Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

CodeWeavers To Release CrossOver For Android To Run Windows Programs

Posted by samzenpus on from the playing-together dept.

An anonymous reader writes: For the better part of three years there has been talk about running Wine on Android to bring Windows x86 programs to Android phones/tablets, and it's going to become a reality. CodeWeavers is planning to release CrossOver For Android before the end of the year. This will allow native Windows binaries to run on Android, but will be limited to Android-x86 due to struggles in emulating x86 Windows code on ARM. The tech preview will be free and once published the open-source patches will be published for Wine.

66 comments

  1. Why run LUDDITE programs on App Apper OSes?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    LUDDITE programs are shitty and lame. Modern app appers know that only APPS are appy enough to app apps!

    Apps!

    1. Re:Why run LUDDITE programs on App Apper OSes?! by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      So you can app while you app?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  2. How useful is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I know there exist some x86 Android devices, but how many could there really be?

    1. Re:How useful is this? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Asus Zenfone's come to mind.

    2. Re:How useful is this? by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      Owner of an Asus Zenfone 2 here. Stellar device for the sub $300 price point. Good screen, 4GB RAM, 64GB flash, micro-SD, and probably the only non-vanilla Android UI I have ever liked well enough to keep around.

      It's only weak point is the camera is closer in performance to a Galaxy S4 than the last year and current flagships with laser assisted focus and 4K video (LG G3/G4, Galaxy S5/S6, Nexus 6/6x). I am actually waiting for the Zenfone Zoom and probably going to jump straight to getting it should the shooter prove a big enough leap.

      I recommend the Asus Zenfone 2 to friends over the OnePlus 1 and 2 both now due overall better value and consistent execution. A few friends with OnePlus 1s had to deal with some of the common quality issues of a new comer to the field as well as the pile of poo that Cyanogen was becoming at the time.

    3. Re: How useful is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably not many. I have a cheap Onda tablet but it's a dual boot.

    4. Re:How useful is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      only some of those even within the same model family. e.g. i have a z3580 atom, but there is also a qualcomm 610 iirc based model.

      on arm devices they mean that it'd be unuseably slow.

  3. WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

    NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

    FAIL.

    1. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not a problem here. I've tried CrossOver on and off for a few years now; it's still shite.

      Honestly, I've had better luck using WINE for free. God only knows what Codeweavers have done that warrants a not-free fork of an admirable FOSS project.

    2. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly, I've had better luck using WINE for free. God only knows what Codeweavers have done that warrants a not-free fork of an admirable FOSS project.

      That's funny CrossOver (back when I was in Linux day in and day out) was the only reliable way to run MS Office in Linux. Now that they've contributed code back to the WINE project, you can run applications like that in Linux/OS X/BSD relatively easy in comparison to previous iterations. Cedega on the other hand, well, they just leeched a fork when the license allowed them to and maintain a proprietary version. On a moral standpoint, I haven't seen Cedega performance since, well, they renamed it to Cedega?

    3. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

      Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

      NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

      When you think about it running windows programs under wine is more native than running android apps under ART. Windows software executes natively on the CPU under wine. Android java code has to be translated to machine code before it can execute.

    4. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      Android java code has to be translated to machine code before it can execute.

      The method you described is what Dalvik used to be. With ART, that translation is done only one time, which is when you install the app. After that it's as native as something like compiled c#.

    5. Re:WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      The method you described is what Dalvik used to be. With ART, that translation is done only one time, which is when you install the app. After that it's as native as something like compiled c#.

      Statement is applicable to both runtimes as Installation also occurs prior to execution. Reason for my comment was to invoke some introspection with regards to what "NATIVE ONLY" even means.

  4. But more importantly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will it be able to support the Twitter JSON API?

    1. Re:But more importantly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Like twitter, wine died in a fire.

  5. Re:Bloated stinking carcass ... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fuck you. Don't want this fucking garbage on Android.

    Then don't install it. Phew, that was hard.

  6. Re:Bloated stinking carcass ... by ganjadude · · Score: 0

    is anyone forcing you to run it??? of course not

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  7. Available on Android before Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A sign of the times: this software will be available for Android before Linux ARM systems (e.g. Raspberry pi, Jolla, ...)

    1. Re:Available on Android before Linux by itamihn · · Score: 1

      Only Android x86. Nothing for ARM (yet?).

    2. Re:Available on Android before Linux by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      It will be available for Raspberry Pi as soon as you can swap out the CPU for an Intel x86 compatible CPU.

