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Wine 1.0 — Uncorked After 15 Years
pshuke writes "After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot."
How about NONE? Wine doesn't have a "logo" nor a certification program. Being 1.0 release as well means it would be premature for a developer to market towards it (thus accepting liability for what could be shortcomings in the WINE system itself)
Obviously, sooner is better for actual use; but releasing it on June 30th would have been more amusing.
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
* New application support:
o Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and limited Outlook) I'll still be buying a copy though.
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
Last I checked it wasn't possible to get it to work with recent versions of glibc. At least without a lot of work first. Wine support would be a major step up.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Premature? For a product that took a decade and a half to reach 1.0, I'm not sure that's the correct word.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
If there's one thing I've learned from SCO, it's that lawsuits don't need a basis in reality.
There's a lot of us out there who really dislike Office 2007, that doesn't mean that we're promoting OpenOffice, it may mean that Office 2003 is the better product.
Your logic is ridiculous, at 99% compatibility for Open Office, it outdoes Microsoft Office's general compatibility with itself.
The situation you provided is very exclusive to a boss who is intelligent enough to realize the difference between MS Office and Open Office and having to work 100% of the year long.
In a normal business year, 99% compatibility is much closer to 1 day something going wrong, assuming your claimed statistics are even worth arguing.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Send "presentation important" documents as PDFs. Always. Even if you're going from MS Office to MS Office.
Problem solved!
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
There's something to be said for being able to use a Windows application remotely over X11, even if both hosts are running Windows. Remote desktop is kind of a joke in comparison.
No, it's much higher--for me Open Office fails to be a suitable replacement for Word/Excel during every single attempt to interoperate with the genuine article. Documents never look right, and I don't dare edit anything and send it back lest I corrupt something that destroys the file.
I find OO a useful tool for basic previewing of MS Office documents and doing trivial word processing and spreadsheet tasks. For those purposes, it's nice, and I really appreciate having it available. The GP's view that it's 99% there is a still a wild overestimation of its utility from where I sit.
Crossover is fine if it just happens to work well with the one or two applications you actually need. If you're looking to run a larger selection of applications or something they don't support well, then a VM or native install is really the only option. Personally, I don't think this needs to be the case. I think CodeWeavers has a very flawed business model that has hampered them more than anything else. They could be making significant money from small business (and larger business).
The problem I have is with CodeWeavers' method of deciding what applications to support. They ask users to pledge a certain amount of money if they get an application supported and working well. That's a fine method of deciding what to work on if your users are hobbyists looking for support for some video game. It is a complete non-starter in business. For example, I tested it out for use with a certain Adobe application and it was nonfunctional. I looked into when they would support it, and the answer seemed to be "never" because not enough people pledged money. Since this is mainly a business application, what do they expect people to do? Have you ever tried getting approval for a purchase order that says if CodeWeavers ever gets this application supported we'll give them some amount of money... but we have no idea when or if that will ever happen? Not a chance. So, of course, we moved on and purchased a bunch of copies of a virtualization environment and Windows to run in it. Now in my case, they only lost a few dozen sales, but I know another, very, very big company that did a similar evaluation... but they needed a solution within a few weeks. They easily lost 500 sales there for the same application.
Basically, I think if they started targeting business customers with a plan that made even a lick of sense to potential business users they'd be pulling in a lot more money, money they could reinvest to make faster progress and more fully support a wide range of programs.
I have a couple of old games that shipped with MacOS Classic and Windows 95 versions on the same CD. On an Intel Mac, I can run the Windows version in WINE, but can't run the MacOS version. For some reason, this amuses me.
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It's not necessarily the toolbars we document processors/writers/editors miss in 2007--it's the hot keys and the functions usable from the keyboard through drop down menus. In spite of MS's assurances that those haven't been changed, many many have been. Not to mention the whole thing works damned inconsistently from the keyboard.
In this end of things typing speeds above 75 wpm are a matter of course; at that speed, taking your hands off the keyboard to use a mouse is a big productivity hit. Taking that hit plus the hit necessary to relearn an interface? Sorry, but I have deadlines to meet.
The most galling thing about it is MS's hubris (yes, I know, par for the course). They could have at least put in the ability to switch between the old and new interfaces to ease the transition and allow user choice. So confident were they that the new interface was better, that they forced us to make an either/or choice. If I had both, I could use the old interface when I had to and spend some time every day learning the new one. Instead it decreased our productivity.
Thanks guys...this is the worst call since they changed the help system to an online web-imitative help system.
...
You know that Wine is open source, right? There isn't anything stopping you from getting that implemented yourself. Code it, or hire someone to code it. You could even gather a bunch of other people together, and all pay for that person to code it.
If it's really that highly voted, maybe some of those people will want to spend $5 on fixing their problem.
It goes great with vintage Windows apps.
Many a true word was said in jest. Back in 1998 I wrote a small Windows program at work (~3000 lines of Turbo Pascal 7.0, Win 3.1) and tested it at home on Wine on Slackware. It worked fine.
