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Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000 Changes

Posted by timothy on from the drink-up-pilgrim dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wine 1.6 has been released for running Windows applications on Linux and OS X. Wine 1.6 ships with 10,000 changes in the past year and has many new user features like a Mac graphics driver, Direct3D improvements, and 64-bit ARM support."

116 comments

  1. My review by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Funny

    A good amount of tannins, some peppery notes, a hint of vanilla. A nice, full-bodied product. For the price, not bad at all. Should go well with game.

    1. Re:My review by jones_supa · · Score: 0

      I find your review to be flawed. You did not mention its fine bouquet of dog farts and rotten apples, or the way the aftertaste causes you to retch up your morning breakfast.

      *Room laughs hysterically*

      This man couldn't have said it better! Let's all just get drunk! To 1.6!

    2. Re:My review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      get out of the basement you fucken looser

      I say, go TIGHTER!!

    3. Re:My review by auric_dude · · Score: 1

      You should not put new wine in old bottles.

    4. Re:My review by H0p313ss · · Score: 1, Funny

      get out of the basement you fucken looser

      I say, go TIGHTER!!

      That's what she said?

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    5. Re:My review by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

      I went and bought it in a box!

    6. Re: My review by Gilmoure · · Score: 1

      If it'll let me run Balder's Gate on a new Mac, I'll be happy.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    7. Re: My review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering that you can run it in a wrapper with OGL instead, it shouldn't be a problem.

  2. Rather large number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reminds me of this old story about Windows.

    1. Re:Rather large number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny too, I remember that story being posted (get off my lawn!) and people shitting on it. Yet you'd find many of those same people today trumpeting how Windows 2000 was the greatest ever.

    2. Re:Rather large number by SiggyTheViking · · Score: 1

      >>>Windows 2000 was the greatest ever.

      Greatest Windows ever, perhaps, for what that's worth.

  3. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wine on Mac is always left as an afterthought. Except for wine bottler. Glad to see wine devs paying attention.

    1. Re:Finally by TWiTfan · · Score: 1

      I think since Bootcamp, everyone just assumed that Mac users were just dual booting to play games. Not always true, though (and a real inconvenience).

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    2. Re:Finally by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think GOG and other commercial users of WINE have been working on (or, at least, funding) Mac support. There's a much bigger market for Windows games running on Mac than there is on other *NIX platforms.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Finally by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Major inconvenience to use, you have to create a second partition just for Windows. Meaning you lose a lot of disk space. Then you need a full Windows install (and thus you pay for a full Windows license, not just an "upgrade"). Whereas Wine is confusing to install. So it's a tradeoff.

    4. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's like saying everyone just assumed that Linux users were just dual booting to play games.

    5. Re:Finally by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      I think since Bootcamp, everyone just assumed that Mac users were just dual booting to play games. Not always true, though (and a real inconvenience).

      Why would mac users dual boot (and consider that "conventient), and Linux users run wine? Most Linux users run LInux on windows-compatible computers.

    6. Re:Finally by fgouget · · Score: 1

      Major inconvenience to use, you have to create a second partition just for Windows. Meaning you lose a lot of disk space. Then you need a full Windows install (and thus you pay for a full Windows license, not just an "upgrade"). Whereas Wine is confusing to install. So it's a tradeoff.

      Also BootCamp requires you to reboot to start Windows. This means it's impossible to use Windows and Mac applications side-by-side. Like reading your email on Mac OS X and opening attachments in Microsoft Office, or collecting data using one's familiar Safari browser and entering it in a Windows-only genealogy application, etc.

      Windows also brings with it all its extra bagage: the need for an anti-virus, system updates, extra software to make it usable (Firefox or Google Chrome, VLC, ...), the mainteance thereof, etc.

    7. Re:Finally by rsmith-mac · · Score: 1

      Considering there still isn't a proper and official Mac distribution of WINE, I'm not sure this counts for all that much. It's an absurd problem to have in 2013 and should have been solved long ago.

