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Apps That Officially Support Wine

Posted by kdawson on from the insert-alcohol-related-line-here dept.

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!"

16 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Inaccurate? by TrancePhreak · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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    -]Phreak Out[-
    1. Re:Inaccurate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "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.

    2. Re:Inaccurate? by theheadlessrabbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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")

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      -I only code in BASIC.-
    3. Re:Inaccurate? by shish · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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 ._.

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      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    4. Re:Inaccurate? by SleepingWaterBear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

    5. Re:Inaccurate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      /. 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).

    6. Re:Inaccurate? by Zoxed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >> "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 :-)

    7. Re:Inaccurate? by sanosuke001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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...

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      -SaNo
  2. Question by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

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    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:Question by moniker127 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Question by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  3. Apps available are also available natively... by mvdw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Wine troubles me... by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  5. WTF with the summary. by rrkap · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    I like my beverages with warning labels!
  6. Re:No Need for Wine by onefriedrice · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
  7. Open Source, Open Systems... by argent · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... 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.