016/
I already know about this. This is old news. The fact is it still is supported and using the last version that works on XP won't change that the browser will not function.

Also I prefer Firefox and Opera. The browser interface is better.

Both allow stacking of the website shortcuts quite easily but Opera offers override access advantage when a website blocks it. An example is being able to save a picture in Opera whereas in Firefox if the website doesn't permit it will not allow it. Both are also stand alone installable which makes it nice for on the go installations.
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zeroxxx: The amount of retardation in the suggestion is off the chart.
For once I agree that CP/M-88 and OS/360 don't seem to fit.

If anything they could do away with making it an OS dependent Galaxy Client.

Skip the whole idea of making it OS based and make it browser based. There are plenty of user interfaces that use a Browser for the chat room and launching of a game. I've seen it done on MSN Games a long time ago.

This would make it work independent of the machine you are on as long as a browser was available for that computer's OS.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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skeletonbow: Windows 98SE FTW!!!!111!!1! :)
Windows 98 SE was good in the sense that you could still play pure DOS games with Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32 or load and run Windows 3.1/95/98 titles. The problem was it was unstable most of the time crashing. I also hated the limited amount of tabs you could open in Browsers. Windows 2000 fixed that problem to a certain extent. My jaw dropped when you could open more than 20 tabs and it just kept going...

Windows 2000 Professional, not Windows M.E., was the best first stable Windows OS.

XP of course got the eye candy interface put on top of Windows 2000.

It did add the Wireless networking and Internet Connection Sharing which made it any easy choice to share the internet in homes and better USB 2.0 support a huge boost over USB 1.0/1.1.
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: The idea of saved games files kept in the cloud wouldn't make sense. These files are tiny. Let's say GOG's cloud servers went down then you couldn't resume where you left off or say the saved game data was destroyed / corrupted since it was all kept in the Gog cloud and not locally on your computer.
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JMich: You are aware that by "Keep the saves in the cloud" we mean keeping a copy of them there, and if there's a discrepancy, ask us which one to keep, right? So if you are offline, you continue with your local files, while if you are online and the files date is different, you are asked if you want to use the local ones or download the ones from the cloud.
If there are cloud files and no local, cloud ones are downloaded, if there are local and no cloud, at the end of the session, they are uploaded. Do add a better check than date if you wish to counter possible corruption.

P.S. While I don't doubt netmarketshare's stats (don't really want to check what machines they count in their data), I know for a fact that quite a ton of machines that are not used for games but are on the internet are stuck with older OSes. For gaming media, a better estimate would be Steam's Hardware & Software Survey, though that only takes into account users of Steam, so the Linux percentage is quite smaller than the Linux machines in use, even discounting the fact that many Linux gamers do not game on Steam. From those stats, Windows XP share is an order of magnitude less than Windows 8 share, and 20 times less than the Windows 7 share.

So while XP may still be in use by 1 in every 10 machines (really? Linux only has a 1.62% share? That by itself makes me question the data), not all of those machines are used to game.
I recognize your name and I know we've had some long discussions before but I've mistaken you for someone else.
If you knew me you would already know I already knew what he was proposing even though he didn't explain all the details and things are not as simple as you think. I understand what you are proposing in your explanation of what you think he was hoping for but then you would force Gog to locate where the save games files were on the local computer and then upload them to Gog's servers or download from Gog's servers if not present and then deal with checksums to see if the files have changed. Are you asking GOG to constantly keep a copy of everyone's saved games? This would eventually put a burden on Gog's servers over time when more and more users constantly saved games and add bandwidth usage that could cause extra lag between users playing online. Not all saved games are small for each game.

You still have to download the game for use on the new computer unless you are carrying a portable storage device with it already on it then why not just backup your saved games locally while you are at it. Each game has a different storage location and some people install their game in a different partition and folder than some default c: location. Windows actually complicated things compared to DOS where all the necessary files to run a game where all in one subdirectory and not spread all over the place. I think it would complicate matters for GOG to do an entire software library of file save locations where a game typically keeps the saved games or if the user decides to customize the destination of where the game is installed that they now have to introduce some sort of file search hunt for saved game names or folders. I got over 40TB of data connected to my USB ports and I purposely have turned off indexing to not deal with the constant hard drive access thrashing. If GOG decided to add this feature then that would would mean full access to your hard drives and I personally wouldn't want GOG snooping around all my hard drives looking for saved games. GOG would also need to keep a list of the names of saved games file extensions for each game. And even with that kind of file check if someone decided put a huge file in their saved game directory with the same saved game file extension and GOG tries to download it would eat up the bandwidth on their server. People could use this feature to make GOG a free cloud storage and eventually eat up all their storage.