    8. Re:Finally by TWiTfan · · Score: 1

      Well, for one thing, Apple really hyped Bootcamp when it came out. And a lot of fans were really playing up the "Now you can game on a Mac!" thing at the time. And so Wine got neglected. I don't recall Apple officially even mentioning Wine, even before Bootcamp. And certainly not afterward. It's a shame, it really set Wine development on OS X back for a long time.

      --
      The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    9. Re:Finally by delt0r · · Score: 1

      the idea of needing different source for the same hardware on different OSes is very... well lame, even for freeking TCP/IP. The 60s called and want their crappy standard libraries back.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
  4. But the question remains... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Does it run Linux?

    1. Re:But the question remains... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does it run Linux?

      It might run loadlin, although I think that's a DOS program so DOSemu might be preferable. I don't see why it couldn't run a Windows build of qemu or bochs (although perhaps without acceleration), you could run Linux under those.

  5. Re:64-bit arm support? by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Informative

    it is indeed for developers who port x86 windows software to ARM 64, it is not an emulator but just a way to have windows function API

  6. Re:64-bit arm support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    64-bit ARM Windows binaries running on Linux ARM hardware.

  7. 10,000 changes by aztektum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Without more context that is the most useless metric I've ever seen.

    Did they find/replace 10,000 typos?

    --
    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
    1. Re:10,000 changes by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Worse than that- 10,000 bits were changed in the binary.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    2. Re:10,000 changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      One bit was changed 10,000 times with 10,000 patches.

      It's back to its old value, in case you wondered... ;)

    3. Re:10,000 changes by dimeglio · · Score: 1

      I think it's fair to assume, given past efforts, that not all 10,000 changes are typos. I expect this to be a fairly important upgrade and that it will allow better compatibility. Wine is not perfect but when it works, it's extremely handy.

      --
      Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
    4. Re:10,000 changes by marciot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Without more context that is the most useless metric I've ever seen.

      Did they find/replace 10,000 typos?

      Yup, and all of them were in the comments. The one developer who cares about spelling and grammar in the comments leads in productivity, as measured in code checkins.

    5. Re:10,000 changes by Guppy · · Score: 1

      One bit was changed 10,000 times with 10,000 patches.

      And its sequence coincidentally is a serial encoding of the text for a yummy chocolate chip cookie recipe :)

    6. Re:10,000 changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's phoronix. Trumpeting useless statistics with no actual analysis is their bread and butter.

    7. Re:10,000 changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what about the other 9984 patches? What do they do?

    8. Re:10,000 changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't realize my boss worked over there.

    9. Re:10,000 changes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm on the technical writing team for my company writing the in-app help for our software. We always destroy the productivity metrics with our commits.

    10. Re:10,000 changes by organgtool · · Score: 1

      I once interviewed a job candidate and asked him how many lines of code he would estimate he contributed to the project. He responded by saying that he modified one million lines of code on his last project. Somewhat incredulous, I asked him how he managed to do so much work in such little time and he said it was because he wrote a small tool that reformatted all of the code in the system. Needless to say, that candidate didn't hear back from us.

    11. Re:10,000 changes by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

      Correction, they made 1,000 changes. Thanks for the catch!

    12. Re:10,000 changes by NotBorg · · Score: 1

      Context: http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6

      --
      I want this account deleted.
    13. Re:10,000 changes by VAElynx · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, in that case, I'm sorry but you're a twat. The candidate gave an intelligent answer to an idiotic question.

    14. Re:10,000 changes by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

      the one time I don't have mod points to spend...*this*, however. I can't believe someone is coming out and admitting that they judge a coder by the lines of code they write, and would judge them poorly by fixing a million lines of code other people wrote (ostensibly, without breaking the code...). Enforcing formatting is practically the only thing I like about Python (that and the interactive shell...) but hey, maybe that's just because I've had to fix other people crap code for a couple decades. I don't have the advantage of youth and most of my experience being in the classroom, enabling me to dismiss someone for not writing a million lines of code :P

    15. Re:10,000 changes by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 1

      Dey done took'd out all da bro-speak, G-talk, lolcatese and redneckonized language in da commentz, accounting for about 9000 of da changes, u feelz me dog?

