Wine On Android Starts Allowing Windows Binaries On Android/ARM

STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

Dammit, Dice, I thought you said you heard us. I don't want to use beta, stop redirecting me there PLEASE. I didn't want to do the stupid boycott thing, but when I came into work this morning and found myself on Beta... well, I think I'll just leave.

Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by allo · 2014-02-10 01:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

Isn't it strange, that every anti-beta post is now modded -1, even when the majority of the users is against beta?
And off-topic is wrong, anti-beta is on-topic, because this is a slashdot article, and it will be displayed in the beta website, if slashdot decides to abandon the classic one.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

The point is: Slashdot should stop the beta, the users will stop spamming. Sometimes you have to protest until something changes.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by aitikin · 2014-02-10 01:35 · Score: 0

I don't know why, but I did not get redirected to Beta. Ever. The only reason I knew everyone hated it was the comments (and the fact that I saw it when it was initially created and left feedback that this sort of thing would happen). I have no idea as to why, but I'm not complaining.

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"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 03:02 · Score: 0

I thought all the "FUCK BETA" assholes were supposed to be on Slashcott this week, or whatever the fuck they call it.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by mark-t · 2014-02-10 03:17 · Score: 1

They are off topic, since the topic is not about slashdot, but about whatever the article is about. As is this post, for that matter.

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 03:55 · Score: 0

How much do the admins care that about half of the comments are now off-topic spam? Versus how much do users of the site care about it being useless now under both classic and beta? Regardless of your intentions, the result is it looks like the beta spammers are trying to make Slashdot classic suck as bad or worse than beta. People have no reason to stick around and see if they actually fix or dump beta, because it sucks now people might as well leave regardless of what Dice and admins do at this point. It is like getting the same results as having let them implement beta without complaining, but with much more wasted effort.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Eravnrekaree · 2014-02-10 04:05 · Score: 1

Whats a good slashdot alternative? Maybe someone here ought to set up a site realslashdot.org running the classic interface and then we will move over there.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by MightyMartian · 2014-02-10 04:41 · Score: 1

Being against beta doesn't mean I approve of this constant railing against it. You're doing more damage to Slashdot than beta ever could, rendering it pretty much unreadable.

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 05:55 · Score: 0

Isn't it strange, that every anti-beta post is now modded -1, even when the majority of the users is against beta?
Unfortunately, your cognitive dissonance is no strange behavior for people.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 09:19 · Score: 0

I was unaware there's been a poll showing support for Beta, and it's hard to say what such a poll would prove anyway.
What I can say is that the majority of Slashdotters, in my experience, are fed up with anti-betas hijacking every fucking thread with your crapfloods.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 09:29 · Score: 0

I believe the link you want is: http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1. This is supposed to prevent you from being redirected to the beta, I'm a bit worried about how long that will continue functioning for... Finally the obligatory buck feta!
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Rakarra · 2014-02-10 13:07 · Score: 1

Isn't it strange, that every anti-beta post is now modded -1, even when the majority of the users is against beta?
And off-topic is wrong, anti-beta is on-topic, because this is a slashdot article, and it will be displayed in the beta website, if slashdot decides to abandon the classic one.
I don't think it's strange at all. Most users don't like the beta, but they also don't like each and every discussion about anything on Slashdot being hijacked by the anti-betas. So your average user might see an actual story, think "wonder what other people think about it?" and scroll to the comments.. oh, it's the same anti-beta stuff as the day before, and the day before that. After awhile, you get sick of it.
You see, single-issue crusaders are inherently annoying to the average person; the people who think THEIR cause is so incredibly important that nothing else could be considered important. Nothing else could be considered worthy of time. If you're not spending all your energy on their cause, then you're part of the problem, you just don't "get it."
Tactics are important. How you are seen is important. Focus -too- much on your issue and you'll start to get backlash from people who are perhaps not as committed as you. The Occupy Movement (a few chapters of them anyway) found this out to their sorrow. Protest in front of BofA about bank bailouts and foreclosures? Sure, most people are fine with that. Shit on the lawn of the park and make it unusable for others? Break a few windows of local businesses who had nothing to do with Wall Street? Make sure no one else can use the public space 24/7? That's when many others' patience starts to wear thin.
Saying "have you heard the beta sucks?" "Beta beta beta" while interrupting other conversations will garner you a bit of backlash, not from site staff but from regular users who want to have tech-related conversations who don't need or want to be told about the shitty beta for the 10th time that day. The rest of the world doesn't stop while Slashdot has its beta.
After all, who the hell are you to complain about the beta when kids are dying of AIDS in Africa! Hell, people are probably dying of AIDS in your town! Shouldn't you be turning the computer off and volunteering to help them? Do you not realize that it's the most important thing ever? How could you be so insensitive? Now imagine that on every story comments area. Page after page of it. The relevancy to the site doesn't matter, it's the repetition for every person who has already gotten the message which grates over time.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 16:49 · Score: 0

God forbid we render our community unprofitable for the overlords who bought it up and proceeded to shit on it.
As long as this site remains online and owned by DICE, not enough damage will have been done.
FUCK BETA
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by MightyMartian · 2014-02-10 17:04 · Score: 1

As with most revolutionaties you make worse what you claim you wish to make better.

