logoalt Hacker News

pfixlast Saturday at 10:52 PM1 replyview on HN

Funny. This is the opposite of what https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/ states :D

And there's a lot going on with Proton and the Steam Deck, so I don't think this is a valid argument.


Replies

ho_schilast Saturday at 11:17 PM

Why games on Windows ship their own C++ Redistributable? Well, the same problem. And for the very same reason macOS app bundles come with a lot libraries and we still see a lot updates after every macOS release.

A lot of known issues can be avoided with more experience and cooperation before changes happen.

Before anybody mentions Proton. Because always somebody mentions Proton?

Proton is WINE. But maintained by Valve. Which requires a lot resources of Valve (not of the users). But the key is Steam! Valve is controlling the Steam store.

It is still bad and Valve shall press hard on native ports (e.g. Linux only Steam Awards). Reducing the long term workload for Valve. WINE is not a solution and remains a workaround. That is why we use Inkscape and not Adobe.

PS: Remember when Apple dropped iOS 32-Bit? And PPC? And the classic APIs? Microsoft is trying to remain bug compatible. The problem? They’re bug compatible! My thinking is similar to Torvalds, Linux, GNU (GLIBC/GLIBC++, Systemd and Wayland shall strive for compatibility when possible. Users love compatibility. Programmers love compatibility. But it is hard work. It becomes difficult when security implications are involved. As long only re-compilation is need for compatibility I’m fine. When we need to adapt code I’m getting unhappy.

show 2 replies