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I don't know, but you might want to check up on the efforts to use Bochs inside Wine on other platforms.

So where's the linux version [of KaZaA]?

Does KaZaA or WinMX work in Wine or ReWind? I looked for "Kazaa" in the Wine application database, and I found that kazaalite runs quite well if you use MS DLLs. So does WinMX.

Winehq is indeed a place to find obvious whining about undocumented api's. One link was here. Another is here.

Besides that, this reminds me there are indeed numbers of books documenting some of the previously undocumented API's, written by developers outside microsoft who have figured some of them out.

Is Wine (http://www.winehq.com) an option for the applications they need?

I got Quicken 2002 to run with Wine.

First, downloaded the most recent wine from WineHQ. Compiled it. Don't use the rpm's, they won't work. Then, installed Windows 98 on my FAT32 partition.

Then, this is the tricky part. Boot in windows, open up Quicken and make your connections and so forth. Make sure you can download from the bank under Windows, make sure you can save your file, etc. Then BACKUP your file. Try firing up your browser and eliminate the Internet Connection Blizzard, although I didn't do it (my installed win98 is broke).

It should run...mine does. I'm running mandrake 8.2 Download edition...

Does Linux support Windows yet?

Using the WINE binary compatibility layer, an x86-based GNU/Linux system running an X11 server can run many applications designed for Microsoft Windows.

Gnome, KDE, Samba, Wine, etc., all of these were started by the Linux community. They are at their heart Linux software.

Oh and Red Hat owns GCC now since buying out Cygnus. You know it. I know it. Deal with it.

Gnome Xine will hopefully be a vast improvement and have the sense to bear at least some resemblence to quicktime/microsoft mediaplayer/realplayer.

Fully conclusive? No.

But look at the wine mailling lists (or even the weekly summaries). There are plenty of posts along the lines of "app X isn't working because abc.dll makes undocumented call def(ghi, jkl)". Why do you think that Wine still hasn't finished? They have to spend so much time reverse-engineering that actually getting to write the code is far from the hard part.

1. Tell your users
2. give them a chance to opt-out
3. Set up a (properly secured) webmail form to shunt around the block
4. set your mail server to send the URL for that webmail in the rejection message

I'm still not sure if he's just so far removed from the reality of what is going on that he really believes what he's saying, or if he's just impressively two-faced. I suspect the former, just because I don't look for a conspiracy when simple ignorance will do.

26. Given these benefits, we expected that the market would attach great value to any product that enabled such broad interoperability. As I explain more fully below in Section II.B, Microsoft committed itself to providing compatibility among a wide range of products, as we believed the market would demand. There were three key and closely-interrelated elements to our strategy, a strategy that is unchanged to this day.

Literally tens of thousands of hardware and software products interoperate very well with Windows today.

Interoperability across disparate computing products does not happen by accident. Interoperability is a two-way street, requiring a lot of hard work between companies that want to build interoperable products. As discussed below, Microsoft devotes enormous efforts to promoting interoperability between a wide variety of products and Windows. These efforts include our development and broad licensing of the Windows platform (described above) and our disclosure of vast amounts of technical information about Windows--information that we provide to our direct competitors, such as Sun.

What information did Microsoft need to provide to Sun? More likely, they got information from Sun about the various UNIX protocols so they could embrace and extend them.

If Microsoft was really that open with their specifications, wouldn't writing a Win32 emulator be easier? Instead, it seems to actually be simpler to write a working complete PC emulator and rely on Windows' ability to cope well with different hardware to let it run well than it it to duplicate the ever-changing and never-documented Win32 APIs.

I have no doubt that interoperability played a huge role in development at Microsoft. They needed to talk with other software packages and operating systems in order to gain market share.

At the same time, they could leverage their position as the operating system provider to prevent others from doing the same thing to them.

