Bordeaux 1.6 For FreeBSD and PC-BSD Released

Tom Wickline writes "Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.6 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD today. Bordeaux 1.6 comes with added support for Google's Chrome Web Browser, Google Earth, and Google Picasa. In addition, Cellar support has improved; you can now delete and install into an existing Cellar. There have also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the backend to improve the speed and reliability of all the supported applications."

Comments

WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[jonasj]

WTF is this doing on the frontpage? This looks like some proprietary wine ripoff. Don't buy from these, buy from Codeweavers instead!

(I had guessed that this was posted by kdawson before i looked...)

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[icydog]

Actually, this seems to be similar to Winetools. It sounds like it just makes installing stuff easier through a wizard or scripts or some such. People actually pay $20 for that?

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[neowolf]

I don't think Codeweavers officially supports BSD, which is what this is about.

I am kind of tired of what amounts to blatant advertising as Slashdot posts though.

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks like some proprietary wine ripoff. Don't buy from these, buy from Codeweavers instead!

a) Codeweavers is a "proprietary wine ripoff", too.
b) Using the wine sources in accordance with their licence is not a "rip-off"; it's one of the uses the developers intended (had they not, wine would have been under the GPL or a similar licence instead).

That being said, yeah, I agree that this is a blatant advertising post that shouldn't be on Slashdot at all, let alone on the front page. But I guess in these troubled economic times, kdawson needs any extra income he can lay his grubby little hands on.

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just another slashvertisement, surely you're used to this kind of crap by now?

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[hedwards]

Because as everybody knows Codeweavers fully supports FreeBSD 7.x, wait, you say that it's very early stages and doesn't actually run on any of the recent versions?

Seriously, a lot of people would be more than happy to buy from them if they'd ship something that actually works. Right now most of us would have to dual boot to use a beta version. Which unless I misunderstand the point makes it useless for most people. They may as well just boot into Linux at that point. Or even Windows.

Re:WTF is this doing on the frontpage?

[fgouget]

Because as everybody knows Codeweavers fully supports FreeBSD 7.x, wait, you say that it's very early stages and doesn't actually run on any of the recent versions?

Although CodeWeavers doesn't officially support FeeeBSD, we are unofficially relatively active on the FreeBSD front. See bug 16023 for instance.

Interestingly, based on the wine-patches.tar.gz posted on Bordeaux's page, they don't use my work, which means they don't work on recent FreeBSD either (or the binaries they distribute don't match the source they publish which would be contrary to the LGPL).

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, although in good vintages, this total can exceed over 900 million, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world.

Re:What?

[slugtastic]

The Bordeaux Technology Group is a software services and development company specializing in Windows compatibility software. Users of Linux systems from time to time find themselves in the need to run specialized Windows software. The Bordeaux suite enables access to these programs and data in a seamless and low cost manner without requiring licensing of Microsoft Technology.

Read more...

terrible, terrible write-up

[Lord Ender]

Unless we are talking about an extremely popular app (Linux, Firefox), the first or second line of the summary should tell what the hell the app is!!

I am amazed that the slashdot editors still don't get this after so many years.

Re:terrible, terrible write-up

[westlake]

...what the hell the app is!! I am amazed that the slashdot editors still don't get this after so many years.

one wishes the message would get through to the F/OSS developer as well. meaningful and memorable names give your project a leg-up.

Re:terrible, terrible write-up

[Lord Ender]

That's a weak excuse, especially since not everyone has the logos turned on.

No TLA's required

[KlaymenDK]

I am surprised at how Tom succeeds in writing a blurb that is extremely difficult to understand (unless you already know what's being discussed, which I don't); primarily because, at this level of lack of understanding, I had expected a much higher three letter abbreviation-to-actual word ration. Bravo! ;-)

Oh, and happy new year, everyone.

Re:No TLA's required

[KlaymenDK]

...and yes, I do understand that it's a fun pun for a WINE uh...derivative? clone? subcomponent?

