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Well, that's hard to answer if we don't know what games do you play under Windows. Some games run natively on Linux (ie. Unreal Tournament), and rather big number of other games runs under Wine or Winex. Do you want your Diablo, Baldur's Gate, Civ3, Neverwinter Nights, CounterStrike, FooBar? It works. Not everything works, but I'd say that majority of games does.

Take some Wine and open it up

Let it develop for a while and go bad

After a while it will be sour and smell awful. Now you can do Windows! And if you do it right, they will be transparent.

Are you so sure? WinAmp 3.0 is on wine's silver list. 5.0 may only require msvcrt.dll as well. Has anyone tried it?

Precisely:
Wine Is Not an Emulator

F.Y.I.

Wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator

Debunking Wine Myths

-Mary

I would say the reviews of running Photoshop on Wine are mixed, but I'll give you this: they're much better than the last time I looked at that page (there wasn't one success story).

Of course, the problem with Wine is usability. It takes a good deal of learning to do it yourself. Linux PC sellers just need to provide a gui-based way to install pre-tested versions of Windows programs (ala Crossover Office). List the program versions that have been tested on the box. For programs that don't yet run under Wine, list superior alternatives that run natively.

I suspect the average person thinks that if they switch to Linux they will have trouble finding software for it. This is only true for a few applications. And that gap can be filled with Wine.

I can't recall exactly when, but I remember setting up dreamweaver MX under Wine a while ago (let's say about a year). It is listed in the Wine Application DB, It worked pretty well back then, the only problem was that it crashed when you used the color selection box. I no longer use it now, I've come to my senses and use VIM.

I can't recall exactly when, but I remember setting up dreamweaver MX under Wine a while ago (let's say about a year). It is listed in the Wine Application DB, It worked pretty well back then, the only problem was that it crashed when you used the color selection box. I no longer use it now, I've come to my senses and use VIM.

I wish it would always stay around as an alternative API.

Wine, wine, wine, that's all you kids ever do... :)

Maybe they'll do a Longhorn port if Microsoft's built-on-VirtualPC Win32 legacy support isn't up to snuff. Or maybe this will all happen in 2010, with standard Microsoft shipping slippage.

I find it funny to find a this virus listed in the compatibility database. It's a testament to the success of wine!

This is what you are looking for. It runs windows programs on Linux! There is also Crossover office which can run Microsoft Office and games. Its shareware.

Also try OpenOffice 1.1, Its support for document format is very good, and unlike older versions its not slow.

Just remember, I made the switch, so can you ;).

In no particular order:

1. Partition Magic - PM comes in handy more than you'd think. If you're in a Win32 environment and have more than one disk or partition, it's an absolute must-have. Great for transferring data, arranging partition, etc., etc. And let's be honest--the shiny little GUI is just way more convenient than disk druid/FDISK/whatever.

2. Mozilla Firebird - I'm sure I won't be the first or last to mention it, but it more than deserves the recognition. It's essentially a more compact version of Mozilla. Free, obviously, and comes with built-in pop-up blocking, tabbed browing, and pretty much anything else you can imagine via extensions. Far and away the superior compared to IE, and generally better than the default 'nix mozilla variants as well.

3. Mozilla Thunderbird - The companion (though standalone) email client to Firebird. Fairly robust, easy to use, etc. And without all the security hassle of Outlook ;).

4. Virus scanner - Trend Micro has an excellent (free) online virus scanner/sweeper available here [trendmicro.com]. McAfee/Norton and their ilk are, I find, grossly intruisive and generally a pain in the ass. No, an online scanner doesn't have the advantage of constant vigilance, but that shouldn't be a problem for a security-minded user.

5. WINE - WINE [winehq.com] is no doubt known to you, but one can't underestimate its usefullness. At the very least, it's a big timesaver for situations when you're booted into Linux, but want to run a Win32 app.

Wine (not sure if straight wine, or one of the comercial versions) runs photoshop.

They might get some use for the GIMP too. It isn't as good as Photoshop, but it is free and does some useful things. Rumor is they are modifying a spcial animation version specific your movie studio use, but I couldn't find any links to confirm that so I'll leave it as a rumor.

Not necessarily. The patents could be, as MS claims, defensive patents. It gives them some clout when dealing with unnecessarily stupid situations involving little craphole companies.

Even the article says that Microsoft doesn't have a history of enforcing patents (who reads the article anyway?). What they do instead is keep adding to the API forcing compatible projects to constantly play catch-up (see Wine).