From the earliest days of DOS, they kept their cards close. The use of those (intentionally?) undocumented DOS calls in Excel gave Microsoft a big advantage over Lotus-1-2-3, who had to go in and either re-implement an existing (but unknown) API that Microsoft had in the OS, or reverse engineer the process to find the undocumented calls that the Excel folks had advance notice of. By the same token, Microsof could and did (deliberately?) change the "undocumented" APIs that Lotus relied on while simultaneously changing the new version of Excel to stop using them.

In short, they seem to have a firm handle on the fact that the path to dominance is to make sure your product can interface with others, but don't let the others interface with you.

Logically, I agree with you. OTOH, MS might be trying to discourage reuse of donated machines -- knowing that Windows pre-loaded systems don't usually ship with media. By doing so, they are more likely to get a new sale, either in the form of a boxed copy of Windows or on a new machine.

Anyway, who cares? If the OS license is somehow wrong or expired, then wouldn't this be an opportunity for the linux horde to march in? I don't see why this is bad.

Agreed. I'd like to see more native educational software -- like GCompris and others for young kids through teens. Baring that, Codeweavers and Transgaming should consider support for Windows programs under Wine. There are ways Windows programs can be installed using Wine that just aren't available or are prohibitive using Windows.

Example: Creating a VNC-style applet to embed in a web page -- webifying an existing Windows program: Signtopia's use of Wine to embed thier Windows app in a web page. Here's an excerpt;

1. "David Hawkes of Cadlink technologies made the next presentation, "A unique application for wine". His company, Signtopia, has a product called Signlab, which is a windows application for designing signs. They wanted to make it available to their customers over the web. They looked into many other solutions such as terminal server, Citrix, Graphon, and a rewrite in Java. Due to licensing concerns, they decided to use Wine and VNC. Some of the limitations were Wine's slow startup and some visual glitches. To get around this, they use a number of pre-started wine sessions and they removed the UI and made the application work from a web form. To improve the performance, they moved to Tight VNC and provided some sponsorship for the development.

VirtualDub runs quite well under (recent?) incarnations of Wine. As do many other video-related tools. Oh, and of course there's also Broadcast2000 (originally found here, but now also to be found here), and (for the more adventurous) its successor Cinelerra, which is not on their main site but lives on the Sourceforge project site. Beware, compiling Cinelerra is not for the faint of heart.

I'll pay for this, if it is as good as the orgional.

Note however that it must work with WINE Best would be a native linux version. Just so long as I can play it on my systems without paying theMicrosoft tax

Frankly, from me, the problems of documentation with OS-level API's are hearsay - I just haven't done Windows programming at that deep a level. It has, however, been the standard complaint of WINE and SAMBA developers for years.

Really, if someone has trouble looking up documentation on MS APIs in MSDN, then they'd probably have trouble looking something up in Google, too. The problem is, more than likely, people completely unfamiliar with MS' APIs (Win32, COM, .NET, DirectX...), so they don't even know what they're looking for.

Your point that you have to know what you're looking for, no matter what toolkit you use a fair one, but I think you're overstating it. I've used the MSDN library for reference on Access programming for 3 years, and I can't say I'm that impressed. Most of the documents on there are written in marketing style, rather than being direct technical information. Reading "Did you know you can embed Excel documents into Access forms?" is not helpful when you want to know why something's not working.

Let's take consumer software. Consumer software is things like applications, consumer operating systems, development tools, etc. Companies like Red Hat, CodeWeavers, Mandrake, theKompany, Suse, etc. all employ programmers. As far as I know, these programmers are making money, and in some cases, the companies are as well. CodeWeavers, for example, contributes code to the Wine project and then writes non-free "easy-installation and setup" utilities in order to have some "value add" that is worth paying for. Red Hat actually makes money from selling only services, as every piece of code that they write (AFAIK) is released to the public under an OSS / FS license.