      --
      This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
    16. Re:10,000 changes by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      Look on the bright side: he didn't have to work for the GP (*shudder*). I'll occasionally give KLOCs when talking about personal projects just as a rough indicator of how much development went into it, but it really doesn't matter; 100 lines of clean abstractions can save 20000 lines of bug-riddled copy-pasta, for example. It's more impressive if it's "I coded the X, Y, and Z features, with error chacking, and I did it in only 5KLOC of C including documentation comments, plus another KLOC of unit tests.

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
    17. Re:10,000 changes by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      They changed the indentation from tabulations to spaces on 10k files.

    18. Re:10,000 changes by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      Why not? It sounds like he knew what counts, and amount-of-lines-of-code really doesn't count.
      I think this pretty much covers the entire subject:
      http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt

    19. Re:10,000 changes by VAElynx · · Score: 1

      Measuring a coder's worth by lines of code is kinda like gauging the performance of an engineer by the mass of components he contributed. "Today I designed 56.5 lbs of an engine".
      Also analogous in terms of you saving material actually reflecting badly on your performance.

    20. Re:10,000 changes by delt0r · · Score: 1

      Not to rag on your comment. But seriously i would love to have someone work on the comments and documentation of my projects. Its sorely needed, but not measured and a thankless task.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    21. Re:10,000 changes by organgtool · · Score: 1

      We do not hire people based on the number of lines of code they produce. Personally, I hate that metric since not all lines are created equally. Furthermore, the original request was that he explain the magnitude of his contributions to the project in which he was currently working. After he fumbled that, we settled for asking the approximate number of lines of code he contributed. I could not tell if he was genuinely attempting to take credit for writing a million lines of code or if he was providing a sarcastic answer to a question he didn't want to answer. Either way, it is not a smart move when you're being interviewed for a job. In addition to that, he had little experience and an ego I thought existed only in movies. He admitted he had gone off-the-rails on previous projects, which may be perfect in environments that require less structure, but would be a disaster in ours. The project he was interviewing for dwarfed the size of his previous projects and he failed to answer technical questions that would instill a level of confidence in the quality of his code. The request for metrics was a last-ditch effort to determine if he could be hired to do work of a less technical nature at a higher volume than the other candidates. His response was the nail in the coffin and four people unanimously decided he was not fit for the job.

    22. Re:10,000 changes by VAElynx · · Score: 1

      Well, then he wasn't passed over because of the answer, but because of lacking competence with regards to the field he was attempting to get a job in - a very different thing to what your original description made it look like.

  8. First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ahead of MSFT.

    1. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Which is pretty meaningless with no ARMv8 hardware.

    2. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by ichthus · · Score: 1

      Useless != meaningless. There will be hardware.

      --
      sig: sauer
    3. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're being picky !

    4. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it was useless. I said his bragging was meaningless in the absence of actual hardware.

    5. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by tepples · · Score: 0

      Are announcements of games confirmed for PlayStation 4 likewise "meaningless in the absence of actual hardware"? What an announcement like this means is that once there's hardware, Wine will be ready for compiling the launch titles.

    6. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Where did I say the announcement was meaningless? Oh right, no where. Wine supporting it is not meaningless lr useles. The tard whose bragging I responded to is meaningless.

    7. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually at the moment it is useless, but not meaningless!

    8. Re:First Win32/Win64 on ARM64. by The+Cat · · Score: 1

      Butthurt

  9. Re:64-bit arm support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when are there 64-bit Windows ARM executables? There aren't any AArch64 devices out yet not is Windows for ARM 64-bit.

  10. Re:64-bit arm support? by EkriirkE · · Score: 1

    Isn't the MS Surface RT an ARM windows device? Not sure of the bit-depth, though... the chipset mentions plans for 64, so future forward?

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    from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
  11. Re:64-bit arm support? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    Yes, Surface RT is ARM. No, it is not 64-but since there is no ARMv8 hardware.

