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Wine Software

Wine Works Towards 1.0 158

Posted by Hemos from the over-the-river-and-thru-the-woods dept.
Sukru Tikves writes "Today on Wine Weekly News' future issue I read from that ' The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release, but there's still some way to go, and many usability issues to clean up before even a public beta release is possible. While the wizards churn out the machine-readable source code, the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read. ' "
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Wine Works Towards 1.0 More

Wine Works Towards 1.0

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  • If you really feel the need to poke fun of someone, at least make sure it's the right person.
  • Indeed; WINE seems to be a project that is very interesting, but kinda unneeded since Linux has much more acceptance now than when the project started.
    More and more desktop applications appear native for the Linux platform, hence, many Windows products now have a Linux counterpart.
    For what I have heard many people use/used WINE for Windows programs such as Agent and Eudora. Now with the arrival of Pan, and many GUI email clients/groupware applications in the works (for instance Evolution [helixcode.com]) many people will stop using the Windows programs, and switch to native Linux applications.
    So, as time passes, WINE will probably be used less and less...
  • Is Wine really needed?

    Since more and more applications become available on Linux the use of Wine gets smaller and smaller. There are already office software, browsers, etc. Personally I don't miss any vital application that doesn't under Linux already.
  • Just imagine... DOS running WINE better than it runs Windows - packages being on shop shelves saying: 'Needs either WINE ME 2001 with 16Mb RAM or Microsoft Windows ME 2001 with 64Mb'. Bliss!
    I would love to see that too, unfortunately, Microsoft would rather launch nuclear missiles and destroy the North American continent before that happens.(Microsoft secretly is hoarding a military force, but I digress) Even if this were to happen, Microsoft would probably shrug off thier legacy crap and change the API so it(WINE, as well as DOS Win9x) no longer works. Microsoft is the stubborn spoiled child who if he(bill) can't get what he wants, then no one can get what they want.

  • I, too, would prefer native applications over emulated ones - but emulated ones are definitely better than nothing.
    Wine (the emulator) is definitely a good thing - at this time, a lot of stuff is still written for Windows only, and it's good to have some way to use them without having to rewrite them (phone directories, anyone?).
    Winelib gives programmers the possibility to move their existing code to real OSes quickly without having to learn a new API RIGHT AWAY, and something like
    [Windoze calls for interface] + [Unix specific parts for extra features and/or better integration]
    is definitely better than an emulated application...

  • Re:But does it run MS office? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, yes, it does ... but it's a bit unstable. However, it's reached a point where I nolonger feel I need to reboot into Windows, and I've quite happily used Word, Excell and Powerpoint from Office97 for the last few months. Just save often :)
  • My personal computing experience has gotten way to PERSONAL. As of right now I have a 10 gig drive divided up between Win98, WinNT 4.0, Win2000, and Red Hat/Mandrake Linux (depending on my mood). I know what you are thinking: "Why in the Hell would anybody want to do this?"

    The short answer is: there isn't another way yet. I need 98 for: Partition Magic, which has too many issues under NT; my games; and my misc. CD Burner Utilities (that wont run on anything else).

    I need NT 4.0 to run all the apps 2000 wont including my copy of Visual Basic 6.0, Boot Magic, and my Adaptec CD burner/Creater program.

    To be fair I should mention that 98 and 2000 used to run my burner, and could again, if I format their partitions and re-install.

    Until that happens, I will burn under NT (works great, but only with SP6), and check them under 98 'cause 2000 wont even run Adaptec anymore (reinstalls wont work). Win2K does everything else that Linux doesn't already do better. ;)

    I would gladly give my 10 gig kingdom to run everything I need, in one place, w/0 shelling out more money. I just want all my stuff to work in one place as cheaply as possible. My preference would be LINUX.

    Wine is more than a way to run your favorite Win game. It has the potential to allow me to get all my work done faster. Quad booting is BULLSHIT, and friggin' time CONSUMING. There just isn't a better way... yet.

    I wasn't always this hard -- I had OS/2 with Win 16 support back before Win95. Stable, and everything I needed was in one place. I loved it!! I'm patient. It's worth waiting for... again.
  • hey, moderators -- that was funny!

    Also reminds me of a recent post on lkml...

  • Last time I tried 3dsmax under wine (about 2 months ago) it got as far as drawing the window for the splash screen and that was it. Admitedly that was 3dsmax3, perhaps an earlier version may have had more success and perhaps it might even be able to draw the picture fopr the splash screen now aswell.
  • > I think that 'hehe' is even more evil and conspiratorial than 'heh heh'. But more importantly, you can lengthen it, eg 'hehehe'.

    Yes, evility definitely requires at least three.

    --
  • But it is interesting how this is an achievement, soon 64 big computing will be out and another 7 years later we will be emulating the win64's :)

    Is Microsoft's OS running on IA-64 yet? Last I heard it wasn't - only Linux was! Maybe in 7 years Microsoft will have Windows running on 64-bit CPUs...

  • Using a gif is just inexcusable here. The jpeg format compressed it much better, and have we forgotten about the UNISYS GIF patent issue so quickly?

    <rant>
    Ever heard of PNG? Just perfect for typical Web images (JPEG is still better for compressing the kinds of images you take from a digital camera). No patents, excellent quality, faster load, better compression, true alpha-channel support, etc. etc. etc...
    </rant>

  • mmmm... ok. it's all informal, but I prefer spellings that give a hint to the uninitiated. I would spell the "hee hee"/"heh heh" combo as "eh heh heh"

    BTW, "hehehehe..." might best be reserved for the Beavis and Butthead laugh.

  • The Real World needs Wine (Score:5)

    by robinjo ( 15698 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:41AM (#1040873)

    Many people underestimate badly the need to run Windows apps. We're not only talking about office software here. We're talking about thousands of small utilities or custom made programs that are written for Windows to do some small task. At our company there's already several of them.

