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Wine Software

Wine In New Skins 96

Posted by Hemos from the come-to-the-wedding! dept.
Thanks to Jeremy White of Codeweavers for sending over some of the previews of Wine 1.0. I had a chance to see this during ALS, and was very impressed by what they are doing. 1.0 has Gnome/KDE integration, as well as new (better) config program, and some new launcher features. As well as doing this, they've also WineHQ, for all the Wine news that you can drink.
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Wine In New Skins More

Wine In New Skins

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  • I dont think wine is the way we need to go to make Linux the standard desktop anyway. Probably projects like Kylix [borland.com] are much nicer for development than hoping to have success with wine.
    Ok,okey, Pascal isnt the most cool language of earth, but its atleast a easy way for crossdeveloping good utilities for desktops.
  • LinuxONE lite, at least in theory, does this. I haven't been able to connect to their webserver lately, though, so I couldn't tell you what the status of that is, nor can I download and test it.

    You mean these guys [linuxone.net] ? Bwahahahaha! They've been exposed as a stock-IPO scam with only the barest attempt [linuxworld.com] at a product. How could anyone read Slashdot and miss all the articles [slashdot.org] about LinuxOne?
    --

  • LinuxONE lite, at least in theory, does this. I haven't been able to connect to their webserver lately, though, so I couldn't tell you what the status of that is, nor can I download and test it.
  • Another way to look at it this: Once Wine works perfectly, every Windows program will run flawlessly under Linux. If this is the case, then why in the world would anyone run Windows? If no one runs Windows, then why would any company develop software for Windows, with all it's hidden APIs and such? Of course this is a long way off...

  • Re:Negatorio, mein troll. (Score:5)

    by ninjaz ( 1202 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @01:30PM (#574532)
    1)Windows apps on Linux means that Linux apps are not developed. People don't use Linux, because the native performance of these apps in Windows if of course superior. Wine leads to a catch 22 situation.

    Regarding preventing the development of Linux apps, there is evidence to the contrary. For instance, Word Perfect has been ported to Linux, yet the Free office projects are stronger than ever. Also, Wine is supporting more Windows games than ever. Meanwhile, Loki keeps cranking out native ports.

    Regarding performance, there is no reason why Windows would perform inherently better. Wine Is Not an Emulator. It is a native unix implementation of the Windows API's, which basically amounts to a set of libraries and a glorified linker.

    2) WINE means that software developers don't need to worry about porting their apps to Linux at all.

    Winelib means that initial porting can be as simple as a recompile.

    3) WINE reenforces the Windows blinders, if anything. The users are never escaping from the Windows environment at all. How is this good for Linux?
    Users are ecaping from their Windows environment. If I use 99 applications on my Linux box which are native to Linux, and 1 that is native to windows, I'd say I've successfully escaped the Windows environment. Legacy support does not mean you're trapped in the legacy environment. On the contrary, it's a powerful tool to free you of that environment while not losing access to a specific application.

    Historically, lack of applications, or lack of one specific application on Linux has been a major obstacle preventing people from becoming full-time Linux users. Once Wine can reliably run most Windows applications, the barrier against change becomes much smaller. And, as the user becomes more familiar with Linux, apps mature and are ported, the legacy Windows applications used under Wine can be phased out.

  • If you mean an X server (dont forget the twisted client/server naming in X) then there are ones for windows. There are free ones but the one that I can remember is Kea X from attachmate. Its way cool having the gimp on your windows desktop as if its another application.
    Not X but useful is VNC which lets you view linux desktops.

  • Actually, I'd rather see a good transparent X server under WinXX that basically can run X clients using the Explorer as the window manager - that is, I don't need one large window as the X root where all my other X-clients must reside.

  • As far as I can recall, wine can be configured to access parallel and serial ports. Other emulators, like VMWare [vmware.com] can do the same. And, might I add, for running programs that don't use ActiveX type stuff, VMWare is a lot better than wine, but you need a copy of Windows installed on the computer.
  • "Don't we always complain that biggest problem is a lack of applications?"

    That was the biggest "problem" with OS/2 when it was competing with Win 3.x. The limitation of this analogy is that OS/2 in many cases ran Windows applications better in emulation than Win 3.x did natively. WINE may never reach that degree of success.
    Linux needs native applications that are notably superior to their Windows analogs to truly win the desktop war. In fact, Linux needs a Killer App, which I believe it already has: source code.

  • Actually, I'd rather see a good transparent X server under WinXX that basically can run X clients using the Explorer as the window manager - that is, I don't need one large window as the X root where all my other X-clients must reside.

    Hummingbird Exceed can do this.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I don't know about how to get a win32 bin to access linux hardware, but have you considered using perl? Perl has modules for accessing serial and parallel ports, and you can pick a UI of your choice (everything from (n)curses to Gtk to Tk to wxWindows to ...). Perl works on win32 and *nix (and pretty much anything else with a power cord, I'm expexting a perl-driven toaster Real Soon Now).

