Originally posted by aht0
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Legacy dos games on modern hardware run in dosbox using cpu virtualisation without issue.
We have seen on windows with win16 applications https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2018/07/15/winevdm/ winevdm. Again the win16 games are now old enough they run using software virtualisation fine on modern hardware.
32 bit applications will cross the same line where they no longer need host operating system support some already have. Old 32 bit loki games need to use a runtime different to host and those run perfectly find in qemu-usermode because the overhead of the software emulation does not make current day cpu slower than the cpu those games were designed for. This line with qemu-usermode has moved forwards with MTTCG (multi-threaded TCG) and more parts of qemu being threaded. Of course this also unlocks you from needing a x86 cpu and could use a arm or risc-v or something else instead.
Hard reality here is legacy always sooner or latter end up on a container of some form or virtualisation..
With the way things are going 10 years into the future how long companies want parties to support Ubuntu and RHEL you most likely will not be wanting x86 32 bit host support at that time because by that time x86 32 bit applications are going to be inside virtualisation/emulation.
Really this reminds me of when 64 bit x86 was not going to have v86 mode and people were like this breaks dosemu so it going to be too slow. Yes back then dosbox was too slow 5 years latter dosbox was running old dos games perfectly fine with no hardware support. I have no reason to think 32 bit games/programs are not going to go the same way.
So far I have not seen any arguement from those saying we need 32 bit support that are any different to the dosemu group that was proved wrong in time.
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