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Direct3D Applications And Wine
Vesuri writes "TransGaming Technologies has released a patch for Wine which makes it possible to run Direct3D applications under Wine. I ran 3DMark2000 and I was impressed - it really DOES work like they promised. It's not perfect but it's a really good start!"
I agree, but some game companies aren't open to porting.. I wish everyone was as good about it as id games but ppl like verant/sony are dead set against it... maybe if people would complain more rather than try to make it run under wine (not saying this is a good thing). Loki has the problem in that if the game company gave the "ok" then it's usually ok as well for wine, but for games like everquest, wine may be our only hope.. unless we speak up (might be like pissing in the wind tho)... And even then, Verant might complain about it running under linux/wine.. who knows with them... they keep the tightest leash..
Total troll question, but I'll still bite:
Now, I hope that was enough for you, but if it's not, perhaps you could alter the terms of yor challenge slightly to make it impossible for me to rise up to it?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Are you kidding? The solitaires available on Gnome at least are vastly better than the ones on Windows. The low quality of the graphics on Windows card games is always a bit of a shock to me on the rare occasions when I reboot into Windows. Plus Aisleriot has about a zillion solitaire variations beyond what's available in Windows solitaire. Built in games are one of the few areas where the common Linux desktops have a clear advantage that even diehard Windows users are willing to admit.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
BTW have you noticed that half way down the list is cowboyneal?
Time to cast your vote..........
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word!
Now what self respecting console promoting *NIX nut would be advocating BOTH EMACS AND VI!!!
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
> If this works as advertised, then I am dumping Win9x from my kid's computers and installing Linux. Since I can use
> permissions to delegate who gets to install and operate games, my task as home sysop becomes much simpler.
You can do this with Windows 2000, which I'd imagine would run DirectX games much faster and less buggier than Linux with WINE would.
Other people have already pointed out your other fallacies, so I'll stop here.
Ah, excellent! Now you Linux folks can play with Falcon's Eye, one of several spiffier-than-the-average-16x16-tiles interfaces being designed for that paragon of gaming, Nethack. ;-)
So guess what I've been playing recently...
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
All that means is that people will start using winelib when they want to port to linux. As long as winelib works well and is fast, that's all we should be worried about. Of course, what I'd really like is for all the wine developers to work on improving the geforce2 support for Xwindows... TV-out would be a major plus. :) Then all I'd need to convince my gf to use linux would be a good dvd player for linux... maybe one day I'll have time to help out with the programming :)
This is SO educational! -- Kintaro Oe
We have to decide which battle to fight. It's no good having the perfect platform with perfect apps if no one uses it. The masses won't use it until a critical mass of applications is available, and those apps won't be available until the masses can shell out the $$. The thing that Wine does is gets more people running Linux by providing those Windows apps that don't exist as Linux apps yet.
Exactly. We have to stop focussing on the current battle (Windows versus Linux) and focus on the war (Microsoft versus Open Source). Look, when the press reports on gaming sales, they're going to say:
Windows 75 percent
Mac 5 percent
Linux 10 percent
Other 10 percent
And that Linux portion may be half Wine and half native Linux.
I know we would all prefer native code, but we have to get mindshare first. Or else noone will develop for Linux, or consider doing so.
Because, face it, we all want to play The Sims - and I'd rather buy the Linux-compatible version than the Windows version, if you get my drift.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I remember NT when it first cam out. They had POSIX, OS/2 a bunch of interoperatibility stuff. They were trying to take over UNIX ans so they tried to make stuff easy. They even made a free X11R5 client.
Then, they began to win the war and promptly dropped all of that stuff.
If linux wins the war, Win32 will die.
Emulate the standard until you are the standard.
You mean like how Internet Explorer runs in Ring 0?
It's the only "application" that I have seen that can lock up a Windows 2000 computer.
(yes I have Windows 2000 installed, it locked up solid on me yesterday twice, just from scrolling a web page.)
This is not the fault of TransGaming Technologies, but their voting page has some strange games on it. Since you can suggest games, and then vote on suggested games the community as a whole gets to choose what they like. Still, I find myself wondering just who is voting?
Half-Life and its derivatives are high on the list. I agree 100%. But so are:
Unreal Tournament (ported by Loki, free download)
Quake 3 Arena Quake 3 Team Arena (The team addon will upgrade the Linux version)
Starcraft (has run under wine for some time)
I just can't see why Linux users would vote for these (I guess that they do not know that they work under Linux?)
If you like Linux and you like gaming, you should check out Linuxgames now and again. You will be surprised at what you find.
(Now someone is going to argue a point on those games, but I see it as a waste of time to fix something that is not broken. Unreal Tournament for Linux will run faster on Linux than Unreal Tournament for Windows through Wine on Linux any day.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Yes. I use the command
- wine --managed --dll commctl,comctl32=n iexplore. The interesting part is --dll commctl,comctl32=n but take a look at the docs. It works great and i can even view Java applets in IE - i use IE to test html and it runs surprisingly fast.
tried IE
Didn't you read the license for IE when you installed it?
This is another way IE is tied to the OS.Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
A troll? It just looks like the guy is expressing his opinions on the matter! Just because they don't agree with you doesn't mean they're a troll...
Do you like German cars?
Funny, that sounds like *exactly* the same philosophy that Microsoft has with regards to Java: being compatible with the rest of the world is a threat to commercial success. Best to be incompatible so people will be stuck with you.
I sure hope Linux doesn't succumb to the "you become what you hate" syndrome. I don't want people "stuck" with Linux, I want them to *like* Linux. Users and game developers alike.
Anything -- I repeat, *anything* -- that makes it easier for people to use Linux either as their first OS or as a migration target is a good thing.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
But... but... NetHack already works. Who needs anything else?
Seriously, though, Linux does have a number of games:
That being said, I do agree that Direct3D support in Wine is A Good Thing (except for the possibility that it decreases the likelyhood of true Linux ports). But don't sell Linux short.
(Random "It probably won't work, but..." thought: Running a WinCE Dreamcast game under WINE running on Linux on a Dreamcast. That'd be cool. Useless and probably impossible, but cool none-the-less.)
Perhaps but, I think it's already hard enough for Loki - the Linux game userbase is just too small. Most people either don't run Linux or, if they do, will break down and run a copy of Windows just to run games anyway. At least with Wine, there would be an increase in the userbase and as a result, more people to potentially buy Loki's software.
This is the biggest problem with the BSD license: it gives freedom, but does not require freedom in exchange, and thus cool new additions often have restrictive licenses. With the GPL everything remains under the GPL. With the BSD license, here is one license fork in Wine already, and more will follow. The Wine folks originally chose the BSD license to make it easier to link commercial applications against Wine libraries. These days we have the LGPL which makes it just as easy to link vertical applications against a GPL-ed infrastructure. These days there is really no reason to not use the GPL/LGPL combo - if you goal is to build a truly open-source project that *stays* open-source.
Your points are good ones. Here's why I think we should bother with things like Wine. 1. Windows is free with PCs ? Windows is not free with your PC. It is built into the price of your PC. At present this cost is small. PCs will get cheaper and then the relative system cost will rise. 2. Absolutely. Windows works and is heavily used. All the more reason to be able to run apps from this system on other systems. 3. At the moment games are faster on PCs running Windows, but if we look at Moore's law, in 5 years, it might be possible to run Quake inside an emulator written in Java ! (well... maybe not). 4. Windows does run things better than Wine at the moment, but it will improve with time. 5. I've been able to run some games quite nicely without any trace of Windows on my Linux box. Again this will improve with time. I think Wine is VERY useful. Cheers Parsley
When these people make their jump complete, they will buy Linux software for the platform, as a matter of course. Hence Loki will benefit.
