this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Ideal language and framework for legacy Windows (XP) and modern Linux (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by xvertigox@lemmy.world to c/learn_programming@programming.dev
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I'm looking to write a simple program which can run both on Win XP SP3 (ideally without added dependencies, if it all possible) and modern Linux. Really, it should be platform agnostic but XP and Linux are what I'm specifically interested in.

The program will be for managing my cd-keys for my XP games. It'll have a simple gui with a search box and an output box. It'll parse text files in it's subdir when searching via search box and output the cd-key string contained within.

From what I can see, it would be good/viable to use C++ so it runs on XP and Linux and use gtkmm3 for the UI for the same reason.

Does this make sense or am I missing something glaringly obvious? Any input would be much appreciated~

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with GUI development on XP, but could you accomplish this with a script that you run in the terminal? That might be easier than dealing with a GUI that needs to work on both old and modern systems.

You could alias it to a command like getGameKey your_search_query on both to keep the usage the same. You may need a slightly different command for each one (using find+grep on Linux, some Windows command line equivalent on XP)

[–] xvertigox@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Thanks heaps for the idea. I could definitely do it on Linux via a script and it looks like XP has findstr.

It shouldn't require parsing text files intelligently either. If each line is [Game Name] - [CD-Key], it can just spit the whole line out.

[–] RushLana@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why not write a web app ? Supermium is modern chromium for xp and will work.

Just stick to vanilla web technologies and it should be fine.

[–] xvertigox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

I want it to work offline as I don't want to connect my XP machines to the internet.

[–] chonkyninja@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Step 1. Install Steam Step 2. Open Steam Step 3. Use the menus to import a game, insert Key.

Steam does this.

[–] xvertigox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's to manage cd-keys for my physical games.

[–] chonkyninja@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Yes, steam manages keys. And if you put a key in it will add the game into your library.

[–] gramie@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

You could use Lazarus, which is based on Pascal, cross-compilable, and allows you to create the UI by dragging and dropping.

Another alternative is B4J, which allows you to write the code in a dialect of BASIC, but compiles it to Java bytecode.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

rust and tauri/dioxus, possibly egui?