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WineConf 2005 Sets Deadline for Wine 0.9

IamTheRealMike writes "As WineConf 2005 took place last weekend, the Wine developers discussed the project's direction and future. A new deadline of September 30th for the 0.9 release was set by Alexandre Julliard -- the release promises to bring an end to the system of monthly snapshots and provide a new focus on ease of use and stability. A new GPLd application regression testing tool called CXTest was demoed, as was some of the great Direct3D work being done lately. Finally the CEO of Gupta gave a talk. Gupta have ported their 4GL RAD tools to Linux by working with Codeweavers (who sponsored the event), and their experiences were documented in a fascinating presentation. Overall: big thumbs up, but it's not obvious enough that there's enterprise-level support available for Wine. Check out the group photo and the new Wiki!"

39 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. I could be out of line... by wcitech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Call me crazy, but isn't it deadlines like these that cause software products to often be lacking? I might understand if this were a major for-profit corporation who NEEDED a release in order to satisfy their fiscal department, but isn't this an open-source not-for-profit project? Why have deadlines?

    1. Re:I could be out of line... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Motivation?

    2. Re:I could be out of line... by thaneross · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Deadlines encourage the development of critical components that are the most needed at the time. While this can lead to bad things if the time constraints are unrealistic, it's better than open-ended all-over-the-map kind of work you'd get otherwise.

    3. Re:I could be out of line... by cdgeorge · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I guess this is because it's very important to set goals. While the deadline in itself is kind of annoying, one can afford to wait for the perfect software while it has a (better) running version.

    4. Re:I could be out of line... by m50d · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Like debian, wine has been far too long without a stable release. By all means don't rush it, but you do need to actually release a working version once in a while. At the moment any stable version of wine is stable purely through luck - they're just cvs snapshots.

      --
      I am trolling
    5. Re:I could be out of line... by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And, if we deleted the word "cold" from the dictionary, we wouldn't have need for central heating anymore. ;-)

      It's not deadlines that are toxic to commercial endeavors -- it's deadlines * promises, driven by the imperative to capture customer before the competition does. If you promise more than your competitors, but too far in the future, then you have no competitive advantage. If you promise too much less than your competitors, but sooner, then you have no competitive advantage.

      The ideal is to have much more than your competition, much sooner. The only way to do that is to be more productive than average.

      Since mathematically everyone can't be above average, the typical experience is that you end up with an unfinished pile of shit when your deadline rolls up. Deleting some of the pile simply leaves you with a smaller pile of shit. So the only solution is to let the deadlines slip.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    6. Re:I could be out of line... by h4rm0ny · · Score: 3, Insightful


      The critical difference is who sets the deadline. A bunch of developers saying "we want to have it done by dd/mm/yy" may be good motivation. A manager or salesman coming in and saying "it will be done by now()" is not - most of us have probably had to deal with people like that at some point. It's not good.

      The deadlines we set ourselves are hopefully sensible ones.

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    7. Re:I could be out of line... by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And 0.9 is "stable?" I thought 1.0 was the stable release...

  2. Thanks to CodeWeavers by XanC · · Score: 5, Informative
    We use their fine product to allow library patrons to run MS Office on some of our public workstations. It's great to know how much they contribute back to Wine and the community.

    Kudos to them!

    1. Re:Thanks to CodeWeavers by XanC · · Score: 2, Informative
      There are many advantages to using Linux instead of Windows, especially in a public workstation setting. I won't go into them all here.

      One of the issues that could have been a showstopper is that people want to continue (at least for now) using MS Office. Thanks to CodeWeavers, it's not a problem.

    2. Re:Thanks to CodeWeavers by Eberlin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm with you, man. I work at a library with an aging WinNT population (Thanks to the B&M "First Hit Is Always Free" Foundation) that would probably go catatonic if they were "upgraded" to XP. From what I understand, they're trying to raise funds to get newer machines to replace the current ones (PIII 600Mhz, 256MB RAM).

      Basically, what I was wondering was what the arguments were to push for Linux where you are. I'm sure Linux would do wonders with our aging hardware here and possibly save the place some money in hardware upgrades as well as maintenance costs. However, the MS mentality is prevalent and probably difficult to sway.

      I guess the questions go:
      1) How'd you get Linux in past the bureaucracy?
      2) What distro and what do you do for maintenance?
      3) How do the patrons react? (that whole "learning curve" argument)
      4) Why not cold-turkey to OO.org? Public demand for the popular and familiar hasn't stopped the government from making unpopular decisions before. ;-)

  3. Wine/Cross platform compatibility kit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just curious if something like this would be possible, i.e. to have a plugin to VisualStudio.NET that will notify at the time of writing the code whether a certain function exists inside the Wine compatibility layer. The thought behind this would be to get into developers' heads the idea that either not being lazy or rather putting in a bit more effort at the time of writing the code would ensure compatibility down the line and open up more avenues of possibility for their application.