    Plus, it doesn't suck like VB.

    There are of course other ways to do this (C anyone?), the other scripting language people are likely to mention is python, which is a perfectly vaid choice as well and may be more preferable to somebody with an OO background (or pseudo-OO like VB). I _think_ there are comm port APIs for python (that's just comparatively simple C code after all, and one thing all the *nix-originating scripting langs seem to be great at is glomming around C code (perl, tcl, python, et al)).


    --

  • It's about like a cell phone call. Oddly I get better sound quality calling Korea which is where I get all the savings from well savings over what I would spend if we made the same calls with a regular provider but of course before dialpad we did not call as often but my wife does like talking to her mom more often even if sometimes the sound sucks. For stuff in the US I mostly use my cell

  • Umm... Why? And how exactly do you plan to make the developers of Wine stop working on a program they want to work on? Emulated software never beats native software. No matter how good the emulation gets, there's always going to be some advantage to running native software. Remember - when OS/2 was released, it ran Win3.1 binaries at least as well as Windows itself. Yet there were still quite a lot of OS/2 native programs released. (And there still are a surprising amount, for a "dead" OS)

    Oh, and BTW, many members of the "linux community" develop software not because there's a demand for it, but because they need something done that current software doesn't quite fulfill. If Windows software filled that need, they'd presumably be using Windows. But they aren't, which should tell you something. Many are out to write good software, not take over the world.


    -RickHunter
  • Speaking of Word Perfect where is Corel in the wine community? last i heard they did some work contributed some code and started using an internal version for specially tweaked for their apps rather than the "official" wine version...
    NAd Corel is a classic example of "not developing" apps for linux... their whole draw suite is a wine port... and i am told in reviews that it is lacking on performance...
    hopefully the lack of linux apps will be more solved by things like kylix from borland->inprise->borlandagain
    although i think the efforts of wine is great... it seems like more of a temporary solution in a desprate time to get more people intrested in linux by letting them use word/excel...
  • Wow!

    In the past, you had to do so much manual stuff with WINE, that it took some skills to use it optimally. In theory, it could do everything I read it can do now, but it took some work: editing mime/ file types (or launching Windows programs from the CLI, like I mostly did), WINE config files, pointing to a Windows root, compiling WINE by hand, etc.

    Now you can do all this within a few simple installation steps, find your Windows apps in your GNOME menu and simply launch them.

    I think it is a great advantage and will drastically improve the acceptation of WINE (and as a result, Linux, of course). One might argue this isn't a substantial improvement to WINE, e.g. it might crash just as much as the current snapshot. I would argue that this is the coolest improvement as of yet!

    It's... It's...

  • Re:Negatorio, mein troll. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As for Corel supporting Wine, they've contributed tons of code

    I've modded you up, so I'm posting anonymously to avoid cancelling the moderation. You're quite right, and can I just add that the Codeweavers people are being *paid* by Corel to do their development.
  • I've been trying the binary RPM builds of Wine for quite some time now. As the treasurer of a local church, I use Quicken Deluxe 99. Currently it's installed on my wife's Win95 machine. I'd been hopeful that with Wine I could run QD99 on my Linux (RH 6.2, 2.2.17) box.

    Before I installed the 1.0 Preview from Codeweavers, I could almost use QD99 with Wine. I could view the registers, but trying to change the data resulted in a crash. Since I installed the Codeweavers preview, it doesn't work at all.

    Now I must admit that the Codeweaver installer system is prettier than the RPM I'd been using before, but I'd gotten used to just "rpm -Uh wine-whatever" and having the newest code working. I was getting hopeful of very soon finding success.

    This is not meant to bash anyone; I am grateful for all the efforts put in to making Wine work. I can't imagine the time and work involved except to say I know it's immense! I just was disappointed in the Codeweaver preview's seeming lack of utility when compared to older builds.

  • I know you meant this to be a joke... but there are some great tools and they are quite usefull.


    First, get the cygnus (now owned by RedHat) toolkit [redhat.com]. This gives you a great many unix type commands (tar, ls, cp, dd, less, cat, pwd, ftp, cut, sort, etc), and a real bash shell, and a decent terminal window. Just having the bash autocompletion and command line history is worth the price of download, not to mention your directory slashes now go the right way :)


    Next, get yourself the activestate [activestate.com] perl port for windows. This gives you perl, which combined with the cygnus toolset makes easy and highly portable scripts very easy to throw together.


    Next, get the putty secure shell tools [greenend.org.uk]. This gives you pscp (like rcp, but better in every regard) and a pssh (a secure telnet replacement). These will both connect right up with a RedHat 7 system running the openSSH stuff right out of the box.


