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Google have hired Codeweavers to develop improvements for Wine specifically to enhance the performance of Photoshop.

They don't appear to be quite there yet with CS3 but all previous versions up to CS2 reportedly run well.

Actually, it doesn't quite yet ;-) http://wiki.winehq.org/CygwinSupport - it's actually one of the hard problems.

...because all I can think of now is the fact that this would probably mean there will be people working very hard to port WINE to run on Windows (7)...

i am entusiastic about wine as well, it is really working wonders in some cases - but there are also issues that i have reported several years ago that haven't progressed any (like http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5567).
also, as noted, ms does change things, replicating them all _is_ hard.

I wear two hats, so let me shamelessly plug both projects I'm on: Wine is in its fourth glorious year of the Summer of Code already ( http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode/PreviousProjects ) and each year has been fantastic. See our ideas page is at http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode Wine is going to hit 1.0 this summer, it's an exciting time to be involved. Zumastor (a project to add better snapshots and remote replication to Linux) is overjoyed to be participating in Summer of Code for the first time this year. See our ideas page at http://zumastor.org/soc.html or our home page at http://zumastor.org/ I look forward to working with y'all.

I wear two hats, so let me shamelessly plug both projects I'm on: Wine is in its fourth glorious year of the Summer of Code already ( http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode/PreviousProjects ) and each year has been fantastic. See our ideas page is at http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode Wine is going to hit 1.0 this summer, it's an exciting time to be involved. Zumastor (a project to add better snapshots and remote replication to Linux) is overjoyed to be participating in Summer of Code for the first time this year. See our ideas page at http://zumastor.org/soc.html or our home page at http://zumastor.org/ I look forward to working with y'all.

Windows may not be easy to use, but when you use it, it's only slightly more painful than removing one's own limbs with a rusty spoon... on a good day. Playing a game, for example. Windows, you put disc in, installer runs, you click "next" until your face goes blue, installer tells you that you're missing some other software package that it needs and demands that you install it (of course it can't do this itself) so recursively repeat this process a few times, once you've got everything the installer wants, you click "next" until your face goes blue again, you wait for a really long time while a few files copy, you put the next disc in, you wait for another really long time, you put the next disc in... assuming the installer eventually finishes you now need to check to see if there's any patches for your game (which there probably is) and then find, download, and install those separately, then you need to find the game in the start menu (which for some reason is organized by company name, not by program function), then if you haven't lost interest yet, you play game. Of course, if it's Vista, the game probably won't work anyways. Linux... well, if it's a native game, you install the game with your package manager, then you play it. If you're trying to play a windows game in Wine, you check the AppDB first, and if the rating is good, the experience will probably be better than it would be in Vista.

There, fixed that for you.

but only when the software is in your distro's "click and run" library.

No iTunes. No Rhapsody. No Netflix.

No games with production values to rival Pixar. Unless iD is in a charitable mood.

DRM simply enforces a license.

You don't own a GPL'd app any more than you own Bioshock.

We applaud your effort in bandaging the security holes present in Windows, but we'll still continue to criticize the actual implementation. You would've been better off gutting and reimplementing the NT kernel with security in mind at the get go and making it POSIX compatible. Then taking a queue from Apple, you could have written a compatibility layer (or adopting one, *cough*Wine*cough*).

But you need to understand your definition of old is a bit off. A 3GHz processor with 1 GB of RAM is not a typically old computer. A typical old and fast computer will more likely be in the 1 to 2GHz range with 512MB RAM. Someone running a computer under 1GHz would not be surprising either. To automatically write off old/minimal hardware as incapable of running graphic accelerated desktop is a falsehood because that is what you imply in order to make Vista to run on such hardware. One only needs to look at Compiz Fusion to realize that's untrue.

So your claim that Vista runs on minimal hardware is dependent upon your (arguably faulty) definition of what you consider minimal which includes giving up a modern GUI and settling for a "classic" one. You seem to be as disconnected with what is actually out in the install base as your management. And no, upgrading one's entire infrastructure to the latest and greatest is not a cost-effective solution (or an environmentally conscious one). There's no need for you to apologize for the fact that your personal spending budget for computer hardware is larger than your average consumer, but don't go assuming that what you buy is typical of what the average consumer buys.

Come back to me when you can get a modern version of Windows (with a usable, minimal GUI) running on a P-100. Yes that's not old hardware... that's ancient. In fact, my router has more processing power. I've done a full-fledged installation with Linux and since Haiku appears to have more flash and pizazz, I'll try switching to that when they hit a 1.0 release.

Full disclosure: this post was written on a 2.5 year old 2Ghz 1GB RAM XP box.

