Slashdot Mirror
WineX (And Warcraft3) On FreeBSD
Dan writes "Kenneth Culver has implemented the Linux ftruncate64, truncate64, and mmap2 syscalls in the linuxulator on his computer, (mostly cut 'n pasted the mmap2 from regular mmap with a couple of changes) and with these changes it is possible to run the Linux version of WineX (the one you have to pay for) to run Warcraft 3 on FreeBSD." If WineX is interesting to you, this earlier article on playing Windows games with WineX (under Linux) may be worth a read.
This is just silly. If one wants people to use Linux, you've got to eliminate barriers keeping them from doing so. WineX is a solution (although it may not be perfect) for lowering one of the most important barriers: 'Can I still use that Windows app that I use so much when I switch'.
Read this interesting article by Joel Spolsky, about removing barriers for more info.
Furthermore, do you really think there are less people developing OSS because there's WineX. I don't think so, maybe fewer developers will try to rewrite a win application that works perfectly wih WineX, but they will develop something else instead (work enough if you ask me).
Stef
"Son, in a sporting event, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get" - Homer J. Simpson
what is this a press conference?
Of course it's legal, why would it not be?
They are providing a Free interface for a Free enviroment on FreeBSD, so people can Buy a product from the company and use it.
If that's not free, I don't know what is.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
I do not run *BSD, as I know Linux and am comfortable with at after some 9 years of use. However, it is a great testament to the power of the open source concept that this is possible at all. I am tremendously impressed with the BSD guys for achieving this.
Remember, it is a Good Thing tm to have a computing infrastructure made of diverse systems. So the more code that can be run on Linux , *BSD, Hurd, OSX and others the better.
Today, Wine is probably no less compatible with a random version of windows than any other random version of windows.
- Paul
Hmm, it seems that it hurts so bad, when someone (the trolls) discovers something really revolutionary (Linux), wear the uniform of the partizan (the tux t-shirt), convince themselves that they differ from the crowd (MS users) and then find out that a long time ago, another revolution (FreeBSD) took place that shaked the World (IT) so baddly that even today every one uses the Manifesta (TCP/IP stack, VM, etc...) of this very first revolution. I am afraid spreading false propaganda: 1) Doesnt make you a partizan 2) Doesnt affect the real revolution Linux is not bad. The trolls that try to make themselves feel superior by using it, now thats really bad. Hmmm, why do you sound like a 50 yrs old IT manager that tries not to lose his job... For the moment see
Longest Uptimes
Most requested
It's no wonder that BSD lacks behind linux in software when it is missing important system calls!
:-P
No, BSD just got it right the first time
From a freebsd-emulation mailing list post:
To me, it looks like mmap2 takes an offset that's a page index, rather
than a byte position. Since linux passes the offset with a 32-bit
long, rather than a 64-bit off_t like we do, they need to do this in
order to be able to map offsets larger than 4GB into a file.
So mmap2 would be redundant on BSD...
Microsoft will find ways to break Wine support.
They won't simply let nix develop game support without any resistance.
I've noticed this problem as well. It's almost a given at this point that the best *nix software will eventually be ported to windows. A friend of mine made a good point when he came over and pointed out that almost all the programs I had open were available for windows, in addition to all the windows software. It's the OS2 problem all over again.
It becomes even more of a problem because if you're a windows developer who dosn't release source and states that you'll never port outside windows very few people will have a problem. But if you're not developing for windows and you either don't release the source, or you forbid windows ports...well, you've seen what happens already in this small thread.
We're planning instead on making the non windows versions of our game just a little bit better. The unregistered windows versions would have a couple less levels, an occasional "please register" nag screen on startup, and a release date a couple months later than the registered windows version and the *nix releases.
The hope is that it'd be too much trouble for too little to even bother compiling the *nix version for windows, and there's even a small chance some of the windows users might shell out a few bucks instead of warezing it.
I veiw it more as giving the thing out for free to people of a like mind than crippling the windows version. We'll probaly still get labled elitist bastereds for it, but it's the best way I could think of to support diversity in OS use and not screw over the windows users.
Everything will be taken away from you.