    What Wine lets us do is to run those small programs and concentrate on writing the newest ones for Linux. But we won't port the old ones because it would take a lot of time which we don't have.

    So before you put Wine down, remember that changing OS at work places is a huge task. Changing all those small programs on top of that is just a gigantic task and won't happen unless there's a big reason. And the difference between Linux and NT is not big enough.

  • Now that wine-1.0 is nearing, will we finally get Lotus Notes' Detach working in wine? This has been an open issue for months now, and alas, wine-20000526 is no better :-(

  • the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read

    Wine users? Human? :)

  • Quality Assurance
    No 1.0 release without testing and quality assurance! A set of applications that Wine "must" run should be defined,
    and regression tests should be done regularly.

    Kudos to the wine team for getting this far. [Seeing Office fire up under wine never fails to amaze]

    IMHO, the first target for QA testing should be popular e-mail clients, like Eudora, Agent and (ugh.. Outlook.)
    E-mail is still the most frequently used app in business, and many users are forced to work with a particular client,
    thus dooming them to a life of Windows [or, in more open-minded shops, Macs.]
    Giving these users one less reason to dual boot into Windows would go a long way to driving adoption
    of Linux in a corporate environment.

    Of course, getting Office to run reliably would put the nail in the coffin. But is this realistic? The day it happens,
    you can expect a "service pack" release from Redmond. Sigh.

    docwolf

  • Wine and Games (Score:4)

    by isolation ( 15058 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:46AM (#1040877) Homepage
    I'm really sick of Hearing the open Source RMS wannabes bitching about Wine. Wine w/ its DirectX support has been doing wonders for Linux Gaming.
    3 days ago I was able to get Starsige Tribes to work under linux. I have also run unreal, commandos, Carmageddon and Starcraft under linux flawlessly.

    My Complaint comes in when people bitch about open source drivers Such as NVidias but dont seem to give a damn about open source Games, Atleast untill the Topic of Wine comes up. Then they bitch about Win32 and DirectX being a bad set or APIs. I'M SICK OF THE DOUBLE STANDARD. One moment its ok to have a closed game and then the next it isnt unless its linux native.

    Anyone that knows jack about wine knows the biggest part isnt the emulator its WINELIB the free OPEN SOURCE win32 api for *NIX. The goal is to have a compleat working free win32 clone so any devolper could recomple the application and it WOULD BE LINUX NATIVE. You got that you RMS FREAKS, Its a API, not the goal of a EMULATOR.

    Think of it like this I could port GTK to the USER and GDI componets of windows then if i compiled GNOME on windows it would be WINDOWS NATIVE.

    Ok I've had my rant and relased some anger, time to watch the KARMA drop.

    Isolation
    not just a handle its a way of life
  • As many people have noted, the Windows API is a moving target. Microsoft love to change it, and add to it. WINE has already managed to keep up with Microsoft pretty well, and once WINE has managed at least 99% of the Windows API, most of the work is done.

    Even when Microsoft go and add or change the API again, compared to what WINE has already achieved it shouldn't be too much work to add the new functions into WINE. After all, Microsoft can't change the API too much, without breaking compatibility.

  • Re:(Offtopic) (Score:3)

    by swinge ( 176850 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:53AM (#1040879)
    Where do you have the phrase 'hee hee' from?... Why not just 'hehe' or something?

    • "hee hee" is a mirthful giggle
    • "heh heh" is a more arch, conspiritorial laugh
    • "hehe" is a mispelling of "heh heh"
  • It actually wouldn't be that hard for Smilin' Willy to make the Win9x/Dos stuff obselete. Look what they are doing to the NT4 certified technicians. Bye-bye.
    Windows ME (Win 98 Third Edition) is promising to get rid of more Dos stuff, and include the "tweaked" networking from 2k. Once Bill merges Win ME with Windows NT 2000, all that 9x stuff will be gone, and users forced to upgrade. At this point he can change the API, and at the same time he can thwart the efforts of Samba, since the Win ME/NT 2000 protocols for filesharing are so obfuscated and murky. This could easily happen within 1-2 years.
  • Actually you got it wrong with OS/2. IBM licensed the Windows API and early Win32's. They never reversed engineered anything as they were once in partnership.

    Add to the list of Wine products "Project Odin" which takes it one step futher and allows you to convert the Win32 binary into an OS/2 Binary alongside emulating the program or providing the winelib interface to the OS/2 presentation manager

    Had IBM done the marketing Win32's as we know it today would be a subset of OS/2.. But IBM lost its balls and lost the os market to Microsoft.

    But it is interesting how this is an achievement, soon 64 big computing will be out and another 7 years later we will be emulating the win64's :)

  • Ermm, sorry to disturb you, but it already does (according to some rare comments of users). I have IE 3 running here, and some others say IE 5 works.
  • I just tried a newer version of wine and was supprised at how much it has progressed since I first tried it. I was able to get Netscape and IE both to work under Linux. I did have one problem with Flash and Shockwave not being detected correctly, but the fact that they both ran, means that probably in another year or two I'll have no reason to run windows.

    send flames > /dev/null

  • Changing OSes is an enourmous task.

    Changing platforms is an enormous task. OS's don't necessarily have to be. E.g. moving from Win95 to Win98 is really simple provided things like profiles are properly setup (network profiles). Lots of organisations have a combination of both OS's on older and newer machine's.

    You will start to get REAL problems when you move to a radically different/incompatible platform like WindowsNT or Linux. Such migrations should take years. (And when you do it faster you haven't thought it out all properly so you are going to have even more problems... :-)

  • "As for the Office software, Sun Microsystems has an Office Suite called Sun StarOffice. It's the only Dot Com Office Suite around."

