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OSNews Interviews WINE's Alexandre Julliard
Eugenia writes "OSNews talks with Alexandre Julliard, the WINE project leader and also CodeWeaver's coder, regarding the future of WINE, the obstacles of the development, the WINE commercialization and lots more. An interesting read overall."
fuck linux! yeah!
Gentlemen, the time has come for a serious discussion on whether or not to continue using C for serious programming projects. As I will explain, I feel that C needs to be retired, much the same way that Fortran, Cobol and Perl have been. Furthermore, allow me to be so bold as to suggest a superior replacement to this outdated language.
To give you a little background on this subject, I was recently asked to develop a client/server project on a Unix platform for a Fortune 500 company. While I've never coded in C before I have coded in VB for fifteen years, and in Java for over ten, I was stunned to see how poorly C fared compared to these two, more low-level languages.
C's biggest difficulty, as we all know, is the fact that it is by far one of the slowest languages in existance, especially when compared to more modern languages such as Java. Although the reasons for this are varied, the main reasons seems to be the way C requires a programmer to laboriously work with chunks of memory.
Requiring a programmer to manipulate blocks of memory is a tedious way to program. This was satisfactory back in the early days of coding, but then again, so were punchcards. By using what are called "pointers" a C programmer is basically requiring the computer to do three sets of work rather than one. The first time requires the computer to duplicate whatever is stored in the memory space "pointed to" by the pointer. The second time requires it to perform the needed operation on this space. Finally the computer must delete the duplicate set and set the values of the original accordingly.
Clearly this is a horrendous use of resources and the chief reason why C is so slow. When one looks at a more modern (and a more serious) programming language like Java or, even better, Visual Basic, that lacks such archaic coding styles, one will also note a serious speed increase over C.
So what does this mean for the programming community? I think clearly that C needs to be abandonded. There are two candidates that would be a suitable replacement for it. Those are Java and Visual Basic.
Having programmed in both for many years, I believe that VB has the edge. Not only is it slightly faster than Java its also much easier to code in. I found C to be confusing, frightening and intimidating with its non-GUI-based coding style. Furthermore, I like to see the source code of the projects I work with. Java's source seems to be under the monopolistic thumb of Sun much the way that GCC is obscured from us by the marketing people at the FSF. Microsoft's "shared source" under which Visual Basic is released definately seems to be the most fair and reasonable of all the licenses in existance, with none of the harsh restrictions of the BSD license. It also lacks the GPLs requirement that anything coded with its tools becomes property of the FSF.
I hope to see a switch to VB very soon. I've already spoken with various luminaries in the *nix coding world and most are eager to begin to transition. Having just gotten off the phone with Mr. Alan Cox, I can say that he is quite thrilled with the speed increases that will occur when the Linux kernel is completely rewritten in Visual Basic. Richard Stallman plans to support this, and hopes that the great Swede himself, Linus Torvaldis, won't object to renaming Linux to VB/Linux. Although not a C coder himself, I'm told that Slashdot's very own Admiral Taco will support this on his web site.
Thank you for your time. Happy coding.
Egg Troll
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
The biggest obstacle to wine development must be MS itself. Considering the windows API is their corporate property, there's no reason they have to allow any other developers to emulate it. Just look at what happens to things like playstation emulators! The wine developers are heading for a lawsuit, for their disregard for the IP rights of others. Hopefully they'll get their product to us before then, but I suspect that MS will not be willing to permit this.
Why not use MS-DOS shell language, like in those .BAT files? I have always thought that a really efficient programming language should get rid of the ridiculous I/O paradigm. Java has been a great step in that direction, but it hasn't gone far enough in simplifying the syntax.
I prefer beer anyway
Who gives a flip about wine, when we have my FP to celebrate.
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I want to donate.
Is there an address that I can ship cases of astro-glide to so that when MS decides to come after the WINE team, they won't feel TOO much pain?
They're just asking for hell.
I haven't forgotten about the OSNews conspiracy. THere'll be a LOT of info on it soon.
I haven't played with Wine, but I'm curious: Have they implemented the whole Windows printing subsystem? How is that handled?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I have a dns server on my LAN running on a Linux 2.2 kernel and it's uptime as of now is 76 days.
my question to you egg troll is how long have you had Windows running before it crashed?
It is ironic that MS got into business doing the
same thing hacking the BIOS.
Like the true geek he is, Bill only shrugs at
irony. You can bet his team of bank rolled
lawyers will be mounting their possee ready to
hang WINE. MS doesn't need a court victory or a
legitimate case: They can cripple WINE with legal fees.
Someone modded you down as Flamebait! Its clear that Slashdot is giving Steve Balmer mod points, and he's using them to censor views he disagrees with. Or maybe its Michael Simms. You can't really tell.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
A program that almost runs is like a plane that almost flies
Regardless of what Juliard says, WINE is mostly used as an app-level emulator. The problem is that WINE can't properly run most of the popular Windows applications, and, at the same time, alternatives like Win4Lin do a much better job at that.