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 17:52 · Score: 0

SoylentNews.org (temporary name, a new one is in the works) aims to do just that, using the slashcode codebase. Slashcode is 5 years old, so there's some kinks to work out, but it shouldn't be long now.
Re: STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 08:34 · Score: 0

Who cares?

Capt Keen by Anne+Thwacks · 2014-02-09 23:27 · Score: 4, Funny

Call me back when I ran run my Captain Keen from Floppies!

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Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII

Re:Capt Keen by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-02-09 23:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's Commander Keen to you! (And, incidentally, on an Android device with USB OTG and a copy of DOSbox, you should be only a USB floppy drive away from doing that right now...)
Re: Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:32 · Score: 0

Doubt there will ever be floppy support, but there are already DOSBox ports for Android.
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:33 · Score: 0

I think you mean Commander Keen, and yes, you can already do that with aDosBox for instance.
Re: Capt Keen by kav2k · 2014-02-09 23:38 · Score: 4, Informative

Seems like it's not the case, and USB floppy drives work out of the box (though you need a powered hub): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:39 · Score: 1

Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons, in a Java applet
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:08 · Score: 2, Funny

After 24 years, poor Billy Blaze deserves a promotion by now!
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:14 · Score: 0

Fair enough, but let's promote him to Admiral Keen because Captain Keen is a Simpsons character.
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:57 · Score: 0

Commodore is a fitting rank for someone of his experience.
Re:Capt Keen by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 02:11 · Score: 0

Just copy the files and run it in dosbox..... I already play it that way on my desktop....
Re:Capt Keen by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-02-10 02:43 · Score: 2

He said he wanted to run from floppies. Seems morally unsound to me; but I just do implementation...
Re:Capt Keen by phrostie · 2014-02-10 02:44 · Score: 1

look up Commander Genius
https://play.google.com/store/...
Re:Capt Keen by Minwee · 2014-02-10 04:16 · Score: 1

Or perhaps Apple or Atari.
Re:Capt Keen by johanwanderer · 2014-02-10 07:37 · Score: 1

Just get DOSBox for Android. It should run Commander Keen without problems. I even booted Windows 3.11 on it just for kicks. Everything seems to work fine.

Video of talk is available: by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:39 · Score: 5, Informative

http://video.fosdem.org/2014/AW1120/Sunday/Wine_on_Android.webm

Re:Video of talk is available: by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:40 · Score: 0

I should add - Video - not audio...

Better than protest! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:42 · Score: 2, Informative

The interesting thing about this is that when using Beta, the default view is to show everything. So, if you are using Beta, these trollish anti-beta things are perfectly visible, while if you are on Classic they just get filtered out with the rest of the trolls. So, if you really like Classic and hate Beta, the best thing you can do is try to post an anti-beta, pro-classic threat to leave the site as first post instead of Frosty Piss or whatever. That way, if any advertisers to who Dice is trying to market its new shiny actually check out the site, they will see the user dissatisfaction with the design immediately. Then, in subsequent threads we can go on having our usual geeky conversations in Classic.

ARM executables? by supersat · 2014-02-09 23:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

What about ARM executables? Windows RT ships with most of the Windows utilities ported to ARM, as well as Office and .NET.

Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:49 · Score: 0

Here's an idea: Instead of using distributed computing for all this junk science, let's start a central distributed network. Wine would have a basic interface element for all the major OS configurations, and would be able to update from the web with whatever mathematic formula and trial space it was supposed to run at a given time. Everyone everywhere could download the Wine client, and set it up to run with whatever processor load they wanted, update on a schedule, maybe vary processor load on a schedule so it works extra hard when you're not using the system. Not much of an interface really.
Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:53 · Score: 0

No thanks. I don't want to run your pornographic virtual girlfriend apps for you.
Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-09 23:58 · Score: 2, Informative

Yes, It works! (TM)
Running win8 ARM PEs also works.
Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Windows RT ships with most of the Windows utilities ported to ARM, as well as Office and .NET.
Who cares?
For every crappy half-arsed app on RT, there's a thousand better naive Android apps.
Re:ARM executables? by CastrTroy · 2014-02-10 01:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

Personally, I think that Windows could make really good inroads into the tablet market if they provided some kind of compatibility layer to run Android apps. Since they're using ARM on their Surface tablet, IT wouldn't even require actual emulation to get Android apps running on Windows RT. As an owner of the Surface 2, I have to say that the only real problem I have with it is the lack of apps, and providing the ability to run Android apps would make it probably the best tablet out there (even though I'm already convinced it is).

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Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:ARM executables? by 0123456 · 2014-02-10 03:04 · Score: 2

Don't you, like, buy an operating system to run apps?
Why would you buy a Windows tablet if you're just going to run Android apps?
Re:ARM executables? by CastrTroy · 2014-02-10 03:26 · Score: 2, Informative

It's not really so simple. With tablets you don't buy an operating system. You buy the whole experience. You can't buy a tablet and then choose an operating system after the fact. I chose the Surface over other tablet options because of 2 main reasons.