    Dot Com Office Suite? Even someone from Sun would feel stupid calling it that. The only reason ANYONE would call it a dot com office suite is because it isn't makeing anyone any money.

    And here's a free clue, Star Office SUCKS its buggy, its bloated, and it has an irritating habit of corrupting large documents so badly that I have to go into my backups and fetch an uncorrupted version back. Its quite good at trashing windows machines as well, oh well at least it does something good.

    Seriously I can't see Star Office getting any better, the beta sun released a few weeks back is a major improvement, but AbiWord is a whole order of magnitude better and it has a memory footprint 15 times smaller than StarOffice.

  • Please someone write a new HOWTO for StarCraft. There is an old one, but it does not talk about new Wines (do you still get the zergling rush problems?) and it assumes too much (IMO) familiarity with Wine. I would be grateful.

  • I see. But there is some clarification... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    in order here...

    Lotus' position with porting Smartsuite to OS/2 was their problem, not IBM's.

    Win32-OS/2 is not an IBM project. It is a project of the OS/2 Community and is now Odin. They (Odin developers) ran Lotus Notes R5 Windows version on OS/2 at CeBIT this year.

    IBM did not fail in developing Win32 support for OS/2. At a cost of $1000 per copy (Microsoft's price to IBM), it was a no-brainer decision not to implement. The programmers, feeling a challenge, set out to crack the code. It has been running on OS/2 for years in house. It will not be allowed outside due to legal issues.

    'til dawn...

    Silver Surfer
  • I don't know if I'd have the willpower to stay on a project for seven years..I'd just reach a point where I'd figure it'd just be easier to dual boot...

  • The problem is that usualy when you upgrade redhat you're also upgrading most of your software with it.

    When you upgrade windows you're doing just that upgrading windows. Since Ms almost always make upgrades backward compatible, they can surely leave them untouched.

    Red hat on the other hand has to deal with open source software, this means that sometime when the users/developers think that some configuration is broken they simply change the way the program is configured. When this happen red hat has 2 options leave your conf file and maybe tbreaking the program configuration or installing a new one that will work, but not as expected. Those are the files .rpmnew and .rpmorig.

    I agree with you that wine is not the last nail in Ms coffin. In fact there are people that argue that the fact that OS/2 (do you remember?) ran win 3.1 applications so well was the final nail in Os/2's coffin, since companies thought "if os/2 users can run my software now, why would I port it?". Could wine turn into this? I don't know, linux has today more power than Os/2 ever had. Many software houses are begining to see linux as a MS free market, and naturaly a easier one. And the fact that it is open sourced, is a bless, because everione has the same access to the internals, making everything more fair.

    I belive hardly in Linux, and I am eagerly wainting for the I will be able to format my FAT32 partitions into ext2. But this day still far away, I have a scanner that refuses to work under linux (the people from sane forgot the poor people that have the cheaper paralell scanners). Also my printer works best in windows, witch means that when I need realy high quality prints I must reboot. But on the other hand I don't use any software that is windows only, anymore, and 99% of he time my computer is running linux. :-)

    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"

  • Here is a very real situation that is challenging my roommate, a systems administrator for a remanufacturing company. Although most, if not all, of the PC's and servers that run at his site run Linux (Debian, Redhat, and Mandrake), there is one situation he cannot avoid. Distributors, OEMs, and customers often send parts catalogs in the form of Win32 database embedded programs.

    He has tried in the past to run these odd programs under the Wine libs, but without success. Because these catalogs are critical to the operation of the business, he is getting pressured to come up with a solution. There are really only a few options he can try, each has it's own advantages and disadvantages:

    • Run a few dedicated Windows boxes and provide physical access
      • Adv: No worries about whether the program(s) will run or not
      • Dis: Limited resources for people to use. Therefore, use-by-demand becomes an issue.
      • Dis: Inconvenience of having to provide physical workspace for said machines, and inconvenience for workers to leave their traditional work environments to use the computer "lab" to do work.
    • Provide remote access to dedicated Windows boxen via VNC
      • Adv: Users have access to Windows apps w/o having to leave their traditional work environment
      • Dis: VNC is not the most efficient use of your network.
      • Dis: Concurrent use becomes a problem with limited resources.
      • Personal Opinion: VNC is great for remote management, but is quite annoying when trying to operate for extended periods of time.
    • Purchase and run a Windows Terminal Server + Citrix Metaframe box.
      • Adv: Citrix provides platform independent clients. (It runs in Linux wonderfully!)
      • Adv: Concurrent use issues are handled by the server's licensing management utilities
      • Adv: Citrix's ICA protocol is MUCH more efficient and thinner than VNC's.
      • Adv: Only one box to administrate
      • Dis: It's Windoze...
      • Dis: Licensing for M$ AND Citrix...$$$$
      • Dis: You NEED a box with LOTS of RAM, fast disk speed, and lots of Network bandwidth/speed. More $$$$$$.....
      • Personal Opinion: YANTMTA (Yet another NT Machine to Administrate). M$ TSE is OK to administrate, but there are a lot of quirks you have to work around. It's VERY challenging trying to get the server to run flawlessly (quite impossible, actually). Some software simply does not run well in the TSE environment. Tie in the issues of authentication/authentification...you need to use Windows PDC #@$%@#$ again...

    Of course, if Wine were to run these applications flawlessly (or at least adequately) under Linux, a simple NFS containing the programs in question would provide network access to all machines on the network. His problems would be solved.

    The point of this whole excerpt is this, although Wine may not be necessary in all cases, as Linux native software is available as alternatives to Windows software, it is certainly can be advantageous. It will always have a place in your Linux/*NIX "bag-o-tricks".

