Loss32: An idea for a Linux designed around Win32 apps
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.
The idea comes from a blogger and developer known as Hikari no Yume ("Dream of Light" in Japanese) who made it public at the 39th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany at the end of December.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/06/loss32_crazy_or_inspired/Open linkView original on literature.cafe
20 replies
Windows service layer for Linux?
Microsofts WSL is stupidly named. It shouldve been LSW.
While I do not disagree, it is important to realize that this was named in early 90’s.
When Windows NT was released, an important aspect of the architecture was the idea that it had “sub-systems” to provide app compatibility.
The Win32 sub-system (Windows apps) was just one of them. It’s full name was the Windows sub-system for Win32.
There was also the sub-system for POSIX (UNIX compatibility to win government contracts) and the sub-system for OS/2. OS/2 was interesting as it was still expected to be the important competitor and because it was originally going to be a Microsoft OS so Microsoft had customers that had written OS/2 apps.
The Windows sub-system for POSIX was never any good. It was just good enough to check boxes and win procurement contracts. Windows NT became quite successful and UNIX compatibility was not important.
That is, until Linux became popular.
So, when Microsoft added Linux application compatibility to Windows, it was naturally to call it the Windows sub-system for Linux.
I agree that the name sucks but it makes sense in a historical context.
Interesting, thanks for the lil summary :)
Wasnt there a ReactOS doing this?
Similar ideas but different approaches. ReactOS is trying to essentially reverse engineer Windows, whereas Loss32 is going to run literally everything in Wine.
I'm kind of excited about this one, because it's likely to uncover issues in Wine and upstream any improvements they make.
Lol love the idea. Hope it helps Wine like you said.
Yeah I've been thinking about this kind of thing recently. It should be possible to make things way more seamless. It could just have an entire emulated C drive in the home directory and automatically run exe files through WINE. Just associate the .exe file extension with the program you use to setup the environment and launch WINE for it.
I've basically done this for games and other programs using this desktop file:
Save as
runwithbottles.desktopin~/.local/share/applicationsAnd remember to change--bottle Gamingto whatever bottle you want to use.Now you can run any .exe by double clicking on it. If you associate it with 'Run with Bottles' This needs bottles to be installed, but allows you to run executables with Proton or Proton-GE too.
At least on PopOS you can just double click an exe installer and after the install it will show up in your start menu letting you run it through wine
Same with CachyOS, but Loss32 isn't just trying to run an on-demand emulation layer within your DE, it's trying to be the always-on default. It's ambitious, to be sure!
ReactOS is mentioned in the article, it's a somewhat different approach.
Is this Loss32?
💁🦋
Now do it 32 times
As long as we give people a simpler way/distro to get out of Windows do whatever crazy idea comes to mind.
Windows+Linux soon? Lmao
In before Linux/Copilot