Now let's take enterprise software. Look at projects like JBoss, Tomcat, Castor, etc. In nearly all enterprise software, there is a need for an "infrastructure layer". My company actually PAYS ME to fix any bugs in JBoss, Tomcat or any of the other things we're using as our "infrastructure" because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for a resale license of WebLogic or WebSphere. Our customers are happy because they get a reliable system. I'm happy because I get paid to work on OSS stuff. My company is happy because they save money (or make more money, depending on how you look at it) using the OSS / FS infrastructure ... everyone is happy. I'm not starving to death, I swear. Lots of enterprise software companies take this approach. Why? Because it makes economic sense to do so. Why? Because if they pay their programmers to fix bugs in an OSS codebase, they get the added advantage of other people (who they do NOT pay) fixing bugs for them, too.

So, I'd hate to be harsh, but ... you're just WRONG.

Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.

-1 (Malinformed)

Sure, it's easy to say how writing an API should take less than 7 years, and easy to say that the Wine Project is failing by missing that target, but it's a moving target. The API changes, and when reverse engineering an API, there are multiple right answers for the limited tests they have the resources to do.

Say a program uses APIs 1-50, but only 25% of them. In order to make that program work, you only need 50 APIs 25% done. Not too bad. And, maybe your solution doesn't collide with other variables too badly. Now, when you take that up to 50%, you might start to get some collisions, realize that, while a certain program functioned using an API before, it was based on two assumptions that were both wrong and happened to cancel each other out.

It's 7 years old (and being extended with every release). It's undocumented (at last check Microsoft denied there were undocumented API features, but the Wine project happened to be documenting them on the way through their implementation).

It's not easy to hit an invisible moving target.

To be accurate, it runs on top of Linux - at least if you count wine (the least buggy Windows version ever).

I was raised on DOS. Started with 1.1, and went from there. As far as I was concerned, 5.0 was the mecca. I went kicking and screaming into the "GUI revolution", stopping briefly by Win 3.1 on my way to OS/2 (2.0?) and quickly to OS/2 Warp.

Even then, everything beyond WYSIWYG was just eye candy, and my 486 dx2 66 (with 32 megs of RAM!) was a little slow. Not that it wasn't "pretty good" for the time, it was! I still preferred Word Perfect 5.1 for word processing, and the print preview button for WYSIWYG as a combination of efficiency and page accuracy.

Based on what I actually did, for a while I was labelling myself as a member of the "Operating System of the Semester", because that's about as often as I switched. Did I pay Microsoft for everything I used? No, but I actually had licenses (trading favors/work/things/trinkets) for unused licenses -- M$ got their money, and no copyrights were violated (I still don't buy the whole prohibition of transferring ownership). I just couldn't afford to do all that expirementation and learning! But my skills were growing quickly. Eventually, I went to NT 3.51 server and had enough spare parts to go to Linux 2.0 (Slackware '96 was my friend) on a different machine. I couldn't do everything I needed to for my classes with Linux, but I had NT there to do that for me (no games under 3.51, remember? kept my GPA from falling too far).

Then I realized that, in order to compete, I had to learn Win95, because potential employers were asking about that. I traded for WinNT4.0 workstation, and that gave me the GUI experience I needed for a job. I really resent having to do all that grey-market trading to get the experience I felt I needed, but at this point I feel I'm pretty well rounded. My workplace bought me a computer with Windows 2000 Professional (and I'm competant there), a workstation (with AIX on it, so I'm still good), and at home I have two computers, one with Linux (2.2.flavor-of-the-month) and one with OS/X, my current favorite.

Before I left, my school was replacing all the UNIX machines with Windows machines because of an Intel/M$ grant to do so. The CompSci classes were changing their curriculum to accomodate, but there was an underground movement to "upgrade" all those machines to Linux so CompSci wouldn't have to change their curriculum ("But it worked on GCC in my dorm!" was a realistic thing to hear when working against Visual C).

Will CS students switch from Microsoft? I hope so -- if only to learn what the alternatives are and their strengths/weaknesses. The ultimate question is, what will they do about it? Will they keep their non-Microsoft tendencies, or switch back?

I'm about ready to give back a Windows 2000 Professional license to my company, because I've recently learned that Wine can do everything I need to in order to do my job, and Linux is more what I prefer anyway. Sure, I'm just one engineer, middle management is making all the purchases, but I'm one more in a growing culture here. Our voices will be heard. I'm not saying that as some zealot trying to change the world, but as one engineer who thinks that there's a more efficient way of getting work done, and it happens to cost less in licensing fees. After all, money is what managers care about. If my manager can avoid one more license, and get increased efficiency out of me, what do you think he'll do?

