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Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

loss32.org

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

#221

Post by bobajeff »

jlarocco wrote: post #78
bobajeff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if I don't need to do anything beyond the built-in widgets and effects of Win32. If I need to do anything beyond that then I don't see me being more productive than if I were using a mature, well documented and actively maintained application runtime like the Web.

That's not really true. Even in the 90s there were large libraries of 3rd party widgets available for Windows that could be drag-and-dropped into VB, Delphi, and even the Visual C++ UI editor. For tasks running the gamut from 3D graphics to interfacing with custom hardware. The web was a big step backwards for UI design. It was a 30 year detour whose results still suck compared to pre-web UIs.

That sounds nice. I agree, not having a UI editor making apps is a step back. However, you seem to be discussing mostly in past tense.

Maybe one day something like Lazarus or Avalonia would catch up but today I feel that Electron is best at what it does.

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

#222

Post by aeyes »

guerrilla wrote: post #180
qcnguy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model of patching+recompiling the world for every OS release is a terrible hack that devs hate and that users hate. 99% of all people hate it because it's a crap model. Devs hate middlemen who silently fuck up their software and leave upstream with the mess, users hate being restricted to whatever software was cool and current two years ago. If they use a rolling distro, they hate the constant brokenness that com…

> If they use a rolling distro, they hate the constant brokenness that comes with it. Never happens for me on Arch, which I've run as my primary desktop for 15 years.

Maybe you are running a desktop environment which never changes but Gnome has been constantly broken in many different ways for the last 5+ years. At times it felt more like a developer playground than a usable desktop environment. KDE is more stable nowadays but it still breaks in mysterious ways from time to time. I also had major issues for some time when Qt6 started rolling out.

And Arch itself also needs manual interventions on package updates every so often, just a few weeks ago there was a major change to the NVidia driver packaging.

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

#223

Post by afishhh »

microtonal wrote: post #166
ori_b wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote a friend; "Glibc is a waste of a perfectly good stable kernel ABI"

At least glibc uses versioned symbols. Hundreds of other widely-used open source libraries don't.

> Hundreds of other widely-used open source libraries don't.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think versioned symbols are a thing on Windows (i.e. they are non-portable). This is not a problem for glibc but it is very much a problem for a lot of open source libraries (which instead tend to just provide a stable C ABI if they care).

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

#224

Post by ben-schaaf »

ok123456 wrote: post #176
microtonal wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least glibc uses versioned symbols. Hundreds of other widely-used open source libraries don't.

Versioned glibc symbols are part of the reason that binaries aren't portable across Linux distributions and time.

Only because people aren't putting in the effort to build their binaries properly. You need to link against the oldest glibc version that has all the symbols you need, and then your binary will actually work everywhere(*).

* Except for non-glibc distributions of course.

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

#225

Post by guerrilla »

aeyes wrote: post #222
guerrilla wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they use a rolling distro, they hate the constant brokenness that comes with it. Never happens for me on Arch, which I've run as my primary desktop for 15 years.

Maybe you are running a desktop environment which never changes but Gnome has been constantly broken in many different ways for the last 5+ years. At times it felt more like a developer playground than a usable desktop environment. KDE is more stable nowadays but it still breaks in mysterious ways from time to time. I also had major issues for some time when Qt6 started rolling out. And Arch itself also needs manual…

I've been running GNOME. I've never had breakage from upgrading. Of course there's the fact that GNOME neutered itself, removing many of its own features, but that's a different story and has nothing to do with ABIs or upgrading.

> And Arch itself also needs manual interventions on package updates every so often, just a few weeks ago there was a major change to the NVidia driver packaging.

If you're running a proprietary driver on a 12 year old GPU architecture incapable of modern games or AI, yeah... so I actually haven't needed to care about many of these. Maybe 2 or 3 ever...

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

#226

Post by viraptor »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #171
qcnguy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really just not. GTK is on its fourth major version. Wayland broke backwards compatibility with tons of apps.

The difference is that you can statically link GTK+, and it'll work. You can't statically link glibc, if you want to be able to resolve hostnames or users, because of NSS modules.

Static linking itself doesn't prevent modules. There's https://github.com/pikhq/musl-nscd for example

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

#227

Post by fragmede »

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

What's interesting to think about is Conway's law and monorepos and the Linux kernel and userland. If it were all just one big repo, then making breaking changes, wouldn't. The whole ifconfig > ip debacle is an example of where one giant monorepo would have changed how things happened.

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

#228

Post by kccqzy »

rep_lodsb wrote: post #129
kccqzy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually an intentional nudge to make the software packaged by the distro, which usually implies that they are open source. Who needs ABI compatibility when your software is OSS? You only need API compatibility at that point.

So every Linux distribution should compile and distribute packages for every single piece of open source software in existence , both the very newest stuff that was only released last week, and also everything from 30+ years ago, no matter how obscure. Because almost certainly someone out there will want to use it. And they should be able to, because that is the entire point of free software: user freedom.

Your tone makes it sound like this is a bad thing. But from a user’s perspective, I do want a distro to package as much software as possible. And it has nothing to do with user freedom. It’s all about being entitled as a user to have the world’s software conveniently packaged.

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

#230

Post by ok123456 »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #224
ok123456 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Versioned glibc symbols are part of the reason that binaries aren't portable across Linux distributions and time.

Only because people aren't putting in the effort to build their binaries properly. You need to link against the oldest glibc version that has all the symbols you need, and then your binary will actually work everywhere(*). * Except for non-glibc distributions of course.

If it requires effort to be correct, that's a bad design.

Why doesn't the glibc use the version tag to do the appropriate mapping?

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