Well I'm not trying to dismiss your nitpick here, since I don't know enough about FrameMaker, but if it runs on Linux why do the Wine developers target it as one of the apps to get working before 1.0? http://www.winehq.org/?issue=341#Wine1.0statusupdate/. Maybe by "has run" you mean "once upon a time an obscure beta of this ran un Unix" ;)

Wine AppDB - Photoshop

That's why I use Microsoft. It just works. I find, in the end, FOSS is more expensive. To much productivity is lost because I have to spend so much time figuring out how to get something so stupid as a fucking keyboard to work on my computer. Then you have to set up your network hardware, configure programs (hopefully you can get 85% functionality out of them), and so on, and so on, and so on . . .

Calgon^H^H^H^H^H^H Microsoft . . . take me away!!

Beside the fact that when everything is working properly, and I'm not constantly trying to jury-rig some crippled functionality out of a program, it builds my employers confidence in me.

There are two ways you can look like a hero to your employer
    1) Saving them a little bit of money
    2) Keeping your system up and running smoothly, which has the added benefit of also keeping your customers happy.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of open source, but instead of FreeBSD/Linux/Unix/Solaris and all of the variants within, why don't we pool our resources and get one (1) fucking open source system that can actually compete with Microsoft? Only then will the Chinese be forced to recognize "The Year of Linux" on their calendar.

Oh yeah, this is Slashdot. I'm forgetting about that whole anit-Micros^H$oft sentiment thingy. In other words, I guess you can mod me a troll now.

There actually is a wine package for Windows, although it hasn't been updated in about two years. Also, unfortunately it's not really meant for normal wine usage.

There actually is a wine package for Windows, although it hasn't been updated in about two years. Also, unfortunately it's not really meant for normal wine usage.

/Mike

You guys bitch when it doesn't work with your old shit and if it DOES work with your old shit, you bitch because the OS is bloated and runs like shit. There's a price for compatibility and if you think you have the easy and simple solution, you're probably wrong.

Not true. Wine emulates every version of Windows from 2.0 to XP, and doesn't incur any horrible performance overhead for any of them, or at least I haven't noticed so. The only performance problems I've noticed are in file I/O access, and bitdepth conversion for old DirectDraw games which use paletted modes.

While Wine is certainly far from perfect, it does prove that support for legacy systems on a modern one doesn't mean either horrendous overhead nor cruft. So no, whatever reason Vista has for being bloated and running like shit, backwards compatibility is not it.

And I don't bitch about Vista. I'm happy that I made the right choice and switched to Linux rather than upgrading to XP. Microsoft keeps on proving the validity of that decision time after time :).

After I had a couple of old Win95-era games that refused to install on my brother's Win2k system (I haven't had Windows for nearly a decade, so I was thinking of giving them to him), I've been wondering if it might not be possible to get Wine to run on Windows. Sounds like this might be an idea that will only become more and more reasonable as time goes on. So...how about it, Wine team? Can we possibly get Wine for Windows? It could run on top of Cygwin/X. :)

http://appdb.winehq.org/browse_by_rating.php

Platinum Applications that install and run out of the box 1169
Gold Applications that work flawlessly with some DLL overrides or other settings, crack etc. 1502
Silver Applications that work excellently for 'normal use' 1066
Bronze Applications that work but have some issues, even for 'normal use' 966
Garbage Applications that don't work as intended, there should be at least one bug report if an app gets this rating 2270

maybe not 99% of windows applications but near 50, that's not bad and you have a good chance that your application will work. and those stats are getting better every day.

They are a major contributor, but they are by no means the only ones, nor did they initiate the project.

They are a major contributor, but they are by no means the only ones, nor did they initiate the project.

Oh, I dunno. Wine is already a better Windows than Vista - your old apps are actually much more likely to run properly under Wine.

Does Civ 2 run on Vista?

The only reason I still have Windows installed is because I have CS2 for some school-related projects.

Photoshop 5 through CS2 install and works pretty well on wine! Here are some tips you'll need to run it successfully:

        * You shouldn't have to copy Photoshop from Windows; just install it under Wine by running its Setup.exe. (To run a .exe under wine, you have to doubleclick it, right click and choose "Run with Wine", or run it from the commandline using the 'wine' command, depending on how your Linux distribution integrates Wine.)
        * Never use a cracked version of Photoshop.
        * Never run Wine as root.
        * Use a recent version of Wine (0.9.54 or later).
        *

