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Wine Goes 64-Bit With Wine64
G3ckoG33k writes "Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a popular way to run Windows programs on Linux, and it has an impressive compatibility list. After 15 years of development it reached version 1.0 a few months ago. Now, Wine developer Maarten Lankhorst has succeeded in running 'Hello World' in 64-bit, natively! The 64-bit variety is unexpectedly named Wine64."
How the hell are we supposed to know what that means?! I would've named it Beer.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Judging from this post, it looks like the changes involved support for mixed Windows/Linux calling conventions on x86-64 (i.e. specifying on a per-function basis whether to use the Windows or Linux calling convention).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What are the Windows and Linux calling conventions?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions
See "Microsoft x64 calling convention"
How we know is more important than what we know.
It looks as though Linux users will have native 64-bit Windows applications before most Windows users.
Every time I read about Wine, I shrug and/or roll my eyes. I've tried many times to use it, but it simply does not work for the handful of Windows apps I actually need. I gave it another try just a few months ago, and I was again left high and dry, so I turned yet again to virtual machines. At this point, I have stopped caring about the project.
For the inevitable flamers among you, here's the short list of Windows apps I need, that Wine fails to support:
- Photoshop CS3
- Office 2007
- MSIE 6/7
IE6 runs, sure, but leaks memory like there's no tomorrow, so I have to kill -9 it after a few minutes lest I face a swap-spiral of doom. And don't try to tell me to use The Gimp and OO.o, I don't need "A photo editor" and "An office suite", I need those specific apps because those are the formats my peers and clients use. If it were just me in my little bubble, I'd be quite happy with unbranded alternatives, but my rent doesn't pay itself.
Now one would think that these major apps would be high on the priority list, as I'm hopefully not the only (commercial) web guy trying to use Linux as a serious desktop, and getting them to run perfectly would effectively make Windows redundant for a large number of people, not just web devs. I find it puzzling that Wine can run something like World of Warcraft, but not MS Outlook. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Warcrack, but it doesn't pay my bills.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Whine!
I almost forgot about Gentoo. That's probably the best idea of all.
Because of an almost masochistic love for a challenge. I think everyone should at least attempt to role their own kernel and desktop from scratch in an early Slackware type of way. But I think that is just me.