Winex 3.0 Released

syntaxman writes "You'll find the information thread here, or see the release notes. The pre-packaged files (rpms,debs,tarballs) are available only for subscribers."

Comments

Alright

[electro_mike]

This will convice my mom to switch to linux. good ol' FreeCell... she is at 20 000games Won last time i checked...

Re:Alright

[stratjakt]

Alas FreeCell uses GDI.

Does it run under wine? Because it doesnt run if you copy it to 2000, ME or 98.

Or maybe I'm thinking of Spider solitaire.

Re:Alright

[bhtooefr]

Freecell runs on Windows 3.1 (it comes with Win32s), 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP.

Re:Alright

[Marvel Man]

Works just fine in WINE. You need freecell.exe and cards.dll and runs perfect.

A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[1337_h4x0r]

The day when it doesn't matter what kind of application you run under linux, all win32/directx apps are supported - is the day this will really take off. While I'm sure alot of these games will work under linux, the day when you can just install and play is when it'll make it to the big time.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[HanzoSan]

So why dont you subscribe and make it happen sooner?

I'm sure with a few thousand subscriptions they will have enough money to hire a few more programmers.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Catiline]

I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent. Without a visible need to port to Linux, developers will continue to release games that only support Windows.

You have a choice: emulate Windows (forever), or seek native software ports. I've chosen native ports, because I think that is the better long-term solution. But if you just can't stand to give over your EverCrack until they provide a Linux client... that is your choice. Just be aware I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of Linux game ports.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

WineX tackles the chicken and egg problem linux has been experiencing, if you cant grasp that...dont use it..stick with your few ported games.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. ... You have a choice: emulate Windows ...

Do you even know what the acronym Wine stands for?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[alienw]

It doesn't have PERFECT application support. That's why you want native ports. Besides, you are probably the only person who is willing to switch to another OS and throw away the thousands of dollars invested in software for win32. Your argument is like saying that dos support in win95 held back native win32 apps. Bullshit, ain't it?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Loosewire]

As others have said, buy native - Quake 3 and The Sims for linux is where your money should go. Show the developers they can make money with linux :-)

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[cdemon6]

Think about that again - let software developers the freedom to choose to add a linux port wheter they need one or not!

If we have binary emulation of windows apps more people will use linux, and if more people use linux more companies will port their product to native linux. but for the user winex is a really good thing, some companies just can't spend money on a linux port for this few thousand sales atm.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Catiline]

It doesn't have PERFECT application support. That's why you want native ports.

That's why I phrased it as being "perfect" in quotes: I know there are faults with the program, and I know it will never be literally perfect. But when for the majority of programs the process is "good enough" and doesn't interfere with execution, then most people won't look for a better solution.

Besides, you are probably the only person who is willing to switch to another OS and throw away the thousands of dollars invested in software for win32.

Yep. I sure am.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[stone2020]

Was I dreaming when Loki tried and failed to do only native ports? Wow, 3 ports in the last year. I'm impressed. I'll just stop playing games because holding out for more linux games will help the cause. Wrong! Get people to install linux will help to get more native ports. In the mean time they can use WineX to play games.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Catiline]

WineX tackles the chicken and egg problem...

Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem. From what I understood, it wasn't lack of market that sank the company but poor management.

Anyway, it's not as if Linux doesn't run games without WINE.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Zemran]

??? I have switched to Linux and only use ported games so I know he is not alone. I agree completely with his arguement and think that my support for the ports will help us to move on into a brighter future. I also think your analogy is dumb and that you are simply trying to provoke heated arguement.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I figured you'd come out of the woodworks to start advertising for them again King Troll.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[HanzoSan]

Actually it was both. There was no market because Loki came before KDE was even worth using. Two Loki didnt know how to run a business, you make one or two games, profit, and then move to another game, you port based on demand, you dont port until you run out of money.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[AceM2]

While I can't read minds, I believe Loki's little project may have retarded native port development. I realize it was taking a long time for Loki to get anything out there, but the fact is that if Loki had been making money hand over fist.. The big developers (EA etc) wouldve said hey.. Let's exploit this new market.. but it didn't happen.. I wouldve thought there were enough Linux people out there to start a market, but I guess not. Probably the next best thing would have to be a company (like Loki) just receiving massive donations so they stay afloat and can advertise better..

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[einer]

Well, the reality of the situation is that demand exists, and the quickest and cheapest way to satisfy the demand is with Wine.

I refuse to choose games based on which OS I use. I choose games on their own merits and, if I can help it, I won't limit my field of choices. So what if wine is forever. There's a real possibility that in time, I'll be able to run games better with Linux/Wine than on MS. Talk about opening the door for wide spread linux adoption.

That's fine that you choose not to support wine. Just be aware that I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of native linux games, the proliferation of Win32 apps and the slower than optimal adoption of linux by the masses.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as an AC, no one will likely see this, but here goes...

Actually, Wine helps loosen the grip Microsoft has on Windows. If app vendors write to a Windows "version" properly supported by Wine, Microsoft can change the Win32 API all they want, but no one will use it because they don't want to write off Linux users. End result? Microsoft will no longer control the Win32 API, the market will!

For reference, consider IBM's ill-fated PS/2 line. What killed them? They were not compatible, that is to say, IBM PC's of the period were not "IBM compatable". The market decided, and IBM didn't get back into the market strongly until they stopped trying to change direction.

As for "emulating" ("Wine Is Not an Emulator" ;) Windows, you're not. Your taking Win32 away from Bill, something not even the Justice Department could do...

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[RoLi]

Nonsense.

We can only expect native ports AFTER we have a significant number of gamers on Linux.

And a gamer will only switch when ALL his preferred games run on Linux. Yes, that means it's not enough if out of 10 games only 9 are ported.

Wine is the only way to overcome the chicken-egg problem (as another poster already has pointed out), it is absolutely essential for Linux as a gaming platform and also very helpful for Linux as a desktop in general.

If WindowsXP weren't backwards compatible to Windows95 and Windows95 weren't backwards compatible to DOS, all gamers would still run DOS.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[RoLi]

Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem.

Well, not really. First you would have to throw away all your existing games when switching and then Loki just offered 20 or so games out of several 100 current titles.

If you play 10 games and only one game is not ported by Loki, you will not make the switch, period. Only Wine with near-100% compatibility will allow the masses to switch.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[GMFTatsujin]

Actually, I'm all for WINE. Not for the new games, because that takes a long time to develop and support in WINE, but for the older games. I don't want to have to have a Windows partition just to run them, and I don't want to leave them behind. I've already purchased them once, so emulation is the best way to go for me.

If you have already-released games that you want to keep, support WINE. If you want to play new games, pester the developers and vote with your dollars.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[infinite9]

If we have binary emulation of windows apps more people will use linux

That's the thing. I think linux will eventually be viewed as windows compatible, but the choice for power users. Some people will switch to it to be cool. But when microsoft adds drm, you can bet people will jump ship in a hurry if linux is a viable alternative at that time. Then I think we'll see microsoft's true colors. Windows isn't done till linux doesn't run. The barometer will be directx. When game companies start to resist the move to new versions of directx (that contain linux time bombs) we'll know we've won.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't tackle it, it exacerbates it! WineX is doing a fantastic job of making sure that money spent on things that "run" under Linux ends up in the coffers of Windows companies. WineX helps shift money from the pockets of Linux programmers to Windows programmers, and it helps make sure there is no short- or medium-term Linux application jobs.

And if there's nothing in the near future, why would people expect that once there's a sufficient body of running Windows apps/games tolerable under Linux, Linux programming and releases will suddenly take off?

Wake up! Do we really want to tie Linux to the Windows API?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hard-core gamer will not leave Windows until Windows is no longer the PC gaming platform of choice. And that won't happen until Windows is no longer so hugely dominant, and that won't happen if the body of Linux games and applications is the same as the Windows body.

If the best Linux can offer people switching is "Windows compatibility", the logical question becomes "Why switch?".

WineX eases the transition -- but it is not a reason to switch!

(I should add that WINE and WineX's "100% compatibility" has been "just around the corner" almost since the inception of the project, or at least since I began tracking WINE in 1995. You know what? It runs more apps, but it's no closer now than it was then. When someone recently extolled the virtues of the current revision, I told them to download the most recent 20 demos from any given gaming site and try them. IIRC, he had to dig back a lot further before he found one that installed and ran.)

Furthermore, consider this: one of the largest complaints about Linux as a desktop OS is the lack of consistency. Suddenly layering a NEW approach to the file system ("Oooh, is it /home/user/games or is it C:\Program Files\Game") with a new widget set which doesn't accept the thems of their desktop choices doesn't seem to help that whole consistency thing.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[4of12]

After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent.

Well, with Microsoft having saturated the desktop market for OS and office productivity applications, their new revenue model is based on upgrade cycles and subscription licenses.

In other words, they're deliberately cutting the cords of compatibility back to Win 9X, for example. And stopping future support for NT4 and other versions of Windows at specific times in the future. Anyone with a Windows infrastructure that went through Software Assurance 6.0 knows that MS has them by the balls. From an economic perspective, there is little elasticity in the price of Windows and Office: at zero price you might get an additional 5% of the market, at double the price you might lose 5% of the market.

If people that are happy running their business on those creaky old Windows systems have an emulator that works on Linux that helps them to keep their business running without huge investments in new software (and new hardware to go along with it), then that's a good thing for them. Development of native Linux applications will still go on and probably be spurred even more by those users with only one foot in the Linux camp.

The day may come when more of the legacy Windows applications of yore will run on a Linux/Wine system than on Windows 2006, for the simple reason that MS has a business reason to force those users into upgrading to Windows 2006, while the Linux development roadmap is not so encumbered.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now this sounds familiar...

Anyone remember Open32 for OS/2. Open32 was to OS/2, what Wine is to Linux. There was a brief period of time where Open32 was combined with Wine to produce a product called Odin on OS/2. This product would translate a Windows application into an OS/2 application at runtime.

OS/2 was judged to be technically superior to Windows, as we are hear today about Linux. In fact, IBM is behind both of them!

Anyone remember OS/2?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[EvilAlien]

KDE is worth using now?

I think we have to be fair in acknowledging that Loki had no market because there aren't enough gamers using Linux. This is changing, albeit slowly, and I've seen a number of friends and colleagues consider the switch from MS to Linux. The can consider such a move largely because of WineX. Once there is enough gamers using Linux and willing to use Linux as a primary platform for games then ports will make sense.

It think it would be interesting to get some details out of BioWare on their experiences with putting out a Linux port for Neverwinter Nights. Many Linux gamers, frustrated with the wait and perception of "vaporware", turned to Wine/WineX to play the game under Linux. Now that the client is out in public Beta (and it works great, BTW), they are able to play it natively. The big question is was all this effort worth it to BioWare's bottom line, because that is what makes a project like this possible.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[jasonditz]

OS/2 was judged to be technically superior to Windows, as we are hear today about Linux. In fact, IBM is behind both of them!

