Wine 1.0 — Uncorked After 15 Years 638
pshuke writes "After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot."
Re:What will interest me is (Score:3, Insightful)
Should have delayed the release slightly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:3, Insightful)
* New application support:
o Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and limited Outlook)
Re:SMAC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get it while it's hot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation you provided is very exclusive to a boss who is intelligent enough to realize the difference between MS Office and Open Office and having to work 100% of the year long.
In a normal business year, 99% compatibility is much closer to 1 day something going wrong, assuming your claimed statistics are even worth arguing.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem solved!
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:3, Insightful)
I find OO a useful tool for basic previewing of MS Office documents and doing trivial word processing and spreadsheet tasks. For those purposes, it's nice, and I really appreciate having it available. The GP's view that it's 99% there is a still a wild overestimation of its utility from where I sit.
Re:Personally ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Crossover is fine if it just happens to work well with the one or two applications you actually need. If you're looking to run a larger selection of applications or something they don't support well, then a VM or native install is really the only option. Personally, I don't think this needs to be the case. I think CodeWeavers has a very flawed business model that has hampered them more than anything else. They could be making significant money from small business (and larger business).
The problem I have is with CodeWeavers' method of deciding what applications to support. They ask users to pledge a certain amount of money if they get an application supported and working well. That's a fine method of deciding what to work on if your users are hobbyists looking for support for some video game. It is a complete non-starter in business. For example, I tested it out for use with a certain Adobe application and it was nonfunctional. I looked into when they would support it, and the answer seemed to be "never" because not enough people pledged money. Since this is mainly a business application, what do they expect people to do? Have you ever tried getting approval for a purchase order that says if CodeWeavers ever gets this application supported we'll give them some amount of money... but we have no idea when or if that will ever happen? Not a chance. So, of course, we moved on and purchased a bunch of copies of a virtualization environment and Windows to run in it. Now in my case, they only lost a few dozen sales, but I know another, very, very big company that did a similar evaluation... but they needed a solution within a few weeks. They easily lost 500 sales there for the same application.
Basically, I think if they started targeting business customers with a plan that made even a lick of sense to potential business users they'd be pulling in a lot more money, money they could reinvest to make faster progress and more fully support a wide range of programs.
Re:SMAC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Insightful)
In this end of things typing speeds above 75 wpm are a matter of course; at that speed, taking your hands off the keyboard to use a mouse is a big productivity hit. Taking that hit plus the hit necessary to relearn an interface? Sorry, but I have deadlines to meet.
The most galling thing about it is MS's hubris (yes, I know, par for the course). They could have at least put in the ability to switch between the old and new interfaces to ease the transition and allow user choice. So confident were they that the new interface was better, that they forced us to make an either/or choice. If I had both, I could use the old interface when I had to and spend some time every day learning the new one. Instead it decreased our productivity.
Thanks guys...this is the worst call since they changed the help system to an online web-imitative help system.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:1, Insightful)
You know that Wine is open source, right? There isn't anything stopping you from getting that implemented yourself. Code it, or hire someone to code it. You could even gather a bunch of other people together, and all pay for that person to code it.
If it's really that highly voted, maybe some of those people will want to spend $5 on fixing their problem.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes great with vintage Windows apps.
Many a true word was said in jest. Back in 1998 I wrote a small Windows program at work (~3000 lines of Turbo Pascal 7.0, Win 3.1) and tested it at home on Wine on Slackware. It worked fine.
Wine is an astonishing project. It deserves a lot of credit.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
the same can be said of Windows....
Re:What will interest me is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget the main commercial sponsor (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
Take it step by step (Score:5, Insightful)
Porting a software project can be a very nontrivial task, taking many manyears of work to complete. Few companies are willing to invest this kind of work (and money) for what seems to be a rather small customer base. They could, though, be willing to invest in a few tweaks to make it run on an emulator that would accomplish, from their point of view, the same thing: Letting Linux users use their software.
Companies are usually reluctant to develop for a platform with a small customer base. They do, though, accept making a few tweaks to get a foot into the market.