    1. Re:Wine/Cross platform compatibility kit? by vadim_t · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, it's just the way you write for multiple platforms in pretty much every language. For example, when writing C code you have to have in mind where it's going to run. If you call mmap you have to know that it doesn't exist on Windows, for instance.

      A tool that would allow me to specify a list of systems I want to be compatible with and then warns about things that wouldn't work on some of them would actually be very handy.

  4. You know... by MisanthropicProgram · · Score: 4, Funny
    there will be no Wine before its time!

    Ok, OK! I won't give up my day job! Oh wait, I don't have a day job.

    I going to go and cry now. Manly tears.

  5. Women by alta · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, all the women in that pictures really says a lot. ...Geeks

    --
    Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
  6. Group Photo by dgos78 · · Score: 4, Funny

    All those bodies, and so little testosterone.

    It's a joke! Sorry, I couldn't come up with anything else.

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    SYS 64738
  7. Re:Wine, the perfect emulator by hourieh · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wish I could even use WINE to develop applications for windows tooo (not that I develop many)... That would help me completely free the win partition on my system.

    Actually looks like it is possible, haven't tried it myself though.

  8. Re:Wine, the perfect "not an" emulator by Tharkban · · Score: 3, Informative

    From Wine's web site: Myths

    As Wine's name says: "Wine Is Not an Emulator":

    --
    Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
  9. wine bugs havent seen enough work by Eternal_Flame · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like wine. I really do, I've been using it for over a year now and have never had many real (unsolveable) issues from the few win games I own or any other win32 app I feel like running under it.
    My only true complaint with Wine is how 2/3 of the apps that do work give weird errors and require a lot of tweaking before they actually execute correctly. Its not that I seriously mind messing with the wine config files or spending the time to do so, but it would just be a whole lot easier if it worked by default. Some of the smaller bugs I've found havent been solved over the course of the last year, and I can only hope this new system of deadlines encourages more rapid development to fix the little things those before any new work is done in other areas like directx or 3d support

    --
    ~You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because I'm insane~
  10. Nerds by Stibidor · · Score: 4, Funny

    When I saw the group photo, I thought, "What a bunch of nerds!" And my heart longed to be there...

  11. Wine 1.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is the performance target for Wine 1.0 that any (and I mean *any*) Win32 program will run on Linux?

    1. Re:Wine 1.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Is the performance target for Wine 1.0 that any (and I mean *any*) Win32 program will run on Linux?

      That will never happen. Even Microsoft can't get *all* Win32 programs to work on newer versions of Windows. Some of them depend on low-level hardware access, specific Win9x kernel data structures, etc.

      The best I'd hope for is that any *sane* Win32 program will run on Wine. Meaning any program that sticks to the Win32 API (and maybe even programs using undocumented functions, but not the ones using crazy hacks).

  12. Go nuts! by FooBarWidget · · Score: 2, Funny

    Many people on the photo actually have wives and girlfriends, they're just not on the photo.

    Go nuts!

  13. Re:Wine, the perfect "not an" emulator by Tharkban · · Score: 2, Informative

    why do you use the word emulator?

    Wine implements the windows API. Linux implements the POSIX API.

    API's aren't emulated, they are implemented.

    --
    Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
  14. There are too many incompatible versions of WINE by filterchild · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's about time we got an official release of WINE. I've been getting into Linux music lately and WINE is one of the biggest problems. I'm trying to run freest (a wrapper for Windows VST plugins using WINE), and it is incompatible with the newer versions of WINE. So when WINE goes stable, Paul Davis will hopefully fix whatever's keeping fst from working with new versions of WINE.

  15. Just in time for Longhorn... by hey · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... which will change all the APIs

  16. Longhorn will rain on the parade... by shawnce · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With all of the changes coming in Longhorn it is gonna be interesting to see how long it will take for WINE to gain parity.

    The have a lot of API to implement.

  17. has anyone tried the directx9 patches? by Sark666 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    from here: http://directxwine.sourceforge.net/

    Curious what dx9 games people have thrown at it to see what works. Also wondering when these would make it in mainline.

  18. I need to stop playing MMORPGs by Minwee · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can't be the only one who expected to see "" under each of the names in the group photo.

    1. Re:I need to stop playing MMORPGs by Minwee · · Score: 2, Funny
      Nor can I be the only one who just had a hard, brutal reminder to Preview and look closely before submitting. Let's try that again.

      I can't be the only one who expected to see "<WINE Developers>" under each of the names in the group photo.