WINE license page

can't reliably open a .doc

funny that this is posted on winehq.com then. as someone else said, you'd need to hook wine into an x86 emulation engine, but apparently that's being worked on.

On another more disturbing note I just went to http://www.winehq.com/ and it's been closed?! Anyone know the story behind that?

That doesn't mean that it emulates Windows binaries, but the port has been done.

Wine Is Not an Emulator. It runs x86 binaries on x86 platforms only. It works by providing the Windows API to the X windowing system, not by emulating other architectures.

On another more disturbing note I just went to http://www.winehq.com/ and it's been closed?! Anyone know the story behind that?

Is Wine an emulator?
Fortunately, no. Wine provides low-level binary compatibility, but currently only for OSes running on Intel-compatible chips.

I think http://appdb.winehq.com/ is what you're looking for. I hope this helps.

yes it will. there's a windows emulator called wine available here.

Starting from 16 of August machines infected with Lovsan will send massive amount of packets to windowsupdate.com. 40 byte packets are sent in 20 millisecond intervals to port 80. This might cause a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack on that website.

The Wine web site has some links for running AutoCad in Wine

I do not understand how Photoshop running under Linux is "thanks to Disney". I have been running Photoshop under Linux the same way for months now, so is it thanks to me that Photoshop runs under Linux? No. It's thanks to these guys because of what these guys started. Try to have some more integrity, would you?

In my experience, Wine is a great way to use Windows-only tools under Linux (e.g. the 7-zip tools ) when you need to. However, using it consistently is a lot of work. From the Wine FAQ, "Wine is chasing a moving target since every new release of Windows contains new API calls or variations to the existing ones." Ergo, Wine will never be "finished" or "complete". Our favorite Wine still needs to age a bit before it is ready to be served. Even so, it is wonderfully valuable when needed.

Here is the correct link Wine

The link posted was marked Wine was really a link to codeweavers windows emulator.

......

-- Bob

Too late, Bill! WINE is already here!

Sorry, I meant "wiiiiiine".

Well, we can't hold the entire linux community responsible for the crimes of a few, but it is a known fact that some clever linux hackers have made it possible to actually run Windows programs under linux.

IHBT, IHL, HAND, but I have to rebut.

1 It will soon be illegal because of SCO Maybe, maybe not, we don't know that for sure.
2 GPL is anti-capitalist BSD/Linux is a concept where only the kernel is GPL'd. There are systems based on BSD/Linux. Plus there is the NetLSD Project.
3 Its hard to use ...its hard to use what? Oh, you mean it's hard to use. Not any harder than DOS+Windows 3.1.
4 Its unstable Oh, and Windows isn't? I've only had Linux kernel-panic once EVER, and Windows 98SE crashes daily.
5 The software sucks Opinion, not fact.
6 The UI is inconsistent So is Windows'.
7 You have to tipe commands (type) Oh? You haven't run X Window haven't you?
8 It doesn't run Windows programs Oh? (sp?)
9 You cannot buy a computer with Linux I take it you don't look at wal-mart.com.
10 Linux companies are going out of bussiness Not all of them, look at Red Hat. And SCOrdure :
11 RMS is a communist arsehole Maybe this has to do with the GNU userland, but nothing to do with Linux.
12 High total cost of ownership Compared to paying $250 per machine every couple years for a copy of LoseDoze? If you know where to get it you can get it LEGALLY for free or at least well under $100.
13 Too many distros Maybe, but the answer is to stick to one.
14 Un-american Oh foo off!
15 Its not from microsoft That's a Good Thing, you know.
16 Poor security track record Compared to what? Windows gets hax0red more often than Linux. Besides, Hed Rat 8.0 comes with a firewall standard.
17 Anyone and their 14 year old brother can add (buggy) code maybe, but it won't go into the main source tree if it's buggy.
18 Even BeOS was better Opinion, not fact!
19 Eugenia doesn't like it And?
20 It SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you had actually used Linux, you wouldn't have said that.

BTW, you want split pane, use KDE and Konqueror.

Now GoAT!

-uso.

The big question is this, which happens faster? Wine can support any app for a given MS OS, or MS declares the OS so obsolete and unused that nobody uses it?

--LP, who drank his first Wine about a decade ago

1) Unreal Tournment 2003, Enemy Territory, Quake3, Neverwinter Nights, etc. And much, much more with Wine such as Soldier of Fortune 2.

