I was thinking someone should develop a Wine-like layer for Linux ABIs themselves, translating more historic ones into modern ones. That will allow running old

I was thinking someone should develop a Wine-like layer for Linux ABIs themselves, translating more historic ones into modern ones. That will allow running old native games for a much longer time. In that sense I agree that Wine provides a benefit of preservation and very long term support that native Linux ABIs don't. I completely disagree about regular desktop applications though. Games use case is different becasue they are developed as one time project and game companies move to the next game abandoning support for the old ones in essence after a relatively short time. Such kind of programs need stable ABIs to be usable long term. Desktop applications on the other hand (like browsers for instance) are evolving and are actively developed continuously. They don't need Wine on Linux. I'd simply stay away form those desktop applications which are abandoned.