  12. WinRT != Win32 by tepples · · Score: 1

    Isn't the MS Surface RT an ARM windows device?

    ARM? Yes. Windows brand? Yes. Windows in the sense use by Wine? No. All but three applications for the Surface RT use the WinRT API, not the Win32 API.

    1. Re:WinRT != Win32 by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      WinRT is a wrapper for Win32, so someone could develop a Wine-like compatibility layer to provide WinRT support on Win32 systems, which could then be run on Wine.

    2. Re:WinRT != Win32 by EkriirkE · · Score: 1

      I haven't bothered yet, but I would have imagined it to be just like windows CE. a near-drop-in-identical API to Win32, cross-architecture

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      from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
      to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
    3. Re:WinRT != Win32 by cbhacking · · Score: 1

      There are actually quite a few Windows applications which have been cross-compiled to RT (Win32 desktop or console apps, not WinRT apps). They require a "jailbreak" hack to run on RT, but that has been available for months.

      Also, you actually can use (a subset of) the Win32 API even in legit Windows Store apps. As a random example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa364419(v=vs.85).aspx (look under the "Requirements" section).

      --
      There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  13. Download the wine, just use curl.... by goffster · · Score: 1

    Sorry, Eric Burdon :)

  14. Crossover by jbolden · · Score: 2

    One of the big wine devs is Codeweavers which makes CrossOver a commercial implementation of Wine for Mac.

  15. Re:64-bit arm support? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 1

    AArch64 devices are expected to begin shipping next year.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
  16. 10,000 things by WillgasM · · Score: 1

    How Daoist?

    1. Re:10,000 things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10,000 good deeds is buddhist.

    2. Re:10,000 things by Opyros · · Score: 1

      10,000 good deeds is buddhist.

      I had the idea from somewhere that Chinese uses "ten thousand" to mean "a large number", much as English uses "a thousand". Can anyone confirm or deny, especially native speakers?

    3. Re:10,000 things by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      In English the number 1000 (a thousand) is beween 999 and 1001. It doesn't mean "a large number" at all.

    4. Re:10,000 things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It does, in the context of "I still have a thousand things to do!"

    5. Re:10,000 things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      See U+4E07 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-4E07 "ten thousand; innumerable"

      The Chinese and the Japanese use "ten thousand years" to signify "an eternity". In Japanese, "mannen" means "eternity" in its figurative meaning, and "banzai" meant eternal life (lit. age of ten thousand). Also, "mannenhitsu" means "fountain pen".

      The kanji's other meaning in Japanese seems to be "everything": bankoku "all countries", banzen "perfection", bannin "everybody", banzi "everything"

  17. That can't be right, What does the scouter say? by IcarusMoth · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's over 9000!!

  18. Not that many changes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They really only made 16 changes but that sounded too low so they converted to binary

    1. Re:Not that many changes... by r33per · · Score: 1

      Oh for some Mod points...

      Beautiful :)

  19. When? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When will we ever see WINE 2.0? Will we be forever stuck in 1.x?

    1. Re:When? by gagol · · Score: 1

      My bet is after 1.9. Version numbers dont mean shit, its the code that count.

      --
      Tomorrow is another day...
  20. Re:Car Analogy by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Lamborghini LM002.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  21. Still waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wake me up when it runs TurboTax.

  22. Cool! But why the Steam/DirectWrite issue? by dwheeler · · Score: 1

    Overall looks really promising!

    However, the last point is: "The addition of DirectWrite causes Steam to be unable to display text. This can be fixed either by setting dwrite.dll to disabled for steam.exe using Winecfg, or by running Steam with the -no-dwrite option."

    Why the heck does that happen? Will this be fixed soon?