Yeah, he'll probably blacklist one of my favorite news sites in the name of efficiency.

Not without Solaris libraries, which you'd need to get from an actual Solaris system. You can't just take the binary and run it in isolation.

Likewise, you can't run Windows binaries without Windows libraries, which you'd need to get from an actual Windows system (were it not for these people). You can't just take the binary and run it in isolation.

If enough proprietary Solaris/x86 software is released, you'll surely see a Solaris-compatibility project called "SINE Is Not an Emulator".

1. If the subscription numbers reach TG's goal (meaning they're earning a healthy return on their investment), TG will give its code to WineHQ. By supporting them, I'm doing my part to get this code released to the community.
2. TransGaming has accepted the risk involved in hiring top-notch developers. This is not a trivial amount of risk. The payoff comes on the back end, not the front. By this, I mean they make it off of products and subscriptions and in an ideal world other Wine-dependant companies would sponsor/pay them to release code bits under a free license early. This contrasts with a consulting contract that guarantees money for services and software. Already, their DCOM work has lost its value in a sponsorship scheme because someone else developed it separately and released it under the Wine license. TG took the risk and ate the cost and their programmer still got paid.
3. TG gets results. In just a couple of months, they've advanced WineX to support DirectX 8. Earlier today, they put out a press release announcing support for Max Payne. For $5, you can get a copy of WineX with copy-protection support or get it free from CVS without copy-protection under the AFPL.

Personally, I won't believe that transgaming is going to release their code until after I see it.

Check the CVS tree. A lot of code should already be in there: list archive

Actually, Wine is currently licensed under an X11-style license. What's under consideration is a switch to a copyleft license such as the GPL or LGPL. See this thread for details.

Heh, well, I hate to be the one to counter my own speculation, but it looks like Lindows is not a good candidate for speculating abuut.

Roberston contributed this, among other things, to the discusion:

http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/02 /0312.html

But I have a new question to speculate about (see the "view by thread" on that page to understand):

Who peed in Brett Glass' cereal? He seems really mad.

Actually, he seems to want protection under the LGPL to compete with the other companies using WINE: archive

I get the feeling that he is just trying to force other companies, using different business models, into his business model and get their code. It is just a little selfish.

BTW, TransGaming, one company he complains about not sharing their code, has given a lot of code to WINE: archive

Actually, he seems to want protection under the LGPL to compete with the other companies using WINE: archive

I get the feeling that he is just trying to force other companies, using different business models, into his business model and get their code. It is just a little selfish.

BTW, TransGaming, one company he complains about not sharing their code, has given a lot of code to WINE: archive

http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/02 /0129.html

This is from a person who has made money developing wine-related stuff but thinks he won't be able to under the xGPL scheme. You have to (well, you should) ask whether shutting out this kind of development is good for the project.

freeDOS, yes, is GPL'd and aims to be MS-DOS compatible. freeDOS can be run inside Linux and BSD Unix using either BOCHS or DOSEMU. BOCHS offers more complexity and emulation of x86 platforms ontop of any computer platform, but is slower than DOSEMU. DOSEMU offers better performance, but is only available on x86 at the moment.

Q. Why is freeDOS compatible with specifically MS-DOS and not IBM PC-DOS, Calder Dr. DOS, or Novel DOS?
A. Much of DOS's programs were built for MS-DOS specifications. Other DOS's may offer more features and performance, but have experienced difficulties in programs quitting with an eroneous error (ie Microsoft Windows 3.xx, etc., etc.). For compatability reasons, freeDOS must remain closely indistinguishable from MS-DOS.

