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First Release Candidate of Wine 1.0 Released
moronikos writes to mention that the first release candidate of Wine 1.0 was announced and released into the wild today. This new version includes only bug fixes as the team is in a code freeze while pushing for the full 1.0 release.
does it run linux?
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
I was always under the impression that WINE, based on how it is designed, would never be finished, or even close to a finished release point. I mean, yeah, I know 1.0 doesn't mean it's done, just that it hit a specific milestone, but even so, WINE, being considered a ⥠1.0 version seems to me like it shouldn't happen until it can at least come close to running most everything thrown at it.
Just my non-developer, non-programer, former WINE-user $.02.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Because WINE can run "Lander on the moon" from Windows 3.11 and Windows XP/later cannot.
"Why would I want to use Wine when I can just run windows in a virtual machine?"
:)
You don't have a lot of spare RAM? (e.g. using VirtualBox requires enough RAM for the host OS + the RAM for the virtualized OS + the RAM for the app running in it; with Wine you eliminate the need for the virtualized OS)
You don't want to buy a Windows license/pirate Windows for a single app? (or more generally, you don't want Microsoft code on your system if you can help it?
.. before it is usable? :)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
So, this would be Release Candidate version 0.01 right? ;-)
Well, yeah, it depends on what you need, doesn't it? What you say is true for many, maybe even most people, but that doesn't mean nobody needs Wine.
:)
If you have to interoperate with Windows users who use specific software, and the Linux equivalents can't read/write files from that software sufficiently well for your purposes, then you may still find yourself looking for a way to run the Windows programs. This used to be the case a lot with MS Office; modern Linux office apps are pretty good at interoperating, so it's not an issue so much, though there are still a few rare cases where the Linux software won't be able to duplicate what MS Office does quite well enough. (Complex VBA macros that automate other Windows applications, for example. Though I don't know offhand whether Wine can handle those either, and frankly anyone who uses them deserves the pain they cause
Then there are the cases where the Linux programs are genuinely inferior. Again it's a question of whether that actually matters. For example, GIMP is good enough for most casual users and even many professionals, but still a lot of people are inevitably going to find there are things they need that it doesn't do, and then they're going to want a way to run Photoshop.
And finally we have the fundamental matter of freedom of choice. Some people just prefer various proprietary Windows applications, and it's good that they can have the freedom to choose to retain those, even if the Linux equivalent would work just as well. Linux is all about the freedom to use your computer how you like, after all!
Version number schemes vary between different software, and you'll have to ask WineHQ specifically what they mean to be at 1.0.
In the FOSS world, though, usually version 1.0 is a pretty big milestone showing that the software is complete, with few bugs known and little or no features missing. Some projects gone on for years in the 0.x numbers before ever getting to 1.0 (if ever). Wine itself started just naming it on the date (eg, Wine 20020314), but a couple years ago or so they started calling it 0.9.0 and so on.
Usually the big number in a version number represents important steps, though this can of course vary. For example, OpenBSD doesn't bother with making a fuss about what the number on the left means and they just increment by 0.1 always (after 3.9 came 4.0, and so on). GNU Emacs decided a long time ago that no complete rewrite would ever happen, and so they constantly increment the big number for large changes (they're at version 22.0 now). Hell, Netscape even decided to skip an entire number (4.7 -> 6.0) after the original company died and the new versions were based on the Mozilla project.
Actually they do say, what's their target for wine 1.0:
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleaseCriteria
The long answer is that not all of the DirectX features are quite there, I don't know if it's current but there's an overview here. The result is that some games won't play without native DLLs. Doing that requires the Windows files and adding an override in winecfg. This was a much larger issue before than it is now and it keeps getting fewer that need these overrides.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Really? I'm looking at that page and don't you know, it seems that Direct3D v9 is 95% supported...
The beef is described at
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleaseCriteria
In essence, 1.0 is just another release,
but with more stability (e.g. a month's
codefreeze and only very careful bugfixes)
and a few longstanding bugs
(e.g. serial I/O, dos apps) fixed not because
lots of people need them, but because it just
seemed wrong to reach 1.0 without fixing them.
Dan Kegel
Wine 1.0 Release Manager
Alright guys, this release is 15 years in coming. I'm not aware of any other free software project that's taken 15 years to get to 1.0.
We know we've got some core architecture just right. That's taken a long time to get there. Now we have a lot of bug squashing to do and in many cases it's pretty amazing how quickly regressions can be found, bugs tracked, etc if we just have a few more eyes on this release.
So we put together a list of things you can do to help us out - check it out here:
1.0 regression hunting. And hey! We're giving out t-shirts to the folks who help us out the most.
Notice we didn't say anything about jumping in and writing code? You're certainly welcome to, and in some cases there might even be some low hanging fruit. However, without development experience on Wine's codebase your valuable time might best be spent regression testing your favorite game!
As always, thanks for all the support!
----- obSig