  • Wine 1.0 will be the Stable API release (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:11AM (#1040891) Homepage

    BTW I think ygotta hand it to the Wine developers. They're catching Microsoft up. You can now get Office 97 to run, though it wobbles a lot. They've managed to close in on the moving target which is the Windows API. IBM (OS/2), Sun (WABI) and others have tried and failed. Within the forseeable future it will be possible to execute the average Win95 program under X on x86 Unix. That's really a remarkable achievement, more so as it's free.

  • that's the kind of announcement you would expect from something that has to do with windows ...

  • Re:Wine + Antitrust = Final Nail? (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @04:05AM (#1040893) Homepage
    The latest installs are no-brainers, and Wine means that Linux will have more applications than Windows (all the Windows apps + all the pre-existing Linux apps).

    I beg to differ. Recently, I performed both an upgrade of my Redhat 6.1 installation (to 6.2) and my Windows 98 installation (to Windows 2000). While I would consider myself to be well-skilled in the operation and installation of both, the Windows 2000 installation was by far easier. Windows 2000 easily recognized my current settings, my current programs, and my current hardware and moved everything over the new system. About the only trouble spot during the entire installation was when it detected and changed refresh rates on my monitor, causing the monitor to go blank until I turned it off and on. Redhat, on the other hand, didn't save the majority of my files, opting instead to save them as .rpmorig files, causing me to have to go in and reinstitute many of the changes that I had made to get fix silly problems in their initialization routines specific to my system. By no means was it difficult, but had I been a novice, I might have been screwed.

    Wine itself isn't done yet, and the timetable hasn't been established yet for when it will be. They're just now preparing to begin to get ready to be done. That's a really vague idea of where they are. That's like saying, "Hey, we're gonna get to 1.0 sometime, so let's see what we have to do to be ready for it." It's not as if we're talking about a stable beta here that just needs to be tweaked. Wine still needs some major work to be at the level where it will threaten Microsoft.

    Linux advocates have a tendency to over-embellish their influence, position, and future. Even if Wine came out tomorrow, it would not be the final nail in Microsoft's coffin. The antitrust suit hasn't even been settled yet, much less made its way through the appeals process (remember AT&T? IBM?). Add to that the fact that businesses are not just going to dump their current corporate infrastructure to run something just like it on another operating system. Why not? Because it takes time to take an NT-based system administrator and convert him to a Unix-based system admin. Or, it takes time to hire. And many companies don't make those sorts of technical decisions beyond the realm of the sysadmin anyway, so is that sysadmin going to replace himself? I think not.

    Wine's a good thing, and it means good things for Linux, but I don't think it's threatening Microsoft in any way.

  • IMHO, far from being backwards, this could prove to be Linux' crowning triumph. Not because WINE allows people to use Windows products, but because OS' will no longer be viewable as single, closed entities in their own right, but as interfaces.

    From the user's point of view, the difference between emulation or just offering the API is meaningless - he just sees that a Windows program is running under Linux. But I'm not sure whether this will be the "crowning triumph" - remember OS/2, which could also run Win3.1 apps?

    WINE will have to continuously adapt to MS's ever-changing Windows APIs - only then it will be a good alternative for the "average" user. (Personally, I wouldn't mind if not all windoze apps were supported - as long as StarCraft runs fine! ;-)

  • Last time I checked Tribes didn't work (that was months ago). What type of hoops did you jump through to get it to work?
  • No, the Beavis and Butthead laugh is spelled "huh huh" or maybe "huhuhuh" or something similar.

  • When all the dust settles, operating systems that run Win32 apps will be a commodity anybody can build

    I'd take it farther than that. Win32 will be the next Java: a pseudo-ubiquitous application environment sitting on top of the native operating system, with its specifications controlled by a single company.

    "We got tired of waiting for the Wine project to implement the Windows 5.5 APIs so we did it ourselves, but support on BeOS is kind of dodgy..." It would be really ironic if IBM became the leading supplier of Windows-compliant open-source operating systems.

  • Actually, no it is not an emulator. It is a replacement for the Win32 API. It is no more "emulated" on X than "GTK+" is emulated on X.

    That said, there is a program that comes along with it called "wine" which allows you to execute Windows binaries. There is no bytecode emulation taking place, though.

  • Re:Just a thought... (Score:3)

    by kaphka ( 50736 ) <1nv7b001@sneakemail.com> on Monday May 29, 2000 @08:57AM (#1040899)
    Does this mean I will be able to get the ILOVEYOU virus to work under Linux?
    WINE still lacks the main feature that ILOVEYOU depends on: stupid users.

    We're getting there, though. Give it a year or two.
  • Oh, they have made several additions to their API. IE is one, Direct X is another. DirectX is supported on Win9x and Win2000. They can just add some nifty features to it and some parts of the game industry will follow. Same with IE, while not many depend on it (aoart from MS products Office...) some use the additional features. (In-Programm Preview for HTML, Edit Control for HTML...)

    daniel
  • Now for my obligatory BeOS spiel. Wine is not only helping LInux and other Unicies, but alternative OSs in general. In particular, Wine has already been compiled on BeOS, and things are moving at a fair clip to get the thing working. Wine is really a godsend to some of these alternative alternative OSs because it will allow them (when it's done) to have a body of functional software that allows users to complete some important tasks. Unlike Linux, these OSs are missing a few critical apps, and what better way is there to quickly fill this gap than get good emulation (I know it's not emulation per se, but for lack of a better word) going so Windows apps can be used. If you have any coding talent, support the BeWine project at bewine.loungenet.org. It seems that it is pretty low profile and not enough people know about it.
  • DirectX would have a hard time being ported into Linux. Like NT, Linux has a significant admistration layer, and it wouldn't meld to well with the rest of the OS. Unlike OpenGL, which has a higher level interface to the OS, DirectX has to be down there in the core. Unless the Linux gods officially bless a DirectX port and integrate it deep into the kernel, it will be hard to get a good, fast DirectX port going without forking the kenrel.

