this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 218 points 10 months ago (13 children)

All modules that call a Unix library contain WoW64 thunks to enable calling the 64-bit Unix library from 32-bit PE code. This means that it is possible to run 32-bit Windows applications on a purely 64-bit Unix installation. This is called the new WoW64 mode, as opposed to the old WoW64 mode where 32-bit applications run inside a 32-bit Unix process.

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[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

X86 to arm will become easier with this as box64 could handle everything now

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Does this change run the 32-bit .exe using x86_64 instructions? From the description it just sounds like it allows 64-bit Linux libraries to be used in place of 32-bit ones, but that the Windows layer still operates in native 32-bit mode. This means there is still a need to emulate 32-bit x86 instructions which I don't think box64 can do at this time (x86_32 translates to arm32 with box86, x86_64 translates to arm64 with box64). If box86 could translate x86_32 to arm64 then this might work as Wine would handle the conversion between 32 and 64 bit addressing and argument passing into the libraries but I'm not familiar with the inner workings there.

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks for correction, not everything, but more

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