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Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Wine/Proton Enables Strong Windows App Compatibility on Linux

Discussion highlights Wine's maturity and Proton's success, especially for games, often outperforming modern Windows. "Wine has been around for 30 years and has excellent compatibility at this point." - tapoxi; "Proton verified count... has been rocketing upwards." - dleslie; "Linux is now more compatible with old Windows games than Windows itself." - mikkupikku.

2. Windows' Stable Win32 ABI Outshines Linux's Fragmentation

Win32's ABI stability preserves legacy apps indefinitely, while Linux's changing ABIs (e.g., glibc, GTK) hinder binaries. "WINE has been reimplementing the Win32 ABI... for decades. It already works pretty well." - raddan; "Linux failed completely... to understand what an OS is... a stable ABI." - antirez; "ABI compatibility is not good enough in Linux distros." - senfiaj (citing Linus Torvalds).

3. Nostalgia for Lightweight Classic Windows Tools/UI vs. Modern Bloat

Praise for VB6/Delphi-era productivity and efficiency over Electron/web tech. "VB6 instead of status quo web technologies might actually be more stable and productive." - rickcarlino; "Software written for 2005 Windows runs super fast... <2Mb RAM for Word 97!" - steve1977 & HeckFeck; "The web was a big step backwards for UI design." - jlarocco.

🚀 Project Ideas

WineForge: Automated Windows App Porting Kit for Linux

Summary

  • A CLI/GUI tool that scans Windows EXEs, pulls compatibility data from Wine/ProtonDB/AppDB, auto-generates optimized Wine prefixes with tweaks/patches/DLL overrides, and packages them as sandboxed AppImages for one-click Linux deployment.
  • Core value: Solves patchy Wine compatibility ("5341 of the 16491 applications... 'garbage'") by automating fixes for games/tools like Mp3tag, audio plugins, Notepad++, making Win32 apps "just work" on any Linux distro.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Linux gamers/desktop users wanting Windows apps (e.g., "I've yet to find something that matches... Mp3tag")
Core Feature AI-driven prefix generation + bundling (Wine + esync/fsync + DXVK/VKD3D)
Tech Stack Rust CLI + Tauri GUI; Wine/Proton; ProtonDB API scraping; AppImageKit
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Freemium (basic free, pro $5/mo for cloud prefix sharing)

Notes

  • HN users lament Wine gaps ("many programs... do not work properly"); quotes like "keyringlight: ...rename these files using their tags didn't do anything" show demand for polished media tools.
  • High discussion potential (ProtonDB integration); practical for daily use like ham radio/SDR apps.

RADix: Cross-Platform VB6 Successor for Linux/Windows

Summary

  • Modern RAD IDE for drag-and-drop GUIs/apps targeting Linux/Windows/macOS/Android, using frozen stable ABI (GTK3 + WebView), compiling to native/static binaries or WebAssembly.
  • Core value: Revives VB6/Delphi productivity ("Building GUI utilities based on VB6... more stable") without Electron bloat, for quick tools like media taggers.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Indie devs/hobbyists missing RAD ("I just wanted to convert some Golang CLI... to GUI's for Android")
Core Feature Visual designer + code gen (Go/C#/Pascal backends); auto-cross-compile
Tech Stack Lazarus LCL + Elements-inspired; Zig for static links; Tauri renderer
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: $10/mo pro (cloud builds/export)

Notes

  • Echoes nostalgia ("Windows 2000 era desktop was light"; Delphi votes); "keyringlight" on Mp3tag shows gap for specialist GUIs.
  • HN loves RAD history; practical for "glue CLI and GUI" without sorcery.

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