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Wired Talks Wine
matroid writes "Wired reports that the upcoming WINE version 1.0 may be just what Linux needs to get users to migrate from Windows to Linux."
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"I also find it intriguing that Microsoft has a Linux Competitive Manager if they don't see Linux as competition."
-- from WINE contributor István Lebor
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WINE lets CodeWeavers has created for QuickTime and Shockwave run so smoothly that I never think about them.
I have paid 20$ for CodeWeaver's Crossover plugins. And like he said Shockwave and Quicktime run very smoothly with Galeon + Mozilla 0.9.8. Without having any noticable load on the system resources.
So do your part go pay 20$ and get Crossover plugin. While enjoying all the Quicktime, Shockwave fun, you will be helping Codeweavers in not ending up like Loki.
I had mixed feelings about Transgaming, since they may not be helping in getting Linux game ports and so on. But with Loki gone I might support anything that will get good games on linux.
Its fine with Crossoevr plugins, since Apple was not going to do a Quiktime port for Linux anyway. And I think I read that Apple did support Codeweavers in getting Quicktime working with Wine.
One reason: Lotus Notes. Granted, there are also open source alternatives out there (such as for instance Tutos), but that doesn't help you much if you are an employee at a company which uses Notes. Wine allows you to run Linux on your workstation while still being able to access the corporate document and discussion databases.
Of course, it is in IBM's power to show their true commitment to Linux by making this point moot with a native Linux Notes client, but for some weird reason they don't want to, despite their Linux commitment in many other areas...
Say no to software patents.
Okay, I'm a newbie when comes to Wine's technical side, but what happens when Microsoft releases the .0.1 release of their APIs specifically to break Wine compatibility?
Or what happens when Microsoft updates their EULA to read: "this program must run on an officially licensed Microsoft Operating System" or starts requiring vendors who want to use the XP logo on their boxes to start including that wording also?
Heck, they could just put it all under the guise of their new security stance.
I'm not trolling, these are all possibilities when playing with MS! You can bet they've got contigency plans all ready for the day when Wine becomes a threat.
...if the aim is to get converts. How many people converted to the mac because of softPC? I personally don't know any.
Remember OS/2? One of their claims was "it's a better DOS than DOS" and it was true. OS/2 could run DOS with multiple versions and multiple configurations. But did it take off? No. And one of the reasons is that it didn't have the software support. People don't want emulators, they want native applications.
Emulators are good for that application or two that you still need to run aside from your main software. The key is to make that "main software" Linux software and get the users to like them better than the Windows software.
If people want to run Windows apps, they'll run Windows.
One of the major weaknesses of Wine so far is that there's no support for Windows-only drivers. For example, Matrox Marvel G200 MJPEG video capture. This wipes out whole classes of applications - multimedia, OCR and others.
Fortunately, VMWare version 3 now supports USB, which can allow installation of drivers for USB hardware.
I can envisage that many people will follow an integration path like:
1) Mainly using Windows, add a linux partition
2) Learn the Linux apps, often boot Windows partition
3) Progressively migrate Windows apps to VMware under Linux, less frequent use of Windows partition
4) Progressively migrate Windows apps from under VMware into the Wine environment
5) Progressively convert data from Windows apps to formats usable by native Linux apps
Hopefully, at some point along this path, one can delete the Windows partition, and later the VMware box, and use only native Linux apps or run some Windows apps under wine.
Realistically, I would hope to be completely free of my Windows partition in 6-12 months, and free of VMware in 6-18 months.
But the time to really 'pop the cork' on the Wine is when it supports native Windows device drivers, which will be a feat indeed!
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
THE absolute advantage for game developers are the WINElets which they are working on here. It will make rewriting game code unnessecary and, remember, WINE Is Not an Emulator, so i don't really expect speed issues in the future !
Intersting, however OS 9 apps run in a box of sorts. They can take over the screen, but it is clear when an app is running in classic mode. It is much the same as where VMWare could take you.
WINElib has the potential to do for Linux what Carbon did for OS X.
Carbon is an OS X native API that is based on the classic API. Additionally, Carbon was ported to OS 8 and OS 9. This meant that you could have been developing for Carbon the past few years and having OS X native applications that ran under Mac OS. For extra fun, they could have FAT binaries (I think that I'm using the term right, they had something like that) where they could include a Classic PPC binary, Classic 68K binary, and Carbon OS X binary all as one application.
WINElib is interesting, you can build against WINElib and compile for Windows and Linux, supporting both platforms with native applications. The trick is a strategy that lets you target both OSes for now, it lets you keep your Windows market and expand into the Linux market as it matures.
Personally, I think that Apple should work on getting WINElib to be Aquafied. Then you could build targetting WINElib for Windows/OS X, and Linux or other UNIXes. Obviously you'd hate to make Win32 the standard API, but Apple dropped it when they dropped OpenSTEP for Win32, so oh well.
Alex