Currently, the only argument for people to keep using Windows is that Wine can't handle EVERY SINGLE Windows application. When there is no important application left that doesn't run well on Wine, people will more readily switch (Linux+Wine == Windows, from a user's point of view, but about 100-300 bucks cheaper).
And THEN it's time to ask software companies to develop for Linux, with it being the bigger market.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, you're blaming the OS for something a user has near completely control over. You'd be better blaming Microsoft for not discouraging this practice instead of the OS.
Re:What will interest me is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Take it step by step (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
Rumor has it that Microsoft introduced the annoying UAC prompt to get developers to stop this practice by getting users to bitch at developers until they adjusted applications and games to get rid of the prompts.
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am writing you to inform you that even though you only write Windows apps, I (somewhat) successfully managed to get it to run on my Linux operating system. Please start making a Linux version of this application post haste so you can not gain a customer (I have already hacked your app to run in linux) and increase your development costs. An added perk is the fact that you will be required to support the Linux version rather than just telling me to "run it in Windows" when I call. The extra staff you hire for your support center should help the unemployment rate.
Thanks Again,
A Wine User
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that the types of experiences are different, and it's good that you point it out. Essentially, my beef with X11 style forwarding is that there's never been a killer app for it. XDMCP takes a backseat to the screen-esque experience of rdesktop, and I just don't know of any *nix applications that are seriously worth using over a network link, particularly when the possibility exists of me losing work when the link goes down.
This has been exacerbated by the comeuppance of genuinely usable web applications -- sure, they kinda suck now, but in terms of delivering applications over the network, that's the future, period. I really agree with the anonymous coward who got modded down. Other than novelty value and it being what most *nix folks are used to, I just don't see the point of X11 style forwarding nowadays, and XDMCP is relatively useless for the reasons outlined above.
I realize this is offtopic, but what do you feel is the 'killer app' that takes advantage of the X protocol? Why couldn't it be done as a simple client/server app?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
You should never log in as Administrator or root to play games, and, unfortunately, Windows often makes you to do just that. That kind of behavior just isn't ready for the desktop at all.
Windows does nothing of the sort. Stupid developers make you "login" (really, just "Run As) as Administrator, and they're as likely to do it targeting Linux as they have been targeting Windows.
Re:Take it step by step (Score:5, Insightful)
At the point in time you describe, it will be easy for Windows users to switch to Linux, and there will be incentive for them to do so since it is generally cheaper and they would have more apps available (all Linux apps plus Windows apps under Wine) -- that much I agree with. However, one could argue that developing for the Windows API would still be the bigger market, since developing for Windows would give you an application which would work on Windows or Linux-with-Wine. Until the size of the Windows-only customer base is smaller than the Linux-only-and-I-won't-or-can't-use-Wine customer base, there will still be incentive to develop for Windows. There may be other reasons to develop for Linux instead (ease of development, more plentiful developers, etc), but a bigger market is not one of them as long as you continue to account for Wine.
On the other hand, having an easy-to-use and easy-on-developers Linux API available on Windows does the opposite -- software companies could develop for Linux and get apps that target both the Linux and Windows markets, thus targeting a bigger market than just Windows.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
If that were true, the default permission level would not be Administrator unless you go out of your way to reconfigure it.
You are conflating two very different things. The permissions in the system and privilege level of the user.
The default permission level for new users in Vista is still Administrator: Not sane.
This is simply confirming your ignorance. An "Administrator" in Vista is simply someone who is allowed to elevate their privilege level. It is loosely equivalent to the "admin" group in OS X or the "wheel" group in UNIX.
Re:Take it step by step (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't forget, some people actually like Windows as a Desktop/Server OS, and it's not because they haven't "experienced the glory of Linux" or some other epiphany. Granted, I don't think anyone likes licensing it, but that's a totally different story.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a very nice niche PM.
It will never really hit mainstream thus wont do any damage.
RPM does need to die though.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
At least, that's what I'm rooting for.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:3, Insightful)
Use either DEB or RPM