Anyone remember OS/2?

Hmmm... semi-major platform from a major manufacturer... no, I'm sure NO ONE remembers OS/2. :)

The problem with the comparison is the assumption that there is some magical sliding scale called "Technical Superiority" that can be readily computed. Maybe Windows gets a 5, OS/2 a 6, and Linux a 6.1?

OS/2's downfall was precisely the lack of Windows compatibility. OS/2 3.0 has excellent Win 3.1 compatibility, and was the preferred platform for a lot of Power Users at the time.

To further complicate matters, IBM promised Win32 compatiblity in the Merlin release (4.0), but when they ran into some little problems, they just tossed a sloppy Win32s emulator on it and shoved it out the door. Anyone remember Win32s?

IBM lost its desktop share in OS/2 because not only did they not provide Win32 compatibility, but because they proved with an excellent Win16 emulator that it was possible, and then made an empty promise.

I'll leave the "IBM is behind both of them!" part for some other interested party to cover :)

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Mitchell Mebane]

Here are a few tasty snippets from Wine HQ - Why Wine is so important and Wine HQ - Debunking Wine Myths which I feel answer you better than I can:

From the first page:

Any Windows replacement must run Windows applications

The dependency is not so much on Microsoft Windows as it is on Windows applications. Boxed off-the-shelf applications, games, in-house applications, vertical market applications, are what prevents users, companies and governments from switching to another operating system. Even if 90% of the needs of most users are taken care of if you can provide them with an office suite, an email client, a browser, and a media player, then there will still be a remaining 10% of their needs, potentially critical needs, that are not met. Unfortunately these remaining 10% are spread across a wide spectrum of applications: thousands of applications running the gamut from games to specialized accounting software for French farms, via Italian encyclopedias, German tax software, child education software, banking software, in-house software representing years of development, etc. It is the availability of all this software that makes Windows so compelling and its monopoly so strong. No platform will become mainstream unless it runs a significant portion of that software and lets individuals, companies and governments preserve their investments in that software.

Chicken-and-egg problem for Linux on the desktop

This brings us to the chicken and egg issue of Linux on the desktop. Until Linux can provide equivalents for the above applications, its marketshare on the desktop will stagnate. But until the marketshare of Linux on the desktop rises, no vendor will develop applications for Linux. How does one break this vicious circle?

Again, Wine can provide an answer. By letting users reuse the Windows applications they have invested time and money in, Wine dramatically lowers the barrier that prevents users from switching to Linux. This then makes it possible for Linux to take off on the desktop, which increases its market share in that segment. In turn, this makes it viable for companies to produce Linux versions of their applications, and for new products to come out just for the Linux market.

This reasoning could be dismissed easily if Wine was only capable of running Solitaire. However now it can run Microsoft Office, multi-media applications such as QuickTime and Windows Media Player, and even games such as Max Payne or The SIMS.
Almost any other complex application can be made to run well given a bit of time. And each time that work is done to add one application to this list, many other applications benefit from this work and become usable too.


And now for one of the myths:


Myth 2: "Wine is bad for Linux"

One undeniable fact exists: there is a vast software library that works with Microsoft's operating systems. Many of these applications already have Linux equivalents, however for most people there remains a handful of programs keeping them tied to Windows. Some of these programs have almost no chance of getting ported to Linux (e.g. Microsoft Office), others simply can't be ported because they've become abandonware (e.g. Turbotax 1999). Would I want to have Windows just because someday I may need to access an old tax program?

The fact that Wine exists won't prevent companies from porting their software, but having less than a few percentage points of marketshare will. Wine puts more free software into the hands of people who would otherwise not use it. In turn, history has repeatedly shown that larger marketshare leads to more commercial development. More commercial development has always led to more efforts to develop better free software equivalents.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can honestly say I don't personally know anyone who has switched to Mac from PC. You should really use another example. While some people (few) may share your views on WineX and computers in general, most people don't.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[the_2nd_coming]

so you never moved off of your DOS based OSs since all those thousands of dollors of programs you had for dos would not run in 2k/XP.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people here don't have thousands of dollars in Windows software. They have thousands of dollars in pirated Windows software.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Ravenscall]

I have, err, kind Of.

I run Linux on both!

Now, to see if this bad boy will run on my iBook tonight

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[enjo13]

Your missing the point.

One of the ideas behind Wine is to simplify the process of porting to Linux. In addition to it's library byte-level compatibility, one of the overriding goals is to give companies who write windows products the ability to port over large parts of their code relatively painlessly while only optimizing certain chunks for Linux.

This gives them a foothold in the Linux market with a reduced investment in terms of developer costs. As the market grows and revenue increases the hope would be that they would begin to see the Linux platform as a viable one encouraging MORE (not less) Linux support.

When given a choice between investing man hours in porting code from Windows to Linux or not having a Linux port at all, most companies will choose the latter. The perception (and it may be accurate) is that Linux is simply not a viable revenue producing platform. Wine (and friends) ease the process of porting. With less initial investment we have a much better chance of getting companies involved in Linux and fighting the perception that Linux is not a viable commercial operating system

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[t0ny]

I hear that now, with the new WINE, I can actually get a whopping 20 fps on Quake! Its that fast!

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Fizzol]

>Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem.

They did, but Chicken & Egg evaded Loki's tackle and ran in for a touchdown.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[AlternateSyndicate]

Does it matter? Wine is just a cute name, it was never meant to be taken as the Holy Truth. Even the primary author of Wine has referred to it as an emulator in mailing list posts. Just give it up.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[homer_ca]

"If app vendors write to a Windows "version" properly supported by Wine, Microsoft can change the Win32 API all they want, but no one will use it because they don't want to write off Linux users."

Microsoft already can't change Win32 to break compatibility unless they also break Windows 98, NT, 2000. There's a huge installed base of older Windows and it'll take at least 5 years to End-Of-Life each version.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[FatherOfONe]

I understand your complaint, however the same could have been said about SAMBA. Don't use SAMBA, just force every desktop to run NFS!!!

Without SAMBA a lot of people I know wouldn't give Linux a second look. Now they use it INSTEAD of Windows for some of their servers.

Let's look at it this way. If WINE was perfect it would help bring people like me that still need DreamWeaver and a few other apps over to using Linux on the desktop. Now once Linux gained significant desktop marketshare, say around $35%, developers would have a good market base to target. Once critical mass on the desktop was achived then some development companies would want to develop native applications as opposed to WINE. As it is now, why would Macromedia port DreamWeaver to ~1% of the desktop market.

Please understand that I use DreamWeaver as an example. I have been told that it does run "somewhat" under WINE.

On a side note is there an application that competes with Microsoft Access on Linux. Specifically I am looking for a good tool to build front ends and reports with to an Oracle Database.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[ukyoCE]

This is a stupid argument against Wine. The thing is Wine emulation will never be perfectly compatible with all programs, nor will it ever run as fast as native executables. If Wine is used to make sure the most popular games without linux ports (like Counter-Strike) can run under linux, then there will grow to be enough market for native games under linux that companies take the time to port.

I've never heard any indication that companies are saying "Well, we could do a linux port, but they already have that WineX emulation that runs at 10-40% of the FPS along with many stability problems."

However it IS helping to show companies that there is a linux market. For instance the Half-Life engine simply won't be ported to Linux. They don't care, it's too old, whatever. But they've gotten hassled so much by Transgaming and linux users over VAC (anti-cheat) and other problems that broke Wine compatibility that they're doing some work now to keep Counter-Strike at least working under Wine. I think there's a good chance with Half-Life 2 they're going to have Linux support natively, because they've seen from Winex with Counter-Strike that the users are there.

(personally I still reboot for Counter-Strike because of the VAC problems and because my frame rate is too low in winex on this comp)

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious about one thing: What graphics drivers do you use?

Currently in the Linux world, if you want any sort of a "modern" 3D card, chances are you're using nVidia or ATI's Binary Only drivers. I think we're seeing the same issue here.

As a lot of you may know, nVidia's drivers are often less-than-stable, and ATI's drivers are often underperforming. These drivers prevent you from upgrading to a new version of X right when it is released, and in nVidia's case, there are NO good framebuffer drivers (I know there are other options such as vesafb, but I'm talking about a proper driver) due to the fact that people settle for the binary only drivers and don't demand open source drivers, specs being made available, etc.

Right now, there are a lot of things that are available for Linux that may be less-than-ideal, however if we want any sort of gaming support whatsoever, we may have to settle for the time being.

Also, I'm sure there will be more native ports if Linux gains acceptance on the desktop moreso than it already has, which can be achieved by more people switching, which can be aided by the fact that people are able to play their flashy Win32-only games on their Linux box. Hence, WineX may not be all that bad of a thing for native ports, either.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[mrmeval]

I loaded an old version of wine, fired up Quake II and proceeded to play the game. It was faster than in windows 98 and worked fine. I don't think I even bothered to get the linux version running.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[alienw]

Even with pirated software, don't you want to keep the (illicit) stuff you have already?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we have binary emulation of windows apps more people will use linux, and if more people use linux more companies will port their product to native linux.

But if the only applications Linux users are using are Windows applications via wine, where's the win for Linux users? More Windows applications?

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[abhisarda]

He whines better than wine.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[tmasssey]

I will use your argument for the exact opposite reason. Because OS/2 had such excellent Win16 support, nobody who wrote Win16 apps wrote native OS/2 apps. And those few that did got killed.

I'll give you a perfect example: WordPerfect 6.0. There was a 32-bit native OS/2 version, and there was a 16-bit Win16 version. Guess which one ran better: the Win16 version. It had more developers, testers, resources, effort. The OS/2 version was dropped. Why not? OS/2 ran the Win16 version better than real Windows 3.1!

When Windows moved to Windows 95, IBM quit the Microsoft catchup treadmill. They hoped that OS/2 would have enough market force to compel some native OS/2 apps. They also included a library called Open32. Because Windows NT 3.1 (the beginning of the Win32 API) was supposed to be OS/2 3.0, many of the Win32 API calls were renamed OS/2 calls. So, Open32 basically mapped as many Win32 calls onto their OS/2 equivilents as possible. In fact, Lotus used this extensively in porting the Win32 version of SmartSuite to OS/2. Bu again, developers were targeting Win32, not OS/2.

It's a tough call. If OS/2 hadn't been able to run Win16 apps, it would have been a harder sell in 1992. But because in 1994 OS/2 ran Win16 better than Win16 itself, and ran them nearly as well as true OS/2 apps, there was nearly zero incentive to target OS/2 (maybe 10% of the market, which frankly kills Desktop Linux today). OS/2 never got a critical mass of applications. Of course, Microsoft's anti-competitive actions didn't help...

What makes people think that Linux in 2003 is any different than OS/2 in 1994? The fact that they want it to be? That's not going to cut it. And remember: OS/2 had 10% of desktops in 1994, and a high percentage of servers at the time (30-40% or more: at the time it was OS/2 or Netware). Focusing on Win32 compatibility to increase the user base is not going to cut it.

Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?

[fferreres]

It's supposed to be a temporary solution. It being temporary depends on Linux taking off in, among many other markets, the games market. So you need to WineX for linux to take off, and you need Linux to take off before ports start to make sense. It's a double blade knife yes, it could well be the case that games never get ported to Linux, but that is not intrinsic to your reasoning, it depends on other things. For instance, if we get to a point where it's easier to develop under Linux, then having a Linux port will make sense economically. If it never makes sense quility wise and specially, economically, all hope is lost.

Comment Summary

[MosesJones]

30% Why would I want to run windows anyway ?
20% Its dreadful they limit it to subscribers for the RPMs
20% This great news, it means I can run X, Y but not Z
10% It sucks because Z doesn't work
10% If you want to run Windows you should install windows.

Re:Comment Summary

[autocracy]

5% An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi... and they should give it away entirely at their own expense
5% Complaining about how your numbers didn't add up to 100% (even though it doesn't matter).

Re:Comment Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

30% Why would I want to run windows anyway ?
20% Its dreadful they limit it to subscribers for the RPMs
20% This great news, it means I can run X, Y but not Z
10% It sucks because Z doesn't work
10% If you want to run Windows you should install windows. ...
and finally 10% "first post", "blah"

Re:Comment Summary

[popeyethesailor]

20% Offtopic Replies ;)

Re:Comment Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed off the 2% of Gentoo people like me who will have an ebuild for it in a few days and who have no reason to moan.

#emerge winex

Ahhh, bliss.

Re:Comment Summary

[NicolaiBSD]

20% Its dreadful they limit it to subscribers for the RPMs

If your are too lazy to compile, and to cheap to subscribe, you can always wait for a couple of days until the merry men at FreshRPMS build the RPM for you.

Re:Comment Summary

[Per Wigren]

Yes, but it doesn't include the copyprotection-stuff so you can only run cracked versions of the games with it...

Re:Comment Summary

[NewbieSpaz]

you can always wait for a couple of days until the merry men at FreshRPMS build the RPM for you.

Not to nit-pick, but that whole site is maintained by one guy, believe it or not, Matthias Saou. His site does offer the winex rpms though, which is definitely cool.

Re:Comment Summary

[pair-a-noyd]

is there anyone doing this same thing for Mandrake 9.1 ???

Re:Comment Summary

[T3kno]

Not eliete, emergeleet :)

I know it was bad!

Re:Comment Summary

[bryanthompson]

13.5% people replying with statistics about replies
btw, 83% of all statistics are made up.

Re:Comment Summary

[yerdaddy_777]

10% of the people made 2 comments

Re:Comment Summary

[NewbieSpaz]

You can probably get the SRPM from freshrpms.net and do:
rpmbuild --rebuild winex*.src.rpm

If that does not work, a few minor tweaks to the spec files should do it.

Solitaire

[Anonymous Coward]

It still won't let me play solitaire on my PCC-box. Maybe it's written in x86 assembly for ultimate speed.............gfdtgjdtrshrdyg

good or bad?

[fine09]

I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design. Just the fact that I really like to play a couple games now and again.

I am just wondering if we will ever get the performance we get with games under windows. I know that they have a couple games ported, but in games like FPS where framerates are so important. I think that if Wine can perform in this area, we would see a lot more conversions to linux. Games sell computers, think of the first application that you baught, I know I didn't buy a word processor first(Links386 to be exact).

Now flame me if i am wrong, but doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine, thus adding an extra layer between the hardware and the code?

Re:good or bad?

[yelvington]

"doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine"

No.

http://www.winehq.com/?page=myths

Re:good or bad?

[Surak]

I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design. Just the fact that I really like to play a couple games now and again.

I have one machine for development, one for games, and one for CAD. The problem is that the ideal machine for games is not necessarily the ideal machine for development or CAD. With 3D CAD software and animation and such, I need graphics cards with more capabilities than your average ATI Radeon or nVIDIA GeForce. But games don't run well on cards designed for the CAD market. And for development, I want all the tools I love to use, and many of them either suck on Windows or don't have Win32 ports at all (Quanta+ comes to mind as one that doesn't have a Win32 port). Plus I'm working on a few Linux-specific projects, in addition to the PHP stuff I'm working on.

So my suggestion: one machine for development, another for games. Surak's rule of hardware: Hardware is cheap.

Re:good or bad?

[Loosewire]

I dont want a windows box full stop.
And i cant afford a second machine anyway.

Re:good or bad?

[NorthWoodsman]

Wine is NOT an Emulator; It is a compatibility layer. It just implements the Win32 API

Re:good or bad?

[His name cannot be s]

Now flame me if i am wrong, but doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine, thus adding an extra layer between the hardware and the code?

Flame On!

But sadly no. Wine ( as the acronym goes : WINE IS NOT AN EMULATOR )

It is the libraries and system support that allows linux to direclty execute PE executables, and link them to libraries which have the same interface as Windows itself.

It is a layer in the sense so is QT, GLIBC, etc.. and other libraries that provide support for application services on top of the Linux Kernel.

Wine can be used to facilitate the porting of software from Windows to Linux, via WineLib. It essentially allows the one to code a windows app and compile it for linux. Not quite a perfect fit, but with a little intrepidation, you can get good results.

Another way to look at WineLib is to think of the counterexample: Cygwin. Cygwin is a set of libraries that allow *nix software to port to Windows.

WineLib and Cygwin are covered by the same benefits and limitations:

Do they feel like they are native apps?
-- not quite.
Do they run pretty good?
--for the most part
Could you build an application that people would use on the alternate platform, via the library?
--you bet.

Having used wine for some time, I'll tell you three things:

1. It ain't bad. It ain't the answer to your problems either, but if your app works under it reliably, you won't be dissapointed much.

2. Configuration is the key. 99.9% of resolvable issues I see on the Users' mailing list end up being resolved by a proper configuration. What is a proper configuration? Who the Fcsk knows ;)

3. Perfection is not the goal, but part of the journey. Microsoft has had umpteen years, thousands of programmers, and billions of dollars to build windows, in all it's 'glory' . Comparitivly, Wine is done my a mere handful of extremely talented people, who are replicating and improving that what MS took billions to build. It won't be done today, tomorrow, or even this year, or maybe ever, but it does get better every single day.

Flame off!

Re:good or bad?

[fault0]

> I am just wondering if we will ever get the performance we get with games under windows

With most games yes.

> I know that they have a couple games ported

More than just a few games work in winex :)

> like FPS where framerates are so important.

Yep.. games based on slightly older engines, such as the quake3 engine (rtcw, moh, jk2, sof2), and Halflife (Counterstrike)... pretty much run at the same speeds in WineX and WIndows already.

What would be interested to see is how new games such as bf1942 run on it.. bf1942 is cpu/gfx card intensive, and doesn't run nateively in Linux (unlike ut2k3..)

> Now flame me if i am wrong, but doesn't wine work on some sort of Virtual Machine, thus adding an extra layer between the hardware and the code?

No... wine is an implemenation of the Windows API.

Re:good or bad?

[Spoing]

If you don't try it...you don't know! Well, OK, that's not entirely true. You can take some short cuts to see if Wine and/or WineX will ~likely~ work for you. A few select sites cover Wine and WineX program tips will give you a good idea.

Make no mistake, while Wine is getting damn good it is not perfect or even practical for all Windows software. Some software will probably never run under it, most will not run without some tweaking, so don't expect it to. OTOH, if you tried Wine even as late as a few months ago you might be surprised how things have changed. It all depends on what you 'need' to run.

Many of the main Wine sites have reviews of software and what works -- or how to get it to work. Keep in mind that if a comment is old, even a few weeks, it may not apply to the latest version of Wine. Usually this is a good thing, though some regressions do happen, so you might need a specific 'vintage' for a specific application.

That said, here's a good list;

1. Frank's Corner -- always deserves a mention

   The official Wine Application Database sponsored by Codeweavers

   Transgaming's WineX game list and search engine

   Wine Headquarters -- also sponsored by Codeweavers -- is the main Wine site and has the detailed and oft quoted FAQ-o-Matic

For more information, check the links on any of these sites.

Re:good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually... JK2, SoF2, RTCW, and Q3A have a significant performance hit on a modern graphics card -- especially if you're running non-nVidia.

However, even on a meager little GeForce 3, the detail settings have to be cranked down, the texturing has to be cranked down, and there's a lag in any "busy" scenes which just isn't there under Windows.

A big deal if you're a casual gamer? Probably not. A big deal if you're a hardcore gamer? Certainly.

Re:good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surak's rule of hardware: Hardware is cheap.

is total and utter bull, unless you're writing code for yourself and are worried about efficiency.

Programmer time is expensive compared to 4 computers.
Programmer time is cheap compared to 400 computers.

Of course, if someone else is paying for the hardware, who cares?

Re:good or bad?

[pubjames]

I am so close to switching over to linux, since the work that I do is mostly java programming and web design.

Well, I did so today! RedHat 9, the downloadable version.

I have to decide wether to keep it or not. The only thing missing for me is the Macromedia Flash application (not the plug-in, that works fine on Linux). I am seriously considering keeping RH as my main desktop, and I'll just boot into Windows when I need to use Flash.

I'm quite happy with it so far and it's fun to be learning a new environment.

Re:good or bad?

[usotsuki]

IMHO WINE is an "API emulator", like the DOS module in DR DOSPLUS.

-uso.

Re:good or bad?

[fault0]

> JK2, SoF2, RTCW, and Q3A have a significant performance hit on a modern graphics card

I guess it depends on your definition of modern graphics cards. The aforementioned games are all based on the Quake3 Engine.. which is over three years old now. On modern video cards (as in... GeForce2 and up, or original Radeon and up), all of the games above should run smoothly, unless you are running 1600x1200@32 bit@4x FSAA or something crazy like that.

Anyway, these games pretty much have FPS caps where it's not worth getting more FPS. Q3A, for example, 90% of people have their FPS capped at 125 fps. Why? Because it provides the best strafe jumping physics. SOF2, another example, enforces a FPS limit of 90.

> especially if you're running non-nVidia.

I guess Radeon 9700/9800 owners will have something to say about that!

> there's a lag in any "busy" scenes which just isn't there under Windows.

Um.. I didn't notice that at all with my old system GeForce 3 ti200 (on Athlon 1.4), or my current system gf4ti4600 and Athlon XP 2200+.

> A big deal if you're a hardcore gamer? Certainly.

If you are a hardcore FPS gamer, you probably aren't using high graphics detail anyways. I've been a hardcore competitive gamer since 1998 or so (went Quakeworld->Quake3...), and almost everyone in the hardcore competitive scene uses r_picmip 3 or higher, very low res, vertex lighting, etc..

Re:good or bad?

[swanton]

Games worth playing have direct linux ports.