    Of course, get the latest version of emacs for windows [washington.edu].


    Finally, just for good measure, throw on Apache so you can serve up files in a pinch. This is handy in case you need to move files around with a system that lacks secure shell for whatever reason. Just throw together a quickie page and use browsers to do all the transfers.


    I keep all these tools on a single burned CD (with room to spare). They are the first things I put on any system I use. With this toolset, windows goes from a useless development platform to a slightly annoying development platform, which is better then nothing when your clients require windows on your desktop box.

  • (HANDLE NOT WITHSTANDING, <IRONY>=OFF!)

    I think that the reason they use the Windows logo is because there are other programs that emulate Windows, such as Win4Lin, Plex86, and VMWare.

    You have a good point, though - if Wine continues to head toward this position of dominance, I agree that it would be apropos to create a new logo and a new section.

    Captain Sarcastic

  • .NET. I strongly suspect M$ has quite a shareholding in telephone companies who only offer metered access. Imagine having to sit ON the phone line running a remote app. Or worse... the phone line is a cellphone running at 9600bps. Can we say SLOW? And EXPENSIVE?
  • quite so. this is the first thing I do when I find myself on a windows box.
  • I have StarCraft running to include battlenet. The way I had to do this was to make a small winers partition (about a gig) install everything there StartCraft, BroodWar, patch it all. Then boot into Linux and run it from there. It works fine for me. I could never get it to work without putting it on a winders partion though. This works fine for me because of damn dialpad.com (they save me almost $300 a month and for that I will let my machine be dual booted for now. Now if I could get the dialpad applet to run under Linux I'd start working on getting rid of the winders partition.

  • Re:Skins for wine? (Score:4)

    by Royster ( 16042 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @01:02PM (#574551) Homepage
    "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins." Mark 2:22

  • ...which would allow windows users to run linux in a box (just like we can run windows in a box on linux now).. anyone know of something like this?

    Hmmm... Well, I can't think of anything much easier than downloading and installing ZipSlack or BigSlack. Both of these distros are UMSDOS-native, which means that their whole filesystems live as a file in an existing FAT16 or FAT32 partition.

    They're great for novices, since the default installations will run with a minimum of tweaking.

    Of course, that's not what you wanted: while it would be cool to have a little Linux box running in a window on your Windows Me (yuck!) machine, this seems to me to be a task much more satisfyingly accomplished by simply using Windows to telnet in to the real thing.

    I run Windows 95B on my main machine at home and at work, mostly because I need the Windows applications. I run Windows 95B specifically because it includes FAT32 support, it has a better 16 bit subsystem than its successors, and I don't have to put up with crap like the Active Desktop and other later "enhancements". I barely trust Windows as it is, let alone trying to operate a full virtual machine inside it.

    However, an X client for Windows would be great, so that the connection to the real Linux box could also be graphical. That way, I could use my Linux server for other stuff without having to move the nice monitor from my main system.

    And yeah, I know telnet is insecure, but I like it both on my home and work LANs. (Neither one of which includes people who would be capable of rooting a box.) I haven't looked around for this, but has anyone seen a telnet client for Windows 9x that will provide pretty colors like RedHat's directory listings or so that I can actually use Lynx?

  • Not so utopistic.

    Jeff Dike, the author on User-mode Linux [sourceforge.net] has been actively seraching for people to undertake the Win32 port of UML. (UML is a cool hack that makes it possible to run Linux on top of the Unix system call API, eg. as a userlevel process in linux.) I think someone already started porting. They are using cygwin [redhat.com] (at least in the beginning).

    If they are succesful, one can execute linux binaries on Win32.

  • if you really want cheap quality long-distance without the hassle of all the software, sign up with bigredwire.com. [bigredwire.com] its like a regular long-distance provider, except you can log into their website once every 24 hours and remove one of your calls from your bill. The only limitation is that it has to be 7.00 or less. free in-state calling, .05/min state-to-state, .15 international. there's a 3.80 charge each month, but this is still less than the 4.95 i used to pay mci or at&t to shaft me each month.
  • Why do you call him a troll? The ideas are legitimately interesting and his/her English is good. What more do you want?

    -nme!
  • There's also PuTTY [greenend.org.uk] -- telnet, ssh, and scp for win32.

    --
  • Extra-X! can do this.
  • > My reasoning is that by emulating windows succesfully, the linux community will no longer concentrate with the
    > same focus on developing applications for linux natively. When the average user is running Word, there is not the
    > same need for a solution, and so the solutions that we do get will be lacklustre. After all, necessity is the mother of
    > invention, and the simple fact is that the astounding success of wine means that much of that necessity has been removed.