            Before installing Photoshop, install the Times32 font by downloading and running http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/corefonts/times32.exe
        * The Clone tool uses the ALT key in a way that conflicts with many window managers. Here's how to fix that:
                    o Ubuntu: System / Windows / Movement Key, and pick "Super" instead of "Alt".
                    o Kubuntu: K / System Settings / Look and Feel / Windows / Movement Key, and pick "Super" instead of "Alt"
                    o Suse with Gnome: Computer / Control Center / Look and Feel / Windows / Movement Key, and pick "Super" instead of "Alt"
                    o

                        Suse with KDE: Gecko / Favorites / Configure Desktop / Desktop / Window behavior / Window Actions / "Inner Window, Titlebar & Frame" , and pick "Meta" instead of "Alt"
                    o Fedora 8 with Gnome: System / Preferences / Look and Feel / Windows
        * Some UI elements might use a too-small font. In CS2, you can fix this with Edit / Preferences / General, and change UI Font Size from Small to Medium.

Never use a cracked version of Photoshop.

CS3 is the last thing that keeps me dual-booting between Vista and Ubuntu regularly, and I presume that I'm far from the only one. The most recent release of Wine does mostly support CS2, but I'm loathe to sacrifice the niftyness of CS3. I'm thrilled to hear that some muscle is falling in behind getting Photoshop working under Wine.

I really hope they extend their efforts to the entire Creative Suite. Bridge + Photoshop = An excellent RAW photo processing work flow.

You probably meant to say "Wine all you want"...

If linux was running word, photoshop, quickbooks

If linux was running word, photoshop, quickbooks

Someday I'll move to Linux...probably when I can run the latest Civilization game on it.

I think Civilization IV already runs in Wine, or the current patches of Civ IV, at least.

Good luck with the game Don. All the people I know are now are shifting or have already shifted to Linux, with a couple going to OS X. Valve won't do Linux native but they do try and ensure their games work with WINE, which is why when I get time I will buy the Orange Box. The pleasure I get out of Linux outweighs not being able to play the occasional game, and I'm sure in a year or two WINE will be hacked enough to run Spore by which point I'll be able to pick it up for 10 bucks. If it gets good reviews I'll keep an eye out for it here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php?iCatId=2

Phillip.

It's not just for Linux.

This happened to me when my brother bought SimCity 4. He was unable to play it (on winXP) but I was playing it with Cedega from his hard drive using his hidden shares (C$, D$, etc).

I'd still advice people to get a Nintendo for gaming and let the PC do the rest. If you really want to game on the PC, Tux Games has plenty of 'em, and wine does indeed run many (mostly GL based) games, like Half-Life/counterstrike, Command & Conquer, warcraft (except 1), far cry, battlefield, guild wars, elite force (and most other quake3-based games), eve online, most GTA games and many many more.

Also, when wine supports DX10, it'll be the only way of running DX10 games under XP (or any other OS that can run wine besides vista).

But it didn't stop there. Next they were caught culling information on installed software packages when you upgraded from Win3.11 to Win95 in the now infamous Registration Wizard. Because of that act, I never once used a Win95 based OS on any personal system that I owned. Next, we have the infamous NSAKEY. I only started using NT and 2K after I found out that it is trivially easy to revoke it. I have never used IE explorer, because of the free bundling, which was done because of some petty dispute with the Netscape management.

And I have never once used XP. Once upon a time the mighty Intel said, let there be a processor ID. The people rose up and threatened to chop off their heads. When this idea died from public opinion, of course Microsoft just had to do an end around and establish a hash of hardware IDs in windows product activation. Yes I know they have said that they will do nothing with this information and not identify it with personal information. But, lets face it. Personal information was not going to be identified with Intel's processor ID either. It's the fact that it exists at all, that can give advertisers an edge to relate the ID later to personal information, using in house databases, or even overreaching government agencies doing this, that should be the concern. No I wont use XP and am frankly happy with 2K for the time being. And obviously, I don't trust Microsoft at their word.

But that is not even the end of the story. Along comes fat cat, uber-rich, big media saying, there shall be digital rights management. Microsoft didn't even question the need, before making Vista lousy with it and bundling the latest media player with the OS.

Sorry. For me, its not the perceived lack of performance of Vista. In fact I have talked with some administrators about it, and despite it being a fairly heavy memory hog, apparently Vista is an extremely stable OS. For me, its the sum total of all the evils over the years, treating their users like dirt and not ever listening to their opinions. For me they have already proven that they will never change, despite any statements to the contrary by their management.

They dug this hole for themselves and now they are going to have to lie in it.

My primary machine is an AMD 64 bit running 2K duel booted with Fedora Core 64bit. If the wine project ever gets certain various small applications working flawlessly, then the 2K partition on my computer goes away in a heartbeat and Microsoft will never grace any of my personal CPU's again.