Games with linux ports always get better FPS in linux than in windows in my experience.

My Quake 3 FPS went from 60.0 to ~90 when I upgraded from windows to linux.

This is most likely because WinXP caps your FPS at 60. For no good reason.

Re:good or bad?

[Fizzol]

> Games worth playing have direct linux ports.

Not all games worth playing have direct linux ports.

Re:good or bad?

[Kashif Shaikh]

Surak's rule of hardware: Hardware is cheap.

But monitors are not. I don't want to buy a 21" for all three of my computers. I would get a KVM, but...does anyone know of a *good* KVM switch with no ghosting when running at 1280x1024 or higher?

I would really like to know a recommended brand, honestly.

Kashif

Re:good or bad?

[Surak]

I've gotta ServSwitch from Blackbox. Best way to avoid ghosting is to use high-quality cabling that doesn't leak. FWIU, RF leaks are the biggest cause of ghosting.

Re:good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Toshiba Satellite 850mhz laptop with a 16mb nvidia gforce2go. When running Counter Strike and Quake 3 in linux with WINE, I get about 10 fps more than I get under Windows. (this is likely because the only driver that Toshiba has released for my model of laptop happened just before july 2002 when nvidia almost doubled the 3D performance of their drivers)

I imagine that you would get about the same framrates under WINE that you would with Windows if your video hardware is directly supported in both environments.

BTW, you can not play Counter Strike on a public server under WINE because the anti-cheat technology will not work correctly under WINE.

Re:good or bad?

[Spoing]

Live near a Microcenter? $20 for the all-in-one 2 port Belkin KVM this month. I have one and am using it at 1280x1024 right now.

Re:good or bad?

[realnowhereman]

FYI: Flash MX works fairly well under Crossover office (and I would imagine under Wine as well).

How many subscribers do they have?

[HanzoSan]

I wonder how well transgaming is actually doing? Maybe its time for some of you people to subscribe.

Linux Mandrake is barely alive based on subscriptions but they are also a much bigger project.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, isn't that cute?

And a link to transgaming.com as your homepage, complete with referer ID.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[f0rt0r]

All I can say is that Transgaming sucks. Why do I say that? Well, I subscribed to Transgaming for a year and **my** experience was that:

*Their development cycle is slow.
*I couldn't any games out of the box.
*I couldn't find any tried and true instructions to get a game running under linux in their forums ( or anywhere else on their web site, for that matter..
*Their forums are very disorganized, trying to search them is a lesson in futility. And when you do find some information, it's always a hodgepodge
of 'Joe User tried this' and Jane User tried that' , nothing like 'If you are running Mandrake Linux with WineX ver. X.X., then do this to get the game to work...'

Oh, and I think 'Want Linux Games?' advertisement is nothing less that misleading. Originally it made me think Transgaming put out ports of games for Linux. In truth, if you 'Want Linux Games', you better go somewhere other than Transgaming...they will only give you Winex.

My whole experience with Transgaming is...rip-off.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[Repugnant_Shit]

My experience with them has been the opposite. I subscribed for a year (it will be up in August or September I think).

*Their development cycle *is* slow, I agree.

*I initially had trouble running stuff 2.0 or 2.1
2.2 solved lots of problems for me. GTA3, Half-Life, all worked great.
Deus Ex runs under great under 3.0pre1. Star Monkey does too. I can't wait to get home from work and try BF1942.

*I had trouble with a few games at first, but the FAQs solved usually solved the problem. If they didn't work I could always, *always* find an answer in the forums.

*The forums are a bit disorganized. I wish you could view them like the gentoo forums, and without all the extra side menus like the rest of the site has. Also, your complaint about not having per-distro instructions kind of stretching it, because WineX, for me, has worked the same on three distros (redhat, LFS, and gentoo). It *can* be work to get games going, but once you get it working you should be able to apply the knowledge anywhere (and you could post a guide to the forums if you want to help everyone else out).

Also, with paying comes voting. I like being able to vote on what gets done. (Don't like a game? Set it to -2, take that everquest!).

I don't feel ripped off at all. Maybe that's because I didn't have high expectations when I first subscribed :) , but I'm very satisfied with how WineX has progressed.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[kaworu-sama]

I was subscribed for a period of time. It really is worth the money. The precompiled binaries aren't worth it (its better to get off the CVS tree anyway), but the forums, tech support, and voting are definately worth it. They really take care of their subscribers.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[Fizzol]

>(Don't like a game? Set it to -2, take that everquest!). Pssst . . . EQ runs great under 3.0-final, even better than 2.2.1. :)

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[R0]

I hope transgaming goes bust.
I have little sympathy for mandrake - As they can profit in the good times they shouldn't beg in the bad (but thanks for the software contributions). The fsf and debian are much more deserving causes. Xiph does good stuff too.

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[grolschie]

Amen brother! I totally agree!

Re:How many subscribers do they have?

[Repugnant_Shit]

I know, I couldn't get enough people to vote it to oblivion ;)

Good effort, but...

[gatesh8r]

I'm wary of wine making various Unix and Unix clones going the way of OS/2. So far it has only helped, and people that weren't intrested in Linux for example "because it doesn't run my Wintendo games" are now intrested. This is good, but we must focus on getting native titles out for Unix and Unix clones. Remember what happened to OS/2...

Re:Good effort, but...

[Quarters]

This is not an insightful post. It gets said, one way or another, every time a Wine or WineX story gets submitted. Sit on the sidelines and wait for the day that all game developers go "Oh, gee, we're not coding our games to work in a niche market. A niche market that seems to have certain elements that believe purchasing software is bad. Let's get right on that problem!". You're going to be sitting on that sideline for a long long time...

In some cases we get better

[HanzoSan]

It depends on the game, certain games can actually be faster than they are in windows, it all depends on the game. Some games will be slower.

What matters is, we will have all the Windows games that matter. This means we win. What I'd like to see transgaming support next is AsheronsCall.

You have the tools to build a linux compatible AsheronsCall here AsheronsCall server emulation

All you have to do is vote on it.

Everquest in Winex

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been playing everquest in winex for the past four months and I have to say I am getting less memory leaks than windows. If EQ crashed all I do is close that windows killing winex instance and start a new now walla. In case of windows I have to reboot w2k box since it freezes up or gets slow as molases.
I hope vendor do provide linux client in future besides windows there are a lot of us who plays purely in linux.

Re:Everquest in Winex

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. Win2k doesn't leak memory like Win98. Nice try, though.

Re:Everquest in Winex

[Wolfier]

Leak or no leak does not depend on 16 bit vs 32 bit. All you can say is "good software don't leak. buggy software leak". Nice try, though.

In related news

[guacamole]

.. the Wine package for some reason has been removed from the RedHat Linux 9 distribution according to release notes..

Re:In related news

[Ed Avis]

Wine was probably removed from Red Hat 9 because it is incompatible with the new threading library (NPTL or whatever it's called). The Wine people have now come up with a workaround, but a real 'port' to the new thread system isn't done yet.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just the kind of stupidity that takes place in open sores world.

Re:In related news

[Papineau]

You can get a pre-packaged (unofficial) binary for RedHat 9 here: http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/.

Or install from source.

Or even switch distro :) (says while writing this on his RH8 box and as a packager of Wine for RH8 on sf.net).

Re:In related news

[Per Wigren]

That's just the kind of stupidity that takes place in open sores world.

Yes, making a better threading system is really stupid...

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just the kind of stupidity that takes place in open sores world.

Yes, making a better threading system is really stupid...

Not including a compatibility library for binaries is even more stupid.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

More or less stupid than making ignorant comments about things that you don't understand?

Re:In related news

[praedor]

The workaround is only partially effective. you will still run into (at least) the incredibly annoying message about there being no "wineserver-socket" filey-thing. You will still have to manually rm -rf the damn thing after/before every individual run of winex to get your app working. So, if you use winex to install a game and don't start the game from the install screen (if it has such an option) then you will first have to go to the .transgaming directory and rm -rf the wineserver-socket dir and then try to run your game. After you close out, you will need to do this again next time you want to fire up winex.

They could at least add a cleanup script to the release to delete this damn thing as a matter of course at before actually starting wineserver.

Re:In related news

[Ed Avis]

I guess Red Hat thought that Wine wasn't important enough to bother including a compatibility library. Which is reasonable since it is still prerelease software anyway and Red Hat has never marketed their distro as being able to run Windows apps.

Nothing happened to OS/2

[HanzoSan]

OS/2 only lost because they didnt try. I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers.

So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous, this is why I never purchased it and its the same reason I never owned a mac.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[His name cannot be s]

I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers

I assume you mean Pre-loaded. Cause if you didn't, you are nuts.

So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous

Uh, let me get this straight. From 1992 to 1995, you actively purchased computers based on what OS was preloaded on them? wow. Why didn't you just go and buy a machine with no OS loaded. I bought many during that period, and not one came with an OS.

IBM was giving away OS/2 for $29, and later for free. Cost was not what IBM did to drive OS/2 into oblivion. It was the counterproductive stupidity that was their marketing. My Favorite OS/2 Slogan found on a billboard :

"It obliterated all the software on my desktop"

What the Fsck did that mean? I don't know what marketing droid thought that one up, but it was actually used to promote OS/2. It sure doesn't sound good.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[Gleef]

HanzoSan wrote:

OS/2 only lost because they didnt try. I didnt see a single OS/2 on any computer except for maybe IBMs computers and eventually IBM even took it off their own computers.

IBM certainly tried with OS/2, but not until it was too late.

OS/2 version 1 was too slow for the machines of the day, and shipped without a GUI partially because Microsoft fscked IBM over on their joint development deal. IBM pushed this version, but got laughed at because nobody wanted to run it.

Version 2 was much better, and had a good GUI but developers and IBM marketing really didn't get behind it, feeling burned from Version 1.

Version 3 (The first OS/2 Warp) was even better, it was faster, the machines were faster, the GUI was really polished, critical apps had native versions, developers started getting interested, IBM's marketting really pushed it well. OS/2 Warp sold more retail copies in its first year than its contemporary, Windows 95. The problem was, that was the year that the heavy duty Windows OEM licensing really started, OS/2 was flooded out of the market by computers shipped with Windows 95 preinstalled.

By Version 4, IBM knew that OS/2 really couldn't compete in the wild against Microsoft's OEM deals, so they focusesed their marketing on their core strength, corporate sales, and did reasonably well.

So if OS/2 did bad it was because of IBM, I had wanted to get OS/2 Warp and an IBM but the cost was ridiculous, this is why I never purchased it and its the same reason I never owned a mac.

While IBM certainly holds most of the responsibility for OS/2's failure, Microsoft shares some of the blame too, for backing out of their codevelopment contract, and anticompetitive OEM deals.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[s4m7]

let's not forget that OS/2's windows "compatibility" was, at it's peak, maybe capable of running solitaire or minesweeper. It was terrible. Native apps? fuhgettahboutit. so why buy an operating system that will emulate the one that came with you computer, but only sporadically?

because of that sweet, sweet OS/2 logo!

wait, i mean.. OS/2 isn't dead.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[RoLi]

OS/2 was doomed from day 1.