The Raven
Jag får inte berätta idéen och jag kommer hålla mitt löfte, men alla
ledtrådar för att göra ett snabbare protokoll än normal överföring finns här. Det gäller bara att se "utseendet" av lemma 3, då vet man hur man ska komma runt det. Jag kan komma på 3. 2 av dem används idag. Den ena för att sända snabbare över kopparkabel, den andra för att göra elmotorer starkare i hög hastighet. Båda behandlar exakt vårat problem. Jag kommer att behöva att du är skärpt, för bådas skull. Mina kunskaper inom elektronik är ganska ringa, men jag är bra på att programmera vilket kommer att vara till god hjälp, men icke avgörande för projektets genomförande. Jag kan bara definera begreppen mjukt, som tex lemma 3. Du måste kunna se "utseendet" för detta, som är mycket komplext. En stor mängd faktorer spelar in och vi kommer att behöva kompromissa med dem alla. Tex flankdistortion - skew. Kapacitans, induktans, resonans -Allt som spelar in mellan punkt A och B på en kopparkabel.
I can't say enough good things about the potential for this project to bring open source operating systems to the public at large.
Backwards compatibility to previous versions of (closed) Windows is the biggest obstacle most casual users have with migrating to Linux. All that shrink-wrapped software purchased over the past 15 years - it has to work.
Sheesh, even MS has backwards compatibility as its biggest obstacle to getting users to upgrade to the "next" OS.
WINE can make a serious upgrade happen.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Wow, this is interesting:
The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 5,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.
When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by
pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.
One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto- running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a
time.
In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.
One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.
One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.
Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary
error. Good luck.
Bill Gates and Microsoft don't give one whit about WINE and it's future.
WINE will forever lag behind windows. It's not what people will run the latest and greatest [insert app/game here] under.
The tiny little fraction of zoids who use wine, don't change the MS business one bit.
I know for a fact that Bill Gates and Steve Ballamer Know about WINE, and Are actually happy that it's there. It's a Ace card with the DOJ. -- "SEE... Anyone can make a windows clone" It represents no loss in market share, but provides a clear example of the ability to replicate Windows.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
However, for the average Linux user, WINE shouldn't matter much. After all, what's the reason he uses Linux? Certainly not running Win32 apps, but trying to find free, open alternatives. We should not try to run MS Office but rather improve Open Office & Co. (and agree on a common document standard, damnit). Instead of investing time and money in getting PhotoShop to run on Linux, how about investing time or money in GIMP instead? Etc. etc.
Add to this the fact that WINE has taken on a pretty large challenge. Given the speed with which Microsoft can (and possibly will) change their APIs in the future (and possibly make their own apps incompatible with WINE if it becomes a threat), I don't know if running common applications is really feasible. Again, hardware emulation looks like the more viable approach to me.
Let's also not forget that, were it not for Microsoft's OEM contracts, most PCs would probably come with a running, easy-to-use, well-configured Linux configuration by now, so new users could try both systems separately without ever having to touch Win32.
Why did this get modded down? I think it's pretty damn funny.
Read before you mod please.
I personally think that cross platform capabilities are truly one of the cornerstone capabilities of OSS. To me, the developments in WINE and Cygwin are some of the most important in the entire community these days. I know that's a pretty bold statement, but I say that because both of them are major enabler technologies, both making OSS viable to a whole new crop of users. I know that there are a lot of people that have the "Screw Windoze!" mentality, but users and community are the lifeblood of OSS, which is why I feel that these projects are so important. And they've made a lot of progress lately; I don't follow WINE really closely, but did you know that Cygwin can run XFree86, and that a port of KDE 2 is underway? I'm just waiting for the day when WINE and Cygwin can run each other... :) I must admit that I am really keen on Cygwin because it has such a low barrier for entry; it makes it so much easier to introduce my friends to open source and the *nix way. As WINE matures, getting them to upgrade to Linux will be cake: "Run the programs you're used to on a stable OS without M$ license restrictions!"
-Earthlink Customer Support
MS isn't worried about wine, because wine is not a competitor to MS. Running as it does, on top of a whol other operation system, wine will never be able to achieve performance anywhere near that of native windows systems. Also, wine simply does not have the support or funding of windows, and as such, less applications are written that run under wine. Wine is not a competitor to windows because wine is entirely inferior to windows, by virtue of factors beyond its control, which include the overhead of linux/X, and the generally poor developer response that characterises open source development.
I'm not impressed. I've had a win3.11 box running constantly for four years, with no reboots. Since we phased that out, we had a series of NT boxes, the latest being a winXP box, which has been running steadily for over ten months.
