Slashdot Mirror
New Transgaming WineX Release
Thunderbird writes "Transgaming released a new version of WineX. Winex allows you to run x86 windows games and programs on x86 Linux. It includes allmost full directx support (up to 7 including direct3d). " I'm still skeptical of their business model, but I subscribed anyway in the hopes that The Sims and its expansion packs will work soon. They look legit, although I only own 2 windows program (The Sims, Diablo 2, and their expansion packs)
so I don't have much to test it on.
WINEX also promotes the use of Windows software and insulates programmers from cross-platform considerations. (bad)
Just what cross platform considerations are you refering to--in regards to games? The buying public has spoken and it has said that Linux games do not sell at retail. Even id, the last holdout for retail Linux titles decided after Quake3:TA that retail Linux games sales were not a viable proposition.
Game developers are not being insulated from cross platform considerations. They don't really have any to be insulated from. For good or bad MS has provided the necessary tools to make Windows a viable gaming platform. Linux isn't at the same level. Buying a Windows game and playing it on WineX is not casting a vote against retail Linux games, nor is it paying the enemy in some OS holy war. It's the only way people will be able to play 1st run titles on Linux. That will not change in the foreseable future. Whether or not the developer gets money from a Windows game sale or a Linux game sale doesn't matter. The developer still gets money and the customer gets a product they want. That should be all that matters.
Someone said it a few days ago in a discussion on Slashdot regarding console gaming, but I think it's worth saying here again:
It is a good thing that almost all games are written for Windows.
The reason is that we don't want a moving target for developers who are writing commercial titles. In the console gaming market, you can buy a PS2, XBOX, SNES or whatever, and only play games for those platforms on those boxes. Any developer who wants to capture the whole market must port to each platform. This is slow, frustrating and helps neither the game house nor the consumer.
In the PC market on the other hand, you can write only for Windows and not worry b/c you know you'll hit the vast majority of consumers. John Carmack is fond of saying that all Linux game sales ever don't add up to one medium selling Windows title. So people aren't about to write games for Linux unless they want the techincal challenge/fun.
WINEX is great. We need to accept the fact that people will continue to write games exclusively for Windows (and that they should!). And we need to find ways to make those games work on other platforms if we want to use other platforms to play them.
I really don't think this should be a pro/anti Microsoft discussion, just an evaluation of the reality of the situation.
So which is better, a hard reboot of the machine in Windows, or a process restart on a still running, and stable OS in Linux? I'm pretty sure restarting a process is a lot nicer on the expensive hardware you've purchased to run that nifty new 3d game, than killing power to that hardware unexpectedly because one process killed the entire OS.
You are correct, to a degree. Transgaming has said that once it reaches a specific level of subscriptions, it will release the code under the general wine license. From their web site:
We will not release that code under a less restrictive license (such as the Wine license) unless and until we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users.
Now that's a big if, you are correct. What if they go out of business at 11,000 subscribers? They are under no obligation to do anything with their code.
However, they seem to be pretty nice, and I suspect that if they do go under, and I hope they don't, they will release the code anyway, no matter the number of subscribers.
"Poisoning a community" is a gross over-reaction to their system though. Maybe you should think about the fact that Wine specifically chose BSD not GPL. The initial Wine developers had a choice and they made it. You have to respect their choice, even if you disagree with it.
It does promote development of software for the MS Windows platform, but commercial games development for Linux is in a bad way anyway, and we can hardly blame Transgaming for that.
However, as a user, if I can take a game off of the shelf and run it on a Linux system, what do I care if it was developed for another OS? "Oh, Microsoft Windows, is that thing still going?". What Transgaming should be ( and I think are) doing is persuading Windows developers to test their stuff on WineX. If they can convince them that for a few days work, they could get even a 1% hike in sales, they might succeed, and a few days work by fifty games companies will save Transgaming a hell of a lot of work in trying to make the platform fit the game.
As an ex-commercial games developer, I'll stick my oar in and say that most games projects don't consider cross platform issues until well into development. If it's a choice between getting a version to market for one platform, or waiting six months or a year to add multiple platforms, most publishers will press for option 1 on economic grounds (which is why it will be great if Transgaming can persuade even a few of them to tweak for WineX on the basis that it's a cheap way to break into a new platform). In other words: there's never time to do it right, but always time to do it twice. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When it comes to boxed version, you sell all the platform ports in the same box.
Remember BeOS 4.5, if you purchased that you got both the X86 & PPC versions in the box.
Same again flr Claris Works, if you purchased that you got both the Win16 & Mac Classic versions in the same box.
Gobe's now doing it to, they are porting their BeOS office suite to Windows & Linux. If you buy the boxed version you will get all 3 versions in the box.
That's what Id should have done.
Stores hat having to stock multiple versions of the same application. By using cross-platform bundles stores don't have that problem
From the Transgaming sources page:
Either you didn't know that, or you think they're liars and chose not to give them even the benefit of the doubt by bringing it to our attention. Of course, that still leaves the "problem" that WINE is BSD rather than GPL.
Here's the thing. If you, or another GPL evanglist wants to replicate Transgaming's work (or the whole of WINE) under a GPL license, there's nothing stopping you. They've even given you their source code to look at to help you clean room it. That fact that you choose not to do that does not reflect on Transgaming or WINE, it reflects on you.
Perhaps you think that it's better to have nobody doing this than to have a "poisoner" like Trangaming doing it? If you really think that, I'd be delighted to hear you explain why. Is it GPL or nothing for you, and if so, why not spend your time being part of the solution rather than casting slings and arrows at Transgaming?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.