Its a bit like the PSXII benefiting from having full PSX emulation. People will migrate because of WINE, but when they get there they will buy ported programs as a preference.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Is an Indrema with Direct X support. They could call it the IndremaX
You're a very silly man.
1. Windows is free with PCs.
:D
:)
You have Windows.
I built mine from parts. I don't have Windows.
2. Windows has a GUI that is easy to use because it has been developed in conjunction with literally millions of beta testers and focus groups.
I'll grant this one. Though I'm partial to CLI's myself. Except for games
3. Windows runs these games faster, and necessarily always will - emulation has to be slower, because there's two layers.
WINE Is Not an Emulator. It is an alternate implementation of Win32. There is not an extra layer, and if it were written well, it could be faster (not likely, though).
4. Windows runs the games easier than WINE - you don't have to compile Windows for your PC like you do with Wine (you can get pre-built builds, but they don't work as well).
Granted.
5. For WINE to work usably, you are required to have Windows on your PC (true: all those shots of Word running on Linux only happen because Linux is using the dlls and vxds)
I'm not as sure about that. I installed and ran Starcraft under WINE about a year ago, and it was playable. IIRC, I didn't have Windows on the machine at all.
It is a good start. If I could play games without having to buy a copy of Windows or waste hard drive space and my precious sanity on it, I would be quite happy. If that is what you want, cool, but I want it.
Two is not equal to three, not even for very large values of two.
All my machines were intended to be Linux machines right from the very first - so every PC I've ever bought (with the exception of the laptop that must run some specific software to make the racecar work) was specified "no Windows".
Why pay for what I don't want and will never use?
And lately, the cost of Windows has been a signifigant portion of the cost of the PC. Hardware keeps getting cheaper. Windows is the same price as it ever was. Specifying "no windows" has changed from a political statement to a real cost savings.
And as Wine approaches actual usability, soon I'll be able to have both my OS of choice _and_ still get access to the software I need. Win win win.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Wine is very simple, it simply re-implements the Windows API calls (including DirectX calls now) by mapping them onto the equivelent Unix calls and writing code to fill in the gaps. This lets you run Windows applictions on x86 machines at nearly full speed, although it is a HUGE undertaking. The Windows API is absolutly enormous, and constantly changing, and the Wine people have to implement it the same way that Windows does (as opposed to what the documentation says it does). As a result, Wine has various minor problems running almost all Windows applictions, and still won't run a fair number of applications at all.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Wrong. Windows is factored into the cost of the PC. I bought my most recent PC without Windows from a regular computer shop and saved ~AU$120.
3. Windows runs these games faster, and necessarily always will - emulation has to be slower, because there's two layers.
As others have pointed out, Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API, it should/will have the same overhead (approx) as the Windows implementation, there is no "extra layer".
4. Windows runs the games easier than WINE - you don't have to compile Windows for your PC like you do with Wine (you can get pre-built builds, but they don't work as well).
Yep, you don't have to compile Windows for each machine. But that is also a drawback. Windows is compiled to run well under ANY combination of Intel based hardware, it's not optimised for anything. If you could recompile Windows for your specific hardware believe me, most gamers would be tweeking their compiles till they got the last extra frame per second they could. In my opinion Windows is equivalent to precompiled wine binares, and these are in Beta now (finnaly out of alpha) so performace optimisations are not really setup for a general binary release, optimisations need to be set for your specific hardware and then debugged if neccessary. But once the finnal general releases of wine appear (a version one) you will still be able to get more performance out of the system by custom compiling the software for your specific needs. You don't have that option on Windows.
5. For WINE to work usably, you are required to have Windows on your PC (true: all those shots of Word running on Linux only happen because Linux is using the dlls and vxds)
You don't NEED Windows installed to run wine. The majority of the major runtime DLLs are somewhat supported. At the moment, having access to the real Windows DLLs will improve things, but that is becomming less and less important as time goes on. The goal is to be able to install and run standard Windows software, without a single piece of the official Windows OS installed. Wine will be able to install and run custom DLLs that come with other programs though.
etc.
How is that a question?
So why bother?
Why do this?
Simply put, choice. The choice of running the software you want on the platform you like. No big conspiracy, just choice.
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
---
Guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
Management Healthcare for Technology of Institute Rochester the from Owners Gay and Lesbian of Association to acronym an is "algorithm" sure I'm And
(mine bold) "Emulator an Not Is Wine" for algorithm recursive a is WINE
[/quote]
Hey, that is more confusing.
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Well, I believe the challenge was to come up with a linux application that didn't have a better windows counterpart, not programs that we run through Wine.
if( read(this) ) { you = programmer; }
Or assuming that the game is in your path, such as /usr/local/bin, you can just type the name of the game in the open xterm (or equivalent) that you already had open because the only real work you can get done on a computer requires a command line.
Or even as a faster time saver, simply type the first part of the program name and hit tab, and if its not ambiguous, it will auto-complete the name of the program.
eg:
$ solit[tab] = $ solitaire
I wouldn't doubt that they exist... but the burden of proof lies on you now, doesn't it?
if( read(this) ) { you = programmer; }
Linux native application and even games started to be ported as 100% native Linux binary.
As an ex-OS/2 users, I recall companies like Real or Corel saying their apps were running fine under Win 3.1 emulation of OS/2, but when Win32 apps started to come out, we were out of luck since those company never invested the time to port to OS/2 API when there was a market (and yes, OS/2 got a few millions of users back in 1995).
I don't think a lot of Windows users will jump with Linux because Linux runs the same applications, but without support from the developers who will only support Windows.
Also, I don't remember a lot of Linux users were happy with Corel Draw for Linux which was using Wine.
Huh? What's so hard about clicking on the K or the Foot? I'll grant you they don't have the great big arrow pointing towards them that says "Click here stupid!", but I still fail to see what is so difficult about it.
Of course, what do I know, I still prefer the old click anywhere on the desktop instead of actually dragging your cursor all the way over to the bottom left, and then only if it isn't obscured...
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
--
assert(expired(knowledge));
"Bribe us to release our new source" models are really a shareware transition right back to closed source private code ownership.
Matt
Cool. Now maybe I won't have to get another computer to play games on.
I hear what you are saying, but if you can get away with playing games at work, surely you could dual-boot a system and use Windows.
Is there a company out there that makes a Wine-like tool for using Linux apps under Windows?
As far as I know, the Battlenet networking code might under wine. The Battlenet display gets all f-d up though, so it'd be pretty hard to test. Anyhow, while they are mainly focused on DirectX (and on Direct3D specifically) TransGaming seems to have done some work on InstallShield and other non-DirectX stuff.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
But then I'm being lazy and not checking any of this so I can't say I'm any better than the people voting for this stuff.
Bleh!
I can, for instance, use the Linux Terminal Server Project's programs to easily install and run diskless clients that eliminate the need for my kids to install their own games. Also, my kids have very little patience during the install process and will arbitrarily overwrite existing library files even when prompted to select the best choices (a six-year-old is not a good sysop!).
As for going out and dumping more money on ME just to get games to run better is a non-starter. I am not going out to buy an OS that is marginally better than the one that proceeded it just to get recovery features.
And my kids have never seen an atari 2600 nor are they likely to see a Dreamcast. My world is not awash in money for every "latest and greatest" toy. They are more than likely ahead of the curve just by having their own computer in their room (albiet Pentium One generation machines).
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
... is to make viruses and VB scripts run on Linux through WINE. Once that is done, the migration of the desktop user base to Linux can begin in earnest.
