Apps That Officially Support Wine

David Gerard writes "Wine (the Windows not-an-emulator for Unix) runs Windows applications more often than not. (Certainly more often than Vista does.) Dan Kegel on the wine-users mailing list/forum has started gathering apps that declare Wine a supported platform. And there's now a Wine Support Honor Roll page on the Wine wiki. We need more apps that work with Wine stating that they consider it a supported platform. If you write Win32 open source or shareware, please open yourself to the wider market!"

Comments

Inaccurate?

[TrancePhreak]

There are probably more Vista users than Wine users, so I think the summary is inaccurate.

Re:Inaccurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Certainly more often than Vista does."

This is what gives Slashdot a bad name: completely false (or exaggerated) negative statements in order to promote your own ideas.

I thought one of the premises of Slashdot is that it is unbiased when your news isn't. This kind of shit would be tolerable on Fox News, hopefully it never will be here.

Re:Inaccurate?

[theheadlessrabbit]

from the perspective of a computer user (my sig should confirm that I am not a developer) perhaps this is because people expect windows apps to work in the windows world because, "we paid good money for this, it had better work"
while in the linux world, if an app doesn't work, i am not all that bothered by it, because its free, i paid nothing for it, i will forgive the occasional bug, and if it gets bad enough, there is an alternative out there that is also free.

In wine, having an app that was intended for an entirely different operating system actually work just blows my mind. i would never think to complain to the wine team that "x program won't work"

in windows, when an app fails, it is frustrating because I expect commercial software to be bug free.

(note to linux zealots: please don't mod this flamebait, did you notice how i said "IF a linux app fails" and "WHEN a windows app fails")

Re:Inaccurate?

[shish]

I thought one of the premises of Slashdot is that it is unbiased when your news isn't.

When did that happen o_O? Last time I looked at the FAQ, this was taco's personal blog, and he and his guest contributors did whatever they wanted with it ._.

Re:Inaccurate?

[SleepingWaterBear]

Even so, he's probably exaggerating and/or overestimating. But the fact remains that there's a nasty degree of API incompatibility between Vista and previous versions of Windows. For example, if you have any version of Adobe Acrobat except the latest, you get a file system error if you try to write certain modifications out to disk. Basic I/O operations broken! That's pretty bad.

I'm not so sure he's overestimating! Given how many years Windows XP and Windows 98 were aroung for, it's a safe bet that there are hundreds of times more apps for those two platforms than for Vista. A rather large fraction of those work in Wine. If a decent fraction of them don't work in Vista (and my understanding is that they don't), then just by number of apps Wine probably runs a lot more windows apps than Vista does.

Of course, the vast majority of the apps Wine runs that Vista doesn't are outdated, or have been replaced by newer version that do run in Vista, but for sheer numbers, I think it's a safe bet that Wine wins!

Re:Inaccurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

/. needs a healthy does of text book logic lessons. Categorical statements such as this not only remove any credibility from the article, they set a tone on /. that encourages more such statements, and so on. This sort of sophomoric drivel in the comments is to be expected, but it has no place in the submissions (at least not those which get green-lighted).

Re:Inaccurate?

[timmarhy]

what kind of fucking retarded maths is that, wine has a fraction of the apps xp had so if a fraction of the apps don't work on vista is greater than the piddling amount supported by wine than wine is better?

a quick google of the situation shows these issues are all down to these apps requiring XP/98's poorly thought out security model, requiring access to system components and registry settings. If these software companies refuse to update software to a more secure model than by all means they should be nuked. this is exactly what happens in the linux world, only at a faster pace.

Re:Inaccurate?

[vux984]

Wine has rather good support for older apps, it's always playing catch-up, but everyone agrees it does old stuff better than Vista does. Lets suppose Vista supports 80% of the old apps, and Wine supports 83% of them (the numbers are made up, but what matters is that Wine is a few points ahead). Then out of every 102 apps (100 98/XP and 2 Vista) Wine supports about 83, and Vista supports 82. I suspect that Wine has a much better than 3% edge for older app support though, and I've assumed that wine has absolutely no support for new Vista apps.

Except that Vista is actually WAY ahead of Wine. WAY ahead. No comparison. No contest.

