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No WINE Before Its Time
Joe Barr writes "Stephen Feller has a story about WINE on NewsForge this morning ahead of next week's expected Beta release. The WINE project is 12 years old, so it's just about time." From the article: "'Wine has historically had a very frustrating history because it has been alpha software,' White said. 'This is really hard work. We're replicating the work of a billion-dollar company. The reason we're saying it's alpha is because we believe we still have fundamental changes to make on the way the internals work.' Noting that it has not always been easy to install software with Wine's alpha releases over the last decade, White said that once you got something working it has never meant it would continue to do so, or do so properly. There may have been display glitches or things not functioning properly, if a program even worked with Wine at all." OSTG is the parent company of both Slashdot and NewsForge.
LWN.NET has a good rundown of new features, including Direct X 9 support and a new RichEdit control :)
http://lwn.net/Articles/154451/
~jennifer.k~
Cheers.
Say hello to my little sig.
Does it run linux?
I think it would be incredible to have a VisualStudio plugin that would allow developers to target the Wine API and at least indicate if a particular API will not be supported under it. That way it makes the API less of a moving target in that it establishes WINE as the authoritative API for development of Windows applications that will work across platforms. Once people recognize that Windows is not the way forward they will appreciate having their options open.
Noting that it has not always been easy to install software with Wine's alpha releases over the last decade, White said that once you got something working it has never meant it would continue to do so, or do so properly.
Sounds like it represents the Windows API pretty well then.
How will Vista affect this beta release?
Unless they rewritten wine in c++ its going to have problems emulating c++ features like objects really really bad. I am not bashing C, but rather pointing out that rewriting the language to mimick an operating system heavily built on C++ is a mistake.
Gnome 1.x learned this lesson by emulating c++ in C because the unix C purists thought it would be less bloated and more cool. It was fine until object oriented programing became a factor.
Most of it is due ot the fact that windows is complex and very proprietary with information hidden on the inner details. There are thousands of lines of code in windows based programs that simple workaround bugs. You have to actually duplicate the bug so the code works properly. Its a mess.
http://saveie6.com/
You know, starting about next year, WINE will suddenly find a new big customer base, provided they can abstract the design enough to run on OSX-x86. I'm not sure how much work that would take but it certainly seems worth doing. I imagine that the people on OSX with an urge to run Windows apps will outnumber users of Linux with the same urge. Hell, if I were Codeweavers, I'd be working really hard on CrossoverOSX. There might even be good money in it!
Could it be that the hardware improvements made over the last 12 years may have made library-level emulation unnecessary? Device-level (eg, vmware) and architecture-level (eg, virtual pc) are both simpler and more robust.
anyone know if this project is affected by this? Is it moving along? Have they made it to alpha yet?
[opendarwin.org]
The Admin and the Engineer
In the hardware-side x86 world, at least for the last fifteen years or so, you could buy a complete system, and no single company could be guaranteed a cut. AMD might get money, Intel might get money, but nobody had it locked down. Over time, the x86 has become something of a standard hardware platform. With WINE, I'd love to see a Windows Standard Base created. A single software environment that would be very commonplace, widely supported, shipped on almost all hardware, but not tied to a single company. In a sense, push Microsoft in software where IBM went with hardware. Eventually, you'll see vendors start creating secure versions, embedded versions, silly hacks to the PSP, and the money could go anywhere. Microsoft's Windows division could use some more direct competition.
Wouldn't that be great, or am I wrong?
This is really hard work. We're replicating the work of a billion-dollar company.
Yes and no. It is a little simpler than this quote suggests. Wine does not need to implement every API that Microsoft produces. It needs to implement every API that desired Windows applications use. In some ways it is a quality of service problem, the marginal cost between supporting 90% of apps and 100% of apps may be too expensive. Maybe 80% to 90% is too expensive. I don't pretend to know what the optimal percentage is but it is surely not 100% or even mid to high 90%s.
In any case this is a monumental task and the Wine developers deserve an awful lot of credit and thanks.
