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modelesstoday at 6:08 AM1 replyview on HN

The point is not that Win32 is exemplary. The point is that it's compatible. More compatible, in some cases, than native apps for non-Windows platforms. A Win32 binary that runs in Wine is likely to work on more Linux distros than a native Linux binary, due to decisions made by glibc and distro maintainers over the years.


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arcfourtoday at 6:49 AM

Uh, no, a Win32 binary will run in Wine because of the concerted effort of thousands of talented developers for more than a decade, painstakingly reimplemting Win32 into a a compatibility layer for it to run on Linux.

There has been little to no interest in doing the reverse, at least until WSL, which is just containers anyways. (WSfU barely counts as an "attempt.")

I would hardly consider anything relying on a compatibility shim "compatible." Especially since Wine is not a perfect shim!

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