When I released Nicotine for Linux last year, I received a steady stream of DMs on Discord from Windows players asking if I had any intention of porting it. My answer, without hesitation, was "no." I built Nicotine to scratch a very specific itch on Linux, and the whole point of the project was that I'd finally freed myself from Windows. Porting it back to the platform I'd just escaped felt, at the time, philosophically incoherent.
Times change. People change. Intents change.
Nicotine is now available for Windows and has preview windows.
Why I Changed My Mind
I've been pretty public about my disdain for Windows 11, and none of that has softened. Windows is, in my opinion, still trending in the wrong direction. But I had to admit something to myself over the last few months: the majority of the EVE community plays on Windows, and the tool I built for myself could genuinely help a lot of people who, for whatever reason, aren't in a position to switch to Linux. Not everyone has the time, patience, or inclination to rebuild their entire computing workflow around an OS change, and that's a completely legitimate position.
The other thing that nudged me was the volume of really thoughtful feedback I got from the Linux release. People were opening PRs, filing issues, and suggesting features I hadn't considered. It became clear that Nicotine wasn't just my tool anymore, it belonged to the community that had coalesced around it. Denying that community a Windows build because of my personal OS politics was, frankly, silly.
EVE-O-Preview is a great tool and a ton of people use it. I've used it for years. That being said, I've been a bit irritated with some of its shortcomings, and it's really unclear what its development story is, given the current repo for it hasn't seen an update since April of 2025, at least at the time of this writing.
- I think having a runtime dependency like the .NET Runtime is sort of crazy for a tool that's built for people to run multiple resource-demanding game clients. It seems sort of self-defeating
- The configuration story for EVE-O is pretty bad, forcing users to update a JSON config and reload the application to have them take effect
- The worst by far is that EVE-O persists the config it's loaded with when it closes, so if you have EVE-O open and edit the config, your changes are wiped out when you close and relaunch to have it pick up the new config
What's In Nicotine
The Windows build has feature parity with what Linux users have been running, plus a handful of quality-of-life additions:
- Live preview windows
- Optional "client list" mode if you don't want previews / thumbnails
- Forward / backward cycling on any keyboard hotkey with an optional modifier
- Per-character configurable jump hotkeys (e.g.
Ctrl+1switches to character 1) - Snap-to-edge dragging when arranging preview windows
- Lock positions toggle so you don't accidentally drag a window out of alignment
- No .NET runtime required
Same daemon architecture underneath, same Rust codebase, same near-zero-latency switching that made the Linux version feel good to use. If you've been running EVE-O Preview and wanted something a bit more opinionated and a lot snappier, this is for you.
Still MIT, Still Open Source
Nothing about my stance on licensing has changed. The EVE community is too niche and too tight-knit to justify releasing proprietary software into it. Every tool I've written for EVE lives on my Github under an MIT license, and Nicotine is no exception. If you want to fork it, modify it, learn from it, or contribute back, go for it. Pull requests are always welcome, and a few folks have already left their fingerprints on the Linux side of the codebase (you know who you are, and you have my thanks).
Where to Find Me
We now have a Discord server dedicated to the Nicotine project, where I'll be taking feature requests, fielding bug reports, and announcing new releases. Come hang out. Or, if you'd rather, open an issue or PR on Github — nothing speaks louder than a good pull request.
This is the first Windows release, so expect some rough edges. I'll be cutting patches as bugs surface.
See you in space. 🫡