    You have a valid point, but I think there are good reasons for wine to exist:

    1) In my case, for example, I use Linux 97% of the time and it gets the job done. The only time I have to reboot to Windows is to use one single database access program, for which I haven't yet been able to write a clone (silly drivers). If I could eliminate that one step using Wine to launch the dumb thing, I doubt I would ever reboot. Too bad it doesn't completely work yet.

    2) Projects like WordPerfect 2000 use winelib to port their applications quickly. These are native binaries and they do work well. Telling my wife she can use WordPerfect for Linux makes her happy, and a quick port makes Corel happy. Get a big enough user base and they might go for broke. Don't we always complain that biggest problem is a lack of applications?

  • hey dumbass, that's not my point... read my comment.

  • Dan Aloni is working on the cygwin port of UML. So far, he's got most of the kernel compiling. The holdouts are mostly OS-specific stuff which we're knocking off one piece at a time.

    If you're interested in helping, contact me or him at karrde at callisto.yi.org.

    Jeff

  • Why is the official Wine logo (a wine glass) not used here? The current windows icon is just horrible!

    A quick look to recent headlines shows that slashdot is using the offical logos for Gnome, KDE, Apache and more. So why not Wine?

    ====

  • Try Exceed from Hummingbird. Not only can you (for example) remotely connect to and view CDE on HP-UX and Solaris boxen, but you can run X applications on NT with a minimum of fuss. Many common tools (finger, whois, etc.) common with the basic distribution. Also, several CAD application vendors (e.g., Unigraphics) have done this to move their stuff to NT quickly. I still use SCO version of UG15 on an NT box this way.
    ~wmaheriv
  • If Wine 1.0 is available (Thanks to the Wine Team!) wont this accelerate the development and deployment of M$'s ".NET" cra^H^H^Hstuff?

    I believe M$ is very actively creating a moving target - sure you'll be able to emulate Office2000, but what happens when Office".NET" is 'un-emulate-able" simply because it lives somewhere else and runs through your browser?
    Running Linux to emulate 'old' Windows Software becomes a little less attractive than The New Exciting! M$".NET" stuff...

  • The limitation of this analogy is that OS/2 in many cases ran Windows applications better in emulation than Win 3.x did natively.
    OS/2 did not emulate Windows 3.1, it actually ran a copy of it in full-screen mode or as a seamless window on your OS/2 desktop. The red box Warp required the user to have a copy of Windows 3.1, while the blue box version contained a copy of the Windows code.

    Man I really miss OS/2 and the WPS...
    --
    You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!

  • Re:Is Wine good in the long run ? (Score:3)

    by ink ( 4325 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @04:43PM (#574565) Homepage
    Yes, but Linux has no commercial company that will cancel the projcet.

    That is the key to understanding how Wine can work with Linux in a cooperative manner. Linux users can use Windows programs under a stable, free operating system. If it works out, then why would anybody buy Windows any more? Linux would be able to run all off-the-shelf software, albiet written to Win32. Take that situation and fast forward it 5 or 10 years and what do we have? Linux applications being written for Linux. Look at the 68k software for MacOS when the PowerMac came out. By your arguments, nobody would have written PowerMac software because 68k software worked "just fine" on all the machines; the same thing is happening right now with Cocoa and Carbonized applications. The truth is, development happens on the most predominate platform -- having Wine helps Linux garner more platforms, and the logical result is that free UNIX wins in the end (Wine runs on more than just Linux).

    OS/2 is a red herring in this argument; back then there were 2 competing standards tyring to woo DOS users. People had to pay more for OS/2 with Windows 3.11; when they could buy the "real thing" from Microsoft for less. Now, in the current situatio which one costs less?

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • Consider this possibility: Intuit discovers that 8% of their customers won't buy the next version of Quick Books if they use any Whistler features that Wine doesn't support. They could follow the latest API, but then they automatically lose market share.

    On the other hand, they could stick with the old API and have their product run, not only on the latest windows boxes, but also on machines that have been around a little while and on linux boxes.

    If a significant portion of the windows boxes in use are not following the newest API, the only company for whom it makes sense to use that API is Microsoft, since anyone who wants to use a product that uses the API will have to pay Microsoft for the OS upgrade.

    So the critical mass needed to make Wine beneficial to linux and a thorn in MS's side is the point at which the portion of customers using the windows API who aren't going to switch to the latest Microsoft version is significant; a much smaller mass than one might think, especially with the problems MS has had at making upgrading safe and affordable.
  • OS/2 is a red herring in this argument; back then there were 2 competing standards tyring to woo DOS users. People had to pay more for OS/2 with Windows 3.11; when they could buy the "real thing" from Microsoft for less.

    In addition, IIRC, the OS/2 SDK also cost more than the MS equivalent. And IBM's on-again, off-again marketing strategy didn't help matters much.