2) Grip, VERY good CD Ripping app. Will auto download CDDB, run the encoder of your choice, etc. As for raytracing Povray can do a lot too, but you just need a good modeler, such as Kpovmodeler. As for a one click installer, check out RPMs or RedHat's Package Management System, looks just like Install Shield.

3) KDE,Gnome,etc. You DO know that they can be themed to look just like the crappy Windows GUI too don't you?

What's wrong with Wine?

Shurely with winelib you could compile a program that used the windows dll in linux... not too sure of the details, but I spose thats what theyre mailing list is for.

Kinda works under wine too

According to the Wine App Compatibility database it works fine.

What I've found frustrating is the lack of adventure games available for Linux

Really? I've found that adventure game support for Linux is actually quite good relative to other genres.

There's an entire commercial seven-episode line in the LadyStar series.

Hopkins FBI was, I believe, the first commercial SDL-using game available for Linux.

Want to play older adventure games in Linux? ScummVM can run older Lucasarts adventure games. AGIL lets you play old AGI Sierra games, and FreeSCI old SCI Sierra games. TADS can run on Linux to let you play TADS-based text adventure games (it *is* true that there isn't an HTML-enabled runtime for Linux, but that hasn't turned to be much of a big deal), and Frotz lets you play text-based Z-Machine games on Linux. Both of these have massive libraries of games, some of which are very good (I dearly love Tower of Babel for TADS). There are runtimes for numerous other, less widely-used systems listed on ifarchive.

Finally, I realize it's not a fantastic solution, but adventure games that use DirectX are more likely to work with WINE than the latest 3d shooter because they tend to use fewer features. Riven, for instance, works this way.

But I wonder if the Linux gaming market isn't somewhat different than the Windows gaming market. Many of the people who run Linux are older professionals. We're often not runnng the latest and greatest equipment. Perhaps one explanation for the lackluster sales of Linux games is that they're targeting the wrong population.

I agree -- the best selling games for Linux have been Civilization, SimCity 3, Kohan...the games without high end system requirements on 3d cards or CPU. They tend to be less twitch games.

I wish adventure game developers would return to the VM-based approach that Sierra and Lucasarts used to great success. The portability and ease of debugging is well worth it.

for one thing you can check the AppDB at wine first to see if it runs (or transgaming)... then you can go out an buy it. and who wants a game console that you can only set up on one tv and if you change tvs you have to tell the console makers for permission

. sounds like a blast! where can i get my "game console" so i can begin raping my computer ;p

... the OS that it runs on is against my perverted rule set.

Will Kazaa Lite run in Wine?

Nevermind, I'll look myself. It's reported to work with some borrowed Windows DLLs. Hrm.

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Sorry AC, anyone that knows anything about wine and the wine project Wine HQ knows that "Wine is not am emulator!" per the wine project FAQ

Sorry AC, anyone that knows anything about wine and the wine project Wine HQ knows that "Wine is not am emulator!" per the wine project FAQ

I'm appauled by sad fucking whiners like you that think just because you run linux people owe it to you to make a linux version of X,Y,Z software. Jesus, some of you people act like it's your god-given right to have a linux-version of ..blah blah blah which is like, totally fuckin' pathetic. slashdot. the home of sad fuckin' whiners. whine, whine, whine. jesus. Yes, that's a secretly encoded, hint. how did you guess?

Here are a few tasty snippets from Wine HQ - Why Wine is so important and Wine HQ - Debunking Wine Myths which I feel answer you better than I can:

From the first page:

Any Windows replacement must run Windows applications

The dependency is not so much on Microsoft Windows as it is on Windows applications. Boxed off-the-shelf applications, games, in-house applications, vertical market applications, are what prevents users, companies and governments from switching to another operating system. Even if 90% of the needs of most users are taken care of if you can provide them with an office suite, an email client, a browser, and a media player, then there will still be a remaining 10% of their needs, potentially critical needs, that are not met. Unfortunately these remaining 10% are spread across a wide spectrum of applications: thousands of applications running the gamut from games to specialized accounting software for French farms, via Italian encyclopedias, German tax software, child education software, banking software, in-house software representing years of development, etc. It is the availability of all this software that makes Windows so compelling and its monopoly so strong. No platform will become mainstream unless it runs a significant portion of that software and lets individuals, companies and governments preserve their investments in that software.