1) Ability to plug in an SD card for expandable storage.
2) Reasonable expectation that I'll get OS updates.

The first reason excludes all Apple tablets as well as many Android tablets. The second excludes most Android devices. Sure you may get updates with Android devices, but it's kind of a gamble.

Apps was really secondary. Mostly with apps, I looked at whether or not there were enough apps to enjoy the device. I don't care if there's ten thousand, or a million, or a billion, because in reality I won't install more than a few hundred apps (and most likely a lot less). As long as it has a few fun games, the ability to browse web pages, play music, play movies, and the ability to get a little work done from time to time, it basically fits my needs. The browser on the Surface is actually quite good, and negates the need for many apps in the first place. There's no Youtube app, but the website works just fine. There is a Facebook apps, but it doesn't even need to be used unless you want background notifications, because the browser can access all of Facebook's functionality.

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Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:ARM executables? by MightyMartian · 2014-02-10 04:43 · Score: 1

An android compatibility layer didn't do Blackberry much good.

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:ARM executables? by CastrTroy · 2014-02-10 05:02 · Score: 1

I think that had more to do with Blackberry phones not offering anything above and beyond what you could get on an actual Android phone. Not to mention that the entire company of Blackberry/RIM is floundering putting the future of the device and any software updates for it into question. MS on the other hand, while they have had better times, aren't going anywhere soon.

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Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:ARM executables? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-02-10 05:18 · Score: 1

Well, in any case, with Wine i can finally play Dungeon Keeper on Android, right?

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:ARM executables? by Parker+Lewis · 2014-02-10 05:51 · Score: 1

In the real usage, you'll need the apps more than the updates. My wife don't care if her tablet is not on Android 4.3 (it's on 4.1), but for sure she wants the popular apps.
Re:ARM executables? by Cley+Faye · 2014-02-10 05:53 · Score: 1

No, it's a DOS game.
However, DOSBox runs fine on Android. Just sayin'
Re:ARM executables? by CastrTroy · 2014-02-10 06:21 · Score: 1

I guess it really depends on the person. Like I said, many "apps" are really just wrappers around webpages to get around the historically bad browsers that exist on tablet/phone devices. Almost everything that I need a "specific" app for falls into this category. Any non-specific apps such as games don't really matter so much. Not being able to run Minecraft on my Surface is a bit of a disappointment, but there's plenty of other great games to play. Also, many of the popular apps do exist. It's the thousands upon thousands of non-popular apps that you can't find on Surface.

You're right most people won't care if they're on 4.3 or 4.1, but they'll know when they're on 2.3. Also, it's really not so much the actual version but whether or not they're receiving updates for whatever version they are on. A device that only runs Android 4.1 might run all the apps out there, but if it can't be patched after the version that left the factory, there could very well be some big security holes.

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Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Re:ARM executables? by PrimeNumber · 2014-02-10 09:30 · Score: 1

For every crappy half-arsed app on RT, there's a thousand better naive Android apps.
Good luck finding them.
Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 10:49 · Score: 0

Rendering your PC, with all of those powerful processors and tons of RAM, a worthless piece of junk when not connected to the network.
Re:ARM executables? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 00:37 · Score: 0

Because Windows has a much better UI than Android.

N900 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

This was already done on the N900 (ARM!) using qemu, and it even had acceptable performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3v4YC9RT-g

increasingly inaccurate acronyms by nten · 2014-02-10 00:13 · Score: 3, Funny

So now WINE *is* an emulator? Thats a tough acronym to sell, recursive or otherwise. I guess really the QEMU package is the emulator, but still.

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Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by AdamColley · 2014-02-10 00:22 · Score: 4, Funny

Wine Is Now Emulation
Not so tough -.o
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:22 · Score: 0

The irony is the acronym originally meant WINdows Emulator, so now it does again, huh.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2014-02-10 00:27 · Score: 1

Erm Linux runs on plenty of non windows processors. Some of which people are trying to get WINE running on. What's your point?

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Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:33 · Score: 0

What's a windows processor? Does it run .NET CIR bytecode in hardware or something?
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by evanh · 2014-02-10 00:52 · Score: 2

The point is Wine can't perform the emulation that is needed for x86 code to run on an ARM CPU. For that you actually need and emulator.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:01 · Score: 0

I'm not sure how the Android WINE guys are doing it. But we've had some early WIP builds of WINE on ARM by Linuxbochs on OpenPandora which used QEMU userspace for the emulation.
So yes WINE is not an emulator, QEMU is.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by fgouget · 2014-02-10 01:12 · Score: 1

The irony is the acronym originally meant WINdows Emulator, so now it does again, huh.
Actually it's QEmu that does the emulation part to get x86 applications running on arm. See the schema at 30:00 in the Wine on Android video (with sound as soon as the FOSDEM guys get to it).
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by ChunderDownunder · 2014-02-10 01:15 · Score: 2

Running wine with qemu is nothing new - ppc linux users were doing that a decade ago.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2014-02-10 01:35 · Score: 1

And my point is Linux supports non X86 architecture would he have the same issue if someone was making WINE work on that?

