What if instead of creating a Linux distribution that could run Windows applications, you built the entire distribution with Windows binaries?
The Loss32 It's the most absurd idea we've ever read about how to build a Linux operating system... but it's not impossible. Not only could it be done, but there could be a ton of advantages to doing it this way.
The idea comes from a blogger and developer also known as Hikari no Yume ("Dream of Light" in Japanese) who published it in 39 Chaos Communication Congress in Germany at the end of December.
The gist of the idea is to run the entire user interface, desktop and everything else, inside the WINE. So it's kind of like a bare-metal WINE sitting on top of the Linux kernel, with enough installations to hook it all up. This is very different from the current way, which is to run a Linux-based stack – kernel, init, userland, Linux display system, and Linux desktop, which then run Windows programs.
It won't just be "a Linux that can run Windows applications." That was an old idea – it was the idea behind the distribution. Lindows about 25 years ago, although the name got the company sued by Microsoft. Lindows became Linspire and then freespire, which still exists. There was also an attempt to add direct support for Windows binaries to the Linux kernel, called Longene, a decade ago.
It is a completely different approach to emulating the entire Windows operating system, as the ReactOS project It's progressing very, very slowly.
Will Loss32 be completed?
It's too early to tell. Some love the idea, some hate it, and some are in the middle, which we completely understand. But the idea is there.
Should it be completed? That's a different question, but now that the challenge is there, it may just be a matter of time.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
cool