  • They currently (via Office) support 4 fairly distinct versions of Win32: Win95/98, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000. So-called Linux fragmentation has *nothing* on these guys. Given that nearly all application software in the forseeable future is going to be supporting these same 3 platforms it makes the task of running it much easier. That in turn buys time to implement whatever trick new things get added in Win2000, Windows Millenium, etc, etc.

    Eh. If you've ever gone through the soul-crushing process of reading microsoft documentation, it's almost always lots of small changes. NT does more things because it's more powerful, in some ways. It does less things in other areas because it's designed to be more secure. Windows CE does nothing because it's a chopper of an OS. But skipping Windows CE, the subset of API calls that work on all of the Windowsish OSes is pretty large. It's sizeable even with CE thrown in, actually.

    So this isn't going to win Wine's game. It's not even going to get them free throws.

  • I have _no_ clue what you're supposed to be saying with "[SoftPC] leaves Wine/VMWare standing in the dust.". It seems like you mean that it's faster. Here's a little bit of info: it's not faster to emulate an i386 on a Mac than it is to run the code natively on a similar-speed PC. Try using the software instead of pulling propaganda out of your ass.

    Wine is progressing nicely, and can run thousands of Windows applications at nearly FULL native Windows speed, and in some cases even _faster_ because the underlying OS is faster still. VMWare, which I also run, is closer to being "emulation" because of the virtual machine concept's use of kernel modifications in Windows/Linux/FreeBSD to achieve it, but it is still almost as fast as running apps under Windows itself, and is completely compatible with the apps because Windows itself is actually running.

    There is no possibility that SoftPC/SoftWindows are as fast as VMWare. The only way that could occur would be dynamic recompilation, and in that case you would need horrendous amounts of memory and/or disk space to emulate an i386 at near-native speed.

    --

  • I would direct your attention to the second page of this Byte Article [byte.com] on what's ahead for Netscape, Apple, micros~1, and Palm.

    The article talks about what's coming out in ms Office 2001 and how ms is using their desktop monopoly to force their way into PDA market (something their OS software hasn't allowed them to do).

    From the article:
    Ah, but what if you have a Palm organizer? Isn't this new-fangled PIM redundant, since you're already working with a (portable, don't forget) calendar, to-do list and contact list? It seems that way to me, but Microsoft says the new application will synchronize with Palm's address book, tasks, and notes.     E-mail remains a problem. Clearly, the mail integration offered by Office 2001 is its main selling point when compared to the Palm solution. Still, if you have a Palm, it seems that Office 2001 will complicate your life rather than simplify it.

    [sigh].

    This is an omission of choice for purely marketing reasons. ms knows how important the PDA and wireless market will be. They know they have a poor product in their OS. They know they need at least a 40 share to be relevant to the platform in the future. So they ignore the overwhelming demands of their users to "just make it easy" and choose to intentianly place roadblocks between Office and Palm. Forcing their users to stay locked into the "ms way" and punish the users that don't.
    ___

  • Just check out http://www.winehq.com/Apps [winehq.com] and search for the programs you're interested in. You have to be aware that the revievers are not necessarily talking about the same WINE snapshot, so look for the most recent reviews.

  • How many projects, even OSS ones, have in their home page a link to 'competitor projects?'

    That's GREAT!

    Unless the only reason for it is that Wine people had zero time for upgrading their web site ...

  • I've always used 'hehe' as a combination of 'hee hee' and 'heh' :)
  • This is a legal question. The answer is we don't know yet. First, the judge must come to a decision on the remedy -- the outcome of the trial. If the remedy does open up the Windows API, it still isn't settled. The appeals process kicks in at that point. At the very earliest, the case will be be over in a year.

    Disclaimer: I am a law student.

  • This is a bad idea. The WINE team wants to be "pure" and wants to do this as clean-room as possible.
  • For anyone who hasn't seen programs running under Wine, I have some screenshots here: http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/wine.html [pla-netx.com]
  • I took the plunge earlier this year and decided that I was going to use Linux to write my dissertation (I had it installed for a while but never used it as all my apps were in Win98). I grabbed two copies of star office and loved the way I could operate it in exactly the same way either side of the dual boot. It took me a while to figure out how to do a few things but I soon figured it out. Now (2 months later) I hardly boot windows. I found SO under linux was much more stable than MS Word under Win 98. SO under Win 98 was more stable than Word but not as stable as SO Linux. Overall I was very impressed - the only feature missing from star office is a grammar checker. I had absolutlely no problems formatting paragraphs - and I really loved the crop dialogue for embedding images. MS Office 90 quid? Star Office free / or $1.99 from cheapbytes if you're on a 56k modem
  • I think the guys are heros. This is one open source project that could potentially "eat Microsoft's lunch" as Bill Gates would put it. You know embrace, extend....

  • To pull this back on topic: how platform-independent is WINE? I'm guessing that it's x86-only (since it's running Windows x86 binaries) but does it work (well) on *BSD, Solaris x86, Be, SCO, etc?

    I belive how it works is that it hacks ELF symbols into looking like PE symbols (PE is the format Windows executables use, and they're pretty close - I've heard ELF described as "PE without the cruft") in shared libraries. Of course there's other stuff to emulate having a C: drive, etc, but the main thing in the shared libraries implementing the Windows API and something that will make a Windows executable link with a ELF library. So if it's x86 and ELF, it's probably good to go.