Codeweavers already announced that they were working on that codebase.
I can't find the announcement, but have a line from the last WINE CVS drop changelog:
* Some fixes for MacOS/x86.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
That's what I get from WinXP on a regular basis, so I guess I could stand using Wine.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
MyBlog
"Alpha" is not a subjective measure of the quality or maturity of code. Alpha means the code has never been modified by feedback from testers who are not part of the development team. "Beta" means code that has been or is being modified after receiving beta test results from people without the expectations, therefore the blind spots and other biases, of the developers themselves. Alpha tests are important, but beta tests are much more important to determine whether the code will be acceptable by its users, especially when those users aren't the developers. The "release" test is a more subjective delineation, especially since Netscape got everyone to accept that we'd use "beta" software the same way we'd use a general release.
So WINE might have good reasons (eg. moving Microsoft target) for remaining relatively "immature", incomplete, or buggy. But once they revised it on feedback from people outside the WINE development team, it is beta, regardless of what they call it.
This is not a semantic argument. It's a very important point about how development/testing patterns affect code quality. Incorporating the "social" aspects of development, and their constructive/destructive effects on projects, makes development more productive. This is especially true of OSS, as projects often lack the discipline that comes with keeping the code hidden from "outsiders". Without the proprietary discipline, the alpha/beta/release discipline lets OSS projects have more flexibility, and therefore more productivity when used right. Without even the alpha/beta/release discipline, OSS projects need another to produce quality, or fail to do so.
--
make install -not war
Or do others feel that multibillion dollar companies get away with selling alpha software? As far as I can remember, most companies put out alpha and beta software to let users test it in production environments. I could name a few here, but we have all probably dealt with this issue.
One thing that is nice to see, the group developing Wine have no illusions, and freely admit that you might have problems using the software. Despite that, I know many people who use Wine so they don't need MS operating systems. Since my adventure began to rip MS products out of my home and business networks, I have found a couple of programs that just are not available for *nix and so far, have limped along on an old Win98SE box. Wine is my next step.
Along with others here I say, "so its alpha?", THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
--
Yes, if it works for me, I contribute dollars.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It should require M$ to publish all of its APIs now and verify that all M$ applications are written to those published APIs. Moreover, it should require that all communications between the application development portion of M$ and the operating system portion of M$ are public domain.
Seastead this.
In case anyone doesn't know. The ReactOS project works closely with WINE. They are implementing the API from WINE on a replica of the Windows 2000 kernel.
This means that both Windows drivers and applications will work natively without any changes. They seem to have come on leaps and bounds in the past year with many applications working straight away (OpenOffice, Abiword, mIRC, Unreal Tournament, InfranView, PuTTY as some). Once they start implementing some of the security features then there will be another viable alternative.
In the future I can imagine ReactOS coming on a CD with OpenOffice, Apache etc, much like Linux distributions do, which creates an easy migration path:
Windows + Apps -> Windows + OSS Apps -> ReactOS + OSS Apps then then off to a Linux or *BSD varient if you want.
Now how is that offtopic? Not very funny, but certainly ontopic.
Err... is there some sort of analogy for opening the specs of a complex and mostly-monopolized system so that competition is possible? I mean, if I were an 80 year old judge and the most complex technology I understood was the telephone, how would you sell me on this idea?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Since the primary function of government is the protection of non-subsistence property rights, it is sensible to charge a use fee for those rights. Note, I said "non-subsistence" property rights. The point here is that house and tools of the trade are protected from confiscation under bankruptcy law precisely because they are subsistence assets. Where government does not exist, subsistence properties are typically defended by the occupant, whose life is sustained by those assets. Government brings precisely the property rights we associate with civilization -- assets beyond home and tools of the trade.
Given the relatively liquid nature of civilization, it makes sense to define "non-subsistence" in some dollar value of assets. Various ways of defining the dollar value are all approximately equal:
- The median price of housing a person plus the median price of capitalizing a job.