Just think about it for one second.

Imagine you are selling PCs.

So you now have the choice between being dependent on an evil company or being dependent on an evil competing company.

OEMs would have been pretty stupid helping IBM monopolize the x86-hardware market.

OS/2 never had a chance, it didn't matter how good it was.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[bhtooefr]

Errm... wasn't OS/2's Windows compatiblity actually a copy of Windows 3.1 (3.0 in OS/2 2.0) running in a virtual machine? And, didn't it give a seperate memory space for Windows 3.1 apps so that they didn't hose the system!

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[!Freeky2BGeeky]

Let's not forget that IBM PC company themselves chose to preload M$ because they thought they couldn't compete with the other PC manufacturers. There was a point (however brief) in time when IBM had the business market in it's hands, as far as PCs were concerned, and could have pushed OS/2 into every corporate cubicle just by preloading if for free.

Following the M$ model, having the OS at work would've caused consumers to want it at home as well for the familiarity. This would've brought more developers into the fray and could've given M$ some real competition.

The PC company choose not to and promptly shot its OS company between the eyes.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[slaughts]

The first versions of OS/2 2.1 essentially had their own copy of Windows 3.1, but this meant that for every copy of OS/2 sold, a portion went to Microsoft. A later version was availble that required you to already have Windows 3.1 disks to do the install, so they didn't have to pay a fee to MS for that one.

Of course, Microsoft's answer to this was Windows 3.11 (not WFW, but the new version had the same release number). Nothing seemed to change in 3.11, but for some reason, the Windows subsystem in OS/2 stopped working... Imagine that...

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[jasonditz]

You could do it either way in 3.0, IIRC. There was a different colored box for OS/2 designed for PCs without Windows and for PCs with.

My laptop runs OS/2 3.0 over Win 3.11 over DOS 6.22. I never found a Win 3.1 app that didn't run properly.

I had a friend with OS/2 3.0 only on his system and he swore everything still ran pretty good.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[weeboo0104]

OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 were my primary OS's when I was in college. The full (blue box) version ran Windows 3.x apps with no problem. Ran MS office 4.0 and many other apps with no trouble.

The downfall started when Warp 3 came out and couldn't handle Win32API calls.

OS/2 is still alive and well on several thousand Diebold ATMs in the US.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[bhtooefr]

Knock yourself out... This is a list that I compiled of every version of Windows, and every 1.x version of OS/2 with a GUI. Why only 1.x? OS/2 2.0 MS Alpha became Windows NT 3.1.

If you want OS/2 1.0's release date, it was 1987. Windows 3.2 (it's a Chinese thing I guess - so was ketchup) was released in 1994.

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[tmasssey]

Believe it or not, there were several companies (including Gateway) that were negotiating with IBM to preload OS/2 in 1993-94.

Why didn't they? Microsoft. Microsoft instituted the policy that OEM's *had* to buy MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 for *every* *CPU* they shipped. With Windows, without an OS, with OS/2, it didn't matter. Thou will buy Microsoft. Don't like it? Don't sell Windows.

Of course, when 95% of your PC's will ship with Windows, what do you do? You drop OS/2. It's as simple as that.

Remember the 1994 Microsoft consent decree? THIS IS WHY IT WAS PUT IN PLACE. It's that practice that led to the antitrust suit. The browser issue was not in and of itself the problem. The problem was that bundling the browser violated the 1994 consent decree. No consent decree, no antitrust suit.

Sigh. How quickly they forget...

Re:Nothing happened to OS/2

[bhtooefr]

ARRGH! I forgot the FSCKING link!

Here it is: THE LIST

It's the threading model, stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh. Don't you remember the fuss back when RH9 was "released"?

dont get your hopes up

[RyLaN]

it still has several annoying starcraft bugs that i ran into after less than 10 minutes of testing. also, when you disconnect from a game in counter-strike it greys the screen and hangs, i had to killall wine to get out...if they could just get over themselves and release their patches to winehq things might go better

Re:dont get your hopes up

[jakobk]

They can't, because of that "intellectual property" they licensed from other companies.

True, OS/2 was overpriced...

[gatesh8r]

And an IBM exclusive (heh, Big Blue sure learned), but one of the largest selling points was Windoze compatability. They got Win16 going but Win32 and the flooding of APIs...

BTW, don't get me wrong here; I'm a TG subscriber, but I'd still hate to see companies pass on Linux development "because WineX can run it". Right now WineX is a Good Thing, but it could become a Bad Thing if Linux becomes popular.

Re:True, OS/2 was overpriced...

[HanzoSan]

It wont become bad. Companies will want a Native port when theres a million people demanding it.

Sure we will use transgaming, but certain games we wont tolerate a transgaming style port. We wont tolerate it for a first person shooter, we wont tolerate it for a 3d based game, gamers like good frame rates and quality and wont buy it if the port is shit. As more people use Linux, less people will use Windows, and the Linux community will gain power.

Also lets not forget the guys who make Transgaming can start making games themselves.

Yay

[CausticWindow]

This is nice and all, respect to Transgaming.

But I just have to vent my concern over the lacking win64 support. The bit-gap between native win32/win64 and wine32 might be the final nail in the coffin for linux on the desktop.

Re:Yay

[bhtooefr]

I thought Win64 is only on servers at this point. Also, I thought Longhorn will be the first consumer version to have Win64 support. SO, there's about 18 months to develop Wine64.

winex no substitute for windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaming is a single-tasking app. While Windows supports every Windows game by definition, winex will by definition always be playing catchup. I have no need to integrate Windows games with a Linux desktop, so I might as well reboot into a Windows partition.

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Loosewire]

my desktop is 100% linux, i want to play games but i dont want to reboot into windows (this is used for some simple servers for my network)
i dont want to kvm switch to another box to play games. I want linux to run games, alas it doesent and winex is the best thing around at the momeant to do it.

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You have some pretty serious administration issues if you use a server as a games platform.

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Angry White Guy]

no, just a good job :) Where do I sign?

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Loosewire]

i mean simple things like samba and dhcp for my HOME network :-)

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Per Wigren]

Buy me a Windows-license and I'll dualboot for games also.. :P

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[bryanthompson]

It's not the price of the license for me, it's the fact that you have to sell your soul to accept the TOC. Then again, this guy i know (heh) has a borrowed copy, so I guess it's not selling your soul then...?

Re:winex no substitute for windows

[Poeir]

That's a good idea, unless you have what happened to me happen, which is a section of the MBR dies, and reinstalling Windows doesn't overwrite it. Windows tries to boot, then says there's an error in the boot partition. Try reinstalling Windows, and that portion of the MBR or boot record (I've long since forgotten the exact error) is still bad. Thus, no Windows.

So I started booting into my Linux partition only.

Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for WineX, great work guys, you've made Linux gaming possible! No need for a windoze partition to play my games now :)

Re:Great news!

[molarmass192]

Well, WineX didn't do it alone. The majority of the infrastructure is based on WINE so they deserve as much credit for WineX being where it is. WineX did add copy protection support and some impressive performance improvements in the rendering code. WineX does contribute back to the WINE project so they do do the respectable thing.

Game Support

[rf0]

I've tried WineX a few months ago and looking over their online database I found that most modern games will about install and thats about it. I would really like to be able to play Starfleet Command + Homeworld well and nativly but I'm afraid hat I still keep my machine dual boot.

One day though I hope to just be able format c:\ and never look back. Its just games now that are keeping me having a dual boot system. Most of my time is spent in Linux just waiting for a 2.5 that boots on my system

Rus

Native ports wont happen until

[HanzoSan]

Theres enough Windows users to buy those Native ports using linux.

How do you attract Windows users? With games. You have to start somewhere, you need a market of gamers before you can sell games. Heres how it can work, use WineX to bring tons of new games, get maybe a million gamers to switch to Linux.

Now you have a million linux gamers, little independent Linux development companies can sell games, let the big companies sit on the fence while the little linux companies make plenty of money selling games, and suddenly the big companies will see how much money they could be making and start to port.

This is the only way, you need games to attract gamers, and you need gamers to attract games. So bring games, increased gamers = increased games.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[grammar nazi]

I want to Play Carmageddon 2 and Carmageddon 3 on my powerbook (OS X). I'm willing to install Linux if WineX will support it on G4 hardware.

Can anybody help me out? Direct me to a website that explains how to do it?

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[f0rt0r]

All I can say is that Transgaming sucks. Why do I say that? Well, I subscribed to Transgaming for a year and **my** experience was that:

*Their development cycle is slow.
*I couldn't any games out of the box.
*I couldn't find any tried and true instructions to get a game running under linux in their forums ( or anywhere else on their web site, for that matter..
*Their forums are very disorganized, trying to search them is a lesson in futility. And when you do find some information, it's always a hodgepodge
of 'Joe User tried this' and Jane User tried that' , nothing like 'If you are running Mandrake Linux with WineX ver. X.X., then do this to get the game to work...'

My whole experience with Transgaming is...rip-off.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Catiline]

WineX will not run games on any non-x86 platform. WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator" and that statement is quite true: all it does is translate Windows API calls to Linux API calls. Since this does not alter or in any way affect the machine code of the game program itself, you cannot use Wine (or WineX) to play games on a different platform.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[dmaxwell]

The only use any form of Wine can have on non Intel systems is to build binaries of Windows source. Wine will not help you run IA32 binaries on a PowerPC machine. An Intel Linux machine running a Windows app through wine is still executing IA32 code. Remember Wine Is Not an Emulator, it is a port of the Win32 API to Unix.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[ninkendo84]

My whole experience with Transgaming is...rip-off.

At 5 dollars a month for a minimum payment of 3 months, that's not a very big ripoff. I can get about 5 of 7 of my games to work in WineX (Current games), and the other 2 that don't work are because I didn't bother adding things to WineX's registry. I've subscribed for about 5 months now and I think it was a very worthy investment.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Miffe]

There is a x86 emulator called qemu x86, which is designed for using with wine. http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Fluffy the Cat]

So run it under qemu. Sure, it's not going to be wonderfully fast, but most people with non-x86 hardware aren't going to be that fussed about gaming (otherwise they'd have an x86 already...)

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[jpmahala]

BZZZzzzT!

You need to figure out what your goal is. Is your ultimate goal to have more games for linux developed (noble), or to convert Windows gamers to linux so that they can play their Windows games under a foreign environment which could result in bugs, crashes, and frustration (stupid)?

If you want to convert Windows users, give them something they DON'T have; not a half-baked concoction of something they ALREADY have.