The web site lacks a proper About page, and none of the press release and other stuff really explains what the difference is between this and plain WINE.

Re:No TLA's required

[twickline]

I am surprised at how Tom succeeds in writing a blurb that is extremely difficult to understand (unless you already know what's being discussed, which I don't); primarily because, at this level of lack of understanding, I had expected a much higher three letter abbreviation-to-actual word ration. Bravo! ;-)

Oh, and happy new year, everyone.

What part is hard to understand?

Google Earth?

[bcmm]

Google Earth has been written in Qt with a native Linux version for quite some time now. Wouldn't it be easier to use the Linux version? I thought FreeBSD had extensive compatibility layers for running Linux executable built-in, and a Linux Qt application would look and feel more native.

Re:Google Earth?

[Nerdfest]

There's a very nice Linux version of Picasa as well.

Re:Google Earth?

[Nimey]

Isn't that "Linux" version of Picasa reliant on Wine?

Re:Google Earth?

[cbhacking]

Google Earth has been written in Qt with a native Linux version for quite some time now. Wouldn't it be easier to use the Linux version?

Wait, does that actually run now? Last I heard it wasn't even beta quality.

Also, YMMV but I've had better luck running Windows apps in Wine on Linux than I have running Linux apps (through compatibility) on FreeBSD (even ones that are supposed to work, like Flash).

Re:Google Earth?

[bcmm]

Yeah, I use Google Earth regularly and it works just fine for me. The current version for Windows, Mac and Linux is 4.3 now, so the cross-platform 4.x series is no longer unstable.

There's not really much to go wrong in porting it: the API's it uses are Qt and OpenGL. It's a shame they can't be bothered to put in a couple of days to port it to FreeBSD properly really.

My only complaint is that they insist on statically linking Qt, which makes GE slower to start and means it won't use the system widget theme.

Re:Google Earth?

[fgouget]

There's a very nice Linux version of Picasa as well.

Indeed. It's been ported to Linux by CodeWeavers (working for Google) using Wine.

Re:Google Earth?

[cbhacking]

Ah cool, thanks. I'll have to try that out.

Re:Calling Doctor Relevant

[Sponge Bath]

Calling Doctor Relevant

He can't reply, /. apparently has a restraining order against him.

Eh, it works

[rs79]

" Unless we are talking about an extremely popular app (Linux, Firefox), the first or second line of the summary should tell what the hell the app is!"

Eh, I dunno. I don't know the names of most of the Linux oriented stuff, but as a BSD guy if it says "Bordeaux" and "BSD" in the same line, I know what it is.

If you make it easier for non-BSD people to understand this stuff maybe the same courtesy could be paid for this so call popular linux app thing as well. Fair is fair?

I don't even care if it's an ad. I actually want to read it (unlike the, say, Microsoft banner ads)

Meh.

[Deagol]

Seems to be an add-on to WINE? This page tells you to install WINE. Then you install Bordeaux. No docs for FreeBSD, as far as I can tell.

Since it relies on WINE, I guess those of us who run a pure 64-bit environment are still screwed. If I wanted to pay money and be tied to i386, I'd drop my money on Win4BSD -- assuming it works as well as it did on Linux (Win4Lin) when I tried it a few years back.

It's a bit of a bummer, as FreeBSD's PC emulation options are limited. AFAIK, Qemu is the only viable option right now, but it has known issues with crashing under FreeBSD/amd64 with certain (most) Windows versions. Hopefully VirtualBox will be made to run under FreeBSD in the near future.

Re:Meh.

[cbhacking]

Thank you. That's the closest I've seen to an actual explanation of WTF Bordeaux is, and I spent several minutes poking around their site. I knew it had *something* to do with Wine, but their site is about the least informative thing I can remember reading recently.

Re:Meh.

[twickline]

Bordeaux runs the same on FreeBSD as Linux, I guess I could add some screenshots of Bordeaux running on FreeBSD.. Oh hold on they are here : http://www.wine-reviews.net/wine-reviews/bordeaux/bordeaux-for-freebsd-coming-soon.html

Re:Meh.