Also going by the Steam statistics for how many people actually use XP for gaming is flawed. First off Steam is geared toward the newest games and require a DRM operating system for the most part. Vista and above satisfies this and then combine the need for DirectX 11.0 or higher. This requires Vista and higher to accomplish so you won't see a huge portion of XP players on steam if all the games are targeted for DX 11.0 and higher system requirements.

The entire gaming market is not on Steam if that is what you believe.

The biggest is probably Battle Net. I know that Starcraft 1 and 2 among the biggest user base and the games run perfectly fine on XP. If we were somehow to got the global statistics of the what OS breakdown was used by those users you'd probably get a completely different picture vs Steam. I'm really uncertain how many Steam users there are in comparison to Battle Net but I would assume Battle Net probably has more users since it has been around longer. I remember playing Warcraft 2 on Battlenet and that was in the late 90s. The other competing gaming network would probably be Origin but I would assume most of those players would be using the latest and greatest specs on those games similar to Steam.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: This shows the undying popularity of Windows XP even after 14 years nearing 15 soon.
There is so much hardware that supports XP and a huge software library.

IF anything GOG Galaxy should support at the minimum these two OSes:

XP SP3 32-bit - The last and best 32-bit Windows OS released.
Wrong, the best was WIndows 2000. Goddamn XP kids shitting up the backyard

XP shouldn't be supported. Kill it already. Vista and on are much better for security and driver architectures.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by dewtech
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: If you knew me you would already know I already knew what he was proposing even though he didn't explain all the details and things are not as simple as you think. I understand what you are proposing in your explanation of what you think he was hoping for but then you would force Gog to locate where the save games files were on the local computer and then upload them to Gog's servers or download from Gog's servers if not present and then deal with checksums to see if the files have changed. Are you asking GOG to constantly keep a copy of everyone's saved games? This would eventually put a burden on Gog's servers over time when more and more users constantly saved games and add bandwidth usage that could cause extra lag between users playing online. Not all saved games are small for each game.
That is what cloud saves are. A copy of the files saved in the cloud. The post of yours I replied to said that the files would only be in the cloud, not a copy of them, thus the problem if the servers go down.
So yes, you were also saying that GOG should keep a copy of all saves on their servers, but you also said that they shouldn't leave a local file. That to me says you didn't understand what he was proposing.

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TrueDosGamer: You still have to download the game for use on the new computer unless you are carrying a portable storage device with it already on it then why not just backup your saved games locally while you are at it.
Because you game at 2 different machines, and don't want to set up file transfer between them. You want to be able to play on the TV screen while your spouse isn't at home, but when they return and want to see a movie, save & quit, then continue playing on your laptop with the same progress you have. Then once you go to the office on a slow day (you work as support, so you only need to be available, noone said you can't play games), you boot up your game and continue from where you were before. You don't want to keep a copy of your saves on a portable drive, and the games are already installed there.

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TrueDosGamer: Windows actually complicated things compared to DOS where all the necessary files to run a game where all in one subdirectory and not spread all over the place.
Actually, Windows was made so you would only need to copy the %user% folder from the old machine to the new, then install the games again and they would see the saves. And if more than one person was using the machine, they could each have their own saves. So you would only copy your files, not the game files as well. To me, that is better than saving in the game's directory, for a multitude of reasons.

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TrueDosGamer: If GOG decided to add this feature then that would would mean full access to your hard drives and I personally wouldn't want GOG snooping around all my hard drives looking for saved games.
They wouldn't. If you have Redshirt installed, it would copy the Documents\Saved Games\Redshirt folder. If you had The Bridge (not currently on GOG), it would copy the Documents\SavedGames\The Bridge folder. If you had Dark Sun 2, it would copy the %installation folder%\save??.sav and %installation folder%\????save.gff files. It wouldn't go looking through your disks for save??.sav files, since it would only get the files specified for each game.

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TrueDosGamer: GOG would also need to keep a list of the names of saved games file extensions for each game. And even with that kind of file check if someone decided put a huge file in their saved game directory with the same saved game file extension and GOG tries to download it would eat up the bandwidth on their server. People could use this feature to make GOG a free cloud storage and eventually eat up all their storage.
Also possible to safeguard against. For example, the Dark Sun saves shouldn't be more than 20MB, so give it a quote of 50MB. For The Witcher, which can have a huge amount of saves, limit the space to 500MB, which should be enough for the last 15 saves or so, then don't save the older ones. You can get a ton of cloud services online that offer free space, and if your goal is to eat up GOG's bandwidth, you can do that by continuously downloading one of the bigger games.