Linux users are a little too proud of their unremarkable uptimes. If they'd only bothered to check the performance statistics for more well-known OSs, they'd understand linux's mediocre performance in the marketplace.
Hi!
A friend of mine boots into Windows for one and only one purpose:
He has to operate a flash5-site from his company that does not work on anything else than Internet Explorer. (And yes, I have checked Netscape and Mozilla on both Windows and Linux, and yes other Flash-sites work great.)
I've played a bit with Wine and could run Internet Explorer5 (from Win98SE) but without any flash.
Did anybody successfully run IE with Flash on Wine?
We are also looking into Win4Lin, any expirences about that would also be apreciated.
Thanks for every hint!
He mentions the Wine database at http://appdb.codeweavers.com Please, everyone... If you play with wine and get something working or find any littler qwirks that might help others..
Contribute to the database!
That's not true. I think Win98-compatibility (and maybe WinNT4 for some business apps) would be enough.
Just tell me one Windows app that does not run on Win98 and/or WinNT4, systems that are more than 3 years old!
For most apps, even Win95 compatibility (6 years!) would be good enough.
And since (according to Microsoft themselves) more than 75% of Windows users still run Win9x, it's gonna stay that way for a loooong time.
My best wishes and my deepest regards to the Wine project,
Roland
I don't like to read anything but the -1 posts. Does anyone else feel this way? Is there a way to filter everything but the -1 posts out?
2. There are developers who suggest that WINE should build a graphics subsystem directly into WINE (bypassing X) and do a lot more of the basic Win32 API closer to the kernel. They claim that this way, WINE could probably be more stable and faster. What is your opinion?
Alexandre Julliard: I think this would be a complete waste of time. X overhead is fairly small, so you wouldn't gain much performance, and you would lose a lot in stability (not to mention network transparency). If there are really places where X performance is a problem, the effort is much better spent fixing X than trying to bypass it.
I guess it'll take more than this to turn down the FUD on X.
Why don't people just use VMWare and run the real thing, instead of having to emulate it?
"While I've never coded in C before I have coded in VB for fifteen years, and in Java for over ten" correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't vb only 10 years old??? not even if you wrote vb would you have been able to have 15 years of programming experience in it
- mescaline - its the only way to fly -
Quick Story:
So I was at lunch with my friends today and another guy and I were talking about random linux stuff and servers and whatnot when one of our Windows-gaming friends popped in and said something to the effect of "I'll switch to Linux when I can game on it because it's just not worth the time and effort to switch back and forth for gaming and work."
XBill aside, he's right - although he's not a typical buy-a-computer-from-Wal-Mart guy, he primarily games. No coding skills, aside from HTML and TI-Basic.
Wine and WineX (or Transgaming or whaterver it happens to be) bridge this gap. He wouldn't hesitate to switch full time but just doesn't have the time/space/will to install a redundant word processor/ICQ/mail client. Most people don't. Not many average consumers are going to "try both systems separately" because life's busy and the PC is a way to increase productivity.
While I agree with Loki - it'd be nice if the games were linux-native and true written-for-Linux stuff would be so much better in terms of speed and stability - the fact of reality is that as long as I can't play the latest game with my friends I'm going to keep Windows on my system, and as long as Windows is on my system I'm more likely to use things like Word (which, like it or not, currently is a superior word processor to Star/K/Gnomeoffice - if it fixes my subjunctive when I'm writing in Spanish, it stays).
We shouldn't _have_ to load multiple operating systems. Someone on the recent REBOL thread used the Ferarri v. 85 Volvo Wagon analogie - it's just not valid in the case of an operating system. I should be able to word process, game, IM, e-mail, and research on the same platform. Windows lets me do that now.
I use Linux for everything but gaming now (which actually increases my productivity). Wine(X) eleminates this. It's a crucial step. Wine isn't overrated. You can get a large segment of the Windows world by simply offering them gaming.
They do have some challenges. Changing APIs will suck. But hell, AIM did, and now for a bigger challenge!
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
By far the biggest problem I've had with Wine is the install programs for Windows apps. Most simply don't work -- they either err out saying they can't find some file or DLL, or they'll just hang.
.exe installed with its dependencies, however, Wine seems to handle it quite well.
Once you get an
But how do people deal with install problems?
Why not run VMware and just swith between operating systems?
IIRC, vmware is not free nor free software. If I had money, this would be a different story and VMware would be possible.
Does anyone actually use winelib?
For me, winelib is the most interesting part of wine. I have win32 code I would like to just port to linux/X without doing a rewrite. In fact I want to port it to both i386 AND powerpc. I'm not interested in 386 DLL loading and crud like that. I just want to use it as a portable widget library. Yes I know of other portable widget libraries but it is too late for these old programs.
I found that winelib didn't even come CLOSE to compiling on linuxppc.
