January 2, 2026
Nostalgia at 240Hz
Uxn32: Uxn Emulator for Windows and Wine
One tiny app runs on Windows 95–11 and Wine—and it’s igniting a Win98 vs XP feud
TLDR: Uxn32 is a tiny emulator that runs minimalist apps on Windows 95 through 11 and via Wine, no installer needed. Fans cheer its bloat-free speed while the comments erupt into a Win98-versus-XP nostalgia battle and a DIY debate over how simple it is to build your own—retro drama included.
Uxn32 just dropped a nostalgia nuke: a teeny-tiny emulator that runs the minimalist Uxn virtual machine on everything from Windows 95 to Windows 11—and even through Wine on Linux. No installer, no bloat, just a single .exe and a bundle of ready-to-play ROMs. The crowd went wild… and then immediately started fighting. The hottest thread? A full-on retro culture war over user interfaces, with one commenter sighing that Windows XP was “that grotesque bastardization” of the clean, utilitarian Windows 98 look. Meanwhile, a different camp is here for the vibes: Uxn32’s “counter‑culture” minimalism is being praised as an antidote to modern “slop” and JavaScript-laden apps. Translation: it’s bloat-free, fast, and a little punk. The feature flex—instant redraws up to 240Hz, a built-in debugger, and guardrails so your program can’t freeze the app—only fueled the memes. “Finally, my pixel art at esports refresh rates,” joked one user, while another claimed it “basically fits on a floppy.” Then came the DIY mic drop: veterans chimed in to say Uxn is so simple you can write your own version, which sparked a mini debate—is that empowering or a subtle gatekeep? Either way, Uxn32 just turned retro computing into appointment drama, and we’re grabbing popcorn.
Key Points
- •Uxn32 is a graphical emulator for the Uxn virtual machine distributed as a single, dependency-free executable.
- •It supports Windows 95 through Windows 11 (32/64-bit) and is designed to run under Wine on Linux.
- •Features include sandboxed filesystem access, an integrated debugger, high-DPI support, high-refresh event handling, and pre-emptive execution.
- •The project builds with multiple toolchains (VC6–Visual Studio 2026, Clang/clang-cl, GCC via Winelib, MinGW, Pelles C) and provides CMake support.
- •Linux builds via Winelib are supported; winegcc+lld can produce PE binaries (typically Windows 7+ due to ucrtbase.dll), and specific Windows libraries must be linked for manual builds.