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SolveSpace (open source 2D/3D CAD) working on Windows 2000 (2025)

32 points

8 hours ago

| 3 comments

SolveSpace just became "officially" available for the Web (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586614), it is also officially supported on Windows (Vista-11), Linux and macOS.

However with a little effort it also compiles for and runs on Windows 2000. Here it is:

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco...

So it runs on all the majour platforms from the last 26 years (excluding MacOS 9).

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Multicomp

5 hours ago

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I still tell myself if I going to vibecode a windows app, it will be native and suport 2000 and be a completely static linked executive. Petzold style programming may require memory unsafe legacy languages, but boy does the resulting small fast program with accelerafor keys and native themeable controls make me comfortable.

Im still bummed the web won the UI wars.

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ruevs

47 minutes ago

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Someone at Microsoft thinks the same ;-)

https://github.com/microsoft/edit

If you have Windows 11 it comes with this new (open source) `edit` written in Rust - open a command prompt and type `edit`.

This is somewhat amusing, considering all the bloat that it comes with otherwise. Even `notepad` has become rather... feature full... it has tabs, spell checking and AI...

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userbinator

4 hours ago

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I wonder how much more effort it would take to get working on Win9x (the first of the Win32 API).

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ruevs

1 hour ago

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I wondered the same and actually tried it on Windows 95 - it will be a bit more work. The bottom screen shots in this comment https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco... are the missing APIs on Win95...

I expect the build for Windows 2000 may work on NT 4.0, because it has OpenGL, but Windows 3.11 with Win32s will never work - because it does not have OpenGL(I think...).

And Unicode will also be a problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_in_Microsoft_Windows

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ghssds

2 hours ago

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The first OS supporting Win32 API isn't Windows 95.

Win32s for Windows 3.1x: 1993

Windows NT 3.1: 1993

Windows NT 3.5: 1994

Windows NT 3.51: 1995 (may)

Windows 95: 1995 (july)

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bschwindHN

3 hours ago

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The UI fits right in, in a good way!