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Google Windows Apps Coming To Linux
skaet writes "DesktopLinux.com reports that Google is working together with CodeWeavers to bring their photo editing and sharing program Picasa, formerly only available on Windows, over to Linux. From the article: 'The program is now in a limited beta test. If this program is successful, other Google applications will be following it to the Linux desktop, sources say. The Linux Picasa implementation includes the full feature set of the Windows Picasa 2.x software. It is not, strictly speaking, a port of Picasa to Linux. Instead, Linux Picasa combines Windows Picasa code and Wine technology to run Windows Picasa on Linux. This, however, will be transparent to Linux users, when they download, install, and run the free program on their systems.'"
I gotta say nothing out there for linux even remotely compares to Picasa. I tried F-spot the other day and man is it still very alpha compared to Picasa. Digikam is the closest but if Picasa runs smoothly and keeps its online photo service access then I see it becoming very popular. It's just a pleasure to use and you can get very good results with little effort. I've been using it since before Google bought the previous owner out and it's worked out well for anyone I've showed it to.
People complaining should be happy that anyone at all these day is bothering with porting over desktop apps to linux.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It is 2006 and win32 is 97% of the market for desktop apps like Picassa.
Have you ever USED Picasa? It's an APPLICATION (not a WEB application) that runs on your desktop and helps you organize and perform basic edits/adjustments to your images. It also has the added feature (after Google bought it a couple years ago) of allowing users to easily upload pictures to their blogspot or e-mail it through GMail (not sure about the GMail feature as I haven't tried the latest version, but I seem to remember hearing about this). It's got an awesome GUI, but other than that (and the Google specific tie-ins) it doesn't do much more than other photo organizing apps already available in Linux.
Still, this is a decent start. I'd be more excited about them porting the desktop search (as long as I can still disable the sharing of info. to Google).
Read my blog posts on usability.
Yeah, it already works in Wine, but it would be nice to be able to run it without that.
-- null
But this is only a "Good Thing". This will encourage Google to implement any functions that happen to be missing in Wine. I've been working with and learning the codebase of Wine for the last few months, and it's quite solid. The functions are all laid out into separate DLL subfolders and the debugging support is very thorough. It allows you to figure out why your app isn't working fairly easily by usually telling you which function failed.
The goal of the Wine project is to fully implement the Win32 API on Linux or other Open Source platforms. This has been endlessly debated, but it's generally considered a "Good Thing" as well. This will eventually allow you to run any application that was designed for Windows 95 through XYZ3000 on Linux and eliminate my need for dual-booting to play games. People complain that it will always be playing catch up, but it has really come a long way. The latest version ran Quickbook 99 Professional (the only non-game I had to dual boot for) right out of the box, and I was amazed. When I looked at this project a couple of years ago, it couldn't run anything I threw at it. Most applications you buy today can still be run on Windows 98, and if Wine finishes only Win98 functionality, it will have accomplished tons.
IMHO, getting Google behind the Wine project is spectacular and will only bring about positive things for the Open Source crowd.
Picasa is closer to iPhoto than it is to Flickr. Uploading is not the half of it. The focus is on organizing and basic editing (adjusting levels, reducing redeye, etc.)
Isn't Google Earth using Qt (and OpenGL, of course)? It would make the Wine step completely useless, since Qt works natively on Linux. And so does OpenGL.
I believe it's using Qt, at least in its OS X version, because when Google Earth beta for Mac was issued a few months ago, there were lots of complains that it just didn't "feel" like a Mac app, and the reason for this was it was using Qt instead of one of Apple's toolkits.
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Solaris? ATK? Netbeans? Lots of things. How about you?
go take a peek inside ~/.wine
Serenity now, insanity later.
Make sure you're not connected to the https://mail.google.com/ version of gmail. You want to connect to http://mail.google.com/ You may need to clear your cache/cookies as well, but I didn't need to. I have connected to the SSL version of gmail for a long time and I thought the same as you. Then I read the googlem mail discussion list and they had a few posts about how google chat doesn't work under https mode.
It does have a few (very simple and easy to use) tools to enhance contrast/color etc., but it's purpose is nothing like Photoshop/Gimp/PaintShopPro/etc.
And that is what makes Picasa the right applications for the majority of users, since it does fill their limited needs when it comes to photo editing. The average user simply do not need all the functionality you find in the likes of Photoshop/Gimp/PaintShopPro/etc. Using Photoshop/Gimp/PaintShopPro/etc when you only do basic tasks like cropping and redeye removal etc. is just plain stupid. Those users are better of with simpler tools, and if it's included in their photo organizer application it's just a added bonus, like Picasa or DigiKam.
... and OpenOffice. OK, Sun bought it off a German company (and then graciously open-sourced it), but Google bought off the company that originally wrote Picasa too (surprisingly, Apple did the same for iTunes). Neither are open-source.
(Though I'd use a Picasa port before I use F-Spot, the latter is still too incosistent for me.)
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
LOKI did not use WINE to port the games.
They really ported the games to linux, meaning that the games were linux pure binary with no
"emulation" layer (even thought that WINE Is Not an Emulator).
They job were "simpler" because most of the time they had to translate
direct3D to openGL (if the game did not have an openGL driver),
DirectSound to OpenAudio (or something like that equivalent to openGL for
sound that they created) and the rest of DirectX to SDL.
Basically the game source became mostly thru cross-plataform as openGL, OpenAudio and SDL
can be run anywere.
Although Kylix is named after a Greek wine-drinking cup and the Kylix IDE itself does use WINE, the produced executables do not depend on WINE. The CLX library uses Qt runtime.
Never send a human to do a machine's job.