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TrueDosGamer: The entire gaming market is not on Steam if that is what you believe.
I know it's not. Thus why I allowed for larger XP numbers, but for XP to reach Win8 numbers, it needs to be 10 times more in use than Steam's Survey reports. I sincerely doubt that non-steam gaming is 10 times larger than Steam's gaming.

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TrueDosGamer: If we were somehow to got the global statistics of the what OS breakdown was used by those users you'd probably get a completely different picture vs Steam.
Closest I could find was this strawpoll from reddit, though the sample size is too small.

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TrueDosGamer: I'm really uncertain how many Steam users there are in comparison to Battle Net but I would assume Battle Net probably has more users since it has been around longer.
On February 2015, Steam reported it had over 125 million accounts. WoW at its peaked had 12.5 million, Starcraft 2, Legacy of the void sold 1 million units on release day, so let's multiply that by 10 (yeah, right) and add another 10 million accounts, so let's assume 10 million different users per Blizzard game. That gives us an estimate of ~80 millions users, and it is on the very high side.
The fact that something is around longer doesn't mean it has more users, as any Linux user will tell you.
Posted December 16, 2015
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ZerZer.509: I am disappointed but unsurprised to find a lot of fanboys defending not officially supporting Windows XP, but as a programmer I have to say, it's utterly trivial to make software that runs on 7 run on XP. Really not a challenge... I will admit GOG Downloader definitely showed me software engineering is a serious weak point at GOG and always has been.

As for 'security', if MSIE isn't going to be patched run Firefox. Ain't rocket science. The end of support is to encourage people to buy a newer version, because that's how Microsoft makes their money.
Some people think it is the end of the world because MS decides no more support. For myself I never downloaded any of the updates aside from SP3. I think there is a SP4 unofficial update somewhere that someone put together that contains all the security patches released since.

I think the reason for most of the dislike of XP comes from people that either never used it before and started with Windows 7 or that the last time they used used XP was when it was without Service Packs on some dated P4 single core machine with not enough RAM. Windows 98 ran super fast compared to XP then. I remember giving XP a shot on my unicore P4 and kind of cringing at how slow it went on just 512MB. 1GB made it bearable but 2GB it actually ran fine. Trust me comparing a P4 to an Ivy Bridge is like night and day. Windows 2000 Pro ran smooth as silk in comparison to XP. Imagine putting a Ferrari V12 engine in a chassis of a Delorean. 88 MPH... Try 288 MPH...

Granted if you ran XP SP1 (can use up to 64GB before Microsoft patched it in SP2 and SP3) on a modern day Ivy Bridge quadcore with 64GB of ram or if using XP3 the PAE memory patch you'd probably choke laughing how fast this thing ran next to Windows 7. Hell if I could use Windows 2000 and it had the same patches as XP I'd rather use that because that thing flew. It was like 120fps vs 30fps. Windows 2000 was the epitome of speed as far as how quick and responsive it was. The only real thing preventing me from using it was worse USB 2.0 support when I tried it and I didn't have AHCI SATA drivers for it to get around the BSOD during set up. There is a 3rd party AHCI Sata driver someone created for it so I might consider trying it one day just to see how fast it loads. It really runs on such a small amount of memory compared to what we have access to today and it was super stable for the most part. It was also missing the icon size changing functionality that XP added which would have been nice. However I'm unsure if there was a way to exceed 4GB on it. However according to this link the Data Center Server could go up to 32GB.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/268363


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jeditobe: it is supported. You only need to apply small registry fix.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/registry-hack-enables-continued-updates-for-windows-xp/

With this fix Windows XP will continue to receive updated until April 9, 2019.
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skeletonbow: No, it's not supported. That is a hack for another product and if one reads the entire article here is an official statement from Microsoft (the horse's official mouth) on the matter:

"[UPDATE:] Late Monday we received a statement from a Microsoft spokesperson:

We recently became aware of a hack that purportedly aims to provide security updates to Windows XP customers. The security updates that could be installed are intended for Windows Embedded and Windows Server 2003 customers and do not fully protect Windows XP customers. Windows XP customers also run a significant risk of functionality issues with their machines if they install these updates, as they are not tested against Windows XP. The best way for Windows XP customers to protect their systems is to upgrade to a more modern operating system, like Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
"