Ñ'
Pretty soon, Linux may be sufficient to run games. That would be very nice, and would stop me ever having to boot back to Windows. It is the only thing stopping me from doing so right now. I own a licensed copy of VM Ware but it just doesn't do Direct3D.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Now why on earth would anyone want to do that? Please name for me one Linux application that does not have a superior Windows-based counterpart. You can't and there aren't.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Do not operate Heavy Gear under the influence of Wine!
You should check out The Linux Half-Life Page. Very good instructions on running HL under wine in OpenGL mode.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Yes, but unless you stick a pretty icon on every user's desktop by default on install they won't know it's there. Maybe I'm being cynical, but I've just seen several thousand quid spent on Photoshop for people who are doing stuff Paint could easily handle. And now that Photoshop's been bought people found out about Paint and are using it exclusively...
I've used Aisleriot and it does win, but the thing is for many users you really have to point things out to them.
I hope you are joking because if you are that was *very* well done. If not well I am in console mode quite often and do think that most servers should be headless. But I also like some sweet 3d lovin on my desktop. I'm laughing either way.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Because the Direct3d stuff isn't developed by the wine group. it's done by TransGaming. So of course it wouldn't be in the same tree.
--
Free Mac Mini
Uh, yeah, that was prolly a troll, but in the event that you WERE serious, a solution to your problem is simple: DON'T USE SAID SOFTWARE.
If someone wants to develop it, all power to them, but one of the the beauties of Linux is that you don't need to install the GUI to manage your webserver.
1. Windows is free with PCS.
Can't find my copy. All I see is a bunch of RedHat 6.2 CDs with my Dell.
You have windows
No really, I can't find it... All I see is RedHat stuff.
2. Windows has a GUI that is easy to use because it has been developed in conjunction with literally millions of beta testers and focus groups.
I find it odd that not one user in these focus groups got annoyed with the fact that they couldn't move or iconize or move a window if the application owning the window was busy. Are you really SURE they did that, I just don't see it.
3. Windows runs these games faster, and necessarily always will - emulation has to be slower, because there's two layers
WINE is a recursive algorithm for "Wine Is Not an Emulator." It's NOT an emulator. It's an implementation of Win32 libs on x86 Linux boxes. Wine can even use Windows DLLs, so it is running the same stuff.
4. Windows runs the games easier than WINE - you don't have to compile Windows for your PC like you do with Wine (you can get pre-built builds, but they don't work as well).
Uh, Wine 1.0 isn't out yet. I've only used pre-built versions, and have had good results.
5. For WINE to work usably, you are required to have Windows on your PC (true: all those shots of Word running on Linux only happen because Linux is using the dlls and vxds)
All my experiments with Wine have not involved Windows DLLs. It ran quite a number of applications and installers with no problems, and this was more than six months ago.
As for Word though, keep in mind what atrocities Word does to a system... Word reinstalls hundreds of DLLs on a Windows machine. It breaks Microsoft's own "regulations" for software installation. How is this therefore a valid example of why I shouldn't try to run Windows games on my Linux box?
---
>Okay, I know this'll instantly be modded down as >flamebait,
.dll
.vxd files to help you since you apparently
No, your standard appeal to the moderaters worked;-)
>but I just don't understand you people. You Linux
> zealots are constantly complaining about how
>horrible and unstable Windows is,
Come on. Win9x really _is_ prone to crashing. Even MS advertisment (for Win2KPro) stress that fact.
Win9x may have many merrits, but stability is not one of them. WinNT until SP3 (some say SP6a) wasn't so hot either.
> but then you turn around and try and make your
>so-called superior operating system to look and
>act as much like Windows as possible.
The reason why Linux is so stable is the kernel. Yes, win9x/WinNT has a kernel too, but not in the same leauge as Linux. The WINE project is not about "importing" the unstable Win9x kernel into Linux (thank god for that), but letting some WinXX _applications_ run under the (stable) linux kernel. These applications may suck, or not. That is not the issue.
> You even go so far as to use Microsoft's
>and
>can't figure out how to write your own drivers.
Are you trolling, or using the term "drivers" in a rather bizarre way??.
> Why don't you just save yourself the trouble,
>wipe your hard disk and install Win2K.
On my 3 servers?: Apache, Squid-proxy, Qmail, Sqwebmail, MRTG, Midgaard(CMS), Phorum, Netsaint, ProFTP, OpenSSH, Samba, BRU, XNTP, MySQL. Not to mention the Firewall (soon to be statefull) and IDS systems. No way. They serve a small site (only 4-6 gigabytes a day), but they need to be up 24 hours a day. Linux really delivers on that. And remote managment is really, really good too.
> Oh, and quit whining.
Relax. Try installing a Linux distro one day. You may like it. Even if you don't have the need for a Linux server or desktop, Linux experience will give you much insight, into how computers work.
And its fun too!
Regards
Peter H.S.
You must love Windows, then. All you have to do is type "sol". Much more efficient! (And, for the record, Win2K does tab completion too.)
This has got to be the saddest thread I've ever seen on Slashdot.
MSK
The beta "argument" still works. A beta is a beta...It does not have to work correctly. You are responsible for fixing your own problems. Just because you consider most of Linux programs as "beta" programs does not mean these programs should be a higher standard of beta. They will still have problems.
Actually, there is a grep port for Windows.
So what is the point of this technological exercise -- other that to prove that you can
The same point as masturbation. It's fun. (Although many here would probably dispute this.)
It's even good. (Although probably even more would dispute this.)
To continue the analogy to Wine, it's much to be preferred to all of the trouble from females, no blue screens, etc. (Although many here would dispute this.)
Well, maybe analogies can be carried one step too far. Ignore the third point if so inclined. Reread the first two points.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Windows 2000 has a talk program.
You can reconfigure the command line to your liking (I did with some 3rd-party free utilities).
Name me one package manager in Linux that doesn't occasionally fuck EVERYTHING up?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Hey, must be cool to play such exiting games like 3DMark2000 on your Linux box. BTW, has anyone figured out, how to win this game?
I think he was pointing out that there are fewer steps.
K/Foot -> Games -> [game]
is shorter than
Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Games -> [game].
It's only 3/5 as many steps! Imagine all the time saved...
Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
Do not anger the worm.
doh, should be http://lhl.linuxgames.com
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
If I remember correctly John Carmack said that he had asked Microsoft whether he could make a clone of the DirectX-stuff for Linux, and they had basically said that they will protect the IP in their APIs. I wonder if MS is going to put and end to this reimplementation.
well... :w ...
Ctrl-(x s)
Ctrl-s
and
Alt-f s are all quicker than Esc
Of course, one could argue that Vi saves the file faster than Emacs, Nedit, or (notepad/whatever)...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I got UO to run months ago under Wine. It didn't quite run as fast as the native version at that time, but it ran, with sound and everything. I'd be interested to see how well it runs now since much progress has been made since then.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Go to CDROM.com or download.com and search for Netlab for Windows. It does whois, traceroutes, ping, finger, portscan and several other helpful features. It's a free download.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
This aught to kill you:
One for gaming,
one for toughness,
one for boredom,
and there must be thousands for looks
Kind of cool to think the software can be just as custom. Nothings dead here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sorry for dumb question, but does it work with Starcraft?
Congrats...one of the best old-style trolls I've read on Slashdot in a long time. :) I wonder how many folks will bite...
Atleast, I sure hope this is a troll. It *is* curious that it should come from such a high user ID. But, surely with a line like "resource-hog abominations on us like KDE, Gnome and TWM" it is. Exploiting the fact that newbies probably don't know about TWM, methinks? Nice touch.
Anyone want to start betting on how many angry replies this generates?
--Lenny
DX8 breaks the DirectDraw and Direct3DSurface split paradigm. Considering, that the DX8 SDK, just got released, does anyknow know what version of DDraw, and D3D this supports? (Pet peeve: WHY must M$ yank off the old DX SDK's?!)
