Wine 0.9.44 Released

jshriverWVU writes to let us know about the release of Wine 0.9.44. Wine is a free implementation of Windows on Unix/Linux. New in this release are: better heuristics for making windows managed; automatic detection of timezone parameters; improvements to the built-in WordPad; better signatures support in crypt32; still more gdiplus functions; and of course lots of bug fixes.

Re:How is this /.-worthy news?

[QuantumG]

The fact that they have 5 major improvements every 14 days is kinda impressive.

But yes, good point.

Re:Wine breaks backward compatibility a lot.

[QuantumG]

So, err, just so I've got this right.. you're applying app specific patches to Wine to get it to work and then when you upgrade you're reapplying all those patches and finding that some of them don't apply anymore?

Ya know, Wine uses this revision control system that some Finnish guy wrote.. it's really good at helping you maintain a fork with your changes in it if that's what you want to do. I think it's called "git" or something. :)

Re:How is this /.-worthy news?

[ketilwaa]

All right. It's not an app, it's not an emulator. Trouble is, I don't think I use many compatibility layers other than Wine.

Actually, I was imprecise. There looks to have been some progress on this (I update Wine every two weeks through apt), and things like ie6 dowsn't raise the temperature much. Installing stuff through Wine though, raises the temperature from ~50 to ~65 degrees.

Re:How is this /.-worthy news?

[robbak]

That is unsurprising. Windows installers have always been heavyweight. I don't think that this is wine's problem.
Indeed, wine has had a very hard time supporting Installshield, which seems like a very badly written application.

Re:But face it

[ozmanjusri]

the very existance of Wine is proof that Linux isn't able to exist without windows.

...and the very existence of SFU is proof that Windows isn't able to exist without Linux.

So let's all have a big group hug and make up. We need each other.

Re:But face it

[pakar]

Nope, but the existence of wine is proof that people don't like windows and want their apps running on gnu/linux systems..

Re:New wine project

[Anonymous Coward]

do not laugh to soon..

like dosbox, and I'm pretty sure that under Vista you *may* need wine to run some legacy windows softwares....

Wine 1.0 would be a great mistake!

[z0M6]

At least at the moment. It would be like marking a half-built car (WARNING! car-analogy) as ready for use. I think it would be pointless to push such a product because it is simply not ready yet. Users would also have higher expectations of the product than what should be realistic. That said, Wine has come a long way. Playing opengl games works great. The same can't be said for directx. Some installers does not function at all. And there is a lot of other issues as well. Wine 9.64 seems more realistic than wine 1.0 at the moment.

Re:New wine project

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but since MS isn't going to release DX10 on XP and Wine has already started implementing it, you might end up using Wine to run the new apps in a legacy OS.

Re:But face it

[Xtifr]

> the very existance (sp) of Wine is proof that Linux isn't able to exist without windows.

Uh-huh. Offering an option proves that everybody needs that option. (Just for the record, I haven't had Wine installed since '01, and haven't used Windows since '98.)

Does the very existence of Viper mode prove that Emacs isn't able to exist without vi? Makes about as much sense.

Actually, what the existence of Wine proves is that some FLOSS developers are willing to try to provide a smoother migration path to those who are interested in exploring their options, but don't want to make a blind leap into the unknown.