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Wine Works Towards 1.0
Sukru Tikves writes "Today on Wine Weekly News' future issue I read from that '
The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release, but there's still some way to go, and many usability issues to clean up before even a public beta release is possible. While the wizards churn out the machine-readable source code, the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read.
'
"
Many people underestimate badly the need to run Windows apps. We're not only talking about office software here. We're talking about thousands of small utilities or custom made programs that are written for Windows to do some small task. At our company there's already several of them.
What Wine lets us do is to run those small programs and concentrate on writing the newest ones for Linux. But we won't port the old ones because it would take a lot of time which we don't have.
So before you put Wine down, remember that changing OS at work places is a huge task. Changing all those small programs on top of that is just a gigantic task and won't happen unless there's a big reason. And the difference between Linux and NT is not big enough.
I'm really sick of Hearing the open Source RMS wannabes bitching about Wine. Wine w/ its DirectX support has been doing wonders for Linux Gaming.
3 days ago I was able to get Starsige Tribes to work under linux. I have also run unreal, commandos, Carmageddon and Starcraft under linux flawlessly.
My Complaint comes in when people bitch about open source drivers Such as NVidias but dont seem to give a damn about open source Games, Atleast untill the Topic of Wine comes up. Then they bitch about Win32 and DirectX being a bad set or APIs. I'M SICK OF THE DOUBLE STANDARD. One moment its ok to have a closed game and then the next it isnt unless its linux native.
Anyone that knows jack about wine knows the biggest part isnt the emulator its WINELIB the free OPEN SOURCE win32 api for *NIX. The goal is to have a compleat working free win32 clone so any devolper could recomple the application and it WOULD BE LINUX NATIVE. You got that you RMS FREAKS, Its a API, not the goal of a EMULATOR.
Think of it like this I could port GTK to the USER and GDI componets of windows then if i compiled GNOME on windows it would be WINDOWS NATIVE.
Ok I've had my rant and relased some anger, time to watch the KARMA drop.
Isolation
not just a handle its a way of life
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Add to the list of Wine products "Project Odin" which takes it one step futher and allows you to convert the Win32 binary into an OS/2 Binary alongside emulating the program or providing the winelib interface to the OS/2 presentation manager
Had IBM done the marketing Win32's as we know it today would be a subset of OS/2.. But IBM lost its balls and lost the os market to Microsoft.
But it is interesting how this is an achievement, soon 64 big computing will be out and another 7 years later we will be emulating the win64's :)
I don't know if I'd have the willpower to stay on a project for seven years..I'd just reach a point where I'd figure it'd just be easier to dual boot...
BTW I think ygotta hand it to the Wine developers. They're catching Microsoft up. You can now get Office 97 to run, though it wobbles a lot. They've managed to close in on the moving target which is the Windows API. IBM (OS/2), Sun (WABI) and others have tried and failed. Within the forseeable future it will be possible to execute the average Win95 program under X on x86 Unix. That's really a remarkable achievement, more so as it's free.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
The latest installs are no-brainers, and Wine means that Linux will have more applications than Windows (all the Windows apps + all the pre-existing Linux apps).
.rpmorig files, causing me to have to go in and reinstitute many of the changes that I had made to get fix silly problems in their initialization routines specific to my system. By no means was it difficult, but had I been a novice, I might have been screwed.
I beg to differ. Recently, I performed both an upgrade of my Redhat 6.1 installation (to 6.2) and my Windows 98 installation (to Windows 2000). While I would consider myself to be well-skilled in the operation and installation of both, the Windows 2000 installation was by far easier. Windows 2000 easily recognized my current settings, my current programs, and my current hardware and moved everything over the new system. About the only trouble spot during the entire installation was when it detected and changed refresh rates on my monitor, causing the monitor to go blank until I turned it off and on. Redhat, on the other hand, didn't save the majority of my files, opting instead to save them as
Wine itself isn't done yet, and the timetable hasn't been established yet for when it will be. They're just now preparing to begin to get ready to be done. That's a really vague idea of where they are. That's like saying, "Hey, we're gonna get to 1.0 sometime, so let's see what we have to do to be ready for it." It's not as if we're talking about a stable beta here that just needs to be tweaked. Wine still needs some major work to be at the level where it will threaten Microsoft.