... is now Linux is doing the same that M$ does ... embracing. :-) (The difference of course, is not extendeding in propriertary ways, like Microsoft.)
The Good:
More games can be played under Linux. That's good.
Aside. You know what's funny
The Bad:
Hopefully this won't fuel the fire for game developers to just develop for D3D, if they don't even have to recompile to run the game under Linux.
(I'm still a little upset ot my fellow game developers for not using OpenGL. Hmm, one API, different platform, potential for more sales. But, NOOO, we must use Direct3D, and be locked into Windows. Granted its 99% of the games market, but if no-one develops games for other OS's, they can't buy games for those other OS's.)
The Ugly:
It sucks that we need "hacks" like this, to play the more popular games under something not Windows.
Still a cool util.
--
A similar question was asked about emulation on the Mac - many were afraid that Windows emulation and Playstation emulation would keep games from being ported. In the end, it didn't make a difference - an increasing number of games are being ported to the Mac, despite emulation products.
Setting aside the probability that emulation will usually be slower than a native port, people will still favor native applications because they'll be easier to work with. The interface will be more like what they're used to on their native platform, and they won't have to do anything special to run the native software. Emulation is good for accessing applications and games you can't normally use on your system, but won't be favored by most users. Native ports are in no danger of losing significant sales to emulators.
Naked.
The DLLs are 0 byte files. They're just there to make windows apps happy.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Transgaming appears to have some different plans as far as how they're going to be recompensed for their development efforts. Some of their code is available, some is not, and according to their web site they're going to start selling subscriptions (at $5/month) to allow people to vote on which games they try to get working first. It's a novel idea, I hope they have some success with it. The screenshots looked great!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Sure, but that's still an extra keystroke ;-)
Not that there haven't been enough wasted keystrokes in Vi/Emacs flamewars to make up for it 8^)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
To be honest with you, I would prefer Linux for a web/file server, but the article does not discuss Linux for this purpose, the point of the article was to discuss the merits of Linux, with a focus on WINE, as a desktop/gaming system. One day, Linux may become a valid option for such a system, but unless you *really* like solitare and limited functionality, that day is a few years off at best.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Both 2.0 and 3.0 had solitaire, but only via the add-on Microsoft Games package.
.sig: Now legally binding!
If I'm not mistaken, which i could very easily be, isn't the purpose of WINE to help windows developers make a transition from windows to linux via WineLib?
So maybe with better support for DirectX in wine, game developpers might use the winelib to make it more portable to linux?
-shrug- i dunnno, just a thought.
my $.05
Except, whereas MSFT uses Embrace and Extend(TM), we use Embrace and Assimilate(GPL)
That is a very interesting point. Very true.
The idea at hand is that Linux Gaming will suffer if 'we' make it easy to run DX games on Linux... but just to Fsck w/ Microsoft's 'shit' why cant our developers do a little 'extending' ourselves and add some 'commonly missing' API or just a little extending... if 'we' 'openly' do that whats to say 'we' cant get some DX developer interest and try tickling their interest.
I know its 'evil' and a trait of The Devil(Tm) but why not do it, make it very well know, document it, and propose that M$ 'open'the DX API to allow cross platform development/adoption... if 'we' do this it would force Microsoft to take the position 'we are the only ones who will define the DX API no matter what you want'...
The Best Case:
M$ Creates a OpenDX group.
The Worst Case:
M$ Looks like assholes (again) and Linux Zealots get a giggle.
Let the i'm-more-elite-that-you-because-i-edit-files-with- a-strong-magnet-wars-begin!
.sig.
You actually have a separate magnet? You must just be too stupid to control the electromagnetism from your computer's power supply with carefully timed power surges.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
yes it does, and so does nt4. it's just that the registry entry by default sets the completion keyboard stroke to something ridiculous rather than 9 (tab)
Really? I wasn't aware that Microsoft was in the market of supporting other vendor's software. Perhaps you should contact the manufacturer of your card for the latest drivers, idiot. I've got nothing against Lunix, but if you don't know how to use Windows, you shouldn't blame user error on faulty design.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
You'd also need to rewrite drivers for EVERY graphics card, sound card, joystick, etc, that you wanted to support. it was bad enough under dos when you had the choice of about 3 soundcard brands.. these days, with dozens of 3D chipsets on the market, even more soundcards, and 3D sound API's...
________
I've been following WINE's development for years now, and every time a WINE article gets published here, the bone-heads come out of the woodwork to to express their feeling that WINE is somehow bad for Linux.
Three years ago, when WINE allowed me to run Remedy Action User client (it's the front-end to our trouble-ticket system) so I didn't have to boot into windows at work at all, that was somehow a bad thing? When WINE allows me to run Excel so I can hand in my expense reports using the spreadsheet the corporate Microserfs designed, that's a bad thing?
The ridiculous arguments aside about WINE keeping linux ports from happening, what about a game released a few months ago. There will never be linux ports of games released more than a few months ago unless the company GPL's it. (Not very likely in most cases.)
So, the naysayers don't want to play any older games (or other apps) they've invested in, in hopes that by not having that ability (let alone the ability to play new games) that companies will do native ports? Absurd.
Here's my favorite bit: WINE has two parts to it. The first bit (which everyone thinks is the only thing to WINE) is the program loader. This allows you to run MS binaries. The real heart of WINE is winelib. winelib is a port of the windows API's to linux. Programs compiled against this are Linux programs, period! They could be packaged as RPMS, debs, or tarballs. WINE is as much (or more) a tool for porting applications to linux as it is an emulator!
So when the complaints come out about WINE hindering linux ports, I almost can't help but cry. The WINE hackers are busting their proverbial hump making Linux ports of windows software possible, and easy, and slashdot users are flaming them for trying!
*whew*
Gaming is the only reason that I haven't moved all my computers over to Linux. I play games everywhere, even at work (d'oh!) so I stick with windows2k for it all. If I could run the games that I want to, when I want to (without having to wait for long linux ports) then I'll be much more likely to get rid of windows and begin preaching to my friends about the wonders of linux.
But my servers will still remain openbsd
:)
Also, dosemu is faster on linux than the dos emulator built into nt4- check out the difference running EDIT...
As long as you don't "need" to do high end image editing, playback or edit more than a few obsolete video codecs, use a USB or IEEE-1394 device, use the latest video cards, use a professional word processor or spreadsheet suite or play *good* games it should do just about anything you'd need, right?
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
That's my point.
I just do not understand living within the constraints of Linux. Perhaps people like the challange of it, but I do not understand it.
One word...
grep
if( read(this) ) { you = programmer; }
Let's see. Build a better operating system, but emulate the bad one just long enough to get the critical user base. Here's a lesson you should have learned when you made that decision for OS/2 when you worked in the marketing department there: Companies will cut costs and only develop for the operating system you emulate because it'll work in two environments with the effort of one.
Gnome does. So does KDE. click on the K or Foot menus and they are right there under games. Much eaiser to find than by going to Start-Programs-Accessories-Games only to find the out Administrator has removed them
treke
you are welcome to use GPL license for stuff you create. Just don't tell everyone else what license other people should use for stuff they create.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Save $600 (100%) off the retail price of Photoshop by giving up prepress capabilities (which are not necessary for web or game graphics). Try WinGIMP. Sure, it takes an hour to get used to, but so does Photoslop.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
click on the K or Foot menus and they are right there under games. Much eaiser to find than by going to Start-Programs-Accessories-Games
It's easier to click on the K or Foot rather than Start? And /.ers
wonder why they say Linux isn't ready for the desktop...
--
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
I installed it, ran Notepad, that was OK, tried IE, it churned for about half an hour and dumped about 5000 lines of debug code....nothing. Too soon to focus on 3D support yet?
