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BTW, I just checked and Magicka is rated gold in the Wine AppDB, so it does work.

Some screenies to prove it

Yeah, maybe I'll give that a try. I am not optimistic about the performance, but it doesn't hurt to try. If it works I'll be pretty happy.

Wine was a no go.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=33392&iTestingId=93818

Have you considered trying AoE out on Wine? It may not work, but it's worth a shot isn't it?
Age of Empires
Age of Empires II
Age of Empires III

Have you considered trying AoE out on Wine? It may not work, but it's worth a shot isn't it?
Age of Empires
Age of Empires II
Age of Empires III

Have you considered trying AoE out on Wine? It may not work, but it's worth a shot isn't it?
Age of Empires
Age of Empires II
Age of Empires III

There are, of course, lots of older games that do not run on Linux

Indeed. Very good point.

For the older titles, please give GOG a look. They are wonderful publisher of older and some newer titles without DRM. They have released many old titles with Linux support. Perhaps your favourite titles have Linux port there.

https://www.gog.com/

Of course that means purchasing the game you already bought before again...

Finally there is WINE. That is the absolute last resort as using it is not user-friendly at all! I recommend you try Play On Linux. If there is an install script for your game, it will just set everything up for you quite smoothly.

Barring all those options, sorry: Looks like you will either need to find a way to block those mandatory Windows updates or embrace Windows 10.

Have you tried running it on Linux with Wine? It is apparently listed as "gold" level functionality, so it should run well after minor tweaks in the beginning. See the winehq entry.

I will never again use Windows - simply waiting on the system to die on me and moving to Linux [if there is an option to run my beloved very old windows games like Alpha Centauri that I am done] .

Alpha Centauri is rated silver in AppDB. Load Xubuntu on a USB stick, sudo apt-get install wine, and see what you can run.

Wine Is Not an Emulator!

https://www.winehq.org/ You're welcome

If so, then it's a total non-starter period.

Last time I tried wine on OS X was 3 or 4 years ago, and it wanted me to install X11, and I said screw this, I'll just run Windows in parallels.

If you're not even going to make an attempt at writing a normal native app on OS X, then seriously, don't even bother, all you're doing is embarrassing yourselves and pissing off users by giving the false impression you've actually spent more than 5 seconds in OS X.

I'd say maybe you should spend 5 seconds googling yourself ... There has been a native Mac driver since Wine 1.6: https://www.winehq.org/announc...

I hadn't used Wine in a while either but installed Fallout 2 last night and played without X11/XQuartz. I just had to enable the mac driver as I don't think it's on by default.

WINdows Emulator

Nope. Wine isn't an emulator, it's a Windows compatibility layer.

As https://www.winehq.org/about/ puts it: "Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop."

Uhhh, no:

Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD.

About WINE

On the other hand, every ARM-based device I have (about 8 now) is a pleasure to use.

Say I have a few Windows applications that are free software, something like Modplug Tracker or FamiTracker. Has anyone had success at recompiling Windows applications with Winelib so that they'll run on ARM Linux boxes?

Civ4 doesn't run on Linux

AppDB says otherwise. It's rated Platinum as of May 2015.

I'd try Civ 5 - since they've splintered Christianity into 3

Did they also split Islam into 2 (Gummi and LaBeouf)? Because I can think of a lot more than 3 divisions of Christendom: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter Day Saints, etc.

and another empty threat. you'll be on windows 10 in a few years, you'll see.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaa!

And sometimes it's just an empty threat. Three reasons I can't switch, I got plenty more. Or rather, I did use Linux as my primary desktop like 2007-2010, it worked more or less but I always needed a gaming box so consolidating some hardware I decided to just run Windows 7. I hoped that by now it'd reach more of the mainstream but no, from July 2008 to August 2015 it's gone from 0.84% to 1.5% desktop market share. Steam got less than 1% Linux users. Those who think they see a shift in the market towards Linux are deluding themselves. Most people who run Windows today will run Windows 5 years from now and with Win7 running out of support most people will upgrade then, if not now.

and another empty threat. you'll be on windows 10 in a few years, you'll see.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaa!

And sometimes it's just an empty threat. Three reasons I can't switch, I got plenty more. Or rather, I did use Linux as my primary desktop like 2007-2010, it worked more or less but I always needed a gaming box so consolidating some hardware I decided to just run Windows 7. I hoped that by now it'd reach more of the mainstream but no, from July 2008 to August 2015 it's gone from 0.84% to 1.5% desktop market share. Steam got less than 1% Linux users. Those who think they see a shift in the market towards Linux are deluding themselves. Most people who run Windows today will run Windows 5 years from now and with Win7 running out of support most people will upgrade then, if not now.

and another empty threat. you'll be on windows 10 in a few years, you'll see.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaa!