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Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2014-02-10 01:36 · Score: 1

Sorry forgot I was in here I meant X86 Architecture

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Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Wootery · 2014-02-10 01:40 · Score: 2

Yes. This is exactly what evanh just said. Wine doesn't translate instruction-sets, it just makes available the Windows ABI. Therefore, if you want to run Linux+Wine on anything but x86/x86-64, you'll need hardware-emulation, which Wine itself doesn't provide.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2014-02-10 01:51 · Score: 2

So now WINE *is* an emulator? Thats a tough acronym to sell, recursive or otherwise. I guess really the QEMU package is the emulator, but still.
As the TP post was complaining about how we handle the acronym based on the mistaken premise that there was a "not" in there which originally there was not. I was only pointing out that plenty linux distros support different architecture which is equally not supported.
End of

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Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 02:15 · Score: 1

Windows software is made up to large amounts of closed source x86 Binaries using the Windows API and related Libraries. Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) provides the Windows API by forwarding calls to the native API (Kernel/X11/etc.), Windows programs run native as they would on Windows as long as the underlying processor is x86 conform - which until recently was the only supported platform. Having windows x86 programs run on ARM means that they now also have to emulate the CPU and since x86 was not made to act as an abstraction layer (vs. Java bytecode, CLR instructions and python opcodes) this is costly and slow.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 03:15 · Score: 0

WISE - Wise Is Sometimes an Emulator
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-02-10 04:25 · Score: 1

and since x86 was not made to act as an abstraction layer (vs. Java bytecode, CLR instructions and python opcodes) this is costly and slow.
Actually, x86 already *is* an abstraction layer - a lousy one, admittedly, but still, most current CPUs have to perform all sorts of moderately complex computation to massage the x86 stream into something that can be executed quickly. So QEMU and the like are massaging it into something else. There's little technical reason for the ARM version of WINE to be slow, beyond the actual computational performance of a single ARM core.

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Ezekiel 23:20
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by purpledinoz · 2014-02-10 19:17 · Score: 1

Great, now I can have my blue screen of death on my smartphone too?
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by evanh · 2014-02-10 20:03 · Score: 1

Wine has no other target than x86, it's purpose is for Windoze ABI compatibility.
Windoze Server did have a tiny market on other architectures but I don't think anyone is seriously trying to get Wine to run such programs. Certainly not on an ARM.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 09:02 · Score: 0

So, Mac processors?

how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 00:21 · Score: 3, Interesting

that it takes the linux open source community to port windows programs to smart phones.

We've been asking for this from MS for EVER. MS keeps worrying about how to win the smartphone war...

They're morons. They'd win instantly if they allowed windows apps to run on the windows phones. Yes yes... there are problems. None of them are impossible to solve. Do it or pay someone to do it.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by AC-x · 2014-02-10 01:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

We've been asking for this from MS for EVER
They just can't win can they?
Everyone: We want the same apps on our phone and tablet as on our desktop!
MS: Ok, with Windows 8 we'll created a unified UI and Dev experience so the same app can be released on all 3 platforms! Neat huh?
Everyone: We don't want our PC to be like a phone, we hate Windows 8!
Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:07 · Score: 1

They don't run on windows phones because they weren't designed for windows phones (eg multitouch, softkeyboards) This is the exact same reason OS X is not on a smartphone, and Ubuntu/Debian/Mandrake/CentOS/Flavor-of-the-month Linux isn't on a smart phone. A smart phone requires a completely different interface design.
iOS succeeds because it doesn't require anything but your fingers. No damned stylus, bluetooth gadgets or other accessories required. I can't say the same of Windows 8 itself. Try running any game on Windows 8 Surface Pro tablet that was not designed to use the tablet touch interface and you'll see the same problem manifest itself. It's not the CPU type holding it back, it's the lack of actual usability.
Ever play an iOS game that was originally on the Nintendo GBA or DS? You'll find that if it was designed for the GBA, it probably sucks to play because of the need of on-screen touch "Dpad and buttons", however if it was designed for the stylus, it works very well for touch (Ghost Trick is an excellent example. Final Fantasy games, not so much.)
Hell even on my original iPAQ, the gameboy emulator I had on there (B&W) the only game that was playable was the gameboy version of Dance Dance Revolution (yes, such an animal exists.) Reason being that I could use the stylus to tap the virtual D pad. Lack of multitouch on those devices prevents a soft-keyboard/Dpad/pad buttons from working.
The only games that predate touch devices that would work well on touch are the old Sierra Point and Click adventure games and the SCUMM based verb games. The Text parsers (SCI (Sierra)/AGI (Sierra)/Z-machine(Zork)) would not function without a word list, and even then in the AGI games, the game didn't pause to type.
Re:how pathetic is it... by BitZtream · 2014-02-10 01:11 · Score: 0

... No, it takes morons who think a phone can soft emulate a PC to do this. And you'll note, they only thing mentioned is something that can run slow as balls without killing the experience.
Soft emulation of x86 (a FAR more powerful in every way architecture) on ARM is EXTREMELY slow. JIT is better, but still painfully slow.
ARM is NOT x86, and its a long fucking way from it.
You're reading a retarded headline and acting like suddenly you can play quake on your phone: Heres a hint: you wouldn't use this unless you like waiting days for do anything useful.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

They could listen... Doing exactly the opposite of what people ask is not winning.
Home owner: I want my house the same red color as my car.
Painter (who apparently used to work for MS): Ok, I've painted your car white, so now your house has the exact same color as your car.
Home owner: I don't want my car to look like my house, I hate white.
Re:how pathetic is it... by Grench · 2014-02-10 01:21 · Score: 1

You're reading a retarded headline and acting like suddenly you can play quake on your phone
https://play.google.com/store/...

