Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#181

Post by fragmede » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #159

Someone please create a windows 7 like user interface or even XP like interface too and you got yourself a serious fan I might seriously recommend it to newbies and like there is just this love I have for windows 7 even though I really didn't use it for much but its so much more elegant in its own way than windows 10 like it can be a really fun experiment and I would be interested to see how that would pan out.

XFCE plus a windows theme would get you pretty far. Is there anything specific you're thinking of which that plus some pre-configured Wine wouldn't hit?

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#182

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

frumplestlatz wrote: post #9

Technically it's the only stable macOS ABI, too. The only way to run a legacy 32-bit binary on macOS today is a win32 exe running under Wine.

What cool stuff do you run?

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#183

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:43 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #111

This is going to be a bold claim but here goes. This will never work, because it isn't a radical enough departure from Linux. Linux occupies the bottom of a well in the cartesian space. Any deviation is an uphill battle. You'll die trying to reach escape velocity. The forcing factors that pull you back down: 1. Battles-testedness. The mainstream Linux distros just have more eyeballs on them. That means your WINE-firs…

Whatever, at least it can be a desktop alternative to GNOME and KDE where you can also run exes.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#184

Post by SkiFire13 » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

muth02446 wrote: post #118

amelius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never ran into a GLIBC version problem?

Wasn't there also DLL hell on Windows? My understanding is that very old statically linked Linux images still run today because paraphrasing Linus: "we don't break user space".

> we don't break user space

The kernel doesn't break user space. User space breaks on its own.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#185

Post by NetMageSCW » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

dardeaup wrote: post #87

andsoitis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pick Delphi (with which you can build Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS apps - https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi ) Alternatively, RemObjects makes Elements, also a RAD programming environment in which you can code in Oxygene (their Object Pascal), C#, Swift, Java, Go, or Mercury (VB) and target all platforms: .Net, iOS and macOS, Android, WebAssemblyl, Java, Linux, Windows.

Yes, you can build cross-platform GUI apps with Delphi. However, that requires using Firemonkey (FMX). If you build a GUI app using VCL on Delphi, it's limited to Windows. If you build an app with Lazarus and LCL, you CAN have it work cross-platform.

I thought the point was that Windows apps will run on Linux under Wine (and macOS?) so using VCL is a cross-platform GUI development environment.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#186

Post by josephg » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #70

senfiaj wrote: post #50

This might offend some people but even Linus Torvalds thinks that the ABI compatibility is not good enough in Linux distros, and this is one of the main reasons Linux is not popular on the desktop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=283s

While true in many respects (still), it's worth pointing out that this take is 12 years old.

I think he still considers this to be the case. He was interviewed on Linus tech tips recently. And he bemoaned in passing the terrible application ecosystem on Linux.

It makes sense. Every distribution wants to be in charge of what set of libraries are available on their platform. And they all have their own way to manage software. Developing applications on Linux that can be widely used across distributions is way more complex than it needs to be. I can just ship a binary for windows and macOS. For Linux, you need an rpm and a dpkg and so on.

I use davinci resolve on Linux. The resolve developers only officially support Rocky Linux because anything else is too hard. I use it in Linux mint anyway. The application has no title bar and recording audio doesn’t work properly. Bleh.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#187

Post by NetMageSCW » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #124

vips7L wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t python still the slowest mainstream language?

Being slower than other mainstream languages isn't really a problem in and of itself if it's fast enough to get the job done. Looking at all the ML and LLM work that's done in Python, I would say it is fast enough to get things done.

As pointed out already, most of that uses C code or GPU code to do the work and not slow Python code.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#188

Post by josephg » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

ogogmad wrote: post #172

senfiaj wrote: post #50

This might offend some people but even Linus Torvalds thinks that the ABI compatibility is not good enough in Linux distros, and this is one of the main reasons Linux is not popular on the desktop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&t=283s

This might be why OpenBSD looks attractive to some. Its kernel and all the different applications are fully integrated with each other -- no distros! It also tries to be simple, I believe, which makes it more secure and overall less buggy. To be honest, I think OSes are boring, and should have been that way since maybe 1995. The basic notions: multi-processing, context switching, tree-like file systems, multiple user…

I like FreeBSD for the same reason. The whole system is sane and coherent. Illumos is the same.

I wish either of those systems had the same hardware & software support. I’d swap my desktop over in a heartbeat if I could.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#189

Post by dmitrygr » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:53 PM UTC

Thing is, I want the opposite. I want the NT/2k/w7 kernel and XFCE on top. NT kernel is infinitely better designed and has much better support on latest intel/amd hardware than Linux. And XFCE is much better than modern windows ui.

Re: Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

#190

Post by cosmic_cheese » Tue, Dec 30, 2025, 7:53 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #159

Someone please create a windows 7 like user interface or even XP like interface too and you got yourself a serious fan I might seriously recommend it to newbies and like there is just this love I have for windows 7 even though I really didn't use it for much but its so much more elegant in its own way than windows 10 like it can be a really fun experiment and I would be interested to see how that would pan out.

It stuns me that a polished 1:1 2K/XP/7 clone DE (which it mimics is a setting) hasn’t existed for a 10y+ already. It’s such an obvious target for a mass appeal Linux desktop that many techies and non-techies alike would happily use.

Rough approximations have been possible since the early 2000s, but they’re exactly that: rough approximations. Details matter, and when I boot up an old XP/7 box there are aspects in which they feel more polished and… I don’t know, finished? Complete? Compared to even the big popular DEs like KDE.

Building a DE explicitly as a clone of a specific fixed environment would also do wonders to prevent feature creep and encourage focus on fixing bugs and optimization instead of bells and whistles, which is something that modern software across the board could use an Everest sized helping of.