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
We have to decide which battle to fight. It's no good having the perfect platform with perfect apps if no one uses it. The masses won't use it until a critical mass of applications is available, and those apps won't be available until the masses can shell out the $$. The thing that Wine does is gets more people running Linux by providing those Windows apps that don't exist as Linux apps yet. Once they're on Linux, if our OS is really as good as we think it is, they should learn really quickly that native Linux apps are better than emulated ones, and want to switch over. But first we need that critical mass of audience, not of native apps. IMHO.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
dlls and vxd files are not drivers. and we do this because the gaming companies don't release their games for our platform of choice. It's not about making Linux more like Windows, it's about making the stuff available for Windows work under Linux.
Oh, and quit whining.
Who's whining? (or "wining" if I may use such a horrible pun :)
c.
Do you realize that WINE is still a beta program? It is not supposed to work right. If you want to use it, figure out how to get around your problems.
As of the current versions, WINE seems to work very well. I have not seen problems with it lately.
Half-Life has a D3D mode, I hope this means we're one step closer to playing counter-strike on our linux boxen.
I guess I don't particularly understand why that's a bad thing. Supposedly, once WINE is complete, it will be able to run everything at native windows speed (and occasionally faster). I don't really see the disadvantage of running under a high-quality future version of WINE as opposed to native code... and it allows developers to concentrate on the actual game rather than making sure they write portable code... not that portable code isn't a nice goal.
Personally, I'd rather have WINE working good enough to play all the windows games than trying to convince all the developers that Linux is a good gaming platform.
this is not feasible at all. imagine having to support every single gfx card and sound card when lots of them don't even have port info available, yet alone open-source drivers. all this on the notorious tight deadlines of games programming.
also it would still only run on x86, or are you proposing writing a custom os and complete set of drivers for all other cpus too?
you need windows for pc games. deal with it.
dselect and apt. The only time things have gone wrong have been when I was doing force installs.
I'll give you that W2K has a talk program. And you can get Apache for Win32. However, Apache/Win32 and the third party command line utilities aren't exactly the norm under W32, whereas everything I covered is normal under Linux.
Now, I can't help but notice that you ignored all my other points. Way to go! When somebody answers your question, ignore it!
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
RedHat 6.2 was preinstalled.
---
I haven't tried it yet. Just saw it today. ;-)
Obviously MicroSoft then adjusted the expected level of intelligence of their users and changed the game to a more appropriate one.
they are ok with showeq only running on linux
though. They threw a fit when that came to win32.
John Smedly even came and chatted with us in
#showeq for a couple weeks
showeq
The thing is, a lot of people aren't getting away from Windows as long as their favorite apps, or apps they have to use at work, doesn't run under Linux. With Wine, many of them do, and people who would otherwise be stuck with Windows can get rid of it.
Remember that WINE stands for: Wine Is Not an Emulator. Running windows apps only Wine should (theorically) be far more stable than running windows apps under Windows. And faster. And more efficient.
So you say Wine could be bad for Linux, but what you really mean is Wine could be bad for non-microsoft APIs.
If Wine gave a perfect implementation of the Win32 APIs under *Linux* then there'd be no reason to use Windows AT ALL. Ever. You could use apps coded to the Direct3D API (and others) under Linux.
If you don't like Microsoft APIs don't code to them - use OpenGL instead of DirectX etc. But the one thing Wine is doing is opening up the Microsoft APIs to a multiplatform audience and I don't really see how that can be that bad.
If Wine succeeds then the Win32 API and all the others, will become a cross-platform API, and you'll have a choice of implementations. Microsoft's one under W9x/NT (yuk!), or Wine's one under Linux. Which would you choose?
This really makes it a fair more level playing field. You choose your OS and you choose your API to code to - the two become less tied together. (Obviously there are still link between the OS API. Registry API's etc.). Now if the Win32 API is available on Windows and Linux thats a win for the Win32 API and the apps that use it. If you prefer a different API (Posix etc.) and that one is available under Linux and not Windoze them that's a loss for that API - it needs to get better to compete.
Sam
(Oh and those of you who are thinking M$ will just change the API... It's been pointed out before - they can't. Doing so would break all the existing apps on Win32 - all they can do is try and extend the API and not tell anyone about the extra bits).
This has to be a troll but...
"Once-noble systems like DOS? Have you lost your mind? DOS sucked. It was obsolete before it even hit the market, it had incredible numbers of asinine limitations (640K barrier anyone?), was single tasking, awkward to program for, severely lacking in system administration tools, had a rotten file system, no concept of multiple users, and was closed source besides. It was a pathetic knockoff of unix which was only used because there was no real viable alternative.
Sure it was fast but that's because it didn't freakin' do anything. Hard to be slow when you are sitting idle 99.99% of the time.
What a classic troll. The only people that really recognize it probably agree with him :-).
in terminus illic est tantum opes
Yes
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
You're right. I've never been able to get it going. Tried several installs, tried configuring the conf file every which way, nada. I just wanna run Grim Fandango!
Where's the beef?
You crack me up!
Wine to run command line!
The phrase is "compartmentalization". The concept is that even bad drivers should never be able to crash the OS.
The only OS available right now that really does comparmentalization right is the GNU HURD (which, of course, has other problems). End-users, even, can safely develop drivers on The HURD without impacting others on their machine.
My point here is that an OS really can keep even bad drivers from screwing stuff up. Thus, while MS may not be responsible for the content of a driver from some other vendor, they should be capable of stopping that driver from BSODing the box.
(Linux, FYI, doesn't handle compartmentalization correctly in many situations, which is why I'm not using it here).
There is one, and one, single usage for the mouse - selection. Mouse selection of text-areas and mouse-copy-paste is _much_ faster than keyboard. Example: An emacs with two windows (those amacs-windows, not x-windows ones). You want to copy from one of them and paste in the other one. Keyboard: move to start of source CTRL+SPACE, move to end of source, META+w, CTRL+x,CTRL+o, move to insertion point, CTRL+y. Mouse: Klick on source start, move mouse to source end, releasebutton, move to insertion point, klick middle-button.
In addition, I would like to argue that keyboard support is an area where most widgetsets for X sucks - most X programs are unusable from the keyboard! As a _small_ example: There is no key in Gtk+-apps for reaching the menubar. You can reach an item in it if that item has a shortcut, and then move among them with the arrow keys, but there is no general shortcut that allways brings you to the first menubar item (Normally the File menu, so ALT+F should work in most places, but not _allways_)... And there are worse examples.
M$ Winblows _is_ usable without a mouse. A graphical Linux workstation is not (How to you start a shell if you get a GDM and then a stupid window-manager with too little keyboard support? How do you click links in Netscape/Mozilla from the keyboard??).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I love the fact that they haven't updated the solitaire since Windows 3.1, so when you win the game, the sequence of cards bouncing off the screen is timed for a 286....
However it may end up being Loki who ports from Linux to Windows. The toolkits are less flashy, and more versatile than the windows counter parts.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
The group doing this project is not just avoiding GPL, it's attempting to charge subscription rates to further their development... We should just wait for AmigaOS and hope developers code for it.
Funny. I was just wondering the exact same thing. I've been trying to get wine working with openGL on my Nvidia card, but haven't been able to yet. It compiles just fine but then when I try and run anything that uses GL, it complains about some missing libraries (don't have in front of me at the moment :( )
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I think the plan is to release all of the source code under their own license. Then once they make a certain amount of cash on subscriptions they'll begin to merge the code into the main wine tree under the Wine License. But all of the code will be freely available to users
treke
The technology would be demonstrated by the toolkits.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
here's the fundamental misunderstanding you have. you assume that the point here is only to use the programs (games) that run on windows currently. the point isn't just to *run* them... of course, most users could just reboot to windows. easy. the POINT of it all, is to run those programs ON LINUX... just rebooting to windows ruins the fun. remember that the people who use linux primarily, and (i among them) and who program for it, are almost all religiously fanatic about the use of linux.... they (we) believe it's some sort of purity of soul. until you come to grips with that, nearly ALL of this stuff will seem like a waste of time to you... all this open source software. who would want to give away they're hard work? > someone who profits from it in a different way than by selling it. --never assume the other guy sees the world with the same eyes you do.