      Time to break out your hot air rework station!

  8. Who actually wants this? by gstoddart · · Score: 1, Troll

    For the better part of three years there has been talk about running Wine on Android to bring Windows x86 programs to Android phones/tablets, and it's going to become a reality. CodeWeavers is planning to release CrossOver For Android before the end of the year.

    You know, if you want all this stuff ... then why the hell not buy a Windows laptop and get on with it?

    At no point in my owning of a tablet or any other portable device have I ever said "wow, I would like to run the full bloated pile of crap which is legacy Windows" ... quite the contrary, I've found myself thinking "gee, isn't it great this now only takes 20 MB like it should?"

    I'm just having a hard time thinking people really want this, or that we should be forced to buy Android devices with the specs of a desktop machine.

    This just seems like it's taking everything which was good about starting from scratch on mobile platforms, and saying "oh, the heck with it, let's just turn it into a Wintel platform".

    I figure this just leads to overly bloated installations of software which people don't really need on tablets in the first place.

    What percentage of Android owners even remotely want any of this?

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Who actually wants this? by garcia · · Score: 2

      What percentage of Android owners even remotely want any of this?

      Users don't know what they want until it is provided to them and, honestly, if you don't want any part of it, that's cool but perhaps it will really help developers port their work cross-platform and bring us to a completely different level.

      I would love to see Android or iOS apps come back across the divide in some cases, so there's likely a market in reverse.

      No sense in getting all fired up about CodeWeavers doing this.

    2. Re:Who actually wants this? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Well if it means we're going from small devices with small apps and small amounts of resources to suddenly making them full on desktop machines, I just don't see the point.

      You can put anything you want on your device, me, I'm looking at this and thinking if Android starts to need as much resources as a full-on Windows machine it has a very good chance of wrecking the whole platform.

      Tablets aren't laptops. If you want a laptop, get one. But please don't screw up the whole platform as suddenly there' needs to be tens of gigs of space to install crap like this.

      Small, lightweight apps on lower resource devices is what mobile has been doing. This just seems to reverse all of that.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Who actually wants this? by nnet · · Score: 1

      \o/

    4. Re:Who actually wants this? by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Especially now with Surface and universal (Windows) apps.

      Didn't MS put money into Cyanogen? Perhaps this is related to the MS "run everywhere" strategy.

      I have never known Codeweavers to do anything altruistically so I am guessing there is money coming from somewhere for this feature.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    5. Re:Who actually wants this? by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      I see the point if Microsoft is money is behind this.

      Windows mobile being what it is, it behooves MS to have as big of a mobile presence as possible. If that means piggy-backing on Android, I think the current mentality and MS HQ says, "do it!"

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    6. Re:Who actually wants this? by garcia · · Score: 1

      Well if it means we're going from small devices with small apps and small amounts of resources to suddenly making them full on desktop machines, I just don't see the point.

      And that's totally fine. The point isn't what YOU want, it's what some private company wants to do and these actions will in no way, shape, or form negatively impact your life and thus getting all up in a huff about it is a little over the top.

    7. Re:Who actually wants this? by garcia · · Score: 1

      You're still alive, old man?!

    8. Re:Who actually wants this? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we know already. You already whined about this as AC above. If you don't want it, there's a simple solution. Ignore it and don't install it.

    9. Re: Who actually wants this? by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 1

      i can run sql server on wine, so i can now have sql server on my phone! Awesome!

    10. Re:Who actually wants this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      “I don’t want this, and therefore it shouldn’t exist,” is the typical cry of an asshole.

      I just thought you should know.

  9. I am curious about one thing... by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

    ...what was the business case for writing a library set for some very limited conditions?

    I mean, yeah, I guess it would be kind of cool to run Windows x86 binaries on certain models of smartphone and all, but honestly, under what conditions did they think this would be useful (beyond the obvious 'gee whiz' factor)?

    Mind, I'm not normally one to go reaching for business justifications and such, but I can't shake the feeling that they did this to, well, stay relevant. These days, if there's an application that I really need that only runs on Windows, I either find a workaround, or fire up a VM (viz. VirtualBox) and do whatever it is I needed to do with that application.

    There was once a time where something like this was IMHO desperately needed (I'm talking long ago, back when Win4Lin was a thing), but nowadays? I just don't see it...

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:I am curious about one thing... by morcego · · Score: 4, Informative

      Codeweavers has a very strong business focus, and most of the innovations are based on client requests.
      You can rest assured that, if they developed it, they already have a client willing to pay for it. Jeremy White is no fool.