    Yes, I know you could (normally) just run the Steam for Linux if you're running Linux, but I would guess that problem would hit other apps too.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
  23. Re:Cool! But why the Steam/DirectWrite issue? by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

    I should give money to the wine project. I keep a token windows laptop around for a few things, and those things are diminishing in number, but last time I used wine it really did take care of even those few things. I think the only reason I don't do it is because...well, witcher2 and bioshock infinite, honestly ;) And I only play something like that once a month or so

  24. fine wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i'm a windows person but fine wine gets better with age. lol

    but seriously, i forgot all about Wine for Linux. I'll go visit Wine's website now.

  25. Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More than 9000 means its going to be awesome.

  26. Re:64-bit arm support? by cbhacking · · Score: 1

    Surface RT is 32-bit. There aren't any 64-bit ARM systems in production yet. I presume when there are, there will be a 64-bit ARM port; Surface RT already has 2GB of RAM.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  27. Wake me when I can run .Net apps by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    I really want to be able to run things like Quickbooks Premiere without Parallels.

    1. Re:Wake me when I can run .Net apps by paxprobellum · · Score: 1

      You can run most .NET apps in WINE? http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2586

    2. Re:Wake me when I can run .Net apps by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

      I just wonder why Crossover, which is supposedly based on Wine, can't run current versions of Quickbooks.

  28. Feature? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the release notes:

    - ActiveX controls can be downloaded and installed automatically.

    It will never die.

  29. MS Koolaid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Every time I use linux it feels like I'm just wasting precious time"

    go shill elsewhere. i hope they're paying you enough and the kool-aid is plentiful.

    btw, i find windows a painful experience, have you tried C64 or Apple //e? May I suggest you try both? Clearly they are more enjoyable than any Microsoft Windows product, for a lot of us.

  30. Re:Cool! But why the Steam/DirectWrite issue? by fgouget · · Score: 1

    However, the last point is: "The addition of DirectWrite causes Steam to be unable to display text. This can be fixed either by setting dwrite.dll to disabled for steam.exe using Winecfg, or by running Steam with the -no-dwrite option."

    Why the heck does that happen? Will this be fixed soon?

    Before Wine had no DirectWrite dll at all, causing applications to detect that and fall back to other code paths like they do on older Windows versions. Now Wine has a DirectWrite dll so applications try to make use of it. However it's still pretty incomplete, thus causing new bugs. But then theres' also some applications that will only run on Vista or greater that had no fallback work and that have no fallback code path which have now started working, at least to some extent, because this dll is now present. So it's a case of lose, some win some; as every time Wine adds a new dll.

    Will this be fixed soon?

    Depends. We're waiting for your patches!

  31. Re:64-bit arm support? by hobarrera · · Score: 1

    You can build FLOSS windows apps and run them on wine on your ARM Linux machine. :)

  32. Re:Cool! But why the Steam/DirectWrite issue? by hobarrera · · Score: 1

    The need for adding "-no-dwrite" to wine has existed for months, it's nothing new.
    Why don't you run native wine?

  33. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Building things from source on Ubuntu and variants is stupidly hard even for non noobs. Just don't do it.

    Ask on the official forums if there are Wine 1.6 packages available yet and someone will likely point you in the right direction.

  34. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by caseih · · Score: 2

    Funny I have always felt the same way as you about Windows. Quite often while working with windows, often just trying to make it useable for me, I feel like I'm wasting precious time. Then I got back to my comfortable desktop and feel a lot better.

    I have used linux for many years but I don't follow what are rambling on about with installing wine. I install it with aptitude install wine and things are just fine. The handy winetools script installs a bunch of things and it works for the one or two apps that I run with it occasionally. On one box I install from the latest git code just to see how things are progressing. But if you're having trouble building from source, then this route is not for you (on any OS).

    Funny about how you keep dvds and hard drives full of msi's and exes and drivers! For me I just keep a copy of my home directory. Everything else I can install from a net install of Mint or some other distro, and just about everything I use daily is in the repos. Linux hardware support seems quite good to me these days. Even Nvidia's driver is in repos. It's a different paradigm is all. To me the command line is no different than navigating the depths of the registry on windows.