    Since I was a bit curious myself, I looked at the Wine FAQ:

    UNIXes currently being tested for Wine compatibility include Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris x86. NetBSD, OpenBSD, Unixware, and SCO OpenServer 5 worked at one time, but Wine now requires kernel-level threads which are not currently available (or understood by the Wine team) in those platforms...

    There are side efforts underway to port Wine to the Alpha, OS/2, and BeOS platforms.

    Even funkier question (to which I don't expect an answer): can it be compiled on an Alpha-based UNIX system and run Windows NT for Alpha binaries?

    That would be pretty interesting (though of course I have to ask just what apps are there for NT on Alpha?!?!?). It would probably be easier to run everything (Wine and the Windows apps) in an x86 emulator, though you'd need a fast machine (which, happily enough, an Alpha is very good at being).
  • I have to agree completely on the ease on installation issue. Linux installs are confusing as hell to someone who hasn't used it (i.e. me). While I'm only a casual PC user, I've been using one my whole life (I was weaned on an Apple IIe), so I'm a very competent one.

    Maybe it's the fact that I've used an MS OS most of my life (MSDOS 2 anyone?) that it's hard to transition. It's like learning a second language once you've grown up and only spoken one your whole life. MSDOS is like English to me. But when I tried to install Linux (RedHat and Turbolinux), being a Linux novice, I had a bitch of a time. Sure I got it up and running, but I had no idea if I'd actually configured it the way I should have. Which programs do I install? I've never heard of any of these, besides GIMP, Wine, and a couple others... I'm not a programmer, but do I need these development tools to compile programs, or can I do that without them? How DO I compile programs? This filesystem is weird... I've hosed installs (beyond MY ability to repair them. Remember, I'm a novice) just trying to change little things.

    It's an AWFUL steep learning curve. I honestly don't have a week to teach myself all of this, nor do I want to spend that much time, nor do I want to dual boot, because that eats alot of my usable disk space. I want an install comparable to my Win2k setup, not a 200 meg command line-only setup.

    To summarize:

    Linux is hard, even to "experienced" PC users. It's VASTLY different than Windows, from a Linux newbie's point of view. Maybe the similarities pop up as you learn, I dunno, but they're not there when you're starting off.

    Windows DOES suck. My PC is getting unstable as I type this because I tried to play an mpg, and SOMETHING (who knows what) went wrong... damn windows. But games are a big reason I'm into PCs, and without Windows, I wouldn't have many games to play. Wine is ideally the answer to that. I eagerly await the day that I can play other cool games besides Quake in Linux.

    To summarize further: Most people, including me, will take the evils of bad software over "Office KINDA works in this release...". I think easy-to-use Linux + Wine WILL cause a dramatic shift from MS. It would certainly switch me over. But that time isn't anytime soon, unless some major thing happened tomorrow.
  • Even if MS suddenly started adding APIs to try and kill WINE, do you really think all the applications for Windows would follow suit?

    They can always back-port the stuff - I'm sure that for at least the next few years any DirectX updates will be made for 95, 98, and 2000.

  • What I never quite get about Denebas for Linux was how to get the modifications they implemented in their wine version. I thought it was supposed to release them but never found it at their site or got answer. Some were quite good, giving the window management right to window manager instead of simulating the windows minimize on to the desktop.
    Also does anyone tried the last version with the last glibc and XFree 4.0 ? I remember a month ago it was quite broken unless I removed the openGL support or compiled against a different one. Now that I compiled glibc 2.1.3, April wine doesn't run at all.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • But does it run MS office?
    MS Office is still one of the biggest crutches of windows users, especially when most people dont use much more than WordPad/Write + spell checker.

    (i just know some bastard is going to moderate me down for no particular reason, but a response would be really appreciated.)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've got Juno 4.0 build 5 and Yeah Write 1.6 for Win32 running under wine. If the new snapshot allows me to run Homesite, I'm set. I'll never have to run Windows unless I want to play Planescape or Sims! This is so exciting!!!

    Freedom!

    The great thing about wine is it allows us to run various windows applications under Linux. I want to migrate our office to Linux, and leave Windows in the dust. Sadly, we need Act 4.0 to run, as well as Office. (The sales staff relies heavily on the integration between Office and Act, and there's no Staroffice, Applixware or KOffice integration available)

    Our sales staff just doesn't want to leave Act, since they've customized it so much, and it works so well.

    BTW: When will we be able to submit new application to the Wine database?? I've got a few listings to add, but the "database is closed to new additions."


    Matthew Miller, [50megs.com]

  • Many people underestimate badly the need to run Windows apps

    Hmmm. Let me think about this. I guess in many ways you're right. But is it really a *need* to run Windows software, or is it just a comfort-zone thing? Most people are now comfortable with Windows, and a lot of them don't see it's obvious bugs as a reason to change over. It all has to do with perceived reality/actual reality. Tech savvy people are more inclined to get to the guts of things - the under-reality, rather than the flashy illusion that is Windows. But for most people, this isn't the case.

    We're not only talking about office software here

    Ok, I agree about the utilities to a certain point, but even that's not a total argument. Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] is a prime example of small utils that you're talking about, usually with full source code too.

    I think where WINE could really come in handy is for entertainment and esoteric software. I mean, look at the multitude of games for Windows, if WINE managed to get up to a level where it could run most of those without a problem, it would be an extreme boon Linux and other UNIX platforms. but besides games and some very specialized software, I think that UNIXen are most of the way there already:

    As for the Office software, Sun Microsystems [sun.com] has an Office Suite called Sun StarOffice. It's the only Dot Com Office Suite around. What is a Dot Com office suite? Simple. An Office Suite with unrivaled power and usability, which allows you to do everything at the same place. It runs on a variety of platforms, including Linux, and the ultra-stable Solaris(tm) platform. [sun.com] What makes the Solaris platform unique? It's scalable, reliable, and proven. It runs on both Intel and the more robust SPARC [sun.com] platforms. With the functionality of StarOffice, so with the robustness of the Solaris platform and the multitude of free and commercial software available, the only thing that really seems to be missing is Game titles. Databases are there. Enterprise support is there. Business applications are getting there very fast. Looks like a bright future for Linux and Open source in general, especially now that major players in the industry like Sun Microsystems [sun.com] have released their own Open Source licenses.