Chicken-and-egg problem for Linux on the desktop

This brings us to the chicken and egg issue of Linux on the desktop. Until Linux can provide equivalents for the above applications, its marketshare on the desktop will stagnate. But until the marketshare of Linux on the desktop rises, no vendor will develop applications for Linux. How does one break this vicious circle?

Again, Wine can provide an answer. By letting users reuse the Windows applications they have invested time and money in, Wine dramatically lowers the barrier that prevents users from switching to Linux. This then makes it possible for Linux to take off on the desktop, which increases its market share in that segment. In turn, this makes it viable for companies to produce Linux versions of their applications, and for new products to come out just for the Linux market.

This reasoning could be dismissed easily if Wine was only capable of running Solitaire. However now it can run Microsoft Office, multi-media applications such as QuickTime and Windows Media Player, and even games such as Max Payne or The SIMS.
Almost any other complex application can be made to run well given a bit of time. And each time that work is done to add one application to this list, many other applications benefit from this work and become usable too.


And now for one of the myths:


Myth 2: "Wine is bad for Linux"

One undeniable fact exists: there is a vast software library that works with Microsoft's operating systems. Many of these applications already have Linux equivalents, however for most people there remains a handful of programs keeping them tied to Windows. Some of these programs have almost no chance of getting ported to Linux (e.g. Microsoft Office), others simply can't be ported because they've become abandonware (e.g. Turbotax 1999). Would I want to have Windows just because someday I may need to access an old tax program?

The fact that Wine exists won't prevent companies from porting their software, but having less than a few percentage points of marketshare will. Wine puts more free software into the hands of people who would otherwise not use it. In turn, history has repeatedly shown that larger marketshare leads to more commercial development. More commercial development has always led to more efforts to develop better free software equivalents.

Here are a few tasty snippets from Wine HQ - Why Wine is so important and Wine HQ - Debunking Wine Myths which I feel answer you better than I can:

From the first page:

Any Windows replacement must run Windows applications

The dependency is not so much on Microsoft Windows as it is on Windows applications. Boxed off-the-shelf applications, games, in-house applications, vertical market applications, are what prevents users, companies and governments from switching to another operating system. Even if 90% of the needs of most users are taken care of if you can provide them with an office suite, an email client, a browser, and a media player, then there will still be a remaining 10% of their needs, potentially critical needs, that are not met. Unfortunately these remaining 10% are spread across a wide spectrum of applications: thousands of applications running the gamut from games to specialized accounting software for French farms, via Italian encyclopedias, German tax software, child education software, banking software, in-house software representing years of development, etc. It is the availability of all this software that makes Windows so compelling and its monopoly so strong. No platform will become mainstream unless it runs a significant portion of that software and lets individuals, companies and governments preserve their investments in that software.

Chicken-and-egg problem for Linux on the desktop

This brings us to the chicken and egg issue of Linux on the desktop. Until Linux can provide equivalents for the above applications, its marketshare on the desktop will stagnate. But until the marketshare of Linux on the desktop rises, no vendor will develop applications for Linux. How does one break this vicious circle?

Again, Wine can provide an answer. By letting users reuse the Windows applications they have invested time and money in, Wine dramatically lowers the barrier that prevents users from switching to Linux. This then makes it possible for Linux to take off on the desktop, which increases its market share in that segment. In turn, this makes it viable for companies to produce Linux versions of their applications, and for new products to come out just for the Linux market.

This reasoning could be dismissed easily if Wine was only capable of running Solitaire. However now it can run Microsoft Office, multi-media applications such as QuickTime and Windows Media Player, and even games such as Max Payne or The SIMS.
Almost any other complex application can be made to run well given a bit of time. And each time that work is done to add one application to this list, many other applications benefit from this work and become usable too.


And now for one of the myths:


Myth 2: "Wine is bad for Linux"

One undeniable fact exists: there is a vast software library that works with Microsoft's operating systems. Many of these applications already have Linux equivalents, however for most people there remains a handful of programs keeping them tied to Windows. Some of these programs have almost no chance of getting ported to Linux (e.g. Microsoft Office), others simply can't be ported because they've become abandonware (e.g. Turbotax 1999). Would I want to have Windows just because someday I may need to access an old tax program?

The fact that Wine exists won't prevent companies from porting their software, but having less than a few percentage points of marketshare will. Wine puts more free software into the hands of people who would otherwise not use it. In turn, history has repeatedly shown that larger marketshare leads to more commercial development. More commercial development has always led to more efforts to develop better free software equivalents.