Again, ask yourself "What is my ultimate goal?" Make sure you know what you would like to accomplish by porting Windows games to linux. If it is to convert the masses, you've got it all wrong.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, wait. OK, so if Linux users are Linux users only because WineX runs the Windows games they can go buy at their local Best Buy, Fry's, PC Club, CompUSA, Wal-Mart, Target, etc., and game companies (a) get money from Linux users without having to accomodate then and (b) see them all as Windows sales anyways...

Where is the money going to come from to fund these new Linux games? Where is the incentive to port? How is this going to jump-start the market? "Well, we get Linux support for free, we just say it's unsupported and they can use WINE. No reason to waste all that money writing for the OS, the users did all the work and take all the burden of support!"

Good grief! If everyone keeps shovelling money into TransGaming (which is the only Linux company profiting from this) and Windows game companies for the Windows version of the game no obvious benefit comes from releasing a Linux version and, in fact, the money from the Linux community is being used to fund further Windows development.

Users Paying For Windows Stuff != Companies Doing Linux Stuff

Users Paying For Linux Stuff == Companies Doing Linux Stuff

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[geesus]

--
I can't afford a sig!

Well atleast we now know why you cant afford one, You wasted your money on a WineX subscription ;)

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Fizzol]

>which could result in bugs, crashes, and frustration (stupid)?

Everquest under WineX3

Bugs = 0
Crashes = 0
Frustration = 0
Happy Linux user running EQ = Me!

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[jpmahala]

My guess is that you were already running Linux. I never implied that a project like WineX isn't worthwhile. It definately has merit - to give Linux users the ability to play Windows games within their Linux environment; NOT to convince current Windows users that they should be running Linux.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[AlternateSyndicate]

The ultimate goal is for Linux binaries to be included on the CD with every Windows game that ships. Wine is an interim solution that causes people to ignore the real solution.

The only way to get Linux binaries in the box with retail Windows games on a wide scale is to show that it will provide the publisher with an increase in sales that makes up for the time spent porting to Linux. The only way to do this is to build a market for Linux games.

Wine doesn't build a market. The only people switching to Linux because of Wine are those who simply want to stop dual booting Linux and Windows. If you run only Windows, Wine itself provides no reason to switch to Linux. Think about it... "For only $xx.xx a month, you can play the games that ran fine under Windows with only a large amount of hassle in Linux!" You have to pay a monthly fee to play your games and they don't work as well... great deal!

Native ports provide concrete sales figures, and the sales figures provide tell publishers that no one buys Linux games. It's simply not worth it to port games to Linux.... statistic after statistic has shown this. Until things start selling better, we won't get Linux games. Will Wine help? It's been around for years and it hasn't brought people to Linux in droves like you all claim it will. It's just a temporary solution that people are trying to perpetuate. It's like a pain-killer... it relieves the symptoms but it doesn't cure the disease.

If you're using Wine or WineX, that's fine. The problem is when you use Wine or WineX as an excuse not to buy native ports. Not only are you investing your time and money in a temporary solution, you're hurting the market we're trying to build.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[C Roth]

"*Their development cycle is slow"

It's only five bucks a month . . .

"*I couldn't any games out of the box."

I guess it depends on what games you play. I play a lot of Day of Defeat and other Half-Life mods, and haven't had any problems. There are games that aren't supported real well. Battlefield 1942 for instance is just now starting to get support...

"*I couldn't find any tried and true instructions to get a game running under linux in their forums ( or anywhere else on their web site, for that matter"

winex game.exe. If that doesn't work, it's probably not supported.

"*Their forums are very disorganized, trying to search them is a lesson in futility. And when you do find some information, it's always a hodgepodge of 'Joe User tried this' and Jane User tried that' , nothing like 'If you are running Mandrake Linux with WineX ver. X.X., then do this to get the game to work...'"

This I agree on. Their website is absolute crap. I actually brought this up on their forums a while back. Don't know if it got any replies, finding anything twice is too much of a chore.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Fizzol]

>My guess is that you were already running Linux.

Yes and no. Yes, I was running Linux but because I couldn't run EQ I still spent most of my time in Windows (dual booting was just too much of a pain). Once EQ began to work I switched completely and haven't gone back.

I don't think WineX by itself will convince ordinary Windows users to switch. It will however help convince those already interested in switching that Linux is a viable option.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Lord Ender]

The only way to attract Linux game programmers is with a single audio, video and input standard interface. Due to the decentralized nature of Linux, it is unlikely this will ever happen. It just goes to show how having a central controlling power for an entire operating system can have some big advantages over the open source model.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[HanzoSan]

"Wine doesn't build a market. The only people switching to Linux because of Wine are those who simply want to stop dual booting Linux and Windows. If you run only Windows, Wine itself provides no reason to switch to Linux. Think about it... "For only $xx.xx a month, you can play the games that ran fine under Windows with only a large amount of hassle in Linux!" You have to pay a monthly fee to play your games and they don't work as well... great deal!"

wrong wrong wrong. I know people who switched to linux just because it plays games. Many people, hardcore gamers and power users claimed to me the only reason they wouldnt leave Windows is because they want to play games, now I tell them their games work in Linux and they have no excuse, they now have linux, plan to get linux or have tried linux. They will never switch until their current games work. So you can talk native ports all you want, if theres no one to buy those games there wont be native ports, you have to get gamers to use linux to play their windows games before you can get those same gamers using linux to play linux games.

Remember, PS2 is backward compatible with PSX for a reason, when PS2 came out there were no PS2 games worth playing, most PS2 owners praised Sony for keeping it backward compatible.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[Joe Tie.]

As much as I hate it, I think this is good point. Another problem is how much of a moving target Linux is. It took long enough for many companies to support WindowsXP after it's release, and that was the only major change microsoft has made in years. Linux on the other hand, seems to have some major change in one of the major libraries every few months or so.

Re:Native ports wont happen until

[damiam]

You could run MacOnLinux to get you into MacOS (at close to full speed), and then run Virtual PC inside there. It's not exactly zippy, but it works.

Re:Holy shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks -- I'll read that next time I wonder if I'm wasting my life, and be consoled by the fact that at least I'm not that sad.

Here here!

[gatesh8r]

I don't think TG as a company will go away; I would be very suprised if they did. WineX and the focus of the company may change over time, but TG as a company is going to be strong. TG did the right thing; Loki did the popular thing. One's dead; the other is at version 3.0 and is really gaining attention. Of course hindsight is 20/20. :-)

Using the Wine icon for WineX news?

[DeathPenguin]

Now you're just asking for a flame war.

Point2Play GUI -- comments?

[Spoing]

I'm grabbing the Point2Play RPM now, though the Transgaming site doesn't show any pics of it. Anyone use it yet? It wasn't in the beta release AFAICR.

Re:Point2Play GUI -- comments?

[mahdi13]

No, it is new with this release.
I only had a minute to try it this morning, but seems OK. If you use the point2Play, don't download the Binaries...the app does it for you and Point2Play won't work until you do. It will download the .tgz and install so using the RPMs or whatnot are kind of a waste.

Re:Point2Play GUI -- comments?

[Spoing]

1. I only had a minute to try it this morning, but seems OK. If you use the point2Play, don't download the Binaries...the app does it for you and Point2Play won't work until you do. It will download the .tgz and install so using the RPMs or whatnot are kind of a waste.

Thanks, I just found that out. Now, the server's tanked and 'Get Latest Version' can't fetch the files. I'm removing the WineX3 RPM and will try again.

For all the complaints about WineX, it sure seems to be popular!

X-Com: Apocalypse?

[Honken]

According to the forums X-Com: Apocalypse doesn't work at all (it's not even listed in the games section), anyone knows if it is possible to run it in dosemu instead? I'd say it's one of the best games ever made, a shame that Microprose never released a patch to fix the quite serious bugs in it. Quite annoying when you after countless hours of playing discovered that all savegame files were corrupted meaning that you couldn't finish the game...

I look forward to the day when Wine is only for...

[pecosdave]

people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. The demise of Loki is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, Castle Wolfenstein, and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL and OpenGL they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

Waaaaay OT but...

[dirty]

Spider Solitaire absolutely *does* run under 2k. I have it running fine on my 2k box at work.

There is Another Way

[Catiline]

Platform independent code.

There are projects out there that aim to provide a platform-independent method to produce commercial-quality games. There is no real reason that a company has to struggle with long, difficult ports of system-oriented code if they use the platform independent OpenGL (and other libraries) instead.

Now, how do you convince developers (or, more importantly, their managers) of the value of this approach? I don't know, because to a manager market flexibility is just Yet Another Buzzword (TM).

Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games. You needn't rely on software ports to attract gamers to Linux (although I will admit that it does make things easier).

Re:There is Another Way

[fault0]

What incentive do these game developers have in using those cross platform API's rather than something WAY more tested in the real world such as.. uhm... DirectX?

> Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games.

__Extremely__ few compared to Windows.

Re:There is Another Way

[RoLi]

Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games.

You are ignoring the fact that this is mostly irrelevant.

Unless Linux runs ALL games a given gamer wants to play, it won't be used. Just a single unsupported game is enough to keep him from using Linux, end of story.

Re:There is Another Way

[Catiline]

If you're talking the hardcore gamer -- the kind who subscribes to six gaming magazines, builds his(/her) own $4,000 box and argues over the merits of a higher framerate vs. higher screen resolution -- then yes, if Linux doesn't run $Big_Name_Game then they won't want to deal with it. But for Joe SixPack, who doesn't have a single gaming magazine subscription, it doesn't matter if they have Hoyle Solitaire, Spider Solitaire or PySol, just so long as it works. For that segment of the market, there is nothing wrong with Linux's native game support (it's the desktop experience, in my experience, that scares them away).

Since I can state with certainty that casual gamers far outnumber the hardcore gamers, we can worry only about the casual gamers, and let market forces take care of moving the hardcore types to Linux.

Re:There is Another Way

[Fizzol]

>But for Joe SixPack, who doesn't have a single gaming magazine subscription, it doesn't matter if they have Hoyle Solitaire, Spider Solitaire or PySol, just so long as it works.

Then that Joe SixPack isn't a gamer at all. He's probably not really interested in games.

If he'a a gamer, he'll have certain commercial games that he wants to run. If those games don't work undr Linux he won't use it. It doesn't matter how many card games it plays if he wants to run StarCraft.

IL-2 Sturmovik

[Apostata]

In the name of God, I hope this game will work under 3.0. Linux needs flight sims!

Re:IL-2 Sturmovik

[Christianfreak]

Linux has a very good flight sim

Re:IL-2 Sturmovik

[JayateMo]

Say what? I remember playing some "flight sim" on sinclair zx81 that wasn't that far away from flightgear!
Jokes aside, what was the name? Anyone?

Re:IL-2 Sturmovik

[Apostata]

Flight Gear...versus multiplayer dogfighting over Russian ice caps...hmmmn...

Next version ...

[rasjani]

Will be 3.1 and then 3.11 and then 95,98,ME and so on ;)

Re:Next version ...

[kasperd]

That joke has been told many times. But in the case of Wine I think it is more appropriate than for most other pieces of software. I wonder why that joke was not one of the first three comments.