Well.. that's not entirely accurate. Wine aims to be an second implementation of the Win32 API. This means that the overhead over using microsofts implementation only depends on the quality of the wine code (if the wine people write tighter code than the ms guys, wine wins). However, wine can use native win32 dll files, as a fallback for running unsupported api calls (that of course, isnt the only thing it needs dll support for). That's probably what you're talking about.
But the big thing about wine isn't it's binary compability with Win32, it's source compability. Soon all win32 apps will run nativly on linux, only depending on X and the wine libs after a simple recompile and a few tweaks (hopefully).
-henrik
Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word
- a-strong-magnet-wars-begin!
You're just one of those too stupid to learn ed, the standard UNIX text editor. Emacs and vi are for losers!
Let the i'm-more-elite-that-you-because-i-edit-files-with
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
For those of you who have kids who get software for Christmas, you'll share my enthusiasm for this move forward. Nearly all of the latest software, educational and shoot-'em-ups, have been written with DirectX.
I understand the concern of those who would like to see everything written under OpenGL. The lack of use may see the library fall by the wayside, regardless of its superiority in providing a platform independent outlet. But I'm looking at this as a father who has to administer three Winboxes that are being operated by children ages 13 and under. The workload in keeping these systems up and running is amazing.
If this works as advertised, then I am dumping Win9x from my kid's computers and installing Linux. Since I can use permissions to delegate who gets to install and operate games, my task as home sysop becomes much simpler.
Until the game shops start using OpenGL, any help in using DirectX under Linux is manna from heaven.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
WINE is a recursive algorithm for "Wine Is Not an Emulator. (bold mine)
And Im sure algorithm is an acronym to Association of Lesbian and Gay Owners from the Rochester Institute of Technology for Healthcare Management
--
This space left intentionally blank.
Linux does have one MAJOR advantage over Win9x. It doesn't eat half your ram! Hey, that is an advantage for ya! What's more, users can actualy setup their Linux boxes to be efficent, as opposed to Windows in which you are forced to load a bunch of DLL and Driver files you may never need.
Of course, DOS actualy had one up on Linux as far as its memory footprint went, around 100k in the max, though I actualy had all 640k free one time in DOS (that's rounded off of course, I more likely actualy had 635k of so free, with 500bytes going towards the memory manager, which was QEMM before it went Windows and started to suck and crash even more then Norton does now.)
The main problem with LInux programming today is that most programmers have gotten out of the old mindset of "write your own hardware drivers." If Linux had come into the limelight a few years earlier (1994 or so would have ben preferable) when COders where at their heigth of writting custom drivers, then it would have most likely blasted off to success. As it is now though, people have been spoiled by Windows horriblely inefficent API's. What ever happened to the VESA video card standards? Its about time we get a VESA3 out folks, as it is though, few new cards are even VESA2 complient, my old Riva128 was almost 100% Vesa2 complient, missing only a few highly esoteric modes (widescreen 512xwhatever interlaced, and such as that) While my new Geforce256 is missing alot of the critical Vesa2 modes. Screwy.
With Creative being the main SoundCard company out there now, you can pretty much write software for the Creative Sound Blaster Live! Cards and be guarenteed that 40% of so of the hardcore gamer user base has one. Either that, or enough companies write their software soly for the SB:LIVE! that people have to buy one, that is the same thing that happened with the SB:16 and the SB:AWE. Yah, Creative is a darn near monopoly, but they have great prices and their products rock, people don't mind WORKING Monopolies, its non-working monopolies they get pissed off at.
With MS's current strength in the market, they could actualy rewrite 100% of their code and compleatly break backwords compatibility and have thereselves a damn good OS. Sorry to say if folks, but MS _KNOWS_ how to design an OS, it is just that their implementations of those idealogies isn't so great. God knows that Win9x has a very natural feel to it. Win2k is hard as hell to setup though, their DLL system is a pain, since you have to pretty much figure out at random what DLL's to load up to do what. Educational Tech departments aren't exactly blessed with manuals from the donaters or nothing you know:)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Yes, but killer applications are generally DISTINCTIONS that seperate the product from the rest of the flock. This is, hopefully, one LESS killer application for MS. In all likelyhood though, this will not prove as stable, fast, compatible, etc. In other words, if you want to play games, Windows will still be your platform of choice; this just makes Linux that more viable for those who are already using Linux and like to play games.
How many applications intended for the Windows NT market is written to the Posix API, for instance? Even though that would make it trivial to port to Unix/Linux/BSD etc.?
Practically none. Because the native APIs are better supported, and give the look and feel and functionality that your users expect.
I think it's much more likely that as Wine progresses, it will help people switch to Linux. And as people switch because Wine lets them use their favorite games or applications, they'll also start buying native applications now and then. And they'll see the difference. And they'll either vote with their money, or start asking support why app X doesn't support function Y when they're running it under Linux.
If enough people switch, eventually companies will start hearing the word "Linux" from enough customers.
Nice to see that /. is using the proper wine icon intead of that rehashed windows icon they had before.
If voting could really change the system, it would be against the law.
If Wine DirectX did something useful with some argument values that did not do the right thing on Windows, it is likely that game writers might even #ifdef LINUX these calls in and improve the game on Linux, and also be a big embarrassment to MicroSoft, who would eventually be forced to copy the Wine-invented interface.
Windows is about $Oz100 with new PCs: it's built into the price, not itemised. This means that Windows is not gratis-free; it comes with no source (unless you want to count pppmenu.scp and the like as source) and a deadly licencing agreement called the EULA. This means that Windows is not libre-free. So what are you dribbling about?
``Easy to use'' is a relative term - OS/2's desktop is much easier to use, much more consistent. And what of still more innovative design which was squashed either directly or indirectly by Pope Bill's drive to compete?
As to the millions of beta testers, other software makers use a different word for them: ``customers.''
So you don't have to lose your 120 days of uptime just to play a game, nor crank up an emulator (which doesn' work anyway, another poster explains) and so (WINE does this, I've seen the code) so you can fix bugs in Windows programs without having the source.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I don't think so, moderators should not mod something up or down according to whether it is true or justified.
The whole idea of the moderation system is to filter trolls and to avoid flamewars, while keeping what is relevant.
A moderator should mod something up if he thinks that the post was relevant to him, and not just an urge from someone to get some attention, as this clearly was. To filter the true from the wrong goes beyond the power of a slashdot reader.
If it becomes so easy to run Windows Software on Linux (with all the *good* and bad that windows software has), won't this make it harder for companies like Loki who want to make true ports of games and other software to Linux?
If I can run quake via Wine, why would I run Loki's version?
Actually the Windows game Pretty Good Solitare 2K by GoodSol is a pretty fantastic soltiare game. It's got 330 games of solitare to choose from, and runs about 90% of the time under Wine (09/09/2000 build - YMMV). Only downside is that it's shareware (about $27 to register) but I just keep reinstalling it. Although I do like PySol and that other Gnome Solitare too. It'd be nice if GoodSol could port PGS2K to Linux though, it's pretty sweet.
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
if GUIs were designed better then the mouse wouldn't be quite as useless.
(i bet you all thought that was a goatse.cx link, didn't you?)
