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How Is Wine Doing These Days?
zigzag noted a nice article Summarizing the Wine Architecture. It has some interesting technical stuff, as well as poll results asking what Wine's priorities should be (running Office came first, followed by games. I vote games, but I'm sick of having to run Diablo2 on my crappy old laptop w/o 3D Acceleration since it's my only windows box). Anyway, not a lot there, but this is a seriously important project so take a gander.
For well over a year now Wine has had a correct, nice looking logo which you can view on www.winehq.com yet Slashdot insists on using the ugly, insulting, modified Windows logo.
I hate to get bent over something this trivial, but somebody's gotta.
-Ian, wine-developer, but probably not speaking for all of 'em.
Related: Are there any status updates on MainWin for Linux? It'd be nice to see that as an easy and well-proven method for porters.
supporting games in linux with WINE is not necessarily a good ideal to shoot for. At it's best, it's crappy windows emulation with worse performance, at it's worst, it's an excuse for game coders to say "bah - they've got wine, why code fo linux now?"
Additionally, there are a lot more games coming out for linux now than ever before - alot of the top games are now available for linux, and although i never really liked diablo, i REALLY want to see a half-life client. - GIMME MY FSCKING COUNTER-STRIKE IN LINUX DAMNIT!!!! Anyway, the place we need to be looking is just all around kick-ass compatibility/ability to use generic windows software. Office would be nice, but we do have several alternatives there. I would personally like to see programs like Mplayer and Acid or ReBirth with better support. I have, though, seen wine go from a puny little program that helped you run windows apps like minesweeper, into a powerful tool that even professional coders (like the folks at Corel) are using. The guys at wine should keep doing what they're doing and we'll see wine go exactly where it needs to go.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Wine is apparently approching a stable 1.0 release sometime in the next several months, I believe (my source is previous Wine news updates on WineHQ).
A 1.0 release won't mean everything will be complete, but it will mean tha a known set of application will work with it. The most frustrating thing about Wine is how applications may work in one version, not the next version since the code is always changing. As a result, one often has to have several versions of Wine loaded for specific applications that run well with that particular version.
MS tried to get help from SCO on POSIX support for what was going to be their next product Windows New Technologies in 1991. SCO basically told them to take a flying leap. Interesting thing, after that MS wouldn't license Word, during its early really crappy days, to them.
I'm not a programmer, but from what I have been told there is only one posix thread, or whatever, available from NT and if it crashes then you are hosed.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
A little info on WINE, it doesn't actually EMULATE. What it does do is allow for Windows executables to be loaded on the platforms that WINE is compiled under. It also feeds the applications with false information/conversions needed in order to operate under this environment. For instance, my C: drive is actually a FAT32 partition loaded under Linux. In the config file, it is /mnt/fat-c. When the program asks for the C: drive, WINE returns that mount point as if it were the C: drive. It can also pass info to my sound and networking capabilities.
.dll's and environment that Windows provides.
Interestingly, WINE just sort of started as a posting to a news group on letting Linux load Windows binaries, which it technically can with a little kernel hacking, it just won't actually RUN them if they need the
WINE may never be able to run programs quite as fast as Windows, but supposing that the Linux equivalents of the DLL's used by Windows apps are faster, it actually is theoretically possible that it could run programs FASTER. The steps are translation, not emulation.
Eh...
Why not just consider an operating system as a tool? That's what I do. If there is something that I need to do that I can only do (or more efficiently do) with Windows, then I do it with Windows. If Linux works better, then I use that. If Be did the job better, I'd use it, but so far that isn't the case.
A much better idea is to advocate genuine binary compatibility, and that's the best approach with games. Sure, Office on WINE is a great target since business software stays (relatively) static for long periods of time. It's probably a pipe dream to envision Office for Linux anyway. Of course, Office on Windows is maybe more efficient.
Maybe it's time to shed the idea of avoiding Microsoft products at any cost and consider operating systems for what they are: a tool to get a job done.
=h=
I'd like to see some commentary in WINE development about the shifting nature of the Win32 API(s), and what that has cost them in development time and effort. Clearly there must be SOME reason that WINE doesn't just run Win16 or Win32, but instead has Win31, Win95, Win98, and at least one WinNT switch values.
I know, if I'd like to see it, do it myself.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Because it works and I cant be bothered rebooting my workstation every time I need a program that I dont have for any platform but win* - Where good alternatives (with either converters available or file-compatibility) exist for linux I use those instead but wine fills up the gaps by letting me use the win* programs. It works the other way around too - if I have the main workstation booted into windows for any reason but I need access to a utility I only have under linux I'll telnet to the other linux box to do it rather than reboot it to switch OSes. After all, in windows it will crash soon enough without me going and telling it to reboot! ;)
The better wine gets the closer I can get to my ideal of never having to boot windows at all (at least on my machine - I'll still have to support it, my family still has a couple of windows users in it)
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
While the idea of playing windows games on a linux box with Wine sounds like a good idea at first, when you really think about it there are some consequences.
1. Having Wine fully handle games would just be one more reason for game developers to not bother putting out a Linux version of their games.
2. I doubt that performance under Wine would be up to the levels of the game running under Windows. While the symbolic FU to MS may be fulfilling (as in "Ha, I'm running a DirectX game on Linux!"), frame rates that don't look like flash cards are even better!
The argument can be made that this goes for Business type applications (like Office) too. While their performance would be less degraded than that of a game, it's just another exaultation of the Win32 platform. It will encourage people who were thinking of making a linux version of their program to keep it all in Win32 and then just use Wine to port it over. Still a Win32 app! And however good Wine is, it will never be as good as Win32 on Win32. That's just a fact.
A naked chick. No, naked twins.
Scratch that! Naked Triplets!
With big breasts!
But then, I recommend that as a logo for anything.
The absence or presence of people who feel a certain way shouldn't dictate what is and is not a 'noble cause'. Slavery persisted in the US and Britain for many years because there were a number of people who were anti-abolitionist. Of course, the consequences could be far more costly than your average flame war.
Actually, the animosity some feel toward Windows doesn't necessarily extend to say, Quicken. Dropping the stumblingblock of 'limited apps' by allowing access to software that users already know can only strengthen Linux's position.
I don't necessarily agree that Office should be the priority since there are other, stable alternatives with similar features/functionality. I can process words and spread all kinds of sheets on my Linux box, but need better personal finance software. Last time I tried Quicken under WINE it only worked 'sort of'. I've also tried moneydance and another (don't remember the name) package to no avail.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.