Q. Can I play "my popular DOS game" in freeDOS?
A. Yes, yes, all x86 DOS games will run. Actually, anything that is limited to text mode and SVGA will run. For example: The games I have run perfectly in DosEMU are Duke Nukem 3D /with TCP/IP multiplayer(and those darned fake Duke Nukems), Darklands, Rise of the Triad /with TCP/IP multiplayer, megapede, Dirty Harry, and nipples.

Q. What kind of performance should I expect in freeDOS when in BOCHS? Or DosEmu?
A. Bochs is slow only because it is a true emulator; mimicking everying in an X86 computer starting from the dirt on up to the NE2000 NIC and SB16 soundcard. BOCHS can be used on any platform; which includes, but is not limited to Sparc, Alpha, MIPS, X86, PPC, and any others I forgot to mention. BOCHS requires DOS drivers to be loaded in freeDOS: ATAPI IDE CDROM, SoundBlaster 16, NE2000, TCP/IP, IPX, etc. DosEMU takes more of a Wine approach to running a DOS. Both BOCHS and DosEMU are not limited to freeDOS and can run any DOS in existance, but they go by it differently wherease DosEMU runs specifically anything in DOS and BOCHS can run Linux, freeBSD, BeOS, and any other x86 operating system. DosEMU translates DOS code onto the host computer and the DOS environment may interact with the environment of the host operating system. DosEMU realistically is the package that will give you the most security problems and the most performance. BOCHS is more correct, but lacking in performance; like comparing a sinking rock(BOCHS) to a balloon floating away.

Q. Are there any security risks of using freeDOS and if any, how do I optimize security in freeDOS?
A. Just as DOS operating systems before freeDOS, a computer using freeDOS will be susceptible to all virii that ever existed in the DOS world. Once again, many of those virus updates and news flashes apply to you. freeDOS brings users back into the cold, insecure world of Microsoft software once again. Yes, you can install anti-virus software within your freeDOS "session", but it is likely you may have to search for a DOS-based Anti-Virus softwar package. Most Anti-Virus software is Microsoft Windows based, so you might be forced to use an older Anti-Virus package; such as Dr. Solomon's, Nortan Anti-Virus for DOS/Win311, or whatever that is old(pre-1999)...

Q. My name is Klerck, I eat dog poop, and I clean Bill Gate's Swimming Pool; where can I download a freeware Anti-Virus package or possibly where can I download Macafee for free?
A. The only *freeware* Anti-Virus software released was from any given company that offered support for removing a specific virus from an already-infected computer. Your best chance is to look for an older DOS-based anti-virus package on an auction website or computer software discount center. You'll have better chances portscanning for anti-virus software in th 10.x.x.x subnet than anywhere else. It is verry likely that older Anti-Virus software will not screen today's virii, but at least it can screen virii that wanders through old DOS software that still tends to make its rounds in older computers, software, and floppy disks. In essence, MS-DOS and all later Microsoft Operating systems are too indistinguishable from virii. Why bother postpone the inevitable? If you don't like having to use Anti-Virus software then I suggest you clench your fist and petition the company of whose DOS software you still use and want to be ported to a more secure operating system such as Linux and freeBSD. That is the only solution against virii, move on like Microsoft wanted you to(I say move on to Unix).

Q.Why is everyone saying Linux is a communitst operating system?
A. Linux is not a communist operating system. Linux's strengths are in running it's applications in a secure environment. It is an operating system available to anyone for free or buys from a "distribution." MICROSOFT makes everyone pay the same $130.00 to "rent" their operating system, tells people where they may and may not use their operating system, attempts to stifle and become incompatible with competition, and forces computer resellers to preinstall their operating system or risk losing the Microsoft-approved sticker. Linux gives you freedom of use of its operating system, starts you off with many good and fun free programs, has a vastly growing list of commercial software available, and backs-up this claim with the GNU Public License. Microsoft is the communist operating system; Microsoft cracks the whip on you and threaten you with financial destruction if you do not comply to their demands. Linux is liberty.

The screenshots look impressive. It would be cool if I could play that on my platform. And however I realize, that I belong to the minority of gamers (which is good, like Mark Twain has already said, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."), I still think that when they would wisely program this game for many different gaming platforms and few desktop ones, it'd be a piece of cake to release other version. But I'm affraid that they would prefer us to use other options, unfortunately...

