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by p_ing 162 days ago
As a developer, why target Linux in all it's permutations with an unstable ABI when I can target the only stable Linux ABI -- Win32?

If WINE fills the gap (and it largely does), there's zero reason to create native Linux builds. That's simply more bugs and more headaches for devs.
3 comments
yndoendo 162 days ago
Not all software is for consumers and a good amount runs a hardware as a whole product. 2026 will be the year moving from Windows IoT / embedded to Linux as the host OS for the solutions I work on.

Personally, I find software more stable when coding on Linux and making Windows changes after it is operational. Windows takes more work with edge cases than Linux, BDS, and macOS.

Windows treats STDIN and STOUT different between console and GUI. All other OSes that I have worked on threat them the same.

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p_ing 161 days ago
Note my comment was "Linux on the Desktop", not "Linux on Embedded".

It's quite obvious that not all software is for one platform or another. It's just the vast majority of Desktop software happens to be Windows. And if that's what you're writing, targeting Win32 gets you Linux on the Desktop as well as Windows. There's no reason to write a Linux-native version and have to deal with all of the incompatibilities across distros, let alone compatibility issues over time.

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akimbostrawman 161 days ago
>why target Linux in all it's permutations with an unstable ABI when I can target the only stable Linux ABI -- Win32?

You simply do what Steam has successfully done for many years with there containerized Steam Linux runtime based on ubuntu or something like flatpaks.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

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yndoendo 162 days ago
That is a subjective statement. We are moving our software off Windows to Linux hosting for our products. Microsoft has made Windows hostile to the embedded market. They are are pushing a Microsoft account over local with their IoT while plugging the hacks too.
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p_ing 162 days ago
It's difficult to compare embedded to desktop. It's not a market Windows does well today with the available alternatives. And yeah, if you're embedded, by definition you're resource constrained so running Wine makes less sense.

Not so with run-of-the-mill desktop software, games or otherwise.

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