Vista is more compatible with previous versions of Windows than WINE is. Especially after you factor in its compatibility modes, and are prepared to 'run as administrator' things.

Re:Inaccurate?

[Zoxed]

>> "Certainly more often than Vista does."
> This is what gives Slashdot a bad name...

Are you kidding: these grossly sweeping, biased and potentially inaccurate, but FUNNY, statements are what keep me coming back to Slashdot :-)

Re:Inaccurate?

[sanosuke001]

So just because MS decided to "fix" some API calls to be more secure, remove old calls that should have been removed, and modernize their OS (for better or worse) you're saying that breaking backwards compatibility for some apps wasn't worth it? Even though MS told everyone they were doing it a year or more in advance and those companies didn't fix their software.

When functions in your favorite language get deprecated, what do you do? Do you bitch and moan, calling the lead Dev a money-hungry whore? Or do you say, "nice, they're fixing issues and letting us know before they pull support for good"?

I love bashing MS just as much as the next guy, but expecting backwards compatibility for every version of something is shortsighted and, for progress' sake, stupid. Updating the API and removing old, insecure calls, is one thing I do agree with MS on. Now, I wish Intel and AMD would drop x86...

Re:Inaccurate?

[Taevin]

You're right that it's probably an exaggeration, and I'm sure that any honest Wine user will agree. I love it and use it often but I've had my fair share of getting Windows apps to work correctly, whereas I've had few problems getting things to run on my Vista PC at work.

However, I also think it's an exaggeration to say that "There is no way Wine is more compatible." In my experience, though unlikely, it is possible. More than once I've actually seen app run faster and with more stability in Wine than on the original platform. Remember, Wine is a re-implementation of the Win32 API so it's certainly within the realm of possibility that bugs and inefficient coding could reduce the performance and reliability of apps running on Vista/XP.

I think this is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully game developers will soon realize they're missing out on a potential market.

Re:I think this is a good thing

[Daengbo]

Starport Galactic Empires and Soldat are claimed to work on Wine by the publisher. That's a lot more than "should work." Just because you apparently don't think independent games are important doesn't mean that they aren't. In fact, they're probably the easiest to get on the "officially supports Wine" page because they need the extra market wherever they can get it and will do a little testing (maybe even tweaking) to get that exposure.

If you want everything to be EVE Online, you're going to be disappointed.

• Step 1: Get "Officially Supports Wine" backing to increase the number and genres of games available on Linux.
• Step 2: Once a beachhead is in place, get devs to do native support ports using winelib.
• Step 3: Encourage more high-quality cross-platform games.
• Step 4: Get the big guys on board.

Question

[MyLongNickName]

How many developers want to put in the extra effort for a 0.1% wider audience? And consider the Linux crowd has the "free (as in beer) software mentality".... so I figure an even less percentage sales increase.

(ducks and covers)

Re:Question

[moniker127]

If joe sixpack asked a linux expert for help, he would probably get laughed at for not knowing how to compile the source of the application he was trying to get to run.

Re:Question

[SanityInAnarchy]

How many developers want to put in the extra effort for a 0.1% wider audience?

Developers who find actual numbers, instead of pulling them out of their ass.

And that means doing a little market research. The market for your app may be biased one way or the other. For instance, if you're selling a text editor targeted at programmers -- or better yet, an SCM -- it's probably not too difficult to port, and you'll probably get quite a few grateful Linux users.

consider the Linux crowd has the "free (as in beer) software mentality"....

Can we get past this already? It seems the only Linux folk who have that mentality are complete strawmen created by people who've never actually met a Linux user.

I actually bought Windows XP, despite Linux being my primary OS. Most Windows users I know will pirate it if it didn't come with the machine.

There is one exception to that rule: On Windows, there are tons of little freeware (but closed source) utilities like IrfanView, WinRAR, etc. On Windows, and to a larger extent, OS X, there's even more -- a massive culture of shareware, where tiny cataloging utilities and file management utilities are selling for $10 to $20 each.

So, if your app is something truly useful, sure. I would love to see things like Photoshop support Wine officially (I'll use Gimp when I can, but it still hasn't caught up), and I love that WoW releases Wine-specific patches, and Eve uses Winelib.