      --
      morcego
    2. Re:I am curious about one thing... by unrtst · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I don't find it difficult at all to dream up good business cases for this. They'd just be guesses, but it's easy to imagine cases.

      * some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.

      * vm's still need a separate OS and license. Depending on the app, I'd rather (if forced to use a windows only app) use it under wine if possible. This would apply more-so to android tablets/phones, where I wouldn't want to install a full windows, even in a vm, and that likely isn't an option at all.

      * android dongles and streaming media apps that don't support android... that dongle can do *almost* everything some (hypothetical) person wants, except one thing. Is it worth it to just give up and use a full blown windows box, or worth it to sacrifice that one special app you like, or try to use both pieces of hardware? If you can get acceptable use of that corner case and make the cheap, low power, small, device do it all, why not?

      * The user never has to even see wine. It is both an executable, and a set of libraries. For example (not a great one, but a real world one nonetheless), Corel had "ported" Draw to Linux long ago using wine libs. It ran more-or-less like a native application. That was a fairly ambitious attempt and it had its issues, but it does show that it can work.

    3. Re:I am curious about one thing... by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      * some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.

      There are cheap Windows tablets too. Often running the exact same processor that the Android version runs.

      And by cheap, I mean $80 cheap. There's a bunch more around $130 or so. And they're really decent tablets at that - great screens, reasonable touch screens, and a lot more. In fact, I shudder at the "cheap" Android tablets. The cheap Windows tablets I used have all been decent.

      There's no "Windows tax" for this - The reason they shipped with "Windows 8.1 with Bing" was to limit OEM customization in exchange for... free Windows licenses. All it means Is the OEM cannot do customizations like set Google as the default search. The user is, however, free to do so The user is even prompted during first run to set it up.

      I own an HP Stream 7... cost me $100 back in the day. It's a surprisingly fast tablet, and to be honest, it's blown away all my expectations of a $100 tablet. Enough such that a low end Android may not make a whole lot of sense.

    4. Re:I am curious about one thing... by lakeland · · Score: 2

      Yes I was thinking something similar.

      We recently had a situation where the business decided to buy the field force all iPads because they were going to change the whole business process around a new app which happens to only run on iOS. Midway through the project we discovered that a few of the field force have a critical business application which only runs on windows.

      We couldn't have used this specific solution since it is Android rather than iOS, but if it had been available then it would have been very attractive.

    5. Re:I am curious about one thing... by jd2112 · · Score: 1

      I mean, yeah, I guess it would be kind of cool to run Windows x86 binaries on certain models of smartphone and all, but honestly, under what conditions did they think this would be useful (beyond the obvious 'gee whiz' factor)?

      I can see certain applications where it might be a good idea to deploy a legacy Windows application to tablets, but even in those situations it would usually be better to host the application on Citrix or some other application virtualization layer running on a server than have them running natively on the tablet.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
  10. Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Run Windows for Windows applications. Wine needs to die in a fire.

  11. Hipsterism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I was In skool, we carried a backpack full of 8" floppies and plotted our emotions by mean of IBM logo onto a Sony front-projection CRT system.

  12. Imagine a Beowulf Cluster by OverlordQ · · Score: 1

    How many Nexus 6's will I have to slave together to play Crysis?

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Imagine a Beowulf Cluster by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

      You could do all of them and it still wouldn't be enough, since this app will be x86 only and the Nexus 6 is ARM.

  13. All maximized all the time by tepples · · Score: 1

    keep a platform which allows us for once to move back in the direction of small apps which do a few things

    If they're small apps, then why are they so big on a tablet? Why does a simple calculator need to have a 10 inch window?

  14. Dual boot or two devices? by tepples · · Score: 1

    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    Run Windows for Windows applications.

    Which device dual-boots Windows and Android with Google Play? I'm not aware of any. Or were you recommending to carry two tablets, one for Windows applications and one for Android applications?

    1. Re:Dual boot or two devices? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Almost all of them? Teclast, Chuwi, Onda, many noname Chinese Atom tablets you can buy for ~$200.

  15. androwish by stabiesoft · · Score: 2

    I don't know how well their windows emulator works, but when emulators work they can be very helpful. I was trying to write a simple app for my nexus phone and started looking into it and found it was going to be overwhelming. But then I stumbled on androwish, a tcl/tk environment for android and found it trivial to write my app. So this was a case of a emulator/port saving substantial amounts of time.

    1. Re:androwish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A scripting language port is nothing at all like an emulator. Then again, Wine Is Not an Emulator either...