Making winelib robust would allow other software houses to release native linux ports of their win32 software much easier.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
is that one of the comments posted about it was that The Sims runs on WINE but not VMWare or NT.
When did this happen? The ONLY reason why I have a Win98 box is to run The Sims. If that's been resolved, I can reformat it to Linux and reload.
Does anyone have info on this? I tried to search in the WINE db and couldn't find a listing - am I doing it wrong?
Thanks!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I think this is the 3rd osnews story I've seen on slashdot in the last 3 days. What the fuck is up with that?
I mean, the interviews and articles at osnews are informative, and generally better thought out than the "content" (jon katz, CmdrPedo's cartoon reviews) at slashdot, but osnews has their own has their own commenting system, and not nearly as many trolls.
Slashdot: OSNews for nerds. Stuff that we saw at a site better than ours.
you want good luck to follow you and your offspring for geneations to come? This troll has the solution for you...
All you have to do is copy this troll onto two to four of the discussion threads of your choice! That's right! Just copy this into a new message and click "post anonymously." That's all there is to it!
Tired of that idiot talking about geek culture! Stick one of these babies on it! And it's good for the economy!
Marge Gentry of Cambridge, Minnesota participated, and the next day she received a large fruit basket outside of her door from a secret admirer. Unfortunately, Marge was hit by a truck the next day, so she didn't get to the Granny Smith apples.
Commander Taco of Hole-in-the-ground West Virginia didn't participate, and he was violated by a group of raging homosexuals. Since the gang was headed by Jon Katz, Taco had no recourse to the law because the entire town knew about their previous relationship. The unfortunate outcome is enshrined forever at goatse.cx.
So if you want to get the fruit basket and not get poked in the bread basket, just copy this troll onto two of the discussions threads of your choice. We could have this place blanketed by sundown!
###
Windows Media player.
.wmv file I'd be a very rich man.
Microsoft does some things right and media player is one of them. Codeweavers for whatever reason decided to focus their efforts in getting Apple's Quicktime viewer to run and plug into mozilla.
If I had a nickel for everytime I needed to view a
Anybody have luck installing and executing windows media player under wine ? So far my luck has been terrible.
5. Has implementation work started for some new API functions found on WindowsXP?
Alexandre Julliard: No, not really. We only implement functions that are needed by applications, and so far there are no applications that depend on XP-specific functions to work. In fact there are many APIs from older Windows versions that we haven't implemented, simply because we haven't found yet a single application that requires them.
PowerCalc.exe from Windows XP Power Toys is a fully featured scientific graphing calculator, as opposed to the Windows 3.1 calc.exe in Windows 2000 and previous.
PowerCalc.exe does not run on Windows 2000 or previous. It has XP specific hooks or functions. Do they have anyone working with WINE to investigate XP specific calls?
Winemaker does a lot of the work - and is free.
The fact that Winelib is capable of as much as it is now is almost all due to our work - and is free.
We can help you get MFC working quickly and easily, and, okay, that parts not free (we have to eat somehow), but it's not that expensive. We've done it a lot, and we can genuinely save you time and hassle. It's like hiring a plumber instead of learning how to sweat pipes yourself.
Why do so few people ask us for help?
Is it because it's mostly the developers trying this, who have no budget? Or am I missing something else?
Thanks for listening,
Jeremy White, CodeWeavers
Sounds like you have an excellent service there!
I did not know about it.
Are you able to make a bare winelib work under non-intel architectures?
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Yes, we've built and run Winelib apps on both Linux PPC and Solaris SPARC.
Yes, you *CAN* pay US$5/month to help them develop WineX, but their CVS system is public. And anonymous. I am currenty using WineX and I haven't subscribed. (Yet)
.001 version change, you don't have to download the whole shebang again. Just the code changes.
Plus, one of the advantages of CVS is that every time they release a
Chris
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
if I read "slow C" and java is faster then C - I know this guy is foolish us ;)
Time to switch to FissualBasik - this nice fast programming language *ROTFL*
I'm sure there's *lots* of possible scenarios in which Wine can be described as a circumvention device - especially if we let MS do the talking. I wouldn't dare live in the US if I where a Wine developer. Hell, I might not dare live in the US anyway!
The concentration's too low. You need Southern Comfort, Yukon Jack, or brandy...
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
int main() is arguably just as valid as int main(void). The latter is preferred because it provides a prototype, but both will execute properly (assuming one isn't doing very strange things when calling main() recursively) and both are required to be accepted by all standards-compliant compilers.
Mac OS X?
I already said that 'Microsoft does not disclose all it's API calls' or some such thing in the post you just responded to.
fully featured
I hate this term. Its completely meaningless. What does it mean to say something is "fully featured"? It implies that ALL possible features that anyone might want are there, which is obviously just marketing baloney, no existing software fits that description.
I guess when used like this it means the software "has lots of features". Isn't there a better term that means that?