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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.'"
Using programs in wine is painful. It's definitely one of those areas where you only do it if you have to, not if you have a choice. Since Picasa is hardly the only such program available for Linux, why bother if it's only going to be half-assed? Who wants to manage a wine installation to run Picasa. Anyone? Do any of you really want this?
The solution to complaints that Google makes no effort to port their software to Linux isn't to get CodeWeavers to make it run when used with winelib. It's to port the software to Linux. Otherwise just tell Linux users to sod off, because that's basically what linking with wine is doing.
Wine. So that means their still Windows applications then?
Sort of. If they're porting it in the usual way, it'll still use the Windows API but will be a Linux ELF binary. (The actual program binary *might* be a shared object, depending on whether CodeWeavers use the standard wineport tools or some custom-developed toolkit of their own).
Google Throws Linux Users a Bone
An old, marrowless, dried up, bone, with no meat on it, and, yet, there it is.
Basically they're making a Windows app run on Linux, using Wine. Why didn't we think of that?
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Technically maybe but what is important is that for a linux user it looks like a linux application. It will be supported like a Linux application.
:-)
It is not a hack you need to do and support yourself in the back of the original developer.
In any cross-platform development you try to limit the difference between different platform source trees, generally you isolate all platform specific functions in a common framework and only port the common framework on different platforms, leaving the rest of code unchanged.
There are plenty of cross-platform frameworks for plenty of use ( from simply using stdio.h to opengl ), in this case they choosed WINE. That is surprising yes, but that does make sense for a project that need to be crossplatform retroactively.
You can see that Google apps are still Windows applications but you can see them as using a cross platform framework developped conjointly by Microsoft on Windows and WINE team on Linux
They were also a long time ago, at least in terms of computers. Wine has come leaps and bounds especially in terms of stability in just the last year. One of the main ideas behind this however is that Google will know which functions are needed, which lightens the set almost immeasurably. This is a relatively small program compared to WordPerfect so all they need to do is ensure those functions they use are stable, and when they want to port another program along they need to expand the set of functions that they need to be stable to incorperate the functions that program needs and do the maintenance job on that.
They also have the advantage in that they can modify Wine to suit the program and the program to suit Linux should they need it, and advantage that you don't have running Wine on your average computer. They can, for example, rewrite the file loading code to take advantage of the GTK file selecter and grab the files directly from the operating system. They don't *need* to go through the C:\ file system emulation, one of the bigger issues with Wine. They can also probably with small modifications route their audio through GStreamer, cutting out the Wine audio library which is sometimes considered buggy. If a certain section of the program proves buggy, they can simply port that section and do the rest through Wine.
Seriously, I think if a Linux version of Picasso ends up buggy then it's Google's fault, not Wine.
Right.... because Google sure has a history of producing good client side software... Get a grip people, Google makes the best search engine and a good email interface (IMO it's not even that good but that's another topic). Everything else that they've made has been extremely mediocre at best (Google Video, Google Talk etc.). Saying that they have the ability to make Linux acceptable to the masses more than Sun or IBM, who are two of the worlds biggest open source contributors, is beyond ridiculous.
Then you go on to say, "the other guys just R & D it". Oh please, it'll be years, if ever, before Google can claim that they've produced a fraction of the amount of Open Source code as IBM and Sun. There is no company that the R & D statement would apply to more than Google. IBM and Sun produce a ton of Open Source code, whereas Google produces almost nothing. These aren't even going to be native Linux apps and several of those apps already work in Wine.
I love the words you used as well, "Google by some magic". Sheesh...
The combination of your comment and your sig just made my head explode.
Yo mama so fake, she failed the Turing Test.
Unlike what you seem to think, Picasa is not a photo editing tool.
Rather, it is some sort of photo organizer/viewer. 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.
Sorry for not being more clear about what it really is. It's probably because I still wonder myself... Maybe someone who has actually found a use for it can be clearer.