I have a strange idea. Is it possible to build Wine for Windows XP and use it to run incompatible applications? I'm not a programmer, so I don’t know if it’s possible to do such a thing. What do you think about this?

Well, it's not a completely crazy idea - and you're not the first to ask:

Right now you can start a VM from XP, boot Linux, and use Wine to run programs that can't run on XP itself. Your idea is to "cut out the middleman" - Linux - and have Wine run directly on XP. But....

Edited July 28, 20197 yr by Mathwiz

On 1/29/2019 at 7:33 PM, FranceBB said:

Wine is pretty much based on XP, but it has recently been updated to support some Vista and 7 functions, but it's far from being a fully functional Windows 7 alternative. Anyway, Wine doesn't run on XP, but the project is open source and led me to the integration of part of its call in various ways, like whenever I have to backport a programme. There's also project made by Samuel that it's called One Core API that integrates several Wine implementations and it's a custom kernel, but of course it's far from being perfect and although it provides some useful implementations, it's far from being a fully functional compatibility layer (and I can't even link it here).

Anyway, the point is: Wine doesn't run on XP, but even if it would, it wouldn't be like having Win 7 and complex programmes wouldn't work anyway.

(Forum software wouldn't let me insert the above quote into my previous post)

Maybe Wine could be adapted to XP, but it would take a lot of work, and wouldn't really get you as far as you might wish to go.

ReactOS is probably a better bet.

Edited July 28, 20197 yr by Mathwiz

ReactOS has a long way to come before it becomes practical. All my hopes and wishes for it, but not anytime soon.