So it is very much not supported by Microsoft, and even if it was reliable - a company basing their support policies on an unofficial hack to an MS operating system is not a reliable thing to support either. It may improve the protection of a system somewhat, or it may cause problems either way there are no guarantees. I wouldn't rely on it with any confidence.
Are you sure you aren't the Microsoft spokesperson? :)
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: I think the reason for most of the dislike of XP comes from people that either never used it before and started with Windows 7 or that the last time they used used XP was when it was without Service Packs on some dated P4 single core machine with not enough RAM. Windows 98 ran super fast compared to XP then. I remember giving XP a shot on my unicore P4 and kind of cringing at how slow it went on just 512MB. 1GB made it bearable but 2GB it actually ran fine. Trust me comparing a P4 to an Ivy Bridge is like night and day. Windows 2000 Pro ran smooth as silk in comparison to XP. Imagine putting a Ferrari V12 engine in a chassis of a Delorean. 88 MPH... Try 288 MPH...
Why would anyone bother fucking with slipstreaming shit and using XP on anything newer than Sandy Bridge beats me. Give me a call when you manage to hack newer kernel on XP with good ACPI support and a working and good thread pooling for multicore processors. Also WDDM and user-mode driver framework.
Also normal usage of GPT style disks.
Enjoy your nostalgia, better leave that for games, not OS-es, especially when lesser knowledgable people are safer with newer Windowses and they might get wrong ideas from reading stuff written by people like you.

Yeah, nah.
Ran XP pre patched on P4 with a HUGE 80GB HDD and 1GB ram (later 2GB), shit OS, 2000 was and is better. Still run 2000 on an old machine with no internet connection for muh gaems.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by dewtech
Posted December 16, 2015
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USERNAME:JMich#Q&_^Q&Q#GROUP:4#Q&_^Q&Q#LINK:71#Q&_^Q&Q#You are aware that by "Keep the saves in the cloud" we mean keeping a copy of them there, and if there's a discrepancy, ask us which one to keep, right? So if you are offline, you continue with your local files, while if you are online and the files date is different, you are asked if you want to use the local ones or download the ones from the cloud.
If there are cloud files and no local, cloud ones are downloaded, if there are local and no cloud, at the end of the session, they are uploaded. Do add a better check than date if you wish to counter possible corruption.

P.S. While I don't doubt netmarketshare's stats (don't really want to check what machines they count in their data), I know for a fact that quite a ton of machines that are not used for games but are on the internet are stuck with older OSes. For gaming media, a better estimate would be Steam's Hardware & Software Survey, though that only takes into account users of Steam, so the Linux percentage is quite smaller than the Linux machines in use, even discounting the fact that many Linux gamers do not game on Steam. From those stats, Windows XP share is an order of magnitude less than Windows 8 share, and 20 times less than the Windows 7 share.

So while XP may still be in use by 1 in every 10 machines (really? Linux only has a 1.62% share? That by itself makes me question the data), not all of those machines are used to game.#Q&_^Q&Q#LINK:71#Q&_^Q&Q#
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Actually he simplified what it would entail but it's way more complex than that. You can read my response to his saved game implementation in another message.

As for what you stated about the XP market share that may or may not be true we will never know if these machines running XP are on antiquated P3 and P4 computers but most companies may also be using XP on modern computers if they chose to save money. The reason being XP garnered support way beyond it's supposed 5 year life expectancy and thus newer hardware was supported by XP constantly by manufacturers. This allowed XP to continuously be used on each generation of hardware over time should the company have upgraded every few years. Now if there was some hardware that only worked with XP software they would continuously upgrade until XP no longer worked on modern hardware (Haswell was the beginning of this process) rather than throw away expensive hardware that needed XP software. I can attest that even an Ivy Bridge can run XP. I've also had confirmations from people who successfully installed it on a Haswell using a discrete graphics card with XP graphics drivers and using the SATA IDE Compatibility mode. Given that success most likely XP will also work on a Skylake using the same technique. Until Intel decides to break off backward compatibility with 32-bit their CPU will always work with XP 32-bit. I just don't ever see that happening. And if Intel decided to do that AMD would keep that compatibility going in order to steal whatever CPU market share that was interested in backward compatibility.

In theory if you built the same setup as mine completely passive power supply, passive cpu cooler, passive graphics card and SSD. There would be no mechanical parts to fail and if you underclock it like I do it keeps the heat and wattage even lower that nothing would be nearing critical that could cause premature failure.

Also unless SATA is no longer around then you will have problems installing XP but every OS depends on SATA including Windows 10. But as far as I know SATA is going to be around and I hope it stays that way. Backward compatibility is a good thing. This is why USB 3.0, USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and USB 1.0 have their benefits. Would you like to throw away all your good hardware just because each year they decided to use a completely different port?