- The threshold used by the SEC for "qualified investor".
- The level of savings insured by the FDIC.
- Or, for the historically inclined: The market price of 20
arable acres in the Confederate south, a mule, a plow and a small house
on such land.
Until a citizen accumulates the subsistence net asset level, they should pay no tax and then pay tax only on the net assets they own above subsistence.Assessment should be by the owner, thereby establishing a "fair market value" for the exercise of eminent domain. Net assets only would be taxed and would be calculated by subtracting the fair market value of debts against the estate from the self-assessment of the occupant.
Other forms of taxation could be eliminated in a revenue neutral way if net assets, in excess of subsistence levels, were taxed at the risk free interest rate (approximately the interest rate on the national debt).
Indeed, given the centralization of asset ownership that has resulted from the subsidy of non-subsistence property, a subsidy inherent in civilization, it may be the failure to use this tax base is the ultimate cause of the repeated decay of civilizations from ancient times.
Seastead this.
The WINE project is 12 years old, so it's just about time.
In other words...it aged for 12 years?
With the advent of local loop unbundling, it's possible to have another phone company hook your handset up to the rest of the country, by allowing them to implement the backend half of that specification. The result is ultra-fast dark fibre MANs in places like France, Italy and Japan (iirc anyway). By comparison, bandwidth rates in most of the US stalled years ago - the only counterexample is New York, and that was only an attempt to wipe out the cablecos.
(I worked for a business analysis company specialising in telecoms over the summer vacation. This is one of the few things I can remember after 4 weeks of maths.)
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Now I can finally play Duke Nukem Forever on Linux!!!!!!!!!!
It does exist, and yes, it uses some Wine code:
http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html
There's no WINE before its time and no Southern Comfort til the lights go out.
Take off every Sig.
You got the joke.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
That's a ton of work. Congrats!
Somebody should port WINE to Windows, so then you wouldn't need Linux to run Windows applications.
<EmilyLitella>Oh, never mind.</EmilyLitella>
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
"A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain.
Black Stump Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.
Château Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn.
Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: 8 bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour.
Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in it, and the message is "beware." This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.
Another good fighting wine is Melbourne Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.
Quite the reverse is true of Château Chunder, which is an appellation contrôlée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends.
Real emetic fans will also go for a Hobart Muddy, and a prize winning Cueve Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Wagga Wagga, which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit."
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
Visual Studio is pretty powerful, relatively speaking. There's a plugin for PHP, (http://www.jcxsoftware.com/) so it wouldn't be the first time an open source programming platform was used in a Visual studio plugin.
Also, in the new Visual studio HTML editor, there's a web standards dropdown so that the code will flag as errors if not part of the selected standard. The same dropdown could exist for Wine code. I'd use it.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
I never claimed that the idea was original or non-obvious, though I didn't expect something to have already been announced. Thanks for the link.
My guess (I didn't do the moderation) is that it is considered off topic because:
(1) it appears to be mostly a complaint about the legal drinking age in the USA
(2) "No WINE before its time" is more of a reference to the fact that certain wines are aged greatly and that aficionado's won't drink the wine before it has had sufficient time to age. The title was a reference to the age of the wine, not to the age of the wine drinker.
Overall, it would have been a not very joke had the title been referencing drinking age, but as it stands it is merely an off topic complaint about the drinking age. The intent may have been humor, but I don't think that a mod of off topic is completely unwarranted.
You're right about the Win32 API having a C interface, but you can certainly use C++ for Windows applications without using MFC.
Wine runs Buhl Tax.
It looks like the next version of Windows will be coming out pretty soon then. :)
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
>>[...]once you got something working it has never meant it would continue to do so, or do so properly. There may have been display glitches or things not functioning properly[...]
Are they talking about Wine here or Windows?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
By that definition, I'd ask if MS-Windows has ever been out of an Alpha development state.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Do you mean, does it run coLinux? http://www.colinux.org/ I wonder...
This is the best way to try linux on Windows, however, maintain the instabilities and insecurity of Windows...