It's a chuckle-worthy thought now, but I am willing to bed it will be reality for backward compatibility with historic games in the long run - cf. the use of DOSBox to run old DOS games in modern systems. Countdown to old Windows games delivered in full Linux containers starting now ...

Individual DLLs from Wine are alreay being used to fix compatibility problems in older games on Windows.

[0] http://bitpatch.com/ie_ddrawfix.html (included in the GOG.com installer for Planescape: Torment)

You think people will take games that already run on windows and package them in a linux container that runs them with wine, then require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed so they can run through that?

You are willing to bet on this? How much would you like to bet and are there any other bets you would like to make? Maybe the cubs winning the super bowl or dial up modems replacing fiber optics?

> take games that already run on windows

I believe this is in reference to games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows.

The example I gave was old DOS games that no longer run on modern versions of Windows and are easier to ship with a bundled emulator - and that emulator is a free software reimplementation of the original thing. I think it's very likely to happen again in future iterations of the same principle, yes.

You think someone is going to resolve this solved problem by running wine on linux on wsl, which would still require dosbox?

I'm not talking about the DOS games at that point (it's a reference example for a pattern, as mentioned), but newer generations of games and the basic principle of operation. There are already some older ca. Win 98 era games that run better on Linux+Wine than on Windows past Vista due to compatibility problems, and I do think it'll eventually become a commercial reality to sell those kinds of games packaged into a a Linux VM once their numbers increase, yes.

It's easier to test, doesn't require costly porting work if it already works, VM tech is increasingly commoditized, low licensing costs, the performance overhead won't matter, etc. Just like no one notices today if a DOS game is sold bundled with DOSBox.

The alternative would be to maintain the native Windows port of Winet that's effort - I bank on laziness with the VM bit. The fact that WSL went VM from 1 to 2 is an indicator of viability for the general idea of transparent virtualization, too.

Honestly, if you take this another round I have to assume you're being intentionally obtuse for trolling purposes.

> Honestly, if you take this another round I have to assume you're being intentionally obtuse for trolling purposes.

You said you would bet that someone would use wine to deliver an old windows game on linux that runs inside window's linux compatibility layer, doubled down, and say anymore who says that is nonsense must be trolling.

Do you think that maybe instead of being likely to happen, it is likely to never happen due to wine being open source? It could just translate to a modern windows API instead of Linux. There is even something called reactOS that is an open source and windows compatible.

> Do you think that maybe instead of being likely to happen, it is likely to never happen due to wine being open source?

That's what I meant with the last paragraph. Linux doesn't come with a licensing cost; maintaining a working "Windows backend" to wine is effort. Just bundling with Linux seems lower effort and cheaper. Cf. also just about all of the system containerization trend and what's driving it - and it's in part API surface between the delivery and the system.

Place your bets here: https://predictionbook.com/predictions/198711

> require the multi gigabyte widows linux subystem to be installed

It's Hyper-V, so you could just run Linux VM without the sugar coating.

I don't believe WSL has any graphical capability whatsoever.

You can start an X server on Windows and let WSL use it. I've used some GUI programs via Xming in the past. It's fairly simple:

https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/02/08/graphic...

I’m not sure where that belief came from because it absolutely does.

Software compositing, so you’re limited to what is practical but that’s very useful for a lot of things.

> I’m not sure where that belief came from

I vaguely recall (possibly correctly) that I once read it on Scott Hanselman's blog.

By itself no. But you can run an X Server just like you have on Linux machines, and start graphical applications that use it.

Better still, use VcXsrv or similar to run proton.

You want mobaxterm here - vcxsrv is amazingly slow with GLX workloads.

Does it work with VNC and VirtualGL? If yes, this is my new favourite Windows thing.

It does work with VNC. Not sure about VirtualGL though. It IS very comlete however, so it has a high likelihood I think.