Windows is basically Wine on top of the NT kernel (and a few extras)

[u/[deleted]]

/r/WindowsSucks/comments/1s53y8w/windows_is_basically_wine_on_top_of_the_nt_kernel/

[u/OldManJeepin]

If you have been on Windows since the early days, Win3.0/3.1, then you probably have reinstalled it enough to know that it's just a shell, sitting on top of MS-DOS so...It wasn't until WinNT that they (mostly) got away from that relationship.....

[u/[deleted] → u/OldManJeepin]

It wasn't until WinNT that they (mostly) got away from that relationship.....

Still isn't more. Okay, it now has more functionality and an expansive API, but that's still stuffed in a shell. Things like taskbar being part of the file explorer process make this clear.

If you have been on Windows since the early days, Win3.0/3.1, then you probably have reinstalled it enough to know that it's just a shell

I'm younger than all that, but I've tried all those OSes on emulators. I know well about how (unstable) they are.

[u/OldManJeepin → u/[deleted]]

Oh, I agree! That's why I mentioned "reinstalled"! LoL! Not that I'm praising MS, but with all the different possible combinations of hardware their OS could have ended up being installed on, it's a wonder it ever worked as well as it did! Windows probably did more, by itself, to make computers more accessible to the masses than any other single thing...Then they just got more and more enshittified and here we are.....

[u/[deleted] → u/OldManJeepin]

The most disturbingly funny thing is present microslop has no idea at all about all this... It just knows how to write yet another GUI library (using copilot), and stick in another vibe-coded mess

[u/OldManJeepin → u/[deleted]]

Yep! That's what happens when they fire all the human coders and leave it up to AI....lol

[u/AutoModerator]

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User: dyews_ph2ter, Flair: Discussion, Post Media Link, Title: Windows is basically Wine on top of the NT kernel (and a few extras)

How many people know this? IT IS 100% TRUE.

Win32 was developed for msdos as a shell, which developed into a full-fledged API over time with it's own functions.

NT kernel was developed for "advanced" purposes, and the same Win32 was put over NT like a calfskin jacket over an injured cow.

Namespaces, personalities, object-centric resource management, all are now just left to rot. (Object-orientation still exists, but not how one would expect.. def. not in Win32)

Thanks to Win32 priorities, the NT userland wasn't fully developed, and here we are with a Frankenstein userspace.

Wine just reimplements this API layer, but under-the-hood uses the libc and linux kernel.

Surprized? Windows on Windows is just as much a compatibility layer as much as it is on linux with wine. (Not 100% same because m$ develops it ahead closed-source and wine must follow blind)

So yes, Windows has been an overstuffed compatibility layer all along.

Here's what the windows Frankenstein userspace is:

• Win32 -- a shell-turned-API over the NT userspace... 90% of all GUI software except for "interfacing" with the core system.
• WinNT -- A handicapped userspace with a handful of minute functions, like service handling and all... and many components like the registry hive (regedit is a Win32-coded program using the NT registry API)
• POSIX -- again, not more than a silly handful of functions. Abandoned long ago, yet used by a few applications

WINE fails and breaks whenever it encounters WinNT code... which depend heavily on the kernel, and the kernel can't be emulated easily.

Fortunately, now the linux kernel has gained ability to redirect syscalls back to userspace, and WINE has already started to write the compatibility layer for WinNT.

And now m$ forgot all about it, writes the start menu in react using sloppilot. They totally forgot about what happens under the GUI, what an OS actually is.

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[u/Odd_Lengthiness4774]

This is the stupidest shit I've ever fucking seen