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He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
Re:how pathetic is it... by drinkypoo · 2014-02-10 01:32 · Score: 1

The performance of x86->ARM translation isn't good enough for a commercial product. It'd be fine for running Office 97 but if you tried to run modern office your phone would asplode. What's holding this back is intel can't make x86 processors in the ARM power envelope.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Hal_Porter · 2014-02-10 01:52 · Score: 1

We heard you liked Metro so we put Metro on you PC so you use your mouse to make touch screen gestures.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by CastrTroy · 2014-02-10 01:52 · Score: 1

I see this a lot. MS could put out just about any product, and you would see people complaining. Just look at Office. People wonder why they have to pay $X00 every time MS puts out an upgrade (97,2000,2003) when very little has changed. Then they question why MS had to change everything with the ribbon interface in 2007.

I kind of get where my anonymous sibling poster said that they went the wrong way, when really they should have just let the desktop apps run on a regular tablet, and not try to get tablet apps onto a desktop, but really things can't work that way. Using a tablet with desktop apps on my Surface just plain doesn't work, unless I hook up a keyboard and mouse, in which case, I would hardly call that a tablet anymore. They have Office that runs in desktop mode on Windows RT, but it really isn't something that you could use with just a tablet. The whole interface would have to be re-done to make it usable with touch screen only controls.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:54 · Score: 0

Really?
Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 02:27 · Score: 0

MS: Ok, with Windows 8 we'll created a unified UI and Dev experience so the same app can be released on all 3 platforms! Neat huh?
You forgot Windows CE(?) which was like: you can have the windows Experience on a tablet for the 5 sec. it takes your battery to empty.
You forgot Windows RT which was like: Here a cheap windows on a tablet, hey it runs arm so no desktop applications for you.
You forgot the Windows (formerly known as) Metro API: Only metro apps will be allowed to run on ...
Including your own " Windows 8 we'll created a unified UI" none of them let existing desktop applications run on a smart phone/tablet, every one of them required use of OS version specific APIs or had only a stripped down copy of the win32 API.
It is just like when people asked to get the sart button back, Microsoft reintroduced it without the start menu. It is almost like the complaints get filtered by thirty layers of management playing telephone, in the end the solution has almost nothing to do with the original request.
Re:how pathetic is it... by Hal_Porter · 2014-02-10 02:28 · Score: 1

Also no ARM processor shipping has the horsepower to do a good job at emulating even a low end x86. I think even a really good JIT engine running on the fastest ARM you can get is going to be slower at running x86 code than even the slowest x86.
Back when Dec was trying to get people to buy Alphas they wrote a really clever piece of software called FX!32. It would take an x86 binary and initially run it slowly via instruction by instruction emulation. However while doing that it would profile the application and use the information it gained from that to work out which bits were worth JITting to native Alpha code. Since at that point the fastest Alpha was faster than x86 it ended up running JITted code faster too. So at one point the fastest way to run x86 code was in FX!32 on Alpha.
Now that was possible because of that speed advantage. However really everything comes down to power consumption. Alpha was a server processor and burnt watts prodigiously even compared to Intel. It was also a very clean design and just at the point where Risc was a very efficient design philosophy - the fastest Alpha run about twice the speed of the fastest x86 and the ISA was so recent that it could be implemented efficiently. As time went by it seemed like Risc seemed less of a net win - e.g. Risc chips with 32 bit fixed length instructions had worse code density than x86 and x86 chips moved to a design where x86 opcodes were decoded into Risc like uops internally.
Now with ARM it's not like that. ARM cores are designed for mobile devices and are brilliant for low power and small core size. However there aren't people selling ARMs that are faster than the x86. In fact in general the fastest ARM has run neck and neck with the slowest x86.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 02:54 · Score: 1

That's just goal post moving.
If the phone's CPU could emulate a desktop environment of 15 years ago that would be just fine. Most of the increased CPU power for modern applications is just fluff anyway. Anyone want to pretend that applications from 15 years ago weren't capable of the same complexity and sophistication as today? They were much more efficient and less pretty. That's about the only relevant difference. Yes, there are always new features in the new product. But most of them are either never used or could have been implemented in the older software with no performance hit.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 03:04 · Score: 1

I'm not asking to have my PC get gimped to the interface of a tablet.
I'm asking to have access to my legacy desktop applications on my phone.
MS never did that.
MS's lock is Windows. That is their draw. That is why people come back.
Who gives a shit about some new OS that isn't compatible with anything? That's fucking stupid. That's more useless then PalmOS.
Give me access to windows on my phone. It can be slow. Make it windows 95 for all I care. Ideally we'd like per application emulation since who wants to actually deal with the OS. What we want is our programs.
If I can run desktop apps on my phone, that is very powerful. But they have to be actual desktop apps. Not neutered metro freaks.
In short. DO NOT touch the PC environment. That is not what I'm asking you to touch. Leave it the fuck alone. Fix the phone. Do that. Back away from the PC.
Am I not being clear?

