Is the MacOS equivalent what was deprecated in Catalina, ending compatibility with 32-bit applications?
back
2 comments
Crossover maintained compatibility with 32-bit windows applications even after Catalina.
> https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2019/12/10/celebrati...
Which is kind of funny because yet again windows was a better application in terms of longevity than MacOS native.
It's a bit different. WOW64 is a compatibility layer that intercepts calls into system libraries from 32-bit apps and translates them into calls to 64-bit libraries. macOS shipped both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of all system libraries, no translation involved.
So Microsoft continues to support something that is presumably harder to maintain than Apple just continuing to ship existing 32-bit libraries?
I’m not very familiar with the Windows side, but it sounds harder to create but easier to maintain. Once the 32->64 translation shims are implemented, you’re done. They’ll keep working. If you’re not adding new 32-bit APIs then there’s no more work to be done. Maintaining a parallel set of libraries means each change has to work on both targets.
Seems like also 16bit apps????
Yes, as of Wine 10.16 (the version number is a lucky coincidence!) 16-bit Windows applications can run on 64-bit Linux without any special libraries.
Apparently the real WOW64 doesn’t, but WINE’s version of it does. Wow indeed.