Comment by WorldMaker

> I guess I'm just a bit surprised that no distro has taken up the mantle of providing these things; it seems to me it should be possible to build a stable ABI and HAL on top of the existing Linux kernel

Doesn't that distro already exist and it is called WINE?

As funny as it is to pattern the stable ABI and HAL so directly after Win32, it's also a hardened, well battle tested one. Rather than needing to design something from whole cloth and then get user and driver code buy in for it, why not just use an ABI and HAL with a lot of existing code? WINE is a funny answer, but it is a respectable one. (I appreciate the "overnight success 20 years in the making" joke above, too, about it.)