32 ms·

Wine's APIs are more stable than Linux's APIs, so it seems more plausible to me that Wine will become the first class target itself.

TehCorwiz 6mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Wine eventually becomes more stable than Windows.
- carlos_rpn 6mo ago
  It feels like it won't be long before Microsoft starts helping with that (by making Windows less stable, not improving Wine).
  - keyringlight 6mo ago
    What I wonder about is if MS wants to keep people on windows, what methods they can use to do that. For simple desktop stuff I don't think they have many options to lock in other developers (and their audiences) to windows unless they want do so themselves (putting aside web based or not PC-desktop). Bleeding edge gaming and multiplayer anti-cheat is one area where I think having a big company owning the OS probably helps them stay ahead, as that structure probably lets them work with hardware designers to get the capabilities in use (i.e. in new versions of DirectX) and available to software developers first. There's generally a lag in adoption for new features within Vulkan and then usage downstream in wine/proton to get compatibility parity with windows, then the games themselves being able to run feature/performance parity. It'd be interesting to see what cooperation would be needed to have the linux gaming stack equal at the point new features are released, and with the least amount of manual hacks or command line tweaking required for the users. As discussed a few weeks back, tough anti-cheat for linux seems like a paradox with the current methods.
    - mschuster91 6mo ago
      > What I wonder about is if MS wants to keep people on windows, what methods they can use to do that Microsoft doesn't give a fuck about private customers any more. They don't have money. What has money though is enterprise/government sales, and MS got these customers tightly locked in. Compliance audits and tooling for insurances or legal stuff (SOX, GDPR, ...) are built against a full Microsoft stack of MS Server, Active Directory, Azure, Teams, Office 365 and Windows desktops. You might be able to get away with replacing AD and GPO with Samba servers but even that is already a pain when the auditors come knocking. Everything else? There is no single FOSS based "standard offering" (i.e. a combination of everything needed to run an on-prem enterprise site, Office replacement, remote collaboration tooling), so every audit for such setups must be custom made and involves a lot of extra work. A second leg is industrial control machines, medical devices and the likes. That's all stuff built by third party vendors and integrators. They need to continue on Windows because switching to an alternative OS would require redoing everything from scratch on the software and certification side. These customers buy the LTSC IoT stuff. And that is why you see Microsoft pushing enshittification so hard on private customers... extract the last few cents you can from them. But the real money comes from the large customers.
- porphyra 6mo ago
  Wine actually does run some ancient Windows games better than Windows 11 itself.
  - duskwuff 6mo ago
    It certainly runs 16-bit Windows games better than Windows 11, which can't run them at all. Not that there are a ton of those, but it's still pretty neat that they work.
    - senfiaj 6mo ago
      16-bit software won't run natively in 64-bit mode. It requires some programmatic emulator, like DosBox. Or am I missing something?
      - simoncion 6mo ago
        The thing that you're missing is that Microsoft used to ship that emulator with Windows. Then they stopped doing that. AFAICT, Wine can run WIN16 programs. I don't know if it can run DOS programs. There's a WineHQ wiki page that says it can load DOS programs, but various internet fora seem to believe that Wine's DOS support is pretty broken. I've never tried it, and have no DOS programs handy, so I can't verify those claims.
        duskwuff 6mo ago
        "DOS support" is tricky inasmuch as a lot software from that era - especially larger and more complex packages - interacted with hardware directly. In a sense, they weren't really DOS applications so much as they were bare-metal PC applications which were booted from DOS. It'd be difficult for WINE to support those, and other projects like DOSbox / 86box / etc do a better job of it.
        NetMageSCW 6mo ago
        There is also a port of Wine’s VDM back to Windows called otvdm or winevdm that is able to run 16-bit programs on Windows. It is surprisingly capable, I was able to run a 16-bit VB program that used a serial based optical modem without issue.
