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

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

#491

Post by account42 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

johncolanduoni wrote: post #474

uecker wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the problem is getting the build tools to work in your old chroot, then the problem is still "people distributing programs that request the newest version", i.e. the build tool developers / packagers. I generally do not have this problem, but I am a C programmer building computational tools.

Look, it’s not that complicated. If you just build your software with gcc or whatever in a docker container with pinned versions, put the binary on your website, and call it a day, 5 minutes later someone is going to complain it doesn’t work on their 3 year old Linux Mint install. The balkanization of Linux is undeniable at this point. If you want to fix this problem without breaking anything else, you have to jump t…

> The balkanization of Linux is undeniable at this point.

Again this same old FUD.

The situation would be no different if there was only a single distro - you would still need to build against the oldest version of glibc (and other dependencies) you want to support.

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

#492

Post by account42 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #435

jimbobthrowawy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine works on windows too. It's used by the shorthorn project to get software for newer versions of windows to run under XP.

Whoa. Can it be used to run older software on newer Windows too?

GOG used to ship Wine ddraw.dll with some games although for this specific use case there are better options now (e.g. cnc-ddraw).

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

#493

Post by account42 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #457

shakna wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything around DirectX 10 and older has issues with Windows, these days. One more popular example is Grid 2, another is Morrowind. Both crash on launch, unless you tweak a lot of things, and even then it won't always succeed. Need for Speed II: SE is "platinum" on Wine, and pretty much unable to be run at all on Windows 11.

Sidenote: Whilst Morrowind is fine under Wine, there's a fantastic engine rebuild called OpenMW [0]. It runs on both Windows and Linux natively. Some of the memory limits are also lifted, which meant I have a few mods that weren't possible without hacks in the past [1]. [0] https://openmw.org/ [1] https://morromod.netlify.app/

Unfortunately the modding community is split because OpenMW only cares about supporting the original game and not the script extender ecosystem that modders have built around it.