Re:Next version ...

[Anonymous Coward]

you'd think they'd wait for winex 3.1 to come out to start doing this. this is porobably the best context for this joke, but it's also overused (if incoreectly before or not).

Minus the Anti-WINE Troll Slant

[SubtleNuance]

All I can say is that Transgaming rocks. Why do I say that? Well, I subscribed to Transgaming for a year and **my** experience was that:

*Their development cycle is pretty fast.
*Games run out of the box.
*Tried and true instructions get a game running under linux in their forums ( or many places elsewhere, for that matter..
*Their forums are very organized, trying to search them is bliss. When you do find some information, it's always a of 'Joe User tried his' and Jane User tried that' , like 'If you are running Mandrake Linux with WineX ver. X.X., then do this to get the game to work...' very easy to follow.

My whole experience with Transgaming is...TERRIFIC!

Re:Minus the Anti-WINE Troll Slant

[f0rt0r]

ROFLMAO.

Bittorrent mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have the .torrent file for this? Good to distribute the load rather than kill their server.

Re:Bittorrent mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or how 'bout a mirror of the .rpms and .debs. Otherwise to Kazaa we go.... ;-)

Meeting halfway

[yuri]

Linux isn't a viable platform, both because of the small number of desktop users and probably also because they are less likely to pay for software.

Would be interesting to know if any companies test to make sure their games run fine WITH wine under linux.

Going further, it would be good to see games that are published with acknowledged Wine Support.

Re:Meeting halfway

[Anonymous Coward]

Going further, it would be good to see games that are published with acknowledged Wine Support.

Great, let's make sure that the only programming environment two to five years from now is Windows, since everything else just uses WineX to run Windows binaries.

Internal Server Error

[GMFTatsujin]

The release notes page won't come up... Hey, they're not emulating IIS on their server, are they?

Or not not emulating IIS, since Wine Is Not an Emulator?

To much BS on OS/2 demise here...

[Qbertino]

OS/2 only lost because they didnt try.

Wrong.
Lot's of other OS/2 bullshitting around here too.

OS/2 was ruled out 'cause it was extremely picky in terms of hardware. That was at a time where market was being flooded with the cheapo RAM, CPUs (Cyrix was ahead of Intel too, remeber?), boards 'n stuff and people wouldn't yet make the difference between a crappy piece of RAM and the quality stuff. Especially the guys at the screwm-together (and up) PC shops that were popping up left right and center at the time.

Win95 took it all, and any n00b could set it up on cheapo rubbish HW with no sweat. Not with OS/2. Bad RAM? No install, sorry. The standard for testing for buggy RAM was (and often still is!) "Try installing Warp. If it works, your RAM is a-ok."

That's what got Warp go belly up. Bad marketing was just the toping.

Music Software?

[dTaylorSingletary]

How is WineX with music production software? Is Reason 2 working yet? Fruity Loops 3.5? VSTi? Acid? Soundforge? VAZ+? These are the only programs keeping my computer running Windows.

Re:Music Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

many vst instruments work with wine and a program called vstserver. There are many nice aydio apps for linux nowdays. Linux audio is here to stay man

Re:Music Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please suggest me some linux audio apps? Not sarcastic, really! Thanks.

Re:Music Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't seen any real audio apps on Mac or Windows to have even thought to make that statement. Fruity is the "lamest" of them all and it's light-years ahead of anything on Linux.

It'll be a decade bfore anyone could seriouly consider Linux for real audio work...

Re:Music Software?

[dTaylorSingletary]

To think of FruityLoops as lame, though you concede its advancement over linux-tools, is in error. It is really quite more powerful than meets the eye. Its VSTi support and capabilities challenges (at least within my more experimental usage) Cubase. When used in conjunction with a vast array of tools, it can really hold down the fort of insanely intricate and detailed non-standard music making.

Re:Music Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Acid Pro from SonicFoundry. It needs DirectX Media Runtime and the new Windows Installer. As with many other music apps. Audacity in Windows and Linux is a pretty good sound file editor for the small jobs. Converting from 48khz to 44.1khz results in sound speed issues though.

no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

sad that the most exciting GNU/Lunix desktop development is a tool to let you run windows productivity apps. I guess the desktop GNu/Lunix market really is dead.

Can I play windowed OpenGL games within it?

[Wolfier]

I guess all applications that use OpenGL will have its performance halved due to context switching on the graphics hardware...

Re:I look forward to the day when Wine is only for

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the day will not come when WINE/WineX is only for retro-gaming.

Linux gamers would obviously rather fund continued Windows game development, and so there will be no money to continue Linux native development.

In fact, I predict we're going to be seeing a drop in Linux game servers, and Linux admins being told to run it under WINE or WineX, because the development resources will no longer be required since WINE/WineX are Just Good Enough (But Nowhere Near Perfect)

Does Wine support 3D/EAX?

[antdude]

I remember trying an older version and wasn't impressed by the sound engine. Diablo 2 and other games had missing EAX, 3D sound, etc.

Is this area improved in for v3.0?

NFS: Hot Pursuit 2

[mh101]

Anyone tried Hot Pursuit 2 (or any other Need For Speed games) with WineX 3.0 yet?

Don't get excited, still "broken"

[praedor]

with any distro using glibc-3.2.2 (which is just about any new distro release). If you are using older distros, you may be happy and fine with it but if you use RH 9.0 or Mandrake 9.1 (or any other 3.2.2-based distro) you will not be pleased.

This isn't a winex problem, but a problem that affects ALL wine variants whether from WineHQ, Codeweavers, or Transgaming. The glibc developers have happily gone off and broken software everyone uses (again) for no real good reason. I imagine they change things here and there just so they have something to do or simply to try something to see how it works. LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE! IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FRICKIN' TOUCH IT!

Sheesh.

Re:Don't get excited, still "broken"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you want a platform that doesn't change, you should check out this OS called MS Dos 6.2. It hasn't changed in about 10 years - you'll love it.

Re:Don't get excited, still "broken"

[praedor]

I'm not against change. Change CAN be good but it is not automatically good. This is true in software like it is with anything else. It is true that if something isn't broken, it shouldn't be fixed. If something works well as is, there is no reason to change it.

There are changes that are totally arbitrary and cavalier. Some changes in the linux kernel fall into this catagory. Some changes, perhaps memory management is an example, get changed for no real reason other than "what the hell?". This is not a valid reason.

Only change something if it REALLY makes sense and improves the end product. Simply fulfilling someone's idea of "elegance" is not a reason. Trying something new just because is not a reason. As a rule, if changes are to be made for improvement then they should be restricted as much as possible to avoid collateral damage (spuriously breaking applications) that need not really happen.

I just want developers to be circumspect and not simply do something because they can. Don't change something simply to scratch an itch. Also, balancing the end result against the cost (even if software you use isn't financially costly, there can still be a substantial cost to breaking it due to some change in lib x). It is not always as simple as recompiling the app - and the app may be critical to a certain population of users.

Re:I look forward to the day when Wine is only for

[masq]

I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole.

It's good for developers to support ANYTHING besides Win32, but I'd rather have developers starting with Linux, and then porting to OSX, UNIX, and Windows - for the simple reason that OSX is VERY sweet, but doesn't encourage cross-platform coding (at least from what I've seen of their dev tools). Same with Windows. People who write for Windows tend not to care if it runs on any other OS, their focus is only on their own system, and this closes down their future options should they change their mind, or if they are successful and want to expand. My experience is that this is true with Macheads as well, and Apple Corporate doesn't seem at all interested in bringing OSX apps over to Linux, just getting them from Linux over to OSX....

It's best to use strictly open standards which allow for easy cross-platform portability if you're at all interested in supporting other OSes. I've talked to guys who said "If I had only thought of that BEFORE I wrote the whole thing in VisualBasic (or whatever)..." Being able to write your code using open tools and thus support three or more platforms from basically the same codebase (like Opera) is very very cool.

But yeah, OSX is definitely a VeryGoodThing. It's nice to have Apple join the party, and it's interesting to watch how Apple Legal interacts with the OpenSource movement. Apple has a lot of strengths and a lot of things to bring to the table - if they decide to get into the game in a big way and deal a few hands themselves. Hopefully, they keep heading in the "right" direction (openness and sharing). They may get a gold star from the teacher yet.

Re:Somebody call Turing

[Ravenscall]

That'll be some kind of rude awakening when the three humans who post comments on /. finally realize everyone else is a bot.

Good, maybe then the Signal to Noise ratio will improve

Then go here

[Anonymous Coward]

Game Copy World

WineX - Not as evil as you think.

[Karn]

Anti-Wine claim #1:

If a company can use WineX for their game, they won't bother making a true native port.

Here's the deal: If a company cares about it's audience, and a significant number of it's audience are running Linux, they are not going to want to use WineX. Why? Performance. Higher hardware requirements on games means you lessen your audience, so it's in a game developer's best interest to make the game as fast as possible, which means NOT using WineX. In addition to a game developer having to make their game run efficiently to reach more players, they have even more incentive to have their game run well due to competetion. If company X and company Y both have a FPS Doom 3 clone, and company X created a native binary while company Y did not, whose game will Linux gamers choose (assuming the games have comparable gameplay/fun factor)?

What if a company doesn't care about their Linux audience and decides to use WineX? Well, we lose nothing. If they don't care about their Linux audience (because it's much smaller than it's Windows audience or whatever) then chances are they weren't going to do a native port anyway. For example, it's obvious that Blizzard has no intention of porting to Linux in the near future. If they decided to create a Linux 'port' of World of Warcraft using WineX because it was extremely cheap, it doesn't mean that WineX prevented a native port. We lost nothing, but gain a title which is likely to attract many more Linux gamers, which will increase monetary incentive for companies to port their games to Linux. An example of a company that could have used WineX to port their game, but didn't, would be Bioware. They obviously care about their Linux audience (late port issues aside.)

To sum this point up, while WineX could cost us a native port or two, it will increase the Linux gamer audience to the point that it is significant, which is usually what is required for companies to even consider a native port of their game. And companies that do choose WineX during the Linux gaming movement's infancy due to monetary reasons will be reconsidering, because the savings from using WineX will be overshadowed by the return from reaching more gamers, and outselling a competetor whose game is less efficient because it uses WineX.

I'll be buying Neverwinter Nights from Tuxgames.com when it's stable under Linux, I'll be buying Doom 3 from Tuxgames, when it's released, and I'll be buying any other native Linux ports that I can get my hands on. I will also continue to be a Transgaming subscriber so I can play Battlefield 1942, the current game of the year (although, since BF1942 didn't run before, I had to dual-boot, which means I am registering my hits to websites as a Windows user. Is surfing under Linux important? Web hosts know the percentage of Windows users to Linux users.)

Re:WineX - Not as evil as you think.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal: If a company cares about it's audience, and a significant number of it's audience are running Linux, they are not going to want to use WineX. Why?

