Comment by KK7NIL
Do you have any examples that aren't because of the OS (as in, not trying to run a 90's game on Windows 11) or specialized hardware (like an old Voodoo GPU or something)?
Do you have any examples that aren't because of the OS (as in, not trying to run a 90's game on Windows 11) or specialized hardware (like an old Voodoo GPU or something)?
Backwards-compatibility in OSes is the exception, not the rule. IBM does pretty well here. Microsoft does okay. Linux is either fine or a disaster depending on who you ask. MacOS, iOS, and Android laugh at the idea. And even the OSes most dedicated to compatibility devote a ton of effort to ensuring it on new hardware.
The whole point is that everything changes around software. Drivers, CPUs, GPUs, web browsers, OSs, common libraries, etc. Everything changes.
It doesn't matter if x86 is backwards compatible if everything else has changed.
No code can last 100 years in any environment with change. That's the point.