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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 knew Wine started out as a tool to migrate source code bases from Windows to Linux, but this is the first time I've heard of it being used for that (as opposed to doing conversions at runtime).
For those who remember Kylix, this sounds like an awful idea. Borland basically did the same thing with their Delphi IDE when they ported it to Linux, and it turned out very poorly.
It was slow, crash-prone, and just plain messy to install. While WINE has likely improved since then, I'm still not convinced that it is suitable for use in production applications.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
From the article:
The new program is reportedly re-tooled to work perfectly under CodeWeaver's CrossOver Office Wine emulation. This may mean that Linux Picasa is using the program's own native Windows DLLs (dynamic link libraries).
This gives me a very odd feeling.
While for one side this will be very good for Linux users as this technology may be used in the future, allowing a fast deployment and development of very good programs, will this also mark a real beginning for Linux closed-source programs and binary installations?
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
I've already got Picasa up and running on Wine, but I never use it because it references files on the c: drive (shudder) - will that be the case with this thing - or will there be proper paths?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Technically, when you're using Wine to run your own application which you can compile to the target architecture, there shouldn't be an issue apart from endianness fluff that might be exposed in the Windows API. Which is unlikely, given that Windows NT was available for Alpha, PowerPC, ...
It'll probably be like any application that comes with its own GUI, networking, etc, library.
Hopefully Google will make it transparent enough to only need a single shared Wine install between different Google applications, rather than, for example, statically compiling Wine into it!
Given Google don't make any money from Picasa, the Linux client is a loss-leader. So, it makes sense to get the first Linux version in the easiest way possible. And that is Wine. That's what it was written for. In the free software world, there is always someone who will say "I want that for free!", and "Now that I have it for free, I want it better". If you do that in a restaurant, they'll sprinkle crumbled turd on your food. On the internet, all they can do is ignore you.
Check out the code contributions - there are lots of bugs found & fixed by the Google guys that are working on this. It's not like they are saying "Go run on wine, we don't care", it's "Go run on wine, and we've given you the most help we can".
A tool like Picasa, which was written from the ground up for Windows, is not a candidate for a "Linux Port". It would need a "Linux re-write". Maybe a future version could be built using tools to help with platform independance...but Google have much bigger things to worry about.
John
Does this mean that, at long last, we can play with Google Earth on linux?! Why that would make this day almost worth keeping around!
Linux users feel that because Google built their system on Linux that they should give back to the community by porting their closed source apps to Linux. Of course this did not happen and I am sure some people were angry because of it.
We have to remember that Google does pay for Linux apps through bounties so they are giving something back. I doubt we will see real ports until a killer worm takes out 50% of all Microsoft Windows boxes.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Perhaps Google is quietly gaining experience with desktop Linux (Ubuntu) and WINE for a future assault on the Microsoft-dominated desktop. Microsoft will try very hard to switch people away from win32 apps and onto WinFX apps, where they have much tighter control (patents, DRM, etc.). Also, Microsoft knows that win32 will soon be 99%+ reverse engineered to run on Linux, so they have a huge interest in killing win32. Circa 1999 Intel wanted to kill x86 to increase profit margins and gain a tighter control of the market via IA-64 (Itanium), a highly IP-encumbered ISA. In the process, Intel left an x86-64 gap. If Microsoft leaves a win32 gap, like Intel did with x86-64, perhaps Google will fill that gap with Linux/win32, just as AMD filled Intel's gap with AMD64, leaving Intel scrambling and Itanium stagnating. I would guess that Microsoft will do better with WinFX than Intel is doing with Itanium, but how much better is the interesting question!
I hope they remove references to IE in their 'linux' version:s wer=15207
http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an
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Instead of hoping and praying that Google will do what you want, why not look at NASA's World Wind and port it to Linux yourself? This is an Open Source world -- stop being so passive.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It really is too bad they're starting with Picasa. Nothing against Picasa, it does its job, but it is about the easiest Google app to forget about when I want to do the same things on Linux. Google Earth would be a better choice, or Google Talk so that I can voice chat with my family while I am away. Picasa just doesn't do anything really new on Linux.
that's how I see it anyway . . .
Corel released WPO 2K with wine and it proved to be a real PITA. It was slow, it was unstable, it took a while for wine to load, it would only run on a specific version of Linux, etc. They DID make major contributions to Wine to allow them to ship WPO2K, but it still was unstable. We purchases several boxed versions (still have them), but went back to WP8 (and still use it for legacy docs).
However, that was several years ago. Wine has come a LONG way, but I still would ask the following about a product shipping with Wine versus a native application (e.g., Mozilla/Firefox):
They act like it's so difficult and time consuming
Then there's always selling out. And I don't get the system specs, I mean, all that for basically sizing down images? Did they only buy it because of a cool title?
the sun is god