  • My main point is that Wine users can be stuck with old software if the next version of the Windows APIs are sufficiently difficult to revers engineer.

    OS/2 had a lot of things going against it at the time. The Win-OS/2 support was one of them. Perhaps not the only one but it mattered.

    Price is a big thing but not the only thing. Users want a solution and they price it at the cost of everything from an empty desk to a computer with the application loaded. This is why Free Netscape on Solaris was NEVER an option to the Windows users. So yes Linux won't go away in part because it costs less. However people who want to play a game with no Linux port will use Windows no matter what the price. Likewise a business that wants to run a particular set of applications will use whichever OS supports them.

    If at some future point that OS is not Linux then that section of the userbase will vanish.

    PS: For those who don't care let me remind you that large numbers of users is essential to having wide choice in new hardware. Otherwise the performance freak won't be able to use the video card or RAID controller he drools over and the pore student must continue to pay extra for a real modem.
  • Actually that would be a really kean idea... or at least something ( a free application ) which would allow windows users to run linux in a box (just like we can run windows in a box on linux now).. anyone know of something like this?



  • New project (Score:4)

    by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:45PM (#574570) Homepage Journal
    Anyone want to start a project that allows Windows machines to run Linux binaries? With the way it's going, that's what Windows will need to be a desktop OS.
  • "Wine Is Not An Emulator" can be screamed and shouted every day, all day. The fact is people use it as such. As is Linux users run Quick books on Linux+Wine without Intuit having expended a single coin to port it over. For all practical purposes we have Quick books on Linux now. There is no longer much of a financial incentive for a Linux port.

    Yes and no. It's a question of the market dynamics, and in the short term, you're probably right. Intuit can ride on Wine for a while. (Of course, since they've shown no interest in Linux, that's better than nothing!) However, the same argument could have been made for why nobody would ever write Win32 applications for Windows 95, when 16-bit applications would run perfectly well (with no need for porting) and there was already a very large base of Windows 3.11 users to contend with.

    In the end, Windows 95 never would have been accepted without the 16-bit compatibility; the installed base was too critical. In fact, that's the only reason Windows 95 was created -- Windows NT wasn't taking the market by storm, and Microsoft realized they needed a stepping stone to get people using 32-bit applications. That much has worked; 32-bit applications are now the norm.

    Linux could well follow a similar path as Windows 95 did. First, you need compatibility with existing applications. Since Linux can be had for free, people are encouraged to try it. Since it's more stable and more powerful, people may stick with it. When the compatibility with Windows 95 is near-perfect, there will be no need to keep Windows around any longer. Once the needs of the mainstream users are met, the majority may move to Linux, as they once moved to Windows 95.

    If that happens, the mass of the market would start demanding quality native applications that would run better under Linux than emulated Windows applications, much as they demanded higher-quality Win32 applications. Yes, native Linux applications would lock out Windows-only users; companies would maintain two ports if both markets are large enough to be worthwhile, or possibly just the Linux one if it somehow had the majority marketshare by then. (With good Windows 95 compatibility, it could happen -- Microsoft has had trouble getting people to upgrade when they consider Windows 95 good enough for their needs already.)

    There's no guarantee that this will happen, but it's certainly possible. (It would certainly take years, if it happens at all.)
  • Wine API
    Designed for source compatibility with Win32 code
    Sample programs
    Automatically generated API documentation
    32-bit resource compiler
    Partial Unicode and support
    Internationalization -- Wine supports 16 languages
    Built-in debugger and configurable trace messages

    How many Linux packages will you be able to get this with?

    What about Windoze ME, etc.

    What I need to run a Windozeless office and still be able to publish a web-zine, etc.
  • I apologize if I gave the impression that I wasn't supportive of the Hurd.

    Right now Hurd stands out as proof of Linux's "indestructibility". Think about it. The Hurd has very very few users. It is almost never in the press. Nobody has made any money off it at all. Many people see it as a useless venture.

    Yet the development effort continues.

    Linux is on the same "business model". Anyone who depends on it going away is screwed.

  • Not quite there (Score:4)

    by fatphil ( 181876 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:49PM (#574574) Homepage
    I use Wine daily. More accurately I use it constantly. For programs written by friends who don't have Linux. It has it's teeting troubles, it's still cranky in places but it's a life saver (life expectancy of anyone in the same room as me when I am forced into windows is measured in minutes). All progress on Wine is good news.
    This has made my day!
    FP.
  • I've been trying all morning to download it from the CodeWeaver site but it isn't found. Is there a download mirror anywhere ? Or is CW updating the package ?? Was gibt ???

  • Re:New project (Score:4)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento.brentozar@com> on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:50PM (#574576) Homepage
    Anyone want to start a project that allows Windows machines to run Linux binaries? With the way it's going, that's what Windows will need to be a desktop OS.