But if you're trying to sell me a $15 version of diff or merge, it had better iron my socks, too.

Re:Question

[Neoprofin]

consider the Linux crowd has the "free (as in beer) software mentality"....

Can we get past this already? It seems the only Linux folk who have that mentality are complete strawmen created by people who've never actually met a Linux user.

Or anyone who's spent more than ten minutes in any thread on this site involving Windows, Linux, Macs, the FSF, any FOSS announcement, and probably a hand full of other things.

You can't come here every day, or multiple times a day like people seem to do, and not notice that there are plenty of Linux users who are very eager to post about how all of their software is both free as in s speech AND free as in beer.

That said, I think most people are used to "free as in beer" by this point because Linux is free by choice and the high prices of a lot of proprietary programs has led to such massive rates of piracy that things like Windows, Office, and Photoshop may as well be free as far as anyone not professionally involved is concerned. Games don't exactly fit this model though, as developers actually care if their games get pirated much of the time, it's not an arena where gaining market share is worth the lost revenue because that marketshare doesn't continue forth the same way.

I digress though, my point was that that the idea of the fanatical free linux guy is far from a strawman, I'd just be interested to see how many there are compared to Windows and Mac users who just pirate everything but don't talk about it.

Re:Question

[tokyoahead]

The problem for game developers is finally that the costs of porting the big games to another platform outweighs the profit made by the small number of users. As long as all of the big companies stay with windows, no-one has to jump, since 99% of the gamers stick with windows - to game. If one big one would go ahead, all have to follow, and then the market size does not grow but the support/dev costs does. Same happened with "light" produts (sodas etc) - double your product lineup and do not increase turnover enough to justify it.

Apps available are also available natively...

[mvdw]

Most if not all of the apps already mentioned have native Free equivalents that are as good, if not better. Specifically, the majority seem to be DVD or MP3 programs, which are already heavily targeted. Although, more officially-supported WINE apps is certainly good for regression testing the codebase.

Re:hey adobe...

[RedK]

You can already run Photoshop CS4 on Unix, and I mean the real deal (http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html), not imitation Linux Unix.

Re:Wine troubles me...

[_Sprocket_]

As someone playing WoW on my Linux box, I say "chase on!"

Re:Wine troubles me...

[bondsbw]

Agreed. They've done a fantastic job, but their job will never be over.

I personally think that reversing that effort would be best. If companies were able to develop solid apps for Linux, and be assured that they would work flawlessly and efficiently in Windows, that would be a better way to kill two birds with one stone.

A major project going this direction is andLinux, which is basically the opposite of Wine. It uses the coLinux kernel, a port of the Linux kernel for Windows, to allow Linux programs to run natively in Windows.

WTF with the summary.

[rrkap]

Wine is a cool project. It's even useful, but it isn't nearly as compatible with Windows or DOS aps than Vista. That's just stupid. This is yet another story that leads me to suspect that kdawson is an idiot.

Wine for Windows

[sonamchauhan]

> runs Windows applications more often than not. (Certainly more often than Vista does.)

Maybe this occasions releasing Wine on Windows itself ;)

Re:No Need for Wine

[onefriedrice]

My computer is a tool. Software is my job, not my religion. If I can increase my productivity or otherwise enjoy life better by using a win32 binary in wine rather than a Free version which may or may not be available, I'll use wine without even feeling guilty. Ahh, true freedom.

Joke?

[NotBorg]

I believe the word you are looking for is

WOOOOOOOOOOOSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

If you don't put a large bare foot next to it or it doesn't follow a well established pattern of humor (eg Soviet Russia), it cant be funny.

what on earth is the point of this?

[alexander m]

what am i missing here -- isn't the ENTIRE POINT of wine supposed to be that apps can run on it without having to specially support it? bizarre. an emulator that needs developers to target it for it to work isn't doing its job... (sure, i know most apps DON'T have to target it, but then that renders the whole concept of this list completely redundant!)

Open Source, Open Systems...

[argent]

... If you write Win32 open source or shareware, please open yourself to the wider market!"

If you write Win32 open source, consider writing your code to an open API instead of a proprietary one instead. Open systems are at least as important as open source.