Linux advocates have a tendency to over-embellish their influence, position, and future. Even if Wine came out tomorrow, it would not be the final nail in Microsoft's coffin. The antitrust suit hasn't even been settled yet, much less made its way through the appeals process (remember AT&T? IBM?). Add to that the fact that businesses are not just going to dump their current corporate infrastructure to run something just like it on another operating system. Why not? Because it takes time to take an NT-based system administrator and convert him to a Unix-based system admin. Or, it takes time to hire. And many companies don't make those sorts of technical decisions beyond the realm of the sysadmin anyway, so is that sysadmin going to replace himself? I think not.
Wine's a good thing, and it means good things for Linux, but I don't think it's threatening Microsoft in any way.
We're getting there, though. Give it a year or two.
MSK
The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release
(my bold)
So we're still at the preliminary commencement portion of the preporatory stage, eh?
Hee hee. Sorry.
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
..the very idea of emulating Windows on Linux. Sure, there is the argument that it allows people to move over to Linux and continue to use the software they have invested in. Sure there are any number of other positive reasons to use it -but when everything is taken into consideration the final reality is that this reduces the incentive for companies to write good code that can be easily ported. Native code? Why bother..
Should credit be given to the team for their hard work and effort - absolutely! But I recall this project having it's roots in a time when Linux wasn't in a position to *demand* native applications..
They currently (via Office) support 4 fairly distinct versions of Win32: Win95/98, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000. So-called Linux fragmentation has *nothing* on these guys. Given that nearly all application software in the forseeable future is going to be supporting these same 3 platforms it makes the task of running it much easier. That in turn buys time to implement whatever trick new things get added in Win2000, Windows Millenium, etc, etc.
Even if MS suddenly started adding APIs to try and kill WINE, do you really think all the applications for Windows would follow suit? Not likely - software publishers wanna make money, and so they'll continue to run on all Win32 versions.
Does this mean I will be able to get the ILOVEYOU virus to work under Linux?
From the newsletter:
1.0 is not the end. The 1.0 release will not mean that Wine will run everything out there, maybe not even half of it. What it will mean, will be that the core, the foundation of all the functionality contained within, has finally been stabilized, and that from that point, Wine should be a robust and stable platform to implement additional functionality on top of, i.e. to implement additional MS dlls, and to port applications to Unix with Winelib.
I think what they are looking for is the famous quote: "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Rock on, guys.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
The death of Microsoft is no longer something we wish would happen. It's now a practical possibility, and may even be inevitable.
This is very timely.
As others mentioned, the Microsoft antitrust decree, scheduled to be signed by the judge tomorrow, has a big impact on this. 91 days from now, Microsoft will have to disclose their key APIs. Here's the relevant language from the latest version:
Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces that Microsoft employs to enable--
- i. Microsoft applications to interoperate with Microsoft Platform Software installed on the same Personal Computer, or
- ii. a Microsoft Middleware Product to interoperate with Windows Operating System software (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on the same Personal Computer, or
- iii. any Microsoft software installed on one computer (including but not limited to server Operating Systems and operating systems for handheld devices) to interoperate with a Windows Operating System (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on a Personal Computer.
To facilitate compliance, and monitoring of compliance, with the foregoing, Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii).c. Knowing Interference with Performance.
Microsoft shall not take any action that it knows will interfere with or degrade the performance of any non-Microsoft Middleware when interoperating with any Windows Operating System Product without notifying the supplier of such non-Microsoft Middleware in writing that Microsoft intends to take such action, Microsoft's reasons for taking the action, and any ways known to Microsoft for the supplier to avoid or reduce interference with, or the degrading of, the performance of the supplier's Middleware.
When all the dust settles, operating systems that run Win32 apps will be a commodity anybody can build, like PCs and BIOS chips.
And remember, all this takes place before any appeals.