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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."
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.
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.
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
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."
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.
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!"
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
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?
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
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
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?
"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 only that, but Java is only about six years old. Although I suspect the poster knew that, this obviously isn't a valid claim.