Oh, well, I gues I'll just have to wait for Mason, or Warewolf, or Sands of Syllus, or Archipelago, or Catacombs, or Belchfire, or Acid Tempest, or Phoenix...

Wine has been considerring changing licenses anyways. There was a slashdot article about it.

Here is the email.

I've been playing Starcraft for over two years under Wine. You should try it out.

I did this once on my network. Within two days, my /var filled up with logs from all the Windows machines on the network. They were trying to download http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ident.cab every 30 seconds constantly. No Windows Update feature had been activated on any of the machines. This ident.cab file, when extracted, contains a single text file with some interesting information in it. Microsoft is already doing stuff behind our backs. Unfortunately I've not been able to rid myself of the need for Windows-only software yet, but hopefully my employer, or some other group will be able to change that.

Isn't it currently under a MIT-style (or similar) license? Various people in this discussion have claimed that it's moving from GPL to LGPL, but this sure doesn't look like the GPL to me.

I thought that they knew what the ramifications of the license they chose were, but apparently I was wrong; the authors didn't really want their code available under the conditions that they had set forth. I prefer MIT to GPL or LGPL, but it's their business to choose a license that gives them the protection they want. (From which you can see that I'm rather opposed to RMS' "all your license are belong to me" world as well.)

Of course, since the code has been released under the current license, Lindows/Transgaming/whoever we're talking about is still free to use the current codebase to do what they want, right? The new license will only come into play if they want to use newer versions of wine, as far as I understand things.

after reading the email and then finding the wine license it makes a lot of sense to me why they would want to switch to LGPL. As someone who works with computers and has seen the myriad of license and contractual negotiations that are caused by corporate use of software, i've always wondered how free or open software would survive, and always had thought the apache and lgpl licence schemes gave the most advantage to software companies in promoting/using said software while still making a dollar with their enhancements.
No matter what we want, if there is a company behind a product, it needs to make money.

Here is a fractal decoder license.

I can't see why a fellow could in his right mind accept this license. It prohibits installation on SMP machines: "has one Intel 386, 486 or Pentium processor, Motorola 68036 or 68040 processor or IBM Power PC processor." Note: That's "68036" (nonexistent), not 68030, and not Motorola PowerPC (such as some PPC G4). It prohibits installation on dual-boot machines or on WINE: "operates only the Microsoft DOS and Windows operating system or the Macintosh operating system." It prohibits installation on machines whose primary keyboard is a wireless keyboard: "contains a keyboard (not an infrared remote)." It prohibits installation on machines that do not have a printer attached: "is able to produce printed output on a local printer." It prohibits installation on machines that have even one Windows share on them: "does not act as a server on any network."

I'd really like to see this take off, and not just because my dad bought Corel stock. I went to find how to contribute to WINE, and they have this to say. If you haven't yet started the kernel hacking, then take up this project. Give them your time.

Copyright (c) 1993-2000 the Wine project authors (see the file AUTHORS for a complete list)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

You know, even if the source code isn't released, Total Annihilation runs damn near perfectly under current WINE vintages.

I love this game, and I'm extremely glad I can run it in X. If you've never played it (and you run Linux), head to Electronics Boutique. You can find it on the shelf for about $4.99 last time I saw it. Then download, compile, and configure WINE, run TA setup, and voila! Runs fantastic.

The current WWN is convering the progress for some new testing tools for Wine..
But what if Lindows.com already HAD those tools? They could have fixed those regressions already, and boom, you have a 'more complete' Wine.

I don't think LindowsOS running Win32 apps is all that impossible. All the parts are already there, they're just not all working at the same time.

1. They succeed. We are all morons because they did in a few months what we (open source developers) couldn't do in ten years.

Note that Lindows can build on that ten years of open source development in WINE. It's not GPL -- it's an X11 type license.

From the wine-devel mailing list: "We switched from the BSD license to the X11 license on 2000/4/24 to enable commercial companies to be able to include WINE into their products."