    Great idea! That would give you all the stability of Microsoft Windows, with the ability to run the broad base of Linux applications! Brilliant.

    (That would be sarcasm, if you didn't catch it in all its brilliance.)
  • Honestly though, why bother. I'd much rather emulate Win on Linux than vice-versa anyways. As the quote goes: "Let sleeping Dogs Die". I got that right, didn't I?
  • Keep up the good work guys...It's projects like these that make *nix all the more tasty! =)

  • Re:yes (Score:2)

    by matth ( 22742 )
    It may run in windows... however, there is no version of VMWare that I see for windows 95/98! That leaves a good deal of us out of the water.. *sigh*

  • And yeah, I know telnet is insecure, but I like it both on my home and work LANs. (Neither one of which includes people who would be capable of rooting a box.) I haven't looked around for this, but has anyone seen a telnet client for Windows 9x that will provide pretty colors like RedHat's directory listings or so that I can actually use Lynx?

    Get the best of both worlds... Try Teraterm Pro (look on tucows for it) it's free, and it has an extension (TTSSH) for SSH access. I believe it has colour support... it's a really nice APP in my opinion.

  • Thank god they've got new skins... my last wine skin got kinda smelly after I filled it with some really cheap wine and left it in the sun. But enough whining about that.

    On to a more serious comment:

    Why do we really need skins? "Wow, I can make my version of program X look completely different than yours..." Who cares? Its still the same program, it still does the same things. Maybe it only takes 2 seconds to code and only 2 line of code to give programs "skinnabiliy", which then just tell me, and I'll be happy. If not, is this really a worthwhile thing to be "enhancing" programs with, when the damn program isn't even fully functional/stable yet?

    Perhaps I'm missing something here? Or is it really just a big chunk of fluff to divert your attention from what really matters?

  • You should try VNC (or is it VCN) from AT&T. Works about as well as X as is really easy to set up. I've use it to control a Win98 box from Linux, there are servers and clients for WinXX, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and a few others I'm sure I missed.

    Their website is at www.uk.research.att.com. Damn good stuff, and GPLed to boot.

    Nathan

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • damn traffic... makes me look worse than I really am.

  • I'm looking forward to when XFree86 can be run as a rootless client of Mac OSX's display subsystem.. All those apps compile fine (for the most part) on Darwin already! Although I'm still trying to figure out how I can have XFree on one monitor, and OSX on the other..

    cheers,
    -o
  • You are to stupid to even go to the Wine website and read that WINE=Wine Is Not an Emulator It is a native library that does some tricky dynamic linking. It is possible to run faster than windows and someday probably will.
  • The long term effect of Wine on Linux is still open to debate. One logic to follow is that developers like to write as little code as possible to reach the desired audience.

    This is why many Unix developers code to POSIX and ignore the special tweaks available on even the most popular of commercial Unix systems. "Write once, Run anywhere" wasn't invented by Sun's Java Marketing team.

    That brings us to OS/2 with it's robust ( at the time ) Win16 support. Developers were faced with a choice. Write apps for OS/2 and enjoy patronage of the OS/2 userbase or write for the Win16 API and enjoy the Windows 3.11 userbase AND the OS/2 userbase.

    That wasn't a tough call and OS/2 was driven from the desktop in part because of it.

    "Wine Is Not An Emulator" can be screamed and shouted every day, all day. The fact is people use it as such. As is Linux users run Quick books on Linux+Wine without Intuit having expended a single coin to port it over. For all practical purposes we have Quick books on Linux now. There is no longer much of a financial incentive for a Linux port.

    Fast forward a bit to the next version of Quick Books. It has made use of some special new feature in the Windows 64 API of Whistler and it will take years of hacking for Wine to support it again. Suddenly the Linux, QB users are left out in the cold.

    This is why the Wine Runtime is may be a bad thing. The porting API is however a different animal. It works well enough to get an app over but for long term development; you really need to rewrite in KDElibs or something like that to work properly on a Linux desktop. Maintaining a Wine port must be a nightmare by comparison.

    At least it shows signs of going to 1.0 Something that all software should do at least once in it's life. That still leaves the Hurd as the code base determined to NEVER be "finished". Of course they have a different problem. Linux delivers to the user what Hurd intended but with a different technology. V6, V8 ? Who cares, I want Miles Per Galon and cruising speed.
  • The basic point is that there are some (perhaps many) software developers that do NOT want to use Microsoft product, and thus will continue to develop alternatives that are free and have source available. For many developers, the point is not just having apps available, but having apps that they can fix, learn from, extend, etc.