[Deagol]

Yes, but since it relies on WINE, it will not be usable by those who run a FreeBSD/amd64 environment due to the fact that WINE itself doesn't run under such an environment.

I realize that this is a "fault" of FreeBSD, since WINE uses a certain system call that isn't available in 64-bit mode. (Or something like that.) All I know for sure is that 64-bit FreeBSD users have been clamoring for WINE for years, it's a well-known issue, and that a fix is nowhere in sight (probably because the FreeBSD developers -- rightfully so -- have better fish to fry).

Linux fanboys restrain yourselfs

[synthespian]

Seems every time a company chooses to support FreeBSD, Linux fanboys come to /. to diss it. Linux fanboys are usually freeloaders, academics, or religious zealots of the Church of Stallman.

It's very good that there are companies developing for FreeBSD.

We need to have a software ecosystem from small software houses and I feel this will never happen with linux due to the GPL.

Re:Linux fanboys restrain yourselfs

[donscarletti]

Seems every time a company chooses to support FreeBSD, Linux fanboys come to /. to diss it. Linux fanboys are usually freeloaders, academics, or religious zealots of the Church of Stallman..

I believe most of the comments have been along the lines of "What the hell is Bordeaux?" because the summary doesn't say what it does. As for the "fanboys" (an unfair, derogatory term in this context); Linux users are quite welcome to be "freeloaders" since the software itself is free and code contribution is not a requisite to using it; Academics make up an extremely small, but relatively useful part of the Linux community, when I worked for a university, I wrote some pretty interesting and useful software (all open source). As for Stallman, most Linux users are quite embarrassed by him, which is sad because his only real crime is his commitment to his ideology, which shouldn't be a thing to be ridiculed. Otherwise he's a hard working, passionate and intelligent guy (and this is coming from a guy who writes proprietary software and RMS would personally hate).

We need to have a software ecosystem from small software houses and I feel this will never happen with linux due to the GPL.

That's an interesting feeling, particularly since many small software companies already do support Linux. The company I work for (15 programmers or so) makes closed source, proprietary software that runs on Linux. The GPL doesn't obstruct us since we can run on Linux just fine without using GPLed code.

I will say something about BSD, the FreeBSD development team has a good sense of pragmatism in how they write software and are happy to let the jackasses go off and do their thing while they set to work writing good code. However out of those who have switched to the various BSDs in the last ten years, the majority have been looking for a political crusade more than an operating system. Not so much something to abstract and manage their hardware, but something to defend to other nerds (of which, more don't use BSD than don't use Linux). I think the saying that: "Linux users hate Windows, BSD users love Unix" does not apply anymore. The BSD users I've met seem to love attacking Linux, attacking other BSDs and sometimes even praising Windows for shock value, with far more fury than I've ever heard a Linux user over 20 years old bash anything. Sure, if you're a BSD user that I haven't met it may not apply to you and of course there are plenty of stupid jackasses in the Linux world as well, but saying Linux users are comparatively a bunch of fanboy trolls just flies in the face or reality.

Re:FreeBSD is Dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft itself would disagree, considering the amount of BSD code they appear to integrate into their software.

And I've got a kidney that used to belong to a guy who was killed in a car wreck. Kidney works great. Doesn't make the previous owner any less dead, though.

Linux isn't an app.

[spaceturtle]

It is a kernel. Just FYI. This would have to be the first time any Slashdot* reader has needed Linux (or BSD) to be defined

* When I said I used Linux, I once got the response "So, do you really have sex on it?". This was not on Slashdot though

Why Use Proprietary Wine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind the proprietary Wine vendors. However I am mystified by how they often claim Wine is difficult to install and configure. Any Free/Open Source OS likely already has excellent tools to help users download and install Wine (I know mine does). If that's the only problem these vendors solve then are they just making money off spreading FUD or is there some other force driving their (presumed) profits?