- Aerroon 6mo ago
  Windows 14 will just be a linux distro with wine acting as backwards compatibility.
  - voodooEntity 6mo ago
    Inb4 Windows 40k and to run the "kernel" you need to sacrifice 1000 a day
    - beAbU 6mo ago
      By the time we get to version 40k the kernel will just be AI hallucinating a UI for you at 60fps. Secondly, I do acknowlege your 40k reference.
  - pjmlp 6mo ago
    Why would Microsoft ever do that? WSL is already there for the folks that want to play with Linux.
    - Aerroon 6mo ago
      For a while it seemed like Microsoft wasn't taking Windows seriously as a product. And the easiest way to cut costs on that is to use a solution someone else is building and maintaining. They did retire Internet Explorer in favor of a Chromium browser, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.
      - pjmlp 6mo ago
        Edge has lots of features on top of Chromium.
- alexrp 6mo ago
  I've experienced multiple instances where (so I heard; I don't use Windows) a Windows Update completely broke a game on Windows for everyone, but Wine/Proton kept running it just fine. So we're already there in some sense.
  - wing-_-nuts 6mo ago
    I remember when the shader caching done for a popular game in linux made that game run better than the windows version
_flux 6mo ago
What I'd like to see would be some useful extra APIs in Wine, that would allow it to perform even better in some situations, and that such APIs would be then embraced by the game developers. Finally some embrace, extend, and extinguish love right back at Microsoft!
- NetMageSCW 6mo ago
  That will never happen.
zerocrates 6mo ago
Building against the Steam runtime containers seems like the other route, which also gets you more stability.
akdev1l 6mo ago
People always say this to shit on glibc meanwhile those guys bend over backwards to provide strong API compatibilities. It rubs me off the wrong way. What glibc does not provide is forward compatibility. An application built with glibc 2.12 will not necessarily work with any older version. Such application could be rebuilt to work with an older glibc as the API is stable. The ABI is not which is why the application would need to be rebuilt. glibc does not provide ABI compatibility because from their perspective the software should be rebuilt for newer/older versions as needed. Maintaining a stable ABI mostly helps proprietary software where the source is not available for recompilation. Naturally the gnu guys building glibc don’t care about that use case much. I guess you didn’t mention glibc in your comment but I already typed this out
- charcircuit 6mo ago
  No other operating system works like this. Supporting older versions of an OS or runtime with a compiler toolchain a standard expectation of developers.
  - akdev1l 6mo ago
    Plenty of operating systems work like this. Just not highly commercial ones because proprietary software is the norm on those. From a bit of research it looks like FreeBSD for example only provides a stable ABI within minor versions and I imagine if you build something for FreeBSD 14 it won’t work on 13. Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source. Any operating system which assumes you have the source will not prioritize it. (Edit: actually thinking harder MacOS/iOS is actually much worse on binary compatibility, as for example Intel binaries will stop working entirely due to M-cpu transition - Apple just hits developers with a stick to rebuild their apps)
    - kelnos 6mo ago
      Yes, and this is a great reason why FreeBSD isn't a popular gaming platform, or for proprietary software in general. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but... that's why. > Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source. It also benefits people who don't want to have to do busywork every time the OS updates.
HerbManic 6mo ago
Ever since Proton came along, it has been a quiet agreement that Win32 APIs are the best target for Linux support.
beAbU 6mo ago
I agree with this take. Wine/Proton might become something akin to a runtime for games, running on many platforms and consoles. This means devs might stop targeting windows directly, but rather they target wine and you'll need that for your games on Windows.
bsimpson 6mo ago
Valve nudges developers to ship/support their "one best version" of a game, and trust compatibility layers to make it work for everyone else. For x86, that's Windows. For mobile/VR, it's Android.