  35. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    I now only use linux and have been that way for a couple years, but I don't delude myself. It's a lot more easier to download a setup.exe then double-click on it (which works even for drivers).
    On linux, I don't know how to list programs installed from ppas / 3rd party repositories so I can get rid of them or revert them to main repo's version. You can't uninstall a program installed with ./configure ; make ; make install (feels like installer from 1992 or 1993 putting crap in C:\Windows\System). This despite me having six years of experience in use, sysadmin tasks and troubleshooting. Windows had that crap solved in 1995 with the Add/Remove applet in the control panel.

    Oh, Windows users don't compile from git/svn, they download a nightly build and run it. And we wouldn't be able to install anything without broadband internet. The trade off is we don't have those slow windows updates and slow and boring viruses scans (hell on earth is doing a virus scan, a spyware scan, a "sfc /scannow", running all windows updates, then why not running the defragmenter on C:\ for good measure).

  36. Miss the mingw builds by FithisUX · · Score: 1

    I really miss the Wine-On-Windows mingw builds. The SF builds are outdated.

  37. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You're speaking BS
    > On linux, I don't know how to list programs installed from ppas / 3rd party repositories so I can get rid of them or revert them to main repo's version
    Click e.g. on 'origin' in synaptic package manager???

    > You can't uninstall a program installed with ./configure ; make ; make instal
    Never heard of "make uninstall"?

    > Windows had that crap solved in 1995 with the Add/Remove applet in the control panel.
    You should learn how to use package managers: there is a lot of thme

    > This despite me having six years of experience in use, sysadmin tasks and troubleshooting
    After so much experience you can't perform a google search???
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=list+programs+installed+from+ppa

    > Oh, Windows users don't compile from git/svn
    You hardly need to compile stuff on linux for normal use... ever heard of binary packages?

  38. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your arcane knowledge and penchant for pedantic won't win you any friends. Be sure to turn the lights off in your parent's basement.

  39. Not something on which users can rely by tepples · · Score: 1

    I don't see how a software developer could base its business model on this jailbreak hack. Most end users are not going to trust applications that require a jailbreak hack that Microsoft could eliminate with an update to Windows RT.

    And is this subset enough to build an application, or do legit Windows Store applications also need to use other APIs that Wine does not support?

  40. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your arcane knowledge and penchant for pedantic won't win you any friends. Be sure to turn the lights off in your parent's basement.

    Nothing pedantic about my comment, maybe a bit sarcastic though. And it's by no way "arcane" knowledge, just a couple of googles searches away.

  41. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Make uninstall is sometimes available and sometimes, probably most times, not.
    While you tried to be a dick, I guess the suggestion to use synaptic is useful, I will install it on my system.
    Yes there's some binary stuff.. the DeadBeef music player (statically linked) is distributed as such (just a tarball), the author probably thought packaging it the regular way would be a pain in the ass/supported on too few distro versions.

  42. Re:Cool! But why the Steam/DirectWrite issue? by dwheeler · · Score: 1

    Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the answer.

    --
    - David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
  43. Re:linux on the desktop is dead by caseih · · Score: 1

    Just use your distro's package manager, whatever it may be. Synaptic is only for distros that have apt-get and dpkg as their package manager. Other distros have other front-ends for installing software, and they are almost always installed by default, so look in your system menus. On Fedora there's the built-in software manager, and of course the yum commandline command.

    Honestly building software from source should only be done if you want the latest bleeding edge software. And it's fraught with difficulty because often dependencies that ship with your distro are too old for the latest source code. It's always easiest to wait for a packaged binary, which on my system is about as easy as double-clicking a setup.exe.

    As I type this I'm compiling wine from source because I have a very old distribution that is no longer supported in any way by anyone but me at this point. But that's what I've chosen to run for now until I have time to upgrade (and decide what distro to use... Fedora, Mint, or Mint Debian Edition?).

  44. A fine wine by angryfeet · · Score: 1

    Really opens up the sluices at both ends.

  45. Awesome! by m4kamran · · Score: 1

    Wine and Steam. Linux is becoming more and more awesome everyday.

    --
    http://pctechntweaks.com