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Re:how pathetic is it... by AC-x · 2014-02-10 03:37 · Score: 1

Out of interest, what legacy apps are you so desperate to run on your phone? Up until a few years ago it wouldn't have even been feasible to run an x86 emulator fast enough to emulate anything newer than Win95, and even now I can't imagine what you'd want to run on a slow CPU emulator that there aren't already plenty of good native alternatives for. Well, maybe on an Intel based Android phone it might work ok.
On the other hand I can already access my full PC remotely on my phone via Vnc...
Re:how pathetic is it... by jedidiah · 2014-02-10 04:04 · Score: 1

> iOS succeeds because it doesn't require anything but your fingers. No damned stylus,
My ex-ifan loves the stylus on her Android tablet. It eliminates a lot of the crudeness of the usual tablet interface.
Pushing something crippled and calling it superior just because it looks trendy and fashionable doesn't make it so.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-02-10 04:31 · Score: 1

Phones usually have Bluetooth, so they can easily work with keyboards and mice. Also, modern TVs can receive video signal from phones, using wireless, so output is also served. When you have all this, you can carry your desktop around just like with a USB stick computer, only you don't have to carry around the stick computer AND the phone. (Also, the stick computers usually don't have a phone module, so the phone has the advantage of being able to push your backups onto the network in the background. No hassle involved.)

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Re:how pathetic is it... by jellomizer · 2014-02-10 04:41 · Score: 1

Their problem with running Windows app on a Phone and Tablet.
1. Most of these apps were designed to run on a PC, Mouse, Keyboard, Large Screen. Having used RDP and Citrix apps on tablets, let me tell you these PC apps are just hard to use.
2. Performance. This is less of an issue, especially with older stuff. However these programs could take up a little more resources then expected and use up battery power.
3. Security. Backwards compatibility on a locked device like a phone, is a massive disaster waiting to happen. PC you have more direct access to the hardware allowing to fix problems, as well control how well things are locked down. But Windows Apps are the Following... 32bit DLL, that references an old 16bit dll, which was designed to work on a shell to MS DOS, which had no memory protection at all. A lot of the old apps with native compatibility could be a major problem.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Patch86 · 2014-02-10 04:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Everyone: We want to be able to run the programmes that we use on our desktops on our phones too!
MS: OK, with Windows 8 we'll turn your desktop into a MASSIVE PHONE. All your favourite desktop programmes will have to be extensively rewritten so that they can run halfway gracefully on your new MASSIVE PHONE desktop, and will be able to run on your actual phone or tablet too (as long as you buy the software twice, seeing as we're not implementing an ARM/x86 emulation layer at all). Neat, huh?
Everyone: [despair]
Make sense?
Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 05:00 · Score: 0

Who wants MS to win anything?
Better for competition to be able to run their apps in order to lure customers AWAY from their hardware and OS.
Embrace and Extend works both ways.
Re:how pathetic is it... by drinkypoo · 2014-02-10 05:11 · Score: 1

OK, I'll bite, and finish out this conversation before leaving for the week.
The goalposts move. I'm not moving them. The users move them. The users will expect recent applications to work and bitch if they don't. We've seen this time and again.
You can complain that the goalposts are moving, but we call that progress. You can complain about it, but you can't ignore it.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 06:53 · Score: 0

We've been asking for this from MS for EVER
They just can't win can they?
Everyone: We want the same apps on our phone and tablet as on our desktop!
MS: Ok, with Windows 8 we'll created a unified UI and Dev experience so the same app can be released on all 3 platforms! Neat huh?
Everyone: We don't want our PC to be like a phone, we hate Windows 8!
Don't be so disingenuous. We want the same USABLE interface on both. Not the turd pile you've built to lock us into bad DRM. Microsoft didn't try to give anyone what they wanted. They tried to lock everyone into rubbish with a bad interface, and they got their arse handed to them.
Re:how pathetic is it... by narcc · 2014-02-10 07:11 · Score: 1

Well said.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 08:42 · Score: 1

1. I'm aware, but that's a minor issue when put against the outright inability to run the software on such platforms. People will put up with that sort of thing if the know you're working on it.
2. Performance is only reasonable to the extent that the software is useable. No one will expect the same speed. It just needs to be reasonable. Furthermore, some applications will be understood to not be good ideas on the platform. For example, using a modern version of photoshop, opening a 16 gig photo file, and then applying a complicated filter will likely take FOREVER to process if it works at all. No one will fault the platform for that.
Most of the software for windows doesn't gobble those kind of resources. Don't tell me I can't have emulation because the phone can't match the desktop blow for blow.
3. We're talking about emulation here. The application will have access to an emulation layer.
Come now... stop trying to think of reasons why this won't work and think for just one second how it would work.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 09:10 · Score: 1

Corporate database software for one.
There are literally tens of thousands of very sophisticated programs that worked under windows 95. Business applications.
Many of them have been replaced with newer versions mostly because their interfaces look dated now. As to functionality they were often as good as modern applications or in some cases superior.
There is an incredible depth of content in legacy software. Packages that were refined over decades by industry specific professionals.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 09:30 · Score: 1

The ability to run most programs that work in windows is not diminished by the inability to run the latest high performance demanding program that many computers will have a hard time delivering smoothly.
In short, not being able to outright match the modern desktop blow for blow is not a reason to never attempt to build cross compatibility into the phone's OS.
Come now.