    So while it may upset certain proprietary vendors, the free software developers are understandably less concerned with Wine; their goals are not hampered by it.
  • Yeah, Windows is a moving target. What I don't get is why they didn't choose to make v1 support 3.1 only, fork for v2 with 95 support and so on, rather than try to follow the moving target and become forever alpha.
  • But you can get GIMP for windows anyway, and it supports using TWAIN for getting data direct from a scanner (which is more than I can manage with GIMP on other platforms since my scanner is USB and not supported (yet) by SANE).

    VNC also has the useful feature of being able to display the windows screen on another X display.

    There are also VNC clients for PalmPilot !!

  • Augment your OS! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    a lot of *nix apps have been ported to ms . . . i've been using these to augment my win95 box for over a year:

    http://www.weihenstephan.de/~syring/win32/UnxUtils .html [weihenstephan.de]

    can't live without them now! HINT: be sure to put their working subdirectory BEFORE \windows\command in the path statement, otherwise the win9x "find" command pretends to be helpful! ;-)

  • It's good (Score:3)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @05:27PM (#574592)
    As the above poster pointed out, Linux can never be cancelled. More importantly, few users who currently have Linux installed are ever likely to go back to Windows, and Linux has a market share of what, 7 or 8 percent? Now then, if you're right, and no one ever has an increased incentive to port to Linux, then maybe Linux stays more or less the same. But if robust Windows support manages to increase Linux's market share up to 15 or 20 percent, then there's no way companies can resist porting.

    Part of the point of Wine, IMHO, is to help Linux hit that "critical mass" at which point it can start competing with Windows on equal terms. And that is undeniably a Good Thing(tm).

  • You mean an X *server*. My favorite is XWin32 [xwin32.com], which has had no significant problems with any of the apps I run.
  • Anyone know if Windows programs are allowed to access the hardware under WINE?

    Windows programs have the same permissions as the user running WINE. If the user running WINE has access to the serial port, so does the WINE app. You need but to put something like the following in your wine.conf:


    [serialports]
    Com1=/dev/ttyS0
    Com2=/dev/ttyS1
    Com3=/dev/modem,38400
    Com4=/dev/modem


    Now, if you need actual raw access, that's available too (though of course appropriate permissions are required). In your wine.conf, just put something like the following:


    [ports]
    read=0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0
    write=0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0


    Hopefully, though, the character devices will suffice.

  • I moved from warp to linux a few years ago and I did notice that things ran a bit slower. I've heard it has something to do with the way os/2 handles context switches (or something like that) better than other ossen. Is this true?
    I would have stuck with warp if ibm had just stuck with it a bit better.

  • "I posted this anon because I know that moderaters do not have open minds."

    That's funny; I always thought that it was the anti-WINE zealots who had a closed-mind problem.
  • "For all practical purposes we have Quick books on Linux now. There is no longer much of a financial incentive for a Linux port."

    There's not an incentive regardless. A port is a major, expensive effort, and maintaining multiple versions on multiple platforms is even more so. In order for this to happen, there have to be enough paying users to support the effort. Linux doesn't have that many users. Even if it did, there's always the chance of an open source project springing up and grabing away market share and making the port one expensive liability with little hope of profit. There are going to have to be a LOT more Linux users, of a different and less geeky caliber, before any industry trends begin to shift. It's the classic chicken-egg problem; it's just going to take time.

    As for the Hurd, it's time will come. When hardware is sufficiently fast so that no one cares about the communication overhead of the microkernal idea, it should make things a lot easier to manage, as well as offer some potentially amazing abilities. V6 works fine for some things, but there's a reason the V8 exists. In any case, we have no business being anything but supportive. It's free software, it's open source, and no one ever guaranteed anything - we can afford to be patient. If new technology is not encouraged, there could come a time when we will find ourselves where OS/2 is now. It's like science - yes, the research may look useless now, but in 20 someone finds a way to use it, and it changes the world. (See the history of of the laser, or feedback in electronic circuits for a really good example - the patent office thought the guy was insane.)
  • The "Slashdot effect" has crushed our pipe. I spent a good part of today moving the site to a new server. Once the DNS refreshes everyone can hammer away at the site, it should be able to take it. -newman (Webmaster, CodeWeavers.com)
  • What I think Hemos meant is Wine availble in a new skin. CodeWeavers is to Wine as Helix is to Gnome. That is how I like to think of it anyway. It wasn't a reference to skin support in Wine. If you run Wine in managed mode, your Win apps will use whatever skin your window manager supports.
    -newman
  • It's ok. Nice links, too. I hadn't seen some of those before. I always find cynical journalism to be entertaining. I can't really blame the moderator, though I suppose flamebait might have been more appropriate. Sorry about that.
  • I agree, the web page sucks. Horribly. But I've seen very few (a total of one that I can think of) bugs in their actual software. If you judged software companies by their marketing departments... well, let's not even go there.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • How about a project that lets you run Windows binaries under OS/2: Project Odin [netlabs.org].

