except the 1 I usually want to run

I keep fooling myself into thinking that software X is going to run on wine, then I usually end up wasting a lot of time trying to get it to run while borking every other program that it used to run

I think Wine needs a usability team. Some kind of gui/tooling to make things easier for newbies to Wine.

Except the one you want to run requires about 5 hours of fucking around with Wine only to get about 70% of the functionality working and only 40% of the performance despite having being listed as GOLD PLATINUM UNOBTAINIUM in the wine-db. Hurray!

my bank is IE only

Then it might be time to change banks.
I know I would if my bank forced me to use IE.

Random MS Employee that actually keeps up with GNU/Linux stuff: "Wow, Wine 1.2 was released today."
Ballmer: "The fuck does that do?"
Employee: "Allows you to run Windows programs on GNU/Linux."
Ballmer: (throws chair): "WHAT? Did they steal our shit or something?"
Employee: "No, this is a clean reverse engineer of Windows."
Ballmer: (throws another chair) "Is that fucking legal?"
Employee: "There's not much we can do about it..."
Ballmer: "Okay, fuck. Well, at least go out and post FUD and outright lies about it on tech news sites so people will think it's horrible so they'll continue to buy and use our shitty, hacked-together, worthless OS. We'll pay you extra if you succeed in fooling a lot of people."
Employee: "We're on it!"

You want Crossover.

(Buying Crossover funds Wine, by the way - half the Wine devs work for Codeweavers.)

"I am only sorry that so many people end up bashing Wine."

It's because no-one complains worse than the people getting something for free.

I know its bad to feed the trolls but here's a thought...

My experience has shown me that I don't need Windows apps as much as I though I needed them, I found better alternatives and while Wine is great at some point you just have to sit back and wonder, "Is it worth it?"

I went through updates which broke previously working applications, I went through configuration edit after edit for each application to get things working and at one point just decided to look for a better way. Don't get me wrong Wine is great for beginning Linux but it really shows the flaws in many Windows programs and with closed source, you can stumble onto one at random even if you're coding to established API for compatibility.

So why my comment? I commented because I felt it showed that Wine helps break the reliance on Windows applications, it's great for transition but not for long haul requirements and I'm not commenting for the sake of commenting, a review of my account can attest to that. You however seem to enjoy placing your finger up your rear trying to tickle the back of your throat hoping something worthwhile will eventually come out of your mouth.

Too bad it is a miss today for you but thankfully, I'm at least not an anonymous coward like you.

No they didn't. They said it was impossible without rewriting other portions of the OS, and really why should they back port DirectX 10 to such an ancient OS. Here's your backport: Spend the $50 to upgrade every 8 years like I did.

As we're referring to IE, the antecedent of your proposition is false therefore the consequent does not apply.

Win7 is faster, more scalable, more stable, MUCH less bug ridden, better security, and supports new tech...than XP

By your rankings, Linux must be the worst OS out there and Windows ME rules with an iron fist.

My words only express my experience, nothing more and nothing less.

I encourage those whom play Windows games to use Wine, to get Crossover Games and tell the game publishers, if you have a problem, call it in to support, go to their forums, make a little bit of noise showing your support for the game and your platform of choice, just don't be insane about it.

By all means use the tools available and work to make them better, give your feedback and help support those who work to support your gaming. Don't think that just because you've switched that you can't continue to enjoy your computer as you've done in the past.

And while it may not be perfect, if you're adamant about it and help others on official forums, you show that the market can be viable and that the risk for exploring it can be negligible especially given our normal distribution methods for software over the Internet.

scalable how? more stable how? for every bug it fixed, it probably added another at the very least. what new tech does xp not support? most of that is drivers anyway.

Wine, and in particular Wine fanboys, sell it as a sure fire way to run Windows apps on Linux. They happily point to success stories and say "See you can ditch Windows, just run your stuff in Wine! Look how well Office runs!" People then try it and discover three things:

1) It is complex as all get out. You don't just go and start Wine and run a Windows installer to put your application on. No, it is way fucking complex in many cases. Even people familiar with virtualization are amazed at how complex it gets.

2) It works poorly in many cases. A "working" app in Wine speak seems to mean "runs". It may have massive glitches. Most people take working to mean "Works fully with some minor glitches." Even so of the top apps have some rather noticeable glitches.

3) Plenty of stuff doesn't work at all, and there's no readily apparent reason. It just fails.

For example I was trying to move to a Linux desktop at work, to learn more about Linux and its working in our setup. However, being work, I had to be able to get everything done. So I tried Linux AV software and it was crap, couldn't do what I needed to do. I went and asked our Linux head if he'd be willing to help see if Wine could run Sony Vegas. He said sure. After 3 days of fairly intense work and research, he said no, he could find no way to make it run. He was pretty good too, he didn't blow this off he really tried.

