What if, rather than make a Linux distro that can run Windows apps, you built the whole distro around Windows binaries instead?
Loss32 is the most gleefully deranged idea for how to put together a Linux OS that we think we have ever read about in three and a half decades… but it’s not impossible. Not only could it be done, there could be real advantages to doing it this way.
The idea comes from a blogger and developer known as Hikari no Yume (“Dream of Light” in Japanese) who made it public at the 39th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany at the end of December.
Wasnt there a ReactOS doing this?
Similar ideas but different approaches. ReactOS is trying to essentially reverse engineer Windows, whereas Loss32 is going to run literally everything in Wine.
I’m kind of excited about this one, because it’s likely to uncover issues in Wine and upstream any improvements they make.
Yeah I’ve been thinking about this kind of thing recently. It should be possible to make things way more seamless. It could just have an entire emulated C drive in the home directory and automatically run exe files through WINE. Just associate the .exe file extension with the program you use to setup the environment and launch WINE for it.
I’ve basically done this for games and other programs using this desktop file:
[Desktop Entry] Name=Run with Bottles Comment=Run directly with bottles Icon=com.usebottles.bottles Exec=bottles-cli run --bottle Gaming --executable %f Terminal=false NoDisplay=true Type=Application Categories=Utility;GNOME;GTK; StartupNotify=true StartupWMClass=bottles MimeType=x-scheme-handler/bottles;application/x-ms-dos-executable;application/x-msi;application/x-ms-shortcut;application/x-wine-extension-msp; Keywords=wine;windows; X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=trueSave as
runwithbottles.desktopin~/.local/share/applicationsAnd remember to change--bottle Gamingto whatever bottle you want to use.Now you can run any .exe by double clicking on it. If you associate it with ‘Run with Bottles’ This needs bottles to be installed, but allows you to run executables with Proton or Proton-GE too.
At least on PopOS you can just double click an exe installer and after the install it will show up in your start menu letting you run it through wine
Same with CachyOS, but Loss32 isn’t just trying to run an on-demand emulation layer within your DE, it’s trying to be the always-on default. It’s ambitious, to be sure!
Lol love the idea. Hope it helps Wine like you said.
ReactOS is mentioned in the article, it’s a somewhat different approach.