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Re:how pathetic is it... by phorm · 2014-02-11 05:32 · Score: 1

Uhhhh.
"We want our mobile device to be able to do what a PC does"
Not equal to
"We want the usable interface on a PC to be bogged down with cumbersome mobile cruft that works like s*** on a large or non-touchscreen"

Re:From someone who's tested it by maynard · 2014-02-10 00:30 · Score: 1

There is another fascinating benefit- if someone tries to sit in the middle of the photon stream and determine photon polarization, their eavesdropping will be evident- by checking the polarization of a photon in transit, they change the value of the polarization.

I think there's a problem with this. What you describe is similar to a BB84 quantum key distribution scheme. But I think you're missing a quantum no-cloning mechanism here.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

In BB84 photon polarization is used to encode qubit data, much like what you propose. Here's Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...

According to quantum mechanics (particularly quantum indeterminacy), no possible measurement distinguishes between the 4 different polarization states, as they are not all orthogonal. The only possible measurement is between any two orthogonal states (an orthonormal basis). So, for example, measuring in the rectilinear basis gives a result of horizontal or vertical. If the photon was created as horizontal or vertical (as a rectilinear eigenstate) then this measures the correct state, but if it was created as 45 or 135 (diagonal eigenstates) then the rectilinear measurement instead returns either horizontal or vertical at random. Furthermore, after this measurement the photon is polarized in the state it was measured in (horizontal or vertical), with all information about its initial polarization lost.

But I think in your scheme the detector wouldn't know how many photons had been emitted or what polarization any arbitrary photon should be, therefore it couldn't determine if a photon had been emitted by your source of a man-in-the-middle device. And by transmitting that information from emitter to detector classically, you'd negate any security gained.

You'd need to establish a stream of entangled photon pairs:

By using quantum superpositions or quantum entanglement and transmitting information in quantum states, a communication system can be implemented which detects eavesdropping. If the level of eavesdropping is below a certain threshold, a key can be produced that is guaranteed to be secure (i.e. the eavesdropper has no information about it), otherwise no secure key is possible and communication is aborted.

Now: big caveat, this is not my field and I am no expert in qcomputing or qcryptography. Corrections are most welcome.

LOL Your freakin' kidding I hope! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 00:44 · Score: 1

you obviously have never used WinPh 6.5 or earlier incarnations of windows phones. There is a reason why desktop apps suck on smart phones and I think microsoft is finally starting to understand the reason. There is also one hell of a good reason why mac os10 is different from their touch os IOS. Microsoft is just starting to understand the difference and is why we will see a re-release of seven to replace the fiasco which is 8.

Kudos for the wine guys proving that you can guild turds though and run ms crap apps on arm. But the only way using any of them makes any sense is if you hook up a keyboard and a moose to your cell phone LOL. There is nothing more stupid than running desktop apps on tiny touch screens...OH except SLASH BETA

Re:LOL Your freakin' kidding I hope! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 01:01 · Score: 0

I just want to be able to run the original "age of empires" on my samsung android tablet, if they can do that, im in.....
Re:LOL Your freakin' kidding I hope! by drainbramage · 2014-02-10 08:42 · Score: 1

I would like to know more about how you hook a moose up to your cell phone.
If it involves hot grits and Sarah Palin then I would like photos.

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Re:LOL Your freakin' kidding I hope! by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 12:48 · Score: 1

I didn't say the interface would be pretty.
But if it was understood that windows apps worked on phones as well as desktops the program coders would release software with multiple interfaces. A touch interface is VERY easy to add to a program. You just redo some menus with big idiot buttons.
The trick is getting it to run at all. Not the interface.

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Re:Slashdot Rest in Peace by Bozzio · 2014-02-10 00:47 · Score: 0

You sirDrama queen.

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So now Wine IS an emulator by BitZtream · 2014-02-10 01:08 · Score: 0

I guess they'll have to change their name at this sage, won't they?

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Re:Slashdot Rest in Peace by jones_supa · 2014-02-10 01:14 · Score: 0

Updates are being applied...

Please do not close your Slashdot.

(spinning pearls animation)

MAME-WINE multi-layer emulation by Jason+Levine · 2014-02-10 02:15 · Score: 1

How long until I can run MAME through WINE on my Android device. This way I can emulate an older game system while emulating Windows. If the game system I'm emulating is old enough, the resulting processing slowdown of the double emulation might add to the realism of the game system emulation!

