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New Transgaming WineX Release

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gimme-games-dammit dept.

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.

11 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. WINEX: Good & Bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Over at LinuxGames, a multi-day flamewar is starting to cool down a bit after a biting discussion of whether WINEX is good or bad for Linux gaming (or Linux as a whole). We should be discussing those same issues here.

    In a nutshell: WINEX potentially gets more Windows people into Linux where they can use WINEX as a crutch to play the games they need while using a "better" operating system. (good) However, WINEX also promotes the use of Windows software and insulates programmers from cross-platform considerations. (bad)

    1. Re:WINEX: Good & Bad by Quarters · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:WINEX: Good & Bad by cavemanf16 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Ha! - providing an automated tool for calling functions in Windows common to gaming, is not making the Windows platform a viable gaming platform per se, it's just making it easier to program for it. Whether that makes Windows better than Linux for gaming, and the gamer in particular, is still quite debatable. I've had games like Counter Strike hard lock my computer in Windows before, requiring a complete reboot of the computer (highly annoying and not good on the HDD), whereas my friends running Counter Strike on Wine in Linux had it lock, switched terminals, killed the process and loaded it right back up without a hitch.

      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.

    3. Re:WINEX: Good & Bad by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Insightful
      • WINEX also promotes the use of Windows software

      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.

      • WINEX [...] insulates programmers from cross-platform considerations

      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.
  2. Re:Macrovision ??? by goatboy_14 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Your one of those people who should really learn to read the entire page before posting.

    From the page (about half way down):
    Issued on Tuesday November 27, 2001

    The long-awaited WineX update is now available to subscribers in the download area. The full list of changes is below:

    • Support for running SafeDisc protected games, like Alice, Sacrifice, etc

    So there you have it. They probably had to license SafeDisc so the could properly run protected software.

    Don't feel bad, these mistakes happen to all of us. ^_^

    (BTW: since I'm on the subject of corrections, the hole your thinking of is 'whole' as in everything, not hole as in an empty space. Hehe.)
  3. Perils of the BSD-style licence of WINE? by DG · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmmm...

    I've been following the WINE project for quite some time now, and I've been cheering for them from the sidelines the whole time. They've picked exactly the right way to go about their project (provide a Linux version of the Win APIs, not emulate Windows) and once complete, they will have contributed a signifigant service to the community.

    But I wonder about their choice of licence.

    The nature of WINE is that it is very modular; it's not so much a great big tool, as a toolbox full of little tools, where each "tool" is another successfully ported Windows API call. Wine will be "complete" when every possible Windows API is duplicated in Linux-native code.

    As such, it's a program that is very responsive to massive development parallelism - once you have a certain core functionality established, you can hand off large chunks of the API-space to other developers, and they can hack away at it at their leisure. Once they have a given API call working, it can be folded back into the main tree.

    It's analogous to the SETI@Home or Distributed.net efforts, where an "API call" is a "work unit" Once the entire API "search space" has been completed, the project is done.

    (Of course, this is an over-simplification. Windows itself is not so nicely modularized, with APIs calling APIs and lots of undocumented side-effects. But at a course level, WINE does suit parallel development pretty well)

    But WINE is licenced BSD. As such, there is no compelling mechanism that requires that any "work units" be re-submitted back into the main project. It is entirely possible for aome entity to port a core series of Windows APIs, and then withold the source from the WINE community. Entirely legal, but very, very bad form.

    And yet, that appears to be what TransGaming is doing. They are working on (from what I can tell from their website) porting the DirectX APIs - absolutely essential for getting games (probably the most compelling reason for using WINE in the first place) to function. They have staked out a key, core component of the WINE project "search space".

    And they have licenced their portion of the work in such a way that it taints the entire project. In a nutshell, you are prohibited from _selling_ any product that uses WINE and their source. So if you want to write a DirectX Linux app, and sell it, you're FUBARed.

    Furthermore, you can't use any of their source as examples or help in porting other APIs that may be related, because of the tainting effect.

    The end result is very much like Microsoft's "Shared Source" where you can see the source code, but you can't actually _use_ it in any meaningful way.

    It's worth retelling the story that lead to the creation of the GPL - Stallman was having problems getting a printer to work. He knew that if he had access to the source, he could get the printer to work, and that he could pass out copies so that everyone with a similar printer could get it to work too. The manufacturer refused to provide source, on the grounds that they made their money selling the drivers.

    Which is more important, a company making money, or people getting their stuff working?

    There are 3 essential aspects of software freedom: Universal availibility of source, Freedom to modify that source, and Freedom to redistribute modified source any way you want (as long as these freedoms are not denied to those further down the chain) TransGaming is providing the first two, but steps on the third - and by doing so, sabotages a worthy community effort.

    If only WINE had been been released under the GPL, then this situation could not have occurred!

    And a big, HUGE thumbs down to TransGaming, for taking this step in the first place! Yes, they are simply trying to protect their business model, and I understand that. But I offer than any business model that requires poisoning a community effort in this way in order to ensure its success is a business model that should not have been attempted in the first place.

    I will not be making use of TransGaming's code, and I encourage others to do the same.

    --
    Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
    1. Re:Perils of the BSD-style licence of WINE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Perils of the BSD-style licence of WINE? by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Insightful
      • WINE is licenced BSD. As such, there is no compelling mechanism that requires that any "work units" be re-submitted back into the main project

      From the Transgaming sources page:

      • "Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project."

      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.
    3. Re:Perils of the BSD-style licence of WINE? by gavriels · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're right: If WINE had been released under the GPL, then this whole situation could not have occurred.

      The WINE implementatin of Direct3D would have improved at the same slow rate of other parts of WINE that are not commercially funded. None of the work that we've already contributed back to WineHQ WINE would exist (our work on DirectSound, 2D DirectDraw restructuring, DirectInput, OLE Automation, and general bug fixes).

      There would be no opportunity for our business model experiment with the Street Performer Protocol, which could serve as an effective model for other, similar projects.

      You're also right in that this *is* about people getting their stuff working. Nothing stops anyone from taking the code and doing whatever they want with it to improve it to get their software working. If they want to redistribute something commercially, they can come to us to negotiate an appropriate commercial license. If they're commercial developers who want to sell a Linux port that uses our DirectX code, is it unreasonable to ask them to pay to support the project? Under the GPL, of course, they could not do such a thing AT ALL.

      -Gav

      --
      Gavriel State, CEO
      TransGaming Technologies Inc.
      gav@transgaming.com
      http://www.transgaming.com

  4. Id fucked up. by DABANSHEE · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  5. Re:Macrovision ??? by gavriels · · Score: 5, Informative

    The copy protection related code isn't available on SourceForge for the moment due to DMCA concerns, amongst other things. We've just updated the source code page to mention this.

    -Gav

    --
    Gavriel State, CEO
    TransGaming Technologies Inc.
    gav@transgaming.com
    http://www.transgaming.com