- j
The Good:
... is now Linux is doing the same that M$ does ... embracing. :-) (The difference of course, is not extendeding in propriertary ways, like Microsoft.)
...
More games can be played under Linux. That's good.
Aside. You know what's funny
Except, whereas MSFT uses Embrace and Extend(TM), we use Embrace and Assimilate(GPL)
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I wasnt trying to ether I was messing around with real player and it started IE , IE popped up and started loading microsoft.com, all the buttons were messed up but the page loaded corectly , was able to click on links but couldnt enter urls by hand, wish I took a screen shot
whois
At an ISP I worked for I wrote a simple little script to do a whois on every domain we believed we were hosting. The script would check the domain name servers listed in the whois database and let us know if someone had moved an account. We could do 500 domains in a few minutes (actually, I had to slow it down so Network Solutions didn't complain about too many requests in too short a time). We could also use it to monitor change requests that we had made by simply submitting a smaller input.
Sure, it's a niche application, but as an ISP it was something we did regularly and I could do it quickly, easily and without purchasing any third party apps in Linux. Before we did it in Linux the Jr Sysadmin-trainee would sit with a web browser for several days typing in the requests and noting the answers. With 10 minutes of effort I replaced 2 days of clicking "Back" and typing a new domain, with a script that ran in a half hour.
The Unix pros here will point out that that's a trivial application, it wouldn't qualify for posting to Freshmeat. But that's EXACTLY the point of UNIX (and by extension, Linux). It gives you the power to do what you need done, quickly and painlessly. We don't live with the limitations of Linux, we live with the freedom of Linux. There's a difference.
Given that the mandate of these dudes is to make specific games work on Linux, and given that WINE proper has specific code to fix application bugs and incompatbilities, it seems an obvious next step to fix those hardware and driver compatibility problems in the interface layer (which is what WINE does, it is not an emulator).
And to all the WHINErs posting here, the reason for the subscription is that it's an experiment in business models. If you don't like it, write your own. If WINE had used the GPL instead of BSD licencing, the business model in question could not have happened; whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your POV, and whether these patches would have been available at all is another unanswerable question.
More food for thought: not all DirectX apps are games.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There is a game called CowboyNeal in the list, and its voting page points to goatse.cx in one of the links.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word!
Ya I love to have to read the manual to find out what control-key combination I need to press to UNDERLINE something.
Clicking that "U" is such a resource hog!
In the long run, what does wine do for linux. In the short run it will let us play our games under linux, but really, is that good for us? I can just see the following:
CEO: So the release date of Mega War 2 is due on the 15th of November. Is everything going to our timeframe?
Lacky: Yessir, but are we going to allow a linux port of this game? The linux community has a lot of gammers in it and they would love this type of game.
CEO: (thinks) No, I don't think we need to waste time training our programmers on the linux style. They have that wine thingy, if they want to play our game they can just buy the windows version and play it that way. Becides, if they have problems we can just tell them to play it on windows. Easy tech support.
So really, does wine help us in the linux community? I'd love to play halflife: counterstrike under linux as much as the next guy, but are we cutting our throats really? Why would some company spend extra money to bring it over here (or allow someone like loki to see the source code) when they can just write once and be done?
The idea is that eventually wine will actually become more stable than windows. Which really does not require a whole lot really. I mean I can already play half-life just fine, in software render mode under wine... which is pretty cool, because even some of my other much older games run under wine and not under windows! Mechwarrior 2 for example... one of the best games ever, and it won't run under anything except for windows 95... 98, Me, and all versions of NT won't run it. I wish the wine team the best of luck, and this new development with direct 3d is VERY promising
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
b) A subscription model is one way to get compensation for the code that they write.
c) If WINE was using the GPL, they would have make their changes freely available.
Therefore, if WINE used the GPL, these guys wouldn't be writing the Direct3D support in the first place. Would you rather have NO code being written? TransGaming clearly stated that once they achieved their subscription goal, they planned to fully merge their code into the main Wine tree.
Stop being a Stallman cronie for a few minutes and use your brain. Maybe you'll realize that there ARE valid reasons to use the BSD license (i.e. not excluding for-profit coders).
I'm a rather avid gamer, and I'm quite fond of Linux -- but I can't fathom a single, rational reason to run Direct3D games under Wine on Linux.
Now, irrational reasons may exist. For example, a virualent hatred of all things Microsoft might lead someone to run already-unstable games (every DirectX game has hardware and driver compatability problems) through emulators...
Is any serious gaming enthuiast going to give up their Wintel box to run an emulator under Linux? I doubt it.
So what is the point of this technological exercise -- other that to prove that you can run DirectX under Wine?
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
Okay, I know this'll instantly be modded down as flamebait, but I just don't understand you people. You Linux zealots are constantly complaining about how horrible and unstable Windows is, but then you turn around and try and make your so-called superior operating system to look and act as much like Windows as possible. You even go so far as to use Microsoft's .dll and .vxd files to help you since you apparently can't figure out how to write your own drivers. Why don't you just save yourself the trouble, wipe your hard disk and install Win2K. Oh, and quit whining.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Clicking that "U" is such a resource hog!
Anybody who has used computers for any length of time at all knows that keyboard shortcuts are much faster than navigating a mouse up to click a button. That's why all decent software, and even crappy software made by MS, still has lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts available.
Clicky little buttons are for neophytes and grandmothers. Real computer users rarely touch the mouse. Do you actually take the time to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, then move the mouse carefully up to click the little disk icon? What a waste! :w ENTER' anyday, thank you.
I'll take 'ESC
The idea is that eventually wine will actually become more stable than windows
Yeah, that "a better windows than windows" strategy worked out real well for the OS/2 crowd.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Run autoconf before ./configure after applying the transgaming patch. That should fix it.
I started with nothing and have most of it left.
and to shut down my computer i click start????????
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Linux is for EVERYBODY to do as they wish with. That is its power; its openness.
I personally use GUIs and IDEs to help me develop code because it makes navigating and manipulating my code a LOT easier.
Trying to figure out how a large open source program works is so much easier when you have software like Source Navigator to help you navigate the source QUICKLY. Try doing that with vi.
If Linux was owned by purists such as yourself then it would never have got past the "tiny hacker OS" stage that it was in when Torvalds first released the kernel.
Rich
humor for the clinically insane
great comedy company.
This is a step in the right direction because no matter what people say games are often killer applications that help people choose their computing platform.
no sig.
I'll grant you they don't have the great big arrow pointing towards them that says "Click here stupid!", but I still fail to see what is so difficult about it.
That's precisely what makes it difficult. I could click on the kbutton, but I could slo click on the desktop button, the shortcut for XMMS, Konqueror, or many other things. Perhaps a tutorial started the first time a user logs in would be appropriate, identiftying the diferent pieces of the desktop. And turnable off, of course.
Observation #3 is incorrect:
3. Windows runs these games faster, and necessarily always will - emulation has to be slower, because there's two layers.
If you know anything about WINE, you'll know that WINE stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator.
It is not emulating, but rather using actual windows libraries through some sort of abstration layer.
Read though the WINE docs some time, they are doing some amazing things to get it to work. With the addition to D3d (did you see the fps they were getting?!), porting games to Linux will be so easy. Not to meantion FreeBSD...
If Wine DirectX did something useful with some argument values that did not do the right thing on Windows, it is likely that game writers might even #ifdef LINUX these calls in and improve the game on Linux, and also be a big embarrassment to MicroSoft, who would eventually be forced to copy the Wine-invented interface.
