Slashdot Mirror
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).
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.
Does this mean every Beta-Tester gets like 5000 invites, and everyone they invite gets another 5000?
Btw, anyone want a GMail account?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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).
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
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!
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
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!
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...
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.
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.
Honestly, if Google was truely serious about creating a Linux based GOOS then why do a half assed "port" of picasa using Wine. Wine has always resulted in half assed implementations of Windows software, often lacking real performance and often many features disabled. I am surprise Google with all their newly minted billions would not just higher a bunch of Linux Developers and make a native Linux version of Picasa.
And don't fool yourselves, Wine IS an emulator. Anything that has to mediate between native software code and native OS/Hardware code is an emulator. It may not be a hardware emulator (i.e. not translating to machine code the software code wasn't written for), but it is a software emulator translating windows calls to Linux calls. And in any case, emulators are slow.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.