I require Wine and KVM/QEMU to run old window applications. I use Wine for the frequently used programs, and KVM/QEMU for the less frequently used ones.
I froze wine at 10.7-1 in the pacman.conf file:
IgnorePkg = winetricks wine-mono wine wine-gecko
In a perfect world these applications would be converted or replaced, but for a million reasons this is the technology environment I need to maintain right now.
I read the Manjaro Announcements to stay informed about changes that might impact this setup, that’s how I knew to freeze wine awhile back.
I have linux61 and linux66 installed (EOL Dec, 2027).
Is anyone else supporting older Window programs on a Linux machine? Am I missing an option that is out there? Are you using a dedicated machine (no updates, lots of backups)?
I used virtual machines for years - but now I use a company provided ThinkCentre running Windows 11. It is only used to maintain a Windows IIS application interfacing with a Microsoft SQL database.
While I am advocating keeping your system up-to-date, there is situations where this is not feasible - it is how it is.
Since you already use KVM/QEMU then I am thinking, create a virtual machine with the specific configuration. Keep it status-quo, use it when need it - no need to apply changes to a system which work exactly as you need it to.
It is really light. And actually supports only old programs. Note that you have to download the newest possible development version, the official stable one is terribly outdated.
The new dev versions have some components that are vista/7 compatible on top of the general xp (nt5) architecture.
In my tests pretty much every software from up to around 2018 could run. Anything newer will most probably not.
The dev version I use is 11.2. 11.3 and 11.4 gave me unusable menus. That said, yes I use really old apps with it. Photoshop 7 and WordPerfect 7, but they work great.