And sometimes it's just an empty threat. Three reasons I can't switch, I got plenty more. Or rather, I did use Linux as my primary desktop like 2007-2010, it worked more or less but I always needed a gaming box so consolidating some hardware I decided to just run Windows 7. I hoped that by now it'd reach more of the mainstream but no, from July 2008 to August 2015 it's gone from 0.84% to 1.5% desktop market share. Steam got less than 1% Linux users. Those who think they see a shift in the market towards Linux are deluding themselves. Most people who run Windows today will run Windows 5 years from now and with Win7 running out of support most people will upgrade then, if not now.

Agreed. I can't move my wife to Linux simply because she's an accountant and needs access to Quicken/QuickBooks and others tools (MS Excel) that are pretty much industry standard for her. It would be great to have those all ported to Linux, but you'll have to convince a lot of corporate oriented software development houses (f.e Intuit) to do so. It's a big chicken-vs-egg issue - corporates won't move over unless there's software and the software devs won't make the software without the corporates.

Note that recent versions of Quicken should be quite usable on CrossOver and maybe Wine too. Same thing for Excel 2010 or older. Unfortunately it's not the case of QuickBooks :-(

Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.

Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.

Just something to keep in mind: SolidWorks 2014 seems to work in Wine and/or CrossOver. Whenever OpenGL is involved this can depend a lot on your graphics card and driver. Word 2010 or older should definitely work just fine.

SW works under Wine? You know that's bullshit, don't you?

See SolidWorks 2012 (the one that has GOLD compatibility with Wine):
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec...

Let me quote:

What works
Installer (partially), see notes

What does not
Creating a new file (File -> New.

So there you have it - the most Wine-compatible version of SW can't even be used to start working.

Ironically, using Wine in Linux causes Office programs to run faster and more stable.

Download it here:
https://www.winehq.org/

Well, in all seriousness, you could run it under Wine. Emphasis on could.

You can download it here - but it works only on Linux not Windows: https://www.winehq.org/

They also built a tool

That's the problem. A lot of new programmers nowadays assume that if it's going to be a problem, some tool / IDE component / runtime checker / compiler error / etc. will catch it and not allow it to happen, or prevent the program from building at all automagicly.

Hell, I was in a Java II class about a year ago and one of the smartest students in the room asked about why their program was not working. (NULL pointer exception.) When I explained to him he needed to check for a NULL in an array (and allocate the object if found) before attempting to use it, he said: "Well if it's important, then the instructor will explain it." The only problem was that the instructor WAS trying to explain it, multiple times, and having no luck.

2) write document warning people, who ignored history..., of the dangers!!

Even worse is the fact that when the documentation DOES exist, it's rarely used. I remember a wine bug on Civilization 5 that turned out to be a bug in the game. Why? because the game was dependent on the fact that an NTFS filesystem would store it's directory listings alphabetically, without doing any checking to ensure the returned directory listing was alphabetized. The programmers assumed the OS was alphabetizing the list, but the TechNet docs say:

"The FindFirstFile function opens a search handle and returns information about the first file that the file system finds with a name that matches the specified pattern. This may or may not be the first file or directory that appears in a directory-listing application (such as the dir command) when given the same file name string pattern. This is because FindFirstFile does no sorting of the search results. For additional information, see FindNextFile."

Emphasis mine.

We don't even have the professionals reading the documentation of something so basic, and the tools are not going to detect this either. So that document warning of the dangers, is effectively useless. Like most history books :P
The reason I bring this up is to show it's not just a student problem, but rather a problem that affects the entire industry.

The takeaway? Having all of these tools is nice, but they should not be used as a crutch. Programmers should have enough knowledge about their chosen language to be able to use it relatively safely without being over-reliant on automated checking tools. Unfortunately, too many programmers nowadays out right depend on them being there, and have no idea what to do when they encounter something the automatic tools don't handle for them. Most of them barely know that the documentation even exists, and will only look at it as a last resort. Then you give them something that can be dangerous if misused, and you're surprised that shit hits the fan? You may as well give a three-year-old the keys to your car and let them out on the interstate, you'll get the same level of BS, and even worse consequences.

This problem can be fixed, but it requires that programmers take on MORE responsibility for their code. Not less by giving it to automagic tools that do things for them. (They need to be able to fail.)

Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, but depending on what version you want to run, Photoshop runs quite well on Linux under WINE depending on what version you need to use, including CS6 and Creative Cloud versions. If you require support, Code Weavers packages a popular and easy-to-use version of WINE with varying levels of technical support available for purchase. (No affiliation with Code Weavers, just a happy customer.)

