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WINE needs 32 bit support. The bulk of windows programs that people still care about are from the 32 bit era, and as they point out many 64 bit apps use 32 bit
by EamonnMR 7y ago
WINE needs 32 bit support. The bulk of windows programs that people still care about are from the 32 bit era, and as they point out many 64 bit apps use 32 bit installers. Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox.
- 0815test 7y ago> Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox ...or Virtualbox.
- oarsinsync 7y agoYou're suggesting an emulator, which is absolutely correct and a worthwhile reminder that we can emulate 32bit without any problem. It's also worth considering the context, WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) provides an abstraction layer that doesn't require the overhead of an emulation layer. DOSbox is similar. (EDIT: apparently it's not, and is actually an emulator. TIL.)
- EamonnMR 7y agoOr the overhead of running an entire other OS.
- Narishma 7y agoDOSBox is an emulator.
- cwyers 7y agoWhich is one of its big selling points - old DOS games were used to direct hardware access. Some of them even depend on the clock rate of the PC they're running on. So an emulator that can convert Roland and Soundblaster to modern sound and such is necessary for making old DOS games playable.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoWhat's interesting about this is... doesn't WINE also support Win16 applications? My understanding was that it does, yet it doesn't seem to require 16 bit libraries from the host OS...
- djsumdog 7y agoWindows doesn't even support 16-bit applications (unless you use 32-bit Windows with NTVDM enabled). There was another post on here a few months back about someone getting Win16 apps working on modern 64-bit Windows machines: https://hackernoon.com/win3mu-part-1-why-im-writing-a-16-bit-windows-emulator-2eae946c935d https://hackernoon.com/win3mu-part-1-why-im-writing-a-16-bit...
- pedrocx486 7y agoIf I'm not mistaken such emulation already exists with winevdm: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
- makomk 7y agoOne of the little quirks of x86 is that you can run 16-bit code just fine within an otherwise 32-bit process, and the Win16 API is small enough that it's practical to write wrappers for all of it that just call into the 32-bit functions. This isn't feasible for 32-bit code on 64-bit systems for a whole bunch of reasons.
- pjmlp 7y agoI wonder which ones, my Windows boxes are pretty much 32 bit free, except for when there isn't an alternative.
- smacktoward 7y agoLike Bochs? http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ http://bochs.sourceforge.net/