Ob Disclaimer: Yes I know that many of you will be able to come up with more MS evils. In fact I think there is a web page out there somewhere. ;P

How many people are going to put a cracked version of XP into an emulator on a fast linux box?

Why would they need to ?

FFS.
http://www.winehq.org/

Negative a few years...

Not that you'd really want to use it.

Here you go.

Let's face facts, there is tons of software that is not on Linux that people want. How much longer is the Linux community going to ignore this fact?

WTF?

Maybe you've heard of VMWare?

Or, perhaps, Wine?

Or maybe you've noticed that software like Open Office and FireFox is cross platform, running on Win/Mac/Linux ? Toolkits such as GTK Java, Flash and QT allow for easy, straightforward cross-platform development?

Or, perhaps, that there's a whole operating system being put together utilizing all these parts?

Get your head out from under that rock! (or is it... Mom's basement?)

Look, you gave IRIX and Solaris as evidence that a Linux port of Photoshop made sense. But IRIX and Solaris versions of Photoshop flopped,

Is IRIX still in production? Last I heard SGI stopped building PCs and now concentrates on supercomputers. And what is Solaris' market share? Especially in graphics. But Adobe still makes a version of FrameMaker for Solaris, they even make an educational version. I don't know if all the open source graphics programs available for Linux can also be used on either IRIX or Solaris. However their existence as well as people paying extra for CrossOver Linux to run Photoshop indicates there is a market for Photoshop on Linux. People even jump through hoops to get PS running in WINE. Here's a Ubuntu forum on running PS CS3 in WINE.

Openoffice and AbiWord don't matter because they aren't "office." They're plenty useful, but they don't have 100% Office format compatibility, and therefore aren't good enough for Mr. Average Joe.

Same with the Adobe products, really. GIMP is still not good enough for print work, but really it all comes down to industry standard formats and applications. Go into a graphic design interview with GIMP/Inkscape experience but no Adobe experience and see where it gets you.

None of the listed applications hold a candle to the iLife apps for "just getting things done." They aren't as slick, as easy to use, or as integrated.

To complement Ash-Fox: there are commercial companies sponsoring work on Wine, sometimes just by hiring someone and telling that person to make improvements and send updates back. It's not up to Wine alone, and it may be that the sponsored code focused on games more than the Wine team did. Transgaming used to give priority to gaming, so a lot of gaming support would have come from them, before they forked in 2002. I don't know how much was written before or after.

My point is, Wine doesn't really have a focus that I can see. The compatibility database has a voting area - have you voted? If not, it's really your focus that's lacking, not Wine's.

http://appdb.winehq.org/help/?sTopic=voting

Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't

Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't

Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't

Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,

I have no idea what you or the kids at a family party might like. For the linux gaming part, Wine's AppDB or your package manager's "Games" category are good starting points. For the family aspect I'd consider playing PC games a bad idea anyways. Apart from a few notable exceptions (Yay for Serious Sam, but slaughtering kamikaze zombies with 12 year olds mightn't make their parents happy), it's one player per comp, thus boring for everybody else. Get a wii, maybe even an X-Box and have multiplayer fun.

And remember, if all else fails, there's always Wintendo to play around with ;)

No, but Linux runs Windows applications.

The question, then, is which has netter application compatibility: Wine or Windows Vista ? In my experience Wine bugs mostly cause slightly corrupted graphics, while Vista causes applications to crash randomly.

Supposedly Photoshop CS2 works well under Wine 0.9.46 or later. I usually add the WineHQ repos under Ubuntu, so I get updates from them instead of waiting for Canonical to repackage it. You should also try Krita, the KOffice image editor. Also be sure to give Gimp 2.4 a try, there have been many improvements over 2.2.

wine

but I don't know why you'd want to do that when you could use a real browser.

I agree on lots of stuff not working properly, but for many apps relatively simple workarounds exist.
For your mentioned IE problems, there's IEs4Linux. Versions 5-6 run more or less flawlessy, 7 mostly works and 1/2 sometimes do (for laughs).
FlashFXP (which I frequently use because of the lack of any decently stable native FTP client(!)) runs almost perfectly after applying a small source patch and recompiling.
Steam with all it's HL2-based apps worked out-of-the-box, IIRC. (Bought HL2 back after buying and before trying to install Windows on my shiny new metal box. Unfortunately XP got a wee bit confused by too much storage and refused to install, so I switched to Gentoo and, more recently, Ubuntu).

Many other apps will work if you put a similar amount of work into them. For anything else, I've got a legacy XP ThinkPad with Office, Civ III and that kind of stuff installed. Ironically it's the only computer having trouble accessing some SMB shares on this network.

This mail, which was linked from the summary, asks: "Why would they go to all this trouble to hide Windows Binary support?"

HTH.