Wine 1.4 Released
vinn writes "Wine 1.4 was released today and includes support for a wide range of applications, including Office 2010. There are some major architectural changes, including a built-in DIB engine for better graphics display and a new audio stack designed around the newer Vista / Win 7 system and integrated into the native audio system. Almost every other subsystem received substantial updates, including Direct3D, the Gecko-based web browsing components, and better internationalization. The release notes contain more detail and you can download the source code now, or wait for packages to appear soon."
Sadly the Debian bins are still at rc3 - http://www.winehq.org/download/debian
Still, thank you all for the fantastic project called Wine!
how does it stack up against VMware, Virtualbox or the other virtual machine servers?
That's a little like asking how the Toyota Prius stacks up against a Boeing 727. While technically both are able to get you from Boston to New York, they have completely different use cases.
Virtual machine servers are intended to run an entire alternate operating system (under which you can run whatever applications you want). Wine, on the other hand, is intended to allow you to run Windows programs *without having Windows at all*.