So that's why people get mad. Wine shouldn't be marketed as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine is more of an experimental program that can help some Windows software run sometimes. If you want to get your hands dirty and mess around with some complex stuff, maybe it can make things happen. However it is not a friendly compatibility layer that you install and suddenly Windows apps can be run just like on Windows with ease.

People get mad because it is oversold, and because it is something they want. They hear "Windows on Linux," and get all excited. They can use Linux now and not have to sacrifice their computer experience. Then they try it and find no, they can't actually and get real angry.

My time is not free. So it's not free if I waste my time trying to get it to work after being told that it runs almost flawlessly only to find that it's going to take a significant investment of time and require me to become an expert hacker on the project. You see giving something away for free doesn't entitle a developer to be rude, arrogant, condescending abusive or a liar. I've seen all of these behaviours from developers giving something away for "free".

This sounds exactly like a Linux apologist from 5 to 10 years ago.

Windows is finally catching up!

Some of us wasn't appologetical about it.

I've been a linux-only user since 1999. In that time, I've gone from KDE 1.X to 4.X (Okay, 4.x is still crap, 3.x was better :-). I've been through a huge load of linux distros (slack, debian, redhat, suse, mandrake, ubuntu, etc).

I don't regret it. I have a system I understand. I've learned way more about how computers and the internet works, than I would have if I had stayed with windows.

There certainly are things in Linux that aren't entirely up to scratch, even to this day. Sound is one of them. While there is plenty of options, they all suck in different and all non-interesting ways.

And then of course there is the problem of games. While there does exist a few, it is rather annoying to have to go through hoops with wine to get the games to run properly.

But would I switch back? I think not. The first thing I do when my computer is booted is to fire up a couple of xterms, since that's where I do most of my stuff. I can understand that not everyone wants be fiddling around in "the terminal" all the time, but that's where I feel at home. :-)

There is nothing there that couldn't have been done in XP SP4 and almost all of that is something that was intentionally made deficient to increase sales of the new product. For example, there is a hack to install the new direct x versions on XP because there is no technical reason they can't run with full features.

"Windows 7 (and Vista?)"

If you are going to pretend those are different OS then I'm not sure we can even have a conversation.

The best place to check is the WineHQ application compatibility database. It'd have told your sysadmin in much less than three days that people have gotten it to run [winehq.org] but "Installing this was a mission though." and the best anyone's been able to give it a silver rating. The last test report is from almost a year ago though, it'd be very nice if your sysadmin took five minutes to write up a test report to tell others what he found. Anything less than a gold rating should not be used in a production environment, and even then I'd read the notes to see if it's gold because of functionality flaws or installation complications (to get a platinum rating the application must install without special configuration).

Get an account with a real bank and keep the crappy account. Deposit checks and then transfer out to your real bank, transfer in when you need cash (or just use your debit).

In the modern world where you can use your debit card pretty much anywhere for any purchase of 50 cents or more with no fees how often do you really need cash? For that matter, unless you are running a business, how often do you receive cash and checks? Or really cash, you can mail check deposits.

If you absolutely have to have a physical presence I'd couple it with a real account and use it for temporary funds holding. Maybe attach it to an all digital account.

How many years has it been since you've tried running Wine?!

I mean, sheesh, sure, it doesn't run anything and everything. But the project certainly made leaps and bounds in compatibility and what *can* be run.

Really? in my experience nearly all mentions of Wine are along the lines of "hey, it's fairly hit-or-miss but perhaps Wine can help you, give it a try" rather than "use Wine, it can run every Windows app flawlessly!". Hell, even Wine's own website [winehq.org] states that it doesn't run everything so where you got the hype from I have no idea.

And in Wine's favor, my experience with them have been that nearly all apps either work out-of-the-box or don't at all. The ones that work-but-require-a-day-of-editing-config-files are more of a rarity that can be safely ignored by normal people since that issue will most likely be fixed by next version anyways. And if you absolutely *need* some specific app right here right now, well, you should've used VirtualBox to begin with.

You're approaching it the wrong way. If the existing linux-specific software is not acceptable, and the only alternative is to run some windows software, then run it on windows - especially for AV stuff (that gets really pernickety about HW and drivers for sound and graphics cards, and even on Windows can be difficult to get right).

Then you need to lobby your boss. If running everything on Linux is beneficial for your business, but you are unable to do so because of the lack of suitable software, then you need to get your boss to agree to allocate a certain percentage of your time to improving the software portfolio for AV stuff on Linux. Say, spend every Friday afternoon for the next year testing and bug-reporting on existing Linux alternatives. Won't cost your boss a lot, but may mean that in a year or two's time you are able to ditch your Windows box and the proprietary software you run on it, and migrate to an open source solution you have had a hand in developing and making sure did what you needed it to do.

Then you can happily run some non-critical but useful tools using wine while performing your main tasks using a native application.