Except they won't know it because all they'll see is more Windows sales. And, it's easier (from a management point of view) to work with Transgaming to tweak it under WineX than to do a full port.

Transgaming is continuing to do a good job of making sure that the only visible gaming "solution" for Linux is to make it look, run, act, and report itself as Windows.

As a nice side effect, all the money Linux users spend on games and apps then go back to support further Windows development, thereby strengthening the Windows hold on programming APIs.

Yeah, you get a few more games now, but long-term you're trading away control of the development target.

Re:WineX - Not as evil as you think.

[Karn]

Name one port (that wasn't done by Transgaming themselves) that was created using WineX. For every port that is created with WineX, there will be another that was written without it.

Neverwinter Nights: Native.
A Tale in the Desert: Native.
UT2003: Native.

Think of WineX as a gateway drug for game developers. Sooner or later, they are going to want to get maximum performance from their games, and they will do native ports. If they don't care enough to do that, it probably means that there aren't enough Linux gamers to justify a native port, and you have yourself to blame for wanting to prevent people like me from doing all my gaming in Linux.

If I'm already playing Battlefield 1942 under Windows, why not play Neverwinter Nights under Windows too? I feel that dual booting is a bigger threat than Wine. At least when I use Wine, I'm motivated to go to developers sites and ask for a Linux port. People who dual boot would rather spend their time playing the game instead of registering at some company's forum to ask for a port to what they can already easily play.

It wasn't until I ditched Windows for gaming (thanks to Transgaming's support for Half-life) that I really started getting into Linux gaming advocacy. Before then, I just didn't bother because I could just play them in Windows.

glibc 2.3.2 issues are fixed with 3.0

[gavriels]

Please check the release notes - this was one of the things that we fixed with WineX 3.0.

Take care,
-Gav

--
Gavriel State, CEO & CTO
TransGaming Technologies Inc.
gav@transgaming.com

Re:glibc 2.3.2 issues are fixed with 3.0

[praedor]

And yet, I still get the same problems with MDK 9.1, glibc-3.2.2, that I got with the pre-release.

This problem only occurs in 9.1 and affects ALL wine versions, even those prior to 3.0. The problem goes away with pre glibc-3.2.2 distros (I still have 9.0 floating around).

The most annoying manifestation of this problem is the damnable wine-socket error message that requires a manual "rm -rf" to fix every time you try to start wine(x).

Re:glibc 2.3.2 issues are fixed with 3.0

[Conor Turton]

You sure you're using the Release version that came out on 17th April? Works fine here and solves ALL the problems of the pre-release. Point2Click sux tho.

Re:Alright - ya know

[bradyh]

Gnome Freecell is almost indistinguishable from Windows Freecell. All you'd have to do is figure out how to copy the score file over.

WINE is Peculiar

[repetty]

The WINE phenomena is peculiar...

Imagine that some guy has grown up with an oppressive, domineering, butt-ugly, and mean mother.

One night, he decides to do something rather independent -- something he knows that she would not approve of: He hires a hooker.

When she shows up at the hotel room, he hands her some of his mother's clothes to put on, douses her with his mother's perfume, and then he straps a mother mask onto the girl before he does his business.

Hey guys, if you're going to use Unix or Linux, use Unix or Linux.

You're creepin' me out.

--Richard

Re:WINE is Peculiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, now you're creepin' me out. Next you'll say that the hooker doesn't do it quite like his mommy does, and that she is kinda unstable?

Re:WINE is Peculiar

[Wordplay]

Nah, you blew your analogy. It's not about making it look different, it's about making it do something different. In other words, it's more like the hooker shows up, and he hands her his laundry.

Re:WINE is Peculiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooker - you pay for
WineX - you pay for
WineX CVS - egad...time to visit the doctor

Other Non-Game Applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Will WineX 3.0 allow me to run Windows applications (e.g., WordPerfect) better than the plain vanilla WINE. Thanks a lot.

Wine?

[Bobke]

I don't like wine since I read the story about someone getting infected with the YAHA or whatever due to wine getting too good. I like to seperate things, so I put win2k in a second X. Can do everything (even play movies) except playing games, we still reboot for that.

Re:I just realized..

[SharpFang]

They spend too much on hiring the best for marketing department to afford any decent programmers, so don't worry...

MOD PARENT UP! +1 FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, this was a totally unexpected and pretty damn funny comment to be found on /.

simply en el fuego

Companies will be forced to port native because

[HanzoSan]

Transgaming can simply stop working on WineX once the market is big enough and then start selling games.

Game developers will then be forced to port because WineX wont be compatible with directX 10.

Can you run

[nutznboltz]

Cygwin on WINE? :)

I support holding out for native ports

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, I am running a native port of Crossover Office and Crossover plugin. Works great. ;)

Re:WineX - Not as evil as you think. - yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah blah.....

Wine is the best thing to happen to linux

[d3am0n]

I started out using good old DOS

It crashed all the time, i had to fiddle with the autoexec.bat and command.com files to get ANYTHING to run (not to mention figuring out which device used which port)

Then came win 3.1 things ran ok, slightly less stable, but not quite as much fiddling required

Windows 98 was a godsend, but suddenly people were WNuke'ing me all to hell, I had netbus, and I learned that there was a NSA key (i'm canadian, which makes me hate having an American intelligence agency key on my comp rather annoying), then I learned that my browser was also spying on me, and that everything was bugg riddled and insecure

I've tried linux before, it was horrible, now though I can play my games, all i require my computer to do is play games, browse the net, allow me to watch television through my tv wonder card, allow me to watch dvd movies, allow me to watch mpeg, mpg, asf, and avi files. This is the sum total of what I require my compute for.

At the moment linux is becoming more and more attractive, I know it can play games, and browse the web (two big ones) soon the rest will follow, to you nay-sayers, linux grows and gets better with more people, who those people are does not matter, i'm a windows user, but i'd help any way i could if I could use it properly, the idea of ridiculing and telling people oh if you want windows use windows, WE DON'T WANT WINDOWS BECAUSE IT SUCKS everyone has woken up and knows the virtues of linux, we just require more functionality which everyone is beginning to see emerge, so trying to crap on one of the best applications is beyond foolhardy.

Three cheers to the wine development team, and the winex team, here's hoping they have a successful run in the buisness world

Re:Wine is the best thing to happen to linux

[Anonymous Coward]

WE DON'T WANT WINDOWS BECAUSE IT SUCKS everyone has woken up and knows the virtues of linux, we just require more functionality which everyone is beginning to see emerge, so trying to crap on one of the best applications is beyond foolhardy.

Great, but too many people are coming to Linux, buying the Windows versions of Linux applications and games, then using WineX to run them. That doesn't help Linux at all, it just helps the Windows lock in.

Yoiks, folks, if you want application diversity, then support application diversity, don't keep touting that the best thing about Linux is that it's Windows compatible!

Re:Wine is the best thing to happen to linux

[d3am0n]

I was just saying that in order for linux to compete it has to deprive windows of it's installed base of average users, the more linux users of any sort (developer or user) the merrier, an exec who can play half life on linux would be more comfy having his office running with linux than if he was mystified by it and had no reason to approach it, and no way to really use it once he had it.

Re:I look forward to the day when Wine is only for

[Anonymous Coward]

for the simple reason that OSX is VERY sweet, but doesn't encourage cross-platform coding

Don't worry, Transgaming is tackling that too by bringing WineX to OSX.

Don't believe me? Look at their jobs page

(As of today, they are looking for a MacOS9 and OSX senior engineer)

WineX for Mac Question

[ManoMarks]

So, I have a question: WineX runs in Linux. Will it work on a Linux port on a Mac machine? Or any other platform that's not x86? I ask because, though I'm a Windows guy, I do a lot of gaming with a Mac friend, who mostly has to use my other comps for most non-Blizzard games that we play. The WineX site lists the sysreqs in terms of x86 compatibility. Anyone know?

Re:WineX for Mac Question

[Anonymous Coward]

NO

Wine doesnt emulate PC hardware, it just virtualises a win32 environment on a *nix kernel

it needs an x86 processor.. this is why its written in x86 assembly code for the most part. No point even trying to compile it on a PPC box, as windows apps won't run on the PPC processor.

Re:WineX for Mac Question

[ManoMarks]

Thanks for your response. I wish it weren't so. Sigh.

Re:Can you run Cygwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! And even better, Mozilla finally runs under Linux, now that WineX 3.0 can run it! No more stupid konqueror, now you can run a real web browser! Huzzah for WineX, all those great applications Linux was missing are now available, like Mozilla, Opera, WinAmp, etc.!

I went Linux only, and then went back

[Wee]

One day though I hope to just be able format c:\ and never look back. Its just games now that are keeping me having a dual boot system. Most of my time is spent in Linux just waiting for a 2.5 that boots on my system

I quit Windows completely in May of 2001. I scrubbed my drives and went completely Linux. It wasn't too hard since most (all) of the games I played eventually got released by Loki. When they went tits up, I lingered in Linux-only mode for a while. I installed WineX and never had much luck. (I have a SCSI-only system, and they continue to not want to fix the bug where copy protection schemes fail on SCSI CD drives; their answer was "...most people use IDE. Install an IDE CD-ROM if you want to use WineX." So much for me being a subscriber any more.) It's hard to use an all Linux if you can't do WineX and you want to play games. Nearly impossible, actually. There just aren't any games current for Linux.

I wound up playing my old ones for a while until I got some DVD software for Christmas that requires Win2K or XP. So I installed Win2K on a spare drive and now I dual boot again. It's pretty sad.

My advice to you is to look at the "supported games" list on WineX's site very carefully. Then install it and try to play the games you want. If a few work and you're fine, then go full Linux. If they all work, you're golden. If there's one that yuou have to have that doesn't work, keep a Win32 drive around.

-B

Here's an idea!

[bhtooefr]

Linux + WineX is a BIT unstable for Windows apps, right? Here's an idea. Why doesn't someone try to write a Windows 98 SE clone that sits on top of, oh, FreeDOS?

I couldn't be much help in such a project, as all I know is some BASIC, LOGO, and a little HTML. However, I think an open source Windows would be a great idea. Shoot, we could have LazyX, (BeatAroundThe)BushX, BushSound, BushVideo, etc.! Get it? Open source is to closed source as lazy is to active, and as beating around the bush is to being direct? Although, Bush needs eliminated (so did Saddam, but Bush needs eliminated too), so that might not be such a good idea.

it's != its (off topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE !
it's = it is
third person possessive = its
After seeing that error a thousand times (OK, maybe only a couple hundred) I had to write this, at least once.

Snood

[antistuff]

Does Snood run yet? Ive been waiting for this game to work forever.

European Air War

[tqft]

The only reason I keep windows is to play European Air War.

Anyone got it working under linux/*BSD in anyway shape or form?

Also am looking for a Korean War flight sim. Only one I have seen is an update pack for Microsoft Flight Sim @ 2 *AUD90 no way.