  19. Re:Wine, the perfect "not an" emulator by DA-MAN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From Wine's web site: Myths

    As Wine's name says: "Wine Is Not an Emulator"


    I remember reading an article from one of the developers (think it was Tridge) where he was asked if Wine Is Not an Emulator, then what is it. His response was "basically an emulator".

    --
    Can I get an eye poke?
    Dog House Forum
  20. Re:Wine, the perfect emulator by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On the contrary, I've never been able to use wine beyond calc.exe and things like that. I've never been able to run things like IE on XP - call me stupid, I've wasted hours trying to configure it and nothing.

  21. Will WINE be relevant? by Eric+Damron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is not a troll or flamebait. I really wonder how much longer the concept of running Windows applications on Linux will be relevant? WINE has been a slow moving product. I remember playing around with it ten years ago and to this day most applications fail to run properly under WINE. This isn't a statement about the quality of the development team but rather the difficulty in porting the libraries from a closed source OS that is continuously changing.

    It just seems to me that Linux is coming into it's own. How much longer will it be before many programs are released for Windows and Linux? As more and more applications are released for both platforms WINE becomes less and less important.

    I haven't purchased a new Windows program for some time now as Linux comes with everything I need for my day to day work. It would be nice to be able to run some of my older stuff under Linux but that's mostly games. I've supported WineX or whatever they are calling their product now days for years with monthly donations in the hopes that it will become very useful but still there are only a handful of games that run perfectly under WineX. Most don't run at all.

    I'm thinking that rather that rewrite the Windows libraries we should concentrate on libraries like SDL that can be installed on both Windows and Linux thus giving the developer a uniform API that can targeted both OSes.

    --
    The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
  22. Re:Wine, the perfect "not an" emulator by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If you think that Wine is not an emulator, can you please give one example of software that IS an emulator?

    BTW, Lame Ain't Mp3 Encoder, but it is, my head explodes!-)

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  23. Re:Are WineHQ and CoderWavers enermies? by PitaBred · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not CodeWeavers. They're good people, they do Crossover office and such. Mostly at Transgaming, who do the Cedega stuff (no longer WineX)

  24. Yep... by Illissius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...so ironically enough, people will move to Linux+wine instead as the path of least resistance :).

    Which would be the case if the new APIs mattered at all to existing applications, which they don't -- they will continue working just as well as they always have with the existing ones. Microsoft is quite anal about this. So no need to emulate Longhorn until apps actually depend on it, which won't be till some time after it's released, I think.

    --
    Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
  25. Re:Wine, the perfect "not an" emulator by m50d · · Score: 2, Informative

    I know that's true theory. But playing games on wine it's patently not the case. Hopefully it's just a lack of optimization because the wine team are still busy implementing more API, but the slowdown is definitely there.

    --
    I am trolling
  26. Wine has definitely matured in the last year or so by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Last year around this time, only a few apps I ran were running bug-free, and it still had a clunky config. Now, most of the apps I have tested run nearly flawlessly, and at full speed, in fact, running the sega genesis emulator, gens, runs faster than the linux native version (the linux native port is half-assed IMHO) and I no longer get sound clipping issues.

    if you run ubuntu, check their downloads page for an up to date repository.
    I'm currently seeing if GunBound will run on wine, so far so good, it installs well, and is now downloading the game data files and updates.
    I have to see if the game itself will run well, I doubt it due to my hardware limitations (yes, my computer is old, 1998/1999 old. I need an up to date setup, or at least a new FPGA board with a 1 ghz PIII on it and a 32 mb PCI vga card)
    anyway, the fact it installs flawlessly is a good sign, and the release released in february ran photoshop without a hitch.
    Win is looking good, may eventually be worthy of supplying a windows compatibility layer within desktop linux distributions. (microsoft will pitch a fit, little they can do since it's a free implementation using free code, installing directX stuff and so on can be added later)
    Then again, if microsoft is wise, they'll support wine on linux, because hey, another platform to push their products on, such as MS office, yes, despite OpenOffice, there are still people who prefer msoffice. I'm not one though.

    Wine is now looking very good and promising, I was very impressed with the latest release.
    The bridge between windows and linux is almost complete.

  27. Re:There are too many incompatible versions of WIN by vinn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think there's three reasons, two of which are undeniable. First, there's a lot of legacy apps out there that are unsupported and won't be updated because the vendor went out of business. Personally I support 3 applications like that. So it becomes a matter of finding a native replacement which may not exist or be worth switching too if works with Wine. Second, there's a phenomenal amount of software that's been created for Windows. All kinds of odd little apps for doing things like interior design and such that don't exist on Linux. Finally, and this is the item a lot of people will disagree with, many commercial applications are just plain better on Windows. More effort has been put into designing UI's and such. (For the record, I personally use free software always as my first choice based on the principle of free, as in libre, software.)

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