    2. Re:androwish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...Actually an emulator IS a lot like a scripting language. Opcode interpretor with JIT anyone?

      But yeah, I still get your point.

  16. Winelib by tepples · · Score: 1

    That depends on whether developers find it easier to use Winelib to port their Windows desktop apps to Android (with appropriate changes to sizes of controls and removal of mouseover actions) than to rewrite them from the ground up in the language that Google can't call Java anymore.

  17. Get what new laptop? by tepples · · Score: 1

    Tablets aren't laptops. If you want a laptop, get one.

    Which company makes a 10 inch laptop that's not a detachable tablet anymore?

  18. Wandroid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or should it be called WAAAandroid. Yeah, lets run Winblows programs on Android. Makes perfect sense right? It'll take 3 hours for the splash screen to show up, then shit out some obvious out of memory error, them go dark and never work again.

  19. x86 only? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It is already dead.

    Nothing else needs to be said, really.

  20. A story, and, for some, an opportunity by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Not a problem here. I've tried CrossOver on and off for a few years now; it's still shite.

    Way back when, I was considering releasing my software under Wine on Linux, under the terms of "if you run this product under Wine, you owe us nothing." (I didn't copy protect, I used registration enabling, and would have been delighted to enable everyone under Linux.) So, I got and installed Wine, and tested it. It broke. Really badly. Several system calls that weren't covered, or broken, or whatever -- they flat out didn't work. So I contacted the authors. They said, and I am paraphrasing here but this is very close: "give us money and we'll fix our product."

    So, that's why my product never ran under Linux/Wine.

    Although, it may be that Wine works now. I'm not saying it does, or doesn't. I don't know. I don't even own/have a Windows OS any more. But if it does, I long ago made enough money from my product and now give it away, and you are certainly welcome try to get it going under Wine, etc. It's here: WinImages and it was last aimed at Windows XP. Docs are here. WinImages is neither Gimp nor Photoshop, but something else. In a very, very large number of cases, it can replace either/both of them, functionally speaking. In other cases, it does things they cannot. And it is extremely fast, offers a small executable, and the last version, which is what is up there, has very few problems that aren't actually caused by bugs in Windows. Feel free to have at it if you like. Under any OS, real or virtual, you can get it running under. Or not. :)

    PS: Known to work under [OS X + VMWare Fusion + XP] and, of course, under XP itself.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:A story, and, for some, an opportunity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the link. I'm interested enough to go and have a look. However the link for "stro version of fx.exe (.zip file)" points to "http://www.datapipe-blackbeltsystems.com/windows/astroversion.zip" which gives me a 403.

      Just thought you'd like to know :)

    2. Re:A story, and, for some, an opportunity by div_2n · · Score: 1

      Allegedly, their revenue stream from licensing is going down while interest and revenue from software makers in assisting in porting their Windows apps to Linux using their platform is increasing.

      I mean it stands to reason that people are not going to regularly upgrade Crossover if it's already running whatever app they want well. And so it stands to reason that they would target their development efforts to companies looking to port. Sooner or later, essentially all the important calls will be implemented such that only bug fixes and/or config tweaks will be necessary to get apps to run as they would on a stock copy of Windows.

    3. Re: A story, and, for some, an opportunity by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Permissions problem, my apologies. Fixed now.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    4. Re: A story, and, for some, an opportunity by jhoger · · Score: 1

      WINE isn't a product. It's an open code base.

      When you found unimplemented APIs you could: write around them, write them yourself, or pay someone else to write them. You chose to attempt to complain them into existence.

      Interesting choice.

  21. In other news... by hey! · · Score: 1

    Car customizer fits a 1952 Ford Flathead V8 into a Tesla Model S...

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  22. Who cares? by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    I still can't run Quickbooks on it.

  23. Does it run Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does it run Linux?

  24. Things are now so bad... by iamacat · · Score: 1

    That people install Bluestacks to run Android apps on Windows because there is nothing decent available natively. And older enterprise apps this will be good for are terrible with small screen/touch/onscreen keyboard. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

  25. Still not ready after 3 years by thsths · · Score: 1

    These announcements are being made every year: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015... Wine for Android is being worked on.

    Fact is: they have been working on it for 3 years, and it is still not ready. In this time, the first Intel smart phone has been launched (the Intel AZ210), upgraded to Android 4.0, then dumped by Intel and turned obsolete.

    So come back when it is actually released. And remember: "nearly" is marketing speak for not.