If you want to get fancy (i.e. complicated), you can probably set up some sort of application server that will allow you to limit the number of Photoshop licenses you need to purchase, but that's a bit out of scope for a simple Slashdot comment. :)

- Dave

Yes.

Wouldn't [verification of Windows system files in an anti-cheating service for online video games] break every time a Windows Update comes through?

I imagine that such an anti-cheating service will switch to blacklist behavior on Patch Tuesday until the majority have provided the correct hashes of updated files to the anti-cheating service provider.

I haven't heard of this behavior before.

I've read reports of Punkbuster and Games for Windows Live applying something like this. From this post:

Wine could fully implement the Windows API - but how it return the same hashs, etc. for operating system files?? So it will **never** fully support such products as GFWL, Punkbuster, etc. (that can use low-level access to files to verify that the OS is "genuine").

I make part of my living as a photographer, and the Adobe tools don't work on Linux (or Android) yet.

Might want to check out Wine, looks like the support for Photoshop is really good.

People complained about the playschool look of XP and hated all the chrome. Those same users swore by XP after Vista came out, and will adapt to metro the same.

Guilty as charged, eventually I had to move off 2k for XP. Skipped Vista (went on a Linux hiatus), got 7, skipping 8.x but Win10 looks like the next usable version. Until either WINE is just as good as the real thing or most games are cross-platform I'll probably be stuck with a box with a semi-recent version of Windows. Currently the WINE rating of the game I play the most is garbage.

I personally prefer to use cross-platform software. I prefer software that runs about the same regardless of the platform I'm using it on, and I prefer to have the option to use any supported platform to run the software.

can you please do me a favour and make those thoughts known on the following wine bugreport? http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bu...

  the reason i ask is because there is critical functionality in wine that should never have been allowed to go so long without being implemented, and it's Named Pipes "Message Mode". the problem with message-mode is that there really is no good POSIX equivalent, and AJ - the paid-up employee - is in such a dominant and abusive position of authority that nobody may challenge his dictatorship. the only option left to implement anything remotely resembling message-mode under the extreme and fascist technically-tight conditions dictated by AJ is a non-portable hack using a little-known feature of TCP sockets that is *only* implemented in the linux kernel.

i mention this in the context of what you say to illustrate that the problem you highlight is not just restricted to one piece of software (systemd), but is a common problem across many of the critical pieces of software that we are using today. and the worst part is that *in each case* it is extremely difficult to gain sufficient technical expertise in order to engage with these people.... but even if you *do* have the technical expertise they often are so entrenched in their day-to-day mindset as absolute... "gods of their world" that even a reasonable and rational argument is completely ignored.

the long and short of it is that GNU/Linux software is getting out of hand, and is becoming so complex as well as so prevalent that the dominance and arrogance of just one person or company can have massive detrimental consequences for a *lot* of people. i'm really not sure what can be done about this, if anything.

...hmmm... the WINE website seems to disagree with you:
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#hea...

The way they describe it:

"Wine is not just an emulator" is more accurate.

I'm dealing with WINE daily as my kid finds more games he wants to work. The fact that there's a virtual "Bottle" that's the Windows file system... and the DLLs needed for web content and such get opened in wrappers... that's either an emulator, or close enough for the distinction to only matter to annoying Neckbeards.

It seems that WINE is an emulator that has a whole bunch of tools that make using the emulator a hell of a lot easier than it otherwise would be.

https://www.winehq.org/

Take a look at appdb to see how many of the games you play under Windows (which don't have explicit Linux support) will actually work via WINE. You might be surprised - it's not all of them, but these days they work more often than not.

Umm, I do believe there is expirimental ARM support, for ARM Windows binaries (windows CE and windows RT) http://wiki.winehq.org/ARM You really need to read more carefully.

But yes the idea is to be a translation or compatibility layer to expose windows API's to windows PE's.

I think the idea behind the it's a compatibility-layer not an emulator thing is to emphasise that it doesn't emulate the underlying CPU architecture.

Want to use Wine to run Windows programs on Linux-on-ARM (MIPS/PowerPC etc)? That's beyond the scope of the Wine project.

Oracle gave a free license for J2SE, whereas Android and mobile devices use J2ME (which costs $$$ and is the money-maker side of Java - Oracle gives squat about J2SE or J2EE because they aren't profit centers).

Android and mobiles devices use Dalvik. The only thing that is Java related is the syntax which goes into the compiler, the stuff that comes out the other side of the compilation process is not Java bytecode and is not compatible with the Java runtime.

And it's really a patent license - that as long as your implementation is J2SE compatible, you're good.

You cannot file a patent for the single line of code "int printf(const char *, ...);", the API is literally a statement of a problem in the absence of the solution. The solution is the implementation of the code inside the functions which is the only part that is patentable.