A very intriguing idea. If it is a fix to something that leaks like a sieve or that drops mouse turds or something, that sounds like a very good concept. But I'd be very careful with it, as some code may rely on aberrant behaviour.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Great! You can now run Direct3D games with Wine. But don't forget that you can play Glide games with Wine long time ago. As I remember, I was able to play "Super Mario 64" with Ultra-HLE running over WINE. Yes! The N64 emulator over the Windows emulator. And it was a little faster than running it native on Windows :-) I will try Rogue Squadron, StarWars Racer and Toy Story 2 :-)
Although some hack to run a Linux binary on Windows would be interesting, it hardly is useful, as all the good Linux programs have the source and can be compiled on NT, perhaps with the help of some compatability libraries like Cygwin.
Such libraries like Cygwin are the "Wine-like tool for using Linux apps under Windows".
There are examples of programs that are better on Linux: command line programs like the GNU utilities and shells (where I work we could not live without the port of tcsh to NT). Terminal emulators are WAY better on Linux than the built-in one on NT. In graphics only small hack programs are better on Linux, gdiff and network monitoring programs are good examples.
Certainly most of the good stuff has been ported to NT. The only big missing thing is good terminal emulators, but there may be issues with how NT does it's stdio that make this impossible? With the death of Motif I would expect any useful graphics hack on Linux to use a modern toolkit or just Xlib and be portable.
The other killer app is window managers, but not because of that crufty huge "themes". I would very much like to see Windoze fixed so that it does not raise windows when you click on their contents, so that working with overlapping windows was possible. This may be better considered a fix in Windows, besides Linux seems to be going down the same bad road by forcing us to use the KDE or similar window managers, which have the same bugs Windows does...
and the brave souls who are making the jump are running WINE as a matter of course. WINE makes it a lot easier for these people to make the jump, and increases the number of users that Liniux has.
;-) on Linux, and seems to be reasonably stable. I see this as being the future for the project.
No. They are not running WINE as a matter of course. WINE is highly beta, even the Transgaming and Codeweavers version 2 editions are still highly pront to crashing and run less than five percent of Windows applications, and that's a optimistic guess. Currently., managed mdoe is not the default on most versions, the WINE team themsleves don't usually produce binary crashes, and the `building font metrics' three minute wait to start an application still doesn't go away under the codeweavers version.
Yes, WINE will improve significantly over the next year as it actually starts providing more user feedback, testing guideliens and desktop integration. No, IMHO there's no way that within th4e next year newbies will be running WINE. Sorry. Its a a gargantuan task,,and the WINE folk are brave to attempt it, but my honest vide is I think they will fail, and this DirectX code will be more beneficial once it is merged into SDL.
I do a lot of WINE hacking, egnerally iupdate and run with everyt release, and have got Office 2000 and various opther apps working fine. But never a hundred percent, and always lacking some important functionality.
However, using Wine wrappers around Win32 DLLs is something WINE has definitely been sucessful at. The Open Source implementation of the Win32 avifile implementation has been a success and enabled formats like ASF1 and DivX
As a long time Linux user, I strenuously object to this direction for my preferred OS. My Linux box is not a toy, and it shouldn't be used as such!
Linux has succeeded so well because of (until recently) the complete lack of frivolous chrome that bogged down other once-noble systems like DOS. I grudgingly accepted a simple window manager as an occassionally useful tool, but knew full well that some people would get totally carried away with it and force these resource-hog abominations on us like KDE, Gnome and TWM. Serious computing is done with the command line, OK?
It's only gone downhill since that first X server started working with Linux. I've never liked the idea of Wine to begin with. I mean, who the hell wants to run some windoze app on something like Linux? What the hell is the point in that? You know why people do it? Because they're too stupid to learn Emacs or Vi and they need they're precious Word!
Look, people, Linux is a serious tool for people doing serious work. If you can't figure out how to use it then stay the hell away from it and stop trying to corrupt it with your damn eye candy!
I can't believe people have polluted Linux with some Microso~ game API. The Linux we have all come to know and love is dying, and I think it is an absolute shame.
This is something I've thought about before - considering the embedded market and how products are being made with a hidden Linux/QNX/whatever core. Game programmers/companies push what hardware can do for performance, eye candy and the like. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to bundle a game on top of their own OS? The issue of games not running under Windows/Linux/Mac's/BeOS would be a non-issue. The game could be written closer to the hardware, custom to what the Game programmers want for their specific game or goal. There would be no extras! ... no crap running in the system tray .. no extra services the game doesn't need etc.
Mind you, the install of such a game could be setup in such a way as to run off the host hardware, existing partitions and file formats, (ext2, vfat). The only problem would be hardware detection like any OS install has to deal with. For a super tweaked game with it's own custom OS, I think this would be worth it. It wasn't that long ago when installing a game for DOS wasn't as easy as running a setup.exe. I think the change in an install procedure for the user could be minor and well worth it for the game in a finely tuned GameOS.
Am I dreaming or is this too much work? I mean why make multiple versions of a game or program that's designed to be a stand alone (only thing running) when you can put your own OS under it, and have it by-pass the whole issue all together?
Any you don't think that there are tools like that in Windows?
Windows is free with PCs. You have Windows.
The version of Wintendo that comes with store-bought PCs runs everything as root, providing no real memory protection. A Windows license is often the most expensive part of a PC built from parts, costing upwards of US$300 per box.
Windows has a GUI that is easy to use because it has been developed in conjunction with literally millions of beta testers and focus groups.
Mac OS has an even better GUI than Windows's, so why aren't people using Macintosh computers?
emulation has to be slower, because there's two layers.
Wine Is Not an Emulator. The layered structure of a Wine system is similar to that of a Windows 2000 system: application on top of Win32 on top of the kernel.
you don't have to compile Windows for your PC like you do with Wine (you can get pre-built builds, but they don't work as well).
Which means you can't recompile Windows to create a system optimized for your CPU's pipelines. (AFAIK, Windows 9x is still optimized for a 486.)
For WINE to work usably, you are required to have Windows on your PC (true: all those shots of Word running on Linux only happen because Linux is using the dlls and vxds)
This is partially rebutted by your first point. Wine with the Windows 98 DLLs can be more stable than Windows 98 itself because of the protection that the underlying system provides. Even then, you don't need to use Word; you can use Emacs and LaTeX, and your output may even look better.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
A lot of people are not going to like this, and consequently this is going to get modded down quite a lot, but when Goebbels held his speech on Total War on February 18, 1943, tens of thousands of people frantically screamed "YES" at his question whether they wanted "total war, more total and radical than they could even imagine" not because it was true (in the end, they did not really like it as it came) or justified (you can't justify war, let alone total war), but because they liked the way he said it, because they were bewitched by his rhetorics. I'm not comparing Slashdot with Nazi Germany, but the mechanism is still the same.
To get it down to an easy bottom line: It does not matter what you are saying, it only counts how you say it.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
They have their respective SoftWindows and VirtualPC software, as well as their own copies of games released on their platform, that isn't currently released under Linux. Is the emulation software on those platforms stopping the porting and production of games for that market?
So it isn't the emulation issue that seems to stop the games (though admittedly the performance of x86 on PowerPC isn't very hot either)
Louis
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Have I missed something? Are they developing the PS XII already? If it's really PS X compatible, however, then I absolutely need it. What's the point in buying a PS XI, however?
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
What ever happened to the VESA video card standards? Its about time we get a VESA3 out folks, as it is though, few new cards are even VESA2 complient
There already is VESA 3 VBE/AF; here's a few free VBE/AF drivers, and here are some you have to pay for.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I dont get it really - it says ont here they will continue to release their non-3d stuff into the main wine tree - why not their 3D stuff as well ?? Thats really odd to me - why not put everything towards wine as well, isnt that the whole aim of wine? Why put up one portion, jsut so that you know, you have a solution but leave the thing crippled in a way ? Strange rational.
Can I run EverQuest under wine?
-Magnus