"The gist of the idea is to run the whole user environment, desktop and all, inside WINE. So it's something like a bare-metal WINE sitting on top of the Linux kernel, with just enough plumbing to connect them up. This is significantly different from the current way, which is to run a completely Linux-based stack - the kernel, an init, a userland, a Linux display system, and a Linux desktop, and then run Windows programs inside that."
"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."
"Nor is it just "a Linux that can run Windows apps." That's an old idea - it was the concept behind the Lindows distribution some 25 years ago, although the name got the company sued by Microsoft. Lindows became Linspire became Freespire, which is, unexpectedly, still around, and the included Click'n'Run Warehouse was pretty much the first app store on the web. There was also an effort to add direct support for Windows binaries to the Linux kernel, called Longene, over a decade ago."
A distro concept proposes running the entire user environment, including desktop, inside WINE atop a Linux kernel so Windows binaries become the primary userland. This inverts the usual model of a Linux-based stack running occasional Windows applications and instead uses WINE as the core runtime with minimal plumbing to the kernel. Historical precedents include Lindows, Longene, and projects such as ReactOS and Neptune OS that explored similar compatibility approaches. The approach is technically feasible and could offer advantages in application compatibility, though it diverges sharply from conventional Linux design and would require substantial engineering.
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