    Charles Balthazar Rotherwood,

    - Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform

    - Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris

  • I see that everyone is hailing this as the next glorious step of the revolution. Well, that's all great and fine. But let me play the devil's advocate for a moment.

    This is terrible! Wine must never be allowed to reach 1.0 status. The success of the revolution is hinged on a windows emulator that really works for applets and some other things, but can't get any real work done. This attracts software developers and users with its promise, but then when they figure out that it doesn't work perfectly yet, they move on to *real* Linux apps. This keeps Linux healthy. If Wine does truly succeed, developers and users will still come to Linux, but they'll never migrate from the Windows model. Microsoft (or just the "Soft," if it's broken up) then will change the API, and Wine will be broken again. Everyone will move back to Windows.

    Come on people. We don't want another OS/2 on our hands.

    Remember, just playing the devil's advocate. Go Wine.

  • I already debunked this "MS will break Wine" once on this article :) Cliff's Notes version: just 'cuz MS adds stuff doesn't mean the 10 billion apps and users will all upgrade immediately (and in the case of software, stop supporting things like Win95 that still have a tens-of-millions installed base).

    And don't forget stuff like Deneba's Canvas for Linux, which is a native Linux ELF binary linked against WineLib. That way developers can have their cake and eat it too - it's a near-zero-risk way to bring out a Linux port and test the market. If it sells, onwards to Qt or GTK or whatever. If not, well, at least it didn't cost much in engineering time.
  • I beg to differ. Recently, I performed both an upgrade of my Redhat 6.1 installation (to 6.2) and my Windows 98 installation (to Windows 2000). While I would consider myself to be well-skilled in the operation and installation of both, the Windows 2000 installation was by far easier. Windows 2000 easily recognized my current settings, my current programs, and my current hardware and moved everything over the new system.

    Having just hosed my primary desktop PC, I've now got the time to play around with the various OSs I've got lying around. I've got a bit of an oddball system and usually have to resort to some tweaking to get everything humming.

    To cut a long story short, Solaris 7 (x86) was, freakily enough, the best at getting everything properly configured. This was up against Windows 2000, Windows 98, FreeBSD 4, Debian 2.2. RedHat 6.2 and BeOS 5. I found it a little off that the poor stepchild of Solaris SPARC was better able to handle my system than a number of OSs whose bread-and-butter is x86.

    To pull this back on topic: how platform-independent is WINE? I'm guessing that it's x86-only (since it's running Windows x86 binaries) but does it work (well) on *BSD, Solaris x86, Be, SCO, etc?

    Even funkier question (to which I don't expect an answer): can it be compiled on an Alpha-based UNIX system and run Windows NT for Alpha binaries?

  • Some posters seem to have the idea that WINE (together with Samba)
    make it much more logical to use Linux as the backbone of a mixed
    UNIX/Windows shop, with Linux displacing windows. One could equally
    argue that NT & Win2k's support for POSIX means that the displacement
    could work exactly the other way.

    If anyone has any experience, I would be interested to know just how
    good MS's POSIX support is. How difficult would it to build a Linux
    distro on top of NT? (Debian NT?)
  • It could, but PCMCIA support is quite a bit easier. Also, the kernel still has to have some sembelance of what PCMCIA is (in this case a bus) in order to load the module. Sure DirectX could be loaded as a module, but it would still need a great deal of access to hardware without going through the kernel, and would still have to be an integral part of the kernel. It might be loaded from a module, but the kernel would still have to include new code to allow the module to take over the system. (What do you think DX is for? Total control baby ;)
  • "At".

    We poke fun "at" a person.
    We make fun "of" a person.

    I'm assuming that English is not your first language, and Heaven knows it's one of the hardest to learn because of things like this.

    If, however, English _is_ your first language, then you should feel, very, very ashamed. This is kids stuff.

    "AT" because anything which is to be poked has to be poked "at" something. I poke "at" you. You poke "at" me. We poke "at"...pokable things.

    "Of" because "making" is the act of fabrication; we are making this person "into" fun.

    I make fun "of" you, because I'm making you into an object "of" fun for others. See?

    If this seems like pedantic crap to some of you: too bad. Nobody ever mistyped 'of' for 'to', so it's not a 'typo' ("an error caused by hitting adjacent keys on a typewriter"); it's a linguistic misunderstanding. As such it belongs to the author of the previous message, and I'm correcting him/her, so bog off and mind yer own, OK?
  • The WINE logo on Slashdot is looking kinda ugly. Couldn't someone please smooth out those jagged edges?

    Hemos, Malda, whoever: Use this: topicwine.gif [drexel.edu] or even better, this: topicwine.jpg [drexel.edu]
    Using a gif is just inexcusable here. The jpeg format compressed it much better, and have we forgotten about the UNISYS GIF patent issue so quickly?

    OT RANT: It seems as if /. talks big about how they are going to boycott this, that, or the other, but then a couple weeks later we see movie reviews and gifs being used where they don't even belong. Come on! If we're going to seriously take on companies' bullying over IP issues, we need to have a unified front!
    /OT RANT
    KARMA--;

    And really, who is responsible for that color scheme?

    All else aside, I think WINE could be THE Killer App for Linux, as far as getting it established on the desktop of the average user is concerned.