    Or, a project that lets you run X apps (need to be recompiled for now) under OS/2: Project EverBlue [netlabs.org].

    Add ELF support to Odin and combine it with EverBlue, and OS/2 will be able to run:

    • DOS apps
    • 16-bit and 32-bit Windows apps
    • 16-bit and 32-bit OS/2 apps
    • Linux apps

    Sounds like the ultimate desktop OS to me!
    --

  • They are skinning everything these days. From netscape, to the GUI, to the animals shot in the woods. Oh well, at least Wine should still be a functional program when its done, unlike half the programs i rewrite with customizability =)

  • MIRROR (Score:2)

    by jmd! ( 111669 )
    Anti-Slashdot-Effect Mirror:

    http://turbogeek.org/anti-slashdot-effect/wine-1 .0 -preview/
  • that didn't come out very well... how about... http://turbogeek.org/anti-slashdot-effect/wine-1.0 -preview/ [turbogeek.org] have i mentioned HTML forms suck?
  • I STILL cannot get Starcraft to run (including battle.net) and STILL can't get D2 to function under it.

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]

  • Minimum Age Requirements (Score:3)

    by SomeoneGotMyNick ( 200685 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:55PM (#574608) Journal
    Is there a Minimum Linking Age to use Wine?

    I'm pretty sure Underage Linking is still a crime......

  • I've got Starcraft IPX and Battle.net but then again that's over the college network.

    Apt-get dist-upgrade is so useful. What's interesting is I have yet to create a mess with weekly dist-upgrades.
  • Maybe you aughta think about that...
  • by emulating windows succesfully, the linux community will no longer concentrate with the same focus on developing applications for linux natively

    Well, Wine is only an emulator. An emulator will always have its problems, and MS Office running on an emulator will never have the smoothness of a native app like star office.

    Anything that eases the transition for regular (non tech) users from windows to linux is a good thing.
    It's not just nerds who are sick of microsoft's products.
  • Hey, what kind of protection does slashdot have against auto-first-posters? it looks as if the comment submit form has some authentication codes in it at least. I'm sure this has been done in the past... anyone know what's happened? Hard to do, or just really discouraged?
  • Also there is a D2 specifically for linux, you just copy a few files from the CD on over, and there is Kali for linux. Worked fine for me awhile back.

    Not sure about that battle.net though.
  • IIRC, this is exactly why OS/2 died. It emulated windoze too well so no native apps. Heaven forbid that such should happen to Linux.

  • I use it on a regular basis to run Half Life, so it can handle complex programs. It just depends on whether or not the program does anything unusal that would't be implemented yet.
    treke
  • It could be a number of things. I heard that it was the ELF file format that made Linux load apps so slowly. It could also be XFree86.

    BTW, IBM is releasing a new version of OS/2 next year, and there will also be a OEM version that's somewhat different. Maybe it's time to switch back?
    --

  • Actually, Bill Gates claims its possible to clone the Windows API. In a statement that I find incredibly arrogant he claimed that he could have lead any other company and still ended up where he is today. He said if he were up against Microsoft he would have programmers in India cloning the Windows API.


    "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
    (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

  • What we need is a "YES, it runs with Wine" sticker. Some software is hard to make work with wine. Mainly games, which are the only true reason to use Windows.
  • Yeah I realised after posting some smart alec would point out you can get Gimp for windows :-)

  • This looks pretty exciting, with the Gnome and KDE integration. But wasn't it a general consensus that WINE was nowhere near out of alpha stages? That WINE would never come close to accurate Windows emulation?

    For me, I can only get WINE to work with simple programs like EditPad and Gmud. Anything involving multiple loading of DLLS is far beyond me, because WINE refuses to acknowledge that there ARE DLLs there...probably because I'm probably not specifying the correct arguments for the -dll parameter, and I don't know how to, even with the man page.

    ---
    Forever doomed to post at +1

  • Can WINE talk directly to hardware? (Score:4)

    by commander salamander ( 256114 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @12:55PM (#574621) Homepage

    Anyone who's used Visual Basic knows that while the language is a pus-filled zit on the nose of all programmers, it is really easy to access hardware directly using controls such as MSCOMM32.OCX, et al...even on WinNT/2k.

    I used such a program to control a couple of serial barcode scanners. I'd love to be able to do this on Linux - anyone know if Windows programs are allowed to access the hardware under WINE?

  • This is getting to be like the freakin' circle game I saw on "Malcolm in the Middle".

    Only I think I'd rather be hit than see that picture again.

  • Wine will expand Linux-use customer base.

    1) More ppl begin to use Linux because they can use familiar apps on it.

    2) Once familiar with Linux, large scale software-buyers get Linux software, phasing out emulated software

    3) People have Windoze-blinders on. emulation the best way to gradually remove the blinders through retraining

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