Wine is an astonishing project. It deserves a lot of credit.
Stick Men
the same can be said of Windows....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
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Looking at the amount of GPL code they put back in Wine, I don't care about tricks they leave out in the open source version but which people can share on the web.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Using wine is a stop-gap measure for running Windows apps on Linux. All users of wine (and I am one) should write to their applications' developers and let them know that they would like native Linux support. I have a list of tens of software house and their contact info, for writing to software developers. Please, if you use wine, at least write to the application developers and let them know that there is demand for their products on Linux. Whether the apps work in wine or not.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
I disagree. What that would mean is that software producers have tested against the platform, and certified it as a working alternative. That would be a level of awareness that has yet to be seen. It's also no different than having both XP and Vista, or only one, listed on the box. And that's besides the publicity that Wine would get.Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
At the very least, write to them if it doesn't run in Wine.
Porting a software project can be a very nontrivial task, taking many manyears of work to complete. Few companies are willing to invest this kind of work (and money) for what seems to be a rather small customer base. They could, though, be willing to invest in a few tweaks to make it run on an emulator that would accomplish, from their point of view, the same thing: Letting Linux users use their software.
Companies are usually reluctant to develop for a platform with a small customer base. They do, though, accept making a few tweaks to get a foot into the market.
Currently, the only argument for people to keep using Windows is that Wine can't handle EVERY SINGLE Windows application. When there is no important application left that doesn't run well on Wine, people will more readily switch (Linux+Wine == Windows, from a user's point of view, but about 100-300 bucks cheaper).
And THEN it's time to ask software companies to develop for Linux, with it being the bigger market.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Except that you're argument against gaming refers to newer versions of windows, which try to encourage both you AND developers (because they're just as much to blame for this by making crap installers and such) to not always stay in or require Administrator access.
Besides, you're blaming the OS for something a user has near completely control over. You'd be better blaming Microsoft for not discouraging this practice instead of the OS.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I just know there's a Vista and a DNF joke lurking somewhere in there, I just can't put my finger on it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Correction, a lot of Windows games require Administrator access because they insist on writing files to the application's directory rather than to the user's home directory.
Rumor has it that Microsoft introduced the annoying UAC prompt to get developers to stop this practice by getting users to bitch at developers until they adjusted applications and games to get rid of the prompts.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Dear software dev,
I am writing you to inform you that even though you only write Windows apps, I (somewhat) successfully managed to get it to run on my Linux operating system. Please start making a Linux version of this application post haste so you can not gain a customer (I have already hacked your app to run in linux) and increase your development costs. An added perk is the fact that you will be required to support the Linux version rather than just telling me to "run it in Windows" when I call. The extra staff you hire for your support center should help the unemployment rate.
Thanks Again,
A Wine User
I agree that the types of experiences are different, and it's good that you point it out. Essentially, my beef with X11 style forwarding is that there's never been a killer app for it. XDMCP takes a backseat to the screen-esque experience of rdesktop, and I just don't know of any *nix applications that are seriously worth using over a network link, particularly when the possibility exists of me losing work when the link goes down.
This has been exacerbated by the comeuppance of genuinely usable web applications -- sure, they kinda suck now, but in terms of delivering applications over the network, that's the future, period. I really agree with the anonymous coward who got modded down. Other than novelty value and it being what most *nix folks are used to, I just don't see the point of X11 style forwarding nowadays, and XDMCP is relatively useless for the reasons outlined above.
I realize this is offtopic, but what do you feel is the 'killer app' that takes advantage of the X protocol? Why couldn't it be done as a simple client/server app?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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You should never log in as Administrator or root to play games, and, unfortunately, Windows often makes you to do just that. That kind of behavior just isn't ready for the desktop at all.
Windows does nothing of the sort. Stupid developers make you "login" (really, just "Run As) as Administrator, and they're as likely to do it targeting Linux as they have been targeting Windows.
If that were true, the default permission level would not be Administrator unless you go out of your way to reconfigure it.
You are conflating two very different things. The permissions in the system and privilege level of the user.
The default permission level for new users in Vista is still Administrator: Not sane.
This is simply confirming your ignorance. An "Administrator" in Vista is simply someone who is allowed to elevate their privilege level. It is loosely equivalent to the "admin" group in OS X or the "wheel" group in UNIX.
You can leave Portage out of it.
Its a very nice niche PM.
It will never really hit mainstream thus wont do any damage.
RPM does need to die though.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The PM that works on all distros will win. That's competition. Take the load off the developer in figuring out what distro they are on and let the installer put files where they need. It could also set flags for the program being installed to locate appropriate locations to save and load information from.
At least, that's what I'm rooting for.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
No! No not autopackage - it's a just bunch of scripts that make assumptions about the filesystem which may not be true, cannot correctly determine the dependencies (no matter what Autopackage claims) I have been burnt by Autopackage too often (they never seem to work and leave debris in some very odd places...)
... Alien can convert it to other formats and the native package manager can sort out dependencies far better ....
Use either DEB or RPM
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