TehCorwiz 6mo ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Wine eventually becomes more stable than Windows.

carlos_rpn 6mo ago
It feels like it won't be long before Microsoft starts helping with that (by making Windows less stable, not improving Wine).
- keyringlight 6mo ago
  What I wonder about is if MS wants to keep people on windows, what methods they can use to do that. For simple desktop stuff I don't think they have many options to lock in other developers (and their audiences) to windows unless they want do so themselves (putting aside web based or not PC-desktop). Bleeding edge gaming and multiplayer anti-cheat is one area where I think having a big company owning the OS probably helps them stay ahead, as that structure probably lets them work with hardware designers to get the capabilities in use (i.e. in new versions of DirectX) and available to software developers first. There's generally a lag in adoption for new features within Vulkan and then usage downstream in wine/proton to get compatibility parity with windows, then the games themselves being able to run feature/performance parity. It'd be interesting to see what cooperation would be needed to have the linux gaming stack equal at the point new features are released, and with the least amount of manual hacks or command line tweaking required for the users. As discussed a few weeks back, tough anti-cheat for linux seems like a paradox with the current methods.
  - mschuster91 6mo ago
    > What I wonder about is if MS wants to keep people on windows, what methods they can use to do that Microsoft doesn't give a fuck about private customers any more. They don't have money. What has money though is enterprise/government sales, and MS got these customers tightly locked in. Compliance audits and tooling for insurances or legal stuff (SOX, GDPR, ...) are built against a full Microsoft stack of MS Server, Active Directory, Azure, Teams, Office 365 and Windows desktops. You might be able to get away with replacing AD and GPO with Samba servers but even that is already a pain when the auditors come knocking. Everything else? There is no single FOSS based "standard offering" (i.e. a combination of everything needed to run an on-prem enterprise site, Office replacement, remote collaboration tooling), so every audit for such setups must be custom made and involves a lot of extra work. A second leg is industrial control machines, medical devices and the likes. That's all stuff built by third party vendors and integrators. They need to continue on Windows because switching to an alternative OS would require redoing everything from scratch on the software and certification side. These customers buy the LTSC IoT stuff. And that is why you see Microsoft pushing enshittification so hard on private customers... extract the last few cents you can from them. But the real money comes from the large customers.
porphyra 6mo ago
Wine actually does run some ancient Windows games better than Windows 11 itself.
- duskwuff 6mo ago
  It certainly runs 16-bit Windows games better than Windows 11, which can't run them at all. Not that there are a ton of those, but it's still pretty neat that they work.
  - senfiaj 6mo ago
    16-bit software won't run natively in 64-bit mode. It requires some programmatic emulator, like DosBox. Or am I missing something?
    - simoncion 6mo ago
      The thing that you're missing is that Microsoft used to ship that emulator with Windows. Then they stopped doing that. AFAICT, Wine can run WIN16 programs. I don't know if it can run DOS programs. There's a WineHQ wiki page that says it can load DOS programs, but various internet fora seem to believe that Wine's DOS support is pretty broken. I've never tried it, and have no DOS programs handy, so I can't verify those claims.
      - duskwuff 6mo ago
        "DOS support" is tricky inasmuch as a lot software from that era - especially larger and more complex packages - interacted with hardware directly. In a sense, they weren't really DOS applications so much as they were bare-metal PC applications which were booted from DOS. It'd be difficult for WINE to support those, and other projects like DOSbox / 86box / etc do a better job of it.
      - NetMageSCW 6mo ago
        There is also a port of Wine’s VDM back to Windows called otvdm or winevdm that is able to run 16-bit programs on Windows. It is surprisingly capable, I was able to run a 16-bit VB program that used a serial based optical modem without issue.
Aerroon 6mo ago
Windows 14 will just be a linux distro with wine acting as backwards compatibility.
- voodooEntity 6mo ago
  Inb4 Windows 40k and to run the "kernel" you need to sacrifice 1000 a day
  - beAbU 6mo ago
    By the time we get to version 40k the kernel will just be AI hallucinating a UI for you at 60fps. Secondly, I do acknowlege your 40k reference.
- pjmlp 6mo ago
  Why would Microsoft ever do that? WSL is already there for the folks that want to play with Linux.
  - Aerroon 6mo ago
    For a while it seemed like Microsoft wasn't taking Windows seriously as a product. And the easiest way to cut costs on that is to use a solution someone else is building and maintaining. They did retire Internet Explorer in favor of a Chromium browser, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.
    - pjmlp 6mo ago
      Edge has lots of features on top of Chromium.
alexrp 6mo ago
I've experienced multiple instances where (so I heard; I don't use Windows) a Windows Update completely broke a game on Windows for everyone, but Wine/Proton kept running it just fine. So we're already there in some sense.
- wing-_-nuts 6mo ago
  I remember when the shader caching done for a popular game in linux made that game run better than the windows version

_flux 6mo ago

What I'd like to see would be some useful extra APIs in Wine, that would allow it to perform even better in some situations, and that such APIs would be then embraced by the game developers. Finally some embrace, extend, and extinguish love right back at Microsoft!

NetMageSCW 6mo ago
That will never happen.

zerocrates 6mo ago

Building against the Steam runtime containers seems like the other route, which also gets you more stability.

akdev1l 6mo ago

People always say this to shit on glibc meanwhile those guys bend over backwards to provide strong API compatibilities. It rubs me off the wrong way. What glibc does not provide is forward compatibility. An application built with glibc 2.12 will not necessarily work with any older version. Such application could be rebuilt to work with an older glibc as the API is stable. The ABI is not which is why the application would need to be rebuilt. glibc does not provide ABI compatibility because from their perspective the software should be rebuilt for newer/older versions as needed. Maintaining a stable ABI mostly helps proprietary software where the source is not available for recompilation. Naturally the gnu guys building glibc don’t care about that use case much. I guess you didn’t mention glibc in your comment but I already typed this out

charcircuit 6mo ago
No other operating system works like this. Supporting older versions of an OS or runtime with a compiler toolchain a standard expectation of developers.
- akdev1l 6mo ago
  Plenty of operating systems work like this. Just not highly commercial ones because proprietary software is the norm on those. From a bit of research it looks like FreeBSD for example only provides a stable ABI within minor versions and I imagine if you build something for FreeBSD 14 it won’t work on 13. Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source. Any operating system which assumes you have the source will not prioritize it. (Edit: actually thinking harder MacOS/iOS is actually much worse on binary compatibility, as for example Intel binaries will stop working entirely due to M-cpu transition - Apple just hits developers with a stick to rebuild their apps)
  - kelnos 6mo ago
    Yes, and this is a great reason why FreeBSD isn't a popular gaming platform, or for proprietary software in general. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but... that's why. > Stable ABI literally only benefits software where the user doesn’t have the source. It also benefits people who don't want to have to do busywork every time the OS updates.

HerbManic 6mo ago

Ever since Proton came along, it has been a quiet agreement that Win32 APIs are the best target for Linux support.

beAbU 6mo ago

I agree with this take. Wine/Proton might become something akin to a runtime for games, running on many platforms and consoles. This means devs might stop targeting windows directly, but rather they target wine and you'll need that for your games on Windows.

bsimpson 6mo ago

Valve nudges developers to ship/support their "one best version" of a game, and trust compatibility layers to make it work for everyone else. For x86, that's Windows. For mobile/VR, it's Android.