As far as the systems that run on DOS I doubt they would even show up on the Internet so you won't have to worry about those. But now that you mention DOS. It can run on any Intel CPU since the 8088 including Skylake. DOS was written in a way that I suppose could be used on any hardware all the way from the earliest IBM PC to the future Broadwell. Windows 3.1 on the other hand I believe won't work above 32MB. Windows 98SE doesn't work above 1.5GB without some tweaks unless you use the famous R. Loew memory limitation patch then you can install as much memory in your computer and it will still run.

Actually I remember a time I totally hated Windows. This was before Windows 95 came around and Windows 3.1 had the worst games and to me was only useful for word processing and a nice screen saver.

Windows 95 I can remember was a nightmare. Always these damn error windows popping up constantly. Even though I favored Windows 98 SE in the end it was still one buggy mess until Windows 2000 and XP came along.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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TrueDosGamer: This shows the undying popularity of Windows XP even after 14 years nearing 15 soon.
There is so much hardware that supports XP and a huge software library.

IF anything GOG Galaxy should support at the minimum these two OSes:

XP SP3 32-bit - The last and best 32-bit Windows OS released.
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dewtech: Wrong, the best was WIndows 2000. Goddamn XP kids shitting up the backyard

XP shouldn't be supported. Kill it already. Vista and on are much better for security and driver architectures.
Don't mind being called a kid every now and then to feel slightly younger but I already feel like an old man.

Actually before XP...Windows 2000 Professional was my favorite cause it ran so damn fast without the eye candy coating of XP. I used to complain about the cartoony interface they brought from Microsoft BOB and the extra added steps they put into getting to where you wanted to go compared to 2000. I only used XP in Windows Classic Mode similar to 2000 and 98SE style with Quick launch.

However in Windows 2000 the lack of really good USB 2.0 support which seemed to crash often when plugging and unplugging. XP brought some other useful features like ICS and WIFI were added along with icon size adjustments helped make it more useful.

Then software stopped supporting Windows 2000 and I was forced to go to XP. I think IE was the main reason to switch from 2000 at the time.

However if you're still interested in Windows 2000 there is huge support out there and you can get it run on modern hardware. A 3rd party SATA AHCI driver was released so you can try it out. And I believe someone created a Universal video driver so even if your video card doesn't have a Windows 2000 driver you can use it. If you could somehow patch fake so software would think it was XP SP3 then Windows 2000 would be nice to use. I did try installing a Blu-ray software player on it and it didn't work so there's some missing code that it lacks that XP contains.

Vista SP2 DX11 is the my preferred 64-bit OS on modern hardware since it still has Windows Classic Mode and Quick launch. I also like the check boxes for the File explorer and you can perform almost every action just using a mouse and virtual keyboard.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
Posted December 16, 2015
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Buenro-games: I think that if this is an issue that doesn't touch you, you don't need to come here to tell people to upgrade their systems and stop asking for support. There is nothing wrong with asking for the possibility of having support for older games on older OS systems. I think that asking for support of newer games on older systems is problematic though, and something I would not expect to be available.
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DracoMagister: The thing is that people are complaining about new software (Galaxy) for not support a very old OS (WinXP). If you want to play old games on a WinXP machine you still can. You can download the installer like always.

I think the best approach is to ask GOG to make Galaxy Open Source or at least to publish the protocol specification. That way a community alternatives (like LGOGDownloader) can be made to support older OSs, for example.

Or like I said before switch to other OS (Linux, BSD, etc.) which can run fine on legacy hardware.
I was informed GOG Galaxy is using "Chromium Embedded Framework" (CEF).

https://www.reddit.com/r/gog/comments/3lkgy4/gog_galaxy_security/

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2495795/security0/malware-abuses-chromium-embedded-framework--developers-fight-back.html

I think maybe using Mozilla Firefox code might be more compatible. Currently it supports XP, 7, 8, 10, MAC OS X, and Linux including mobile support for Android and IOS so that should make it possible to work on almost every OS using the appropriate source code. Apparently it's the fastest browser now.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/desktop/

Or perhaps maybe they could even incorporate GOG Galaxy as a Firefox addon instead? Then it would work on top of the Firefox browser.

I'm guessing from the dates going back to December 2014 that it's probably been about a year since they started the Alpha. So they could still try other techniques and just suspend working on the current version and allow it to still work until a new version comes out.
Post edited December 16, 2015 by TrueDosGamer
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General discussionPlease add support of Windows XP\2003 into GOG Galaxy!(166 posts)(166 posts)
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