The X11 license lets them use WINE without even displaying a copyright message like a BSD license would require.

Ian

Certainly TransGaming will see this as a very important game to support. With TransGamings current patch Wine can run some of the very latest games and development appears to be moving foward rapidly.

Support Wine by developing, testing or bug reporting.

Certainly TransGaming will see this as a very important game to support. With TransGamings current patch Wine can run some of the very latest games and development appears to be moving foward rapidly.

Support Wine by developing, testing or bug reporting.

Use Wine then.

If you're not having any luck finding replacements, have you tried using Macromedia Freehand or Quark XPress under WINE? Many of the applications tested under WINE still seem to be only partially functional. But if you're desperate, and you can't find direct replacements, maybe it's worth try.

I have a better idea. Make them contract the work out to Codeweavers. You know, WINE, the Windows re-implementation project?

For those of you who know the difference between QT and Quicktime, take heed! There is hope! I've successfully played some Quicktime movies using WINE. Everybody knows the Crossover plugin from CodeWeavers. I've also had some very good results with the CodeWeavers version of Wine.

Unfortunately some aspects of the UI don't work but the movies play nicely. I can't wait until TransGaming's WineX or stock Wine runs Quicktime movies as good as mplayer plays .avi files under my favourite OS!

Does anyone know exactly how crosspollination between these projects work? I would say that besides GNU and Linux, Wine has the potential to be the most useful piece of code ever created.

Sure I may not have root when the macro runs, but it can still damage my stuff and proliferate.

unless maybe while on a LSD type trip Codeweavers ports Wine to Solaras x86.

The "about" page on the Wine Web site says Wine "works on most popular Intel Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris."

Wine is tighed as tightly to x86 as Windows is.

Well, that depends on the part of Wine you're talking about. As the "about" page says:

Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing unmodified Windows 3.1/95/NT binaries to run under Intel Unixes.

The program loader part - which is what CrossOver uses - is tied to x86 (I guess if somebody were really ambitious they could try to make it run MIPS, PowerPC, or Alpha Windows NT binaries - and at some point somebody might do that for IA-64 - but there are a lot fewer non-x86 Windows binaries than x86 Windows binaries, so there's probably not going to be much effort devoted to that soon). So you probably aren't going to see CrossOver for Solaris/SPARC; Solaris/x86 might be possible, but there's probably not much effort going to be devoted to that, either.

(Well, I suppose somebody could try gluing an x86 interpreter, or x86-binary-to-native-binary translator, to Wine, to make a version to run x86 binaries on non-x86 UNIXes, along the lines of Sun's WABI. I don't know whether anybody's thinking about that, however.)

The Winelib library, however, does, I think, work on non-x86 platforms, letting somebody who has source to a Windows application - that "somebody" might be the developer; the idea is, I think, that this can be used for closed-source applications, which I suspect is why WINE isn't GPLed or LGPLed - port it to UNIX.

One of the services that Codeweavers offers is assistance in porting Windows applications to Linux; they speak of "native versions", so this may involve using Winelib.

I purchased Crossover several weeks ago and have been completely satisfied. Quicktime works great. Being able to watch the Fellowship of the Ring trailer on Linux is great! Shockwave works well for many sites. (In particular, Shockwave plugins for stuff like 3D has problems.) Codeweaver's tech support mailing list is great, the developers reply quickly and are very helpful.

While I would prefer that Crossover be free software, at least Codeweavers is contributing most of their improvements back to the main Wine project. Pretty much only the Crossover plugin itself is proprietary software. Buying Crossover is a great way to support the development of Wine and get Quicktime support on Linux right now.

You can use a standard telnet to connect, although it loses a lot of the 5250 functionality.

There is an open source 5250 telnet client

X3270 is a telnet client for mainframes but some people use it for AS/400

Try some of the java telnet packages. Search on www.google.com for +java +telnet +5250.

As a last resort Wine might be able to run your current software, but I doubt it.

Of course, it would be cool to port the AS/400 apps to Linux :-)