Of course, if it's really about whether APIs can be copyrighted, this can have far-reach decisions, because it places a bunch of GPL'd stuff on the line. E.g., in the Linux kernel, there are a bunch of utility functions that are exported to GPL-only kernel modules (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). If copyright doesn't apply, then GPL protections can't apply either (since GPL requires copyright in order to function - the GPL grants you rights if you agree to terms, if you don't agree, you agree to standard copyright). And the kernel devs have looked down on proprietary drivers deliberately working around limitations to call those functions.

You fail. That is the opposite way around: all proprietary code is banned from touching the kernel at all by default; they have exceptions to the GPL which permits certain functions to be used without invoking the GPL's requirements. Those protections are based on the derivative works rule and applies because the finished binary is formed by combining actual code from the kernel. This does create a limitation which nVidia exploits with their module, i.e. if you build it on the end user machine and never copy it to a different computer then the GPL doesn't matter since it only controls distribution. Of course, if APIs being copyrighted is possible then this whole discussion is moot since Linux implements the POSIX API which would be wholly owned by AT&T (via Bell Labs) so Linux would be pretty dead.

GPL'd libraries are fine - since the library implementation is GPL'd. But it also means that someone else can use the same APIs and make a non-GPL'd version of the library for proprietary code, like say a non-free version of readline.

And this would be a problem why? They did the work, it's their right to do whatever they want with it.
Have you heard of Wine, an independent implementation of the Win32 API on top of Unix? Have you perhaps heard of Winsock, the Windows TCP/IP library that is used for all network access on Windows, the one which is a straight copy of the original API created by the BSD developers?

Also, from the README of 0.4.0:

Grab a copy of Windows sol.exe (Solitaire) and run it with the command:

        wine sol.exe

Have a nice game of solitaire, but be careful. Emulation isn't perfect.
So, occassionally it will crash.

"WinExec: accept Unix commands, use Wine emulator."

Versions 0.0.2 and 0.0.1:

A handful of basic Windows functions are now emulated.

You're a fucking idiot. Try reading the logs before you spout off, grasshoppa.

"WinExec: accept Unix commands, use Wine emulator."

Versions 0.0.2 and 0.0.1:

A handful of basic Windows functions are now emulated.

You're a fucking idiot. Try reading the logs before you spout off, grasshoppa.

> This allows wine to run on exotic hardware. (Well, at least ARMv7)

Except that it doesn't. Do check the compatibility ratings at https://appdb.winehq.org/, and select for the word "garbage". Sadly enough, even the compatibility site itself is quite horrible. Like maintaining Wine itself, it requires manual drilling down into individual components to get any useful information about them.

Photoshop mostly runs on Linux. There used to be a donation page to get Wine developers to focus on certain apps, but I can't find it. Seems they are mostly interested in making sure games work correctly......

I've double checked the reviews, especially for Quicken. They match what I remember: namely inconsistent compatibility even after performing recommended manual registry entries and cleanup applications that are not part of Wine or Quicken itself. It's listed at https://appdb.winehq.org/objec....

I'm afraid that Wine remains an unusable option in a business, scientific, or personal environment where basic software _must_ work without frequent manual debugging.

How as this post a troll? My statement was factual, helpful, based on first-hand experience, (I love that game) and in no way soliciting response. Looks like someone out there has mod points and a chip on their shoulder.

by the end of next decade they are building a Linux distro. The trick is that it will only run a version of Microsoft Office and almost nothing else.

Linux already runs Office. I have MS Office installed under Wine and it's always run fine for me.

If Office were really on Linux I think you'd see Windows practically disappear.

Either you're wrong, or people don't know that Office runs just fine under Linux. I was a bit surprised too, but I have it running under Wine & haven't had any problems with it.

Normally a Linux distribution will not run "Games for Windows" without an emulator which in my case I could not be bothered to do

Wine is not an emulator; it is a PE executable loader and an independent reimplementation of the Win32 API. This means Wine is a "Windows emulator" to the extent that Fedora is a "UNIX emulator". Or do games using the "Games for Windows Live" library have particular problems with third-party Win32 reimplementations the way games using PunkBuster do? Or to which "emulator" were you referring?

I can even run EMU games such as NES, SNES, Megadrive etc.

With the Retrode discontinued, what do you use to make ROM images of your NES, Super NES, and Mega Drive cartridges for use with your emulators?

IMHO the gamer has to make the choice of which gaming system they prefer.

And this choice has to be made on the basis of available games. A lot of especially indie games are PC-first or PC-only.

Macs are PCs.

True in the sense that Macs are general-purpose computing devices where the person who owns it controls what computing it does. True in the sense that games work once you buy, install, and reboot into a copy of Windows. But false in the sense that they are compatible out of the box with "PC games" that have deliberate anti-Wine measures.