logoalt Hacker News

rfgplktoday at 9:43 AM2 repliesview on HN

Dead wrong. Win32 (externally) only seems stable, but internally it changes between Windows releases. Win7 syscalls are completely different from Win11 syscalls, meaning if I want to release a binary _without relying_ on Win32 I need to provide full syscall mappings _for each and every Windows version_. This doesn't happen on Linux.


Replies

aseipptoday at 12:58 PM

> only seems stable, but internally it changes

That's literally the definition of it being stable. Programs written against an interface keep working despite the implementation changing. The Linux kernel also constantly changes internally but programs written against syscalls keep working, so it is stable; that fact doesn't stop being a fact just because I dislike perf_event_open(2) or whatever. This is all very basic and easy to understand.

david-gputoday at 10:48 AM

>> Win32 is the most stable abi on the Linux desktop.

> Dead wrong [...] if I want to release a binary _without relying_ on Win32

Then you are not using the Win32 ABI, are you?