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Re:MAME-WINE multi-layer emulation by JustNiz · 2014-02-10 05:58 · Score: 1

There's already a build of MAME for android called MAME4Droid on the play store.
0.139u1: (for dual core devices)
https://play.google.com/store/...
0.37b5: ( for lower-powered devices)
https://play.google.com/store/...

Whoops! by drinkypoo · 2014-02-10 02:33 · Score: 0

I'm an addict. I forgot I was supposed to be boycotting. I was going to read and not comment.

I manage not to be addicted to anything else, and I've tried this and that now and again. But Slashdot is a motherfucker.

In conclusion, Fuck Beta.

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Re:Slashdot Rest in Peace by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 02:41 · Score: 0

on the formerly news for nerds website known as slashdot, beta tests you.

seriously, all beta is, is a new back door for the NSA to track who all the ACs really are.

yes, Beta tracks you.

Majority? by Sepodati · 2014-02-10 02:47 · Score: 1

Squeaky wheels and all that.

protest by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 03:31 · Score: 0

don't understand the idea of a protest?

Not often are chanters at a picket told "Yo, guys, we get it, low wages. you can stop now."

Not against beta by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 03:42 · Score: 0

I have been considering dropping slashdot from sites I visit daily because of this whole beta, but not because of the beta, but because of the idiots who rage on about it.

Stop hijacking every damn post with your stupid beta complaints.

Re:Not against beta by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 05:07 · Score: 0

Thank you! Not for speaking out against freedom of speech, but for going elsewhere.

Get Wine working on x86 first by Eravnrekaree · 2014-02-10 04:03 · Score: 1

I think Wine ought to focus on making sure 99.9% of WIndows apps run on x86 before it starts thinking about other platforms. As it stands now, Wine's support for applications is so spotty that it falls far short of allowing it to be a Windows replacement, and this really must be the goal of wine.

Maybe we can get a version of this for WinRT? by thevirtualcat · 2014-02-10 04:03 · Score: 1

I mean, I've always fantasized about being able to run Windows applications on Windows!

Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 04:09 · Score: 0

Are they any Windows binaries that matter any more?
Does Windows matter any more?

Re:Why? by WillAdams · 2014-02-10 04:38 · Score: 1

Show me a vector drawing program as:
- elegant
- efficient
- productive
- intuitive
as FreeHand and I'd be willing to say no --- until then, I have to have Windows or Mac OS X 10.6.8 or NeXT/OPENstep running either FreeHand or Altsys Virtuoso.

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Pinball by kemosabi · 2014-02-10 04:52 · Score: 1

The pinball game in windows is designed, someone once told me, to use pretty much all of win32. Don't if that's apocryphal or not, can anyone else say? I wonder if they'd move themselves forward by forcing themselves to get pinball working.

uh huh... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 05:03 · Score: 0

Except for all the proprietary office software that only runs on Windows.

So... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 06:53 · Score: 0

Fuck Beta!

MS needs an Android-based OS by giampy · 2014-02-10 07:15 · Score: 1

I think that very clearly the strategy for MS is to start selling Android-based tablets and phones with some kind of wine-like compatibility layer that allows running Office and other windows apps on tablets and phones, without trying to square the circle and forcing windows in an environment that it wasn't designed for.

In the longer run they can transition the same Android based OS (call it windows 10 or something) to home laptops and eventually in the office, before anyone else does (e.g. google, apple, amazon ...).

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Re:MS needs an Android-based OS by Karmashock · 2014-02-10 08:33 · Score: 1

I don't see how you think wine is MS's idea at all... they don't appear involved.

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Re:MS needs an Android-based OS by ChunderDownunder · 2014-02-10 18:15 · Score: 1

It depends on Intel's latest efforts with the Silvermont SoC - if they can get 10-15 hours battery life...
Phones might remain ARM-only but a $300 x86-64 device that can undercut the Surface Pro 2 with both Android and Windows is the future (MS stupid locked-down UEFI pending...)
Forget wine, sketchy compatibility and using qemu to emulate x86 on ARM - the next-gen Atoms include virtualization extensions. Either dual-boot or just port Virtualbox, accessing the physical disk on the other partition and you're done.
Re:MS needs an Android-based OS by ChunderDownunder · 2014-02-10 18:21 · Score: 1

NB: It's a chicken and egg re: Android on x86 (the native-code on ARM argument). However, Intel has been murmuring about running kitkat on x86-64, so it's up to them to promote the platform and convince app-developers to port any ARM-specific native code for an alt architecture.
I do wish them success if they dump any PowerVR nastiness they had in previous Atoms in favour of their own Linux-friendly GPU arch. (Hopefully pressuring Mali, Tegra and Adreno to officially support open drivers)

What I'd like to see... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-10 09:35 · Score: 0

Is for Steam to be ported to Linux-ARM. Then we'll have these games running natively on the devices.

The obligatory buck feta!

TWAT by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-11 11:11 · Score: 0

The title is wrong. That should be This Wine Actually Translates.

Slashdot Mirror

Wine On Android Starts Allowing Windows Binaries On Android/ARM

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