    Cheers,
    Tim

  • YAKP (Score:2)

    by eries ( 71365 )
    Just Yet Another Kudos Post, but talk about perserverance... I remember reading about WINE back in what - 1992? Nice work guys, this is one of those quiet, non-hype amazing projects that is going to make a huge difference in the long run.

    What's the team looking for non-wizards to contribute?

    Want to work at Transmeta? MicronPC? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?

  • A working WINE would be good in that it would allow the running of MSIE, as well as Shockwave and other plug-ins. Then at last one could play SissyFight [sissyfight.com] without shelling out for VMWare and the RAM required to run it.

    It might even be more stable than Netscape...

  • Beginnings... (Score:5)

    by Ravagin ( 100668 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:13AM (#1040956)
    The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release

    (my bold)

    So we're still at the preliminary commencement portion of the preporatory stage, eh?
    Hee hee. Sorry.
    ===
    -J

  • Re:Wine 1.0 will be the Stable API release (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:14AM (#1040957) Homepage
    Hmm the top half of my original message got munched. I was saying that Wine 1.0 will be a version with a core of functionality and a stable API which will be supportable in future versions of Wine. Obviously this matters for Winelib (compiling X apps that use the windows API) rather than for Wine (executing Windows binaries). The idea's not to get perfect Windows emulation for 1.0, it's to have a frozen API in a state which can be supported through future versions. (Also getting documentation into a good state is a priority)
  • Is it stable using a non-stable version of Wine?

    Sort of, yes. They've written it around the current facilities/limitations of Wine (and built on Wine) because they wanted something out of the door Now. Since they've been working on both code bodies (Office and Wine) I imagine there's a good chance they know what they're doing and have only used stable stuff.
  • Media Player is audio-only at this time. And there are easier ways to play mp3s on Linux ;)

    <plug> I'm sort of working on the msvideo stuff. I need more hours in the day though :) See http://www.ug.cs.usyd.edu.au/~bbaetz/win e/ [usyd.edu.au] for very very early patches with known bugs. (ie it doesn't display anything useful at all.)</plug>

    Hopefully I'll have more time to work on it in the (short) uni holidays in a few weeks. Theres also a cosource.com request for this, but I haven't applied for it because I don't have the time.

  • With the regulations that will/are kicking in due to the anti-trust trial, will the Wine team be able to see source code -- or at a minimum the "missing" specs -- needed to find out how the Windows API really works?

  • Seems kinda like a backwards concept (Score:3)

    by _Mustang ( 96904 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @03:19AM (#1040963)
    ..the very idea of emulating Windows on Linux. Sure, there is the argument that it allows people to move over to Linux and continue to use the software they have invested in. Sure there are any number of other positive reasons to use it -but when everything is taken into consideration the final reality is that this reduces the incentive for companies to write good code that can be easily ported. Native code? Why bother..

    Should credit be given to the team for their hard work and effort - absolutely! But I recall this project having it's roots in a time when Linux wasn't in a position to *demand* native applications..
  • My Complaint comes in when people bitch about open source drivers [...] but don't seem to give a damn about open source games

    If you make a hierarchy of which closed-source software has the most potential to restrict freedom, [single-user] games come fairly low. The reason that the software market is such a mess is that, to get anything useful done, several pieces of software have to interact - this is even more true if you want to communicate with somebody else's computer. So the "lock-in" potential of software can be high - you might be forced to use one piece of software just so that you can use another. Compare this to, say, novels, where you only need to buy the books you want to read, and you'll see the problem.


    Now to my mind, [single user] games are more like novels than like software, in that no other program depends upon a game. A game might tie you to a particular OS, but if (say) Wine can make it run on an open OS then this problem is alleviated.


    OTOH closed-source drivers have a bit more lock-in potential because a piece of hardware *is* dependent on them. If the hardware specs are also secret (winmodems, hp printers etc) this could be quite serious. If the specs are available and freely implementable then an open driver can be written if a sufficient number of people want it.


    So, to summarise, I think that it's more important that drivers are open-source than it is that [single user] games are.

  • Wine Works Towards 1.0...


    As opposed to a -1924562 release? :-)

    A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."

  • Ahh, but MS has walled themselves in (Score:3)

    by Ian Schmidt ( 6899 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @05:03AM (#1040972)
    They currently (via Office) support 4 fairly distinct versions of Win32: Win95/98, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000. So-called Linux fragmentation has *nothing* on these guys. Given that nearly all application software in the forseeable future is going to be supporting these same 3 platforms it makes the task of running it much easier. That in turn buys time to implement whatever trick new things get added in Win2000, Windows Millenium, etc, etc.

    Even if MS suddenly started adding APIs to try and kill WINE, do you really think all the applications for Windows would follow suit? Not likely - software publishers wanna make money, and so they'll continue to run on all Win32 versions.

  • Just a thought... (Score:4)

    by Chalst ( 57653 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @05:10AM (#1040975) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean I will be able to get the ILOVEYOU virus to work under Linux?

  • Wine's Status (Score:4)

    by shren ( 134692 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @05:14AM (#1040978) Homepage Journal

    From the newsletter:

    1.0 is not the end. The 1.0 release will not mean that Wine will run everything out there, maybe not even half of it. What it will mean, will be that the core, the foundation of all the functionality contained within, has finally been stabilized, and that from that point, Wine should be a robust and stable platform to implement additional functionality on top of, i.e. to implement additional MS dlls, and to port applications to Unix with Winelib.

    I think what they are looking for is the famous quote: "This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

    Rock on, guys.

  • Media Player is audio-only at this time. And there are easier ways to play mp3s on Linux ;)

    There is a metric TON of Corel code in the current Wine tree, and more is added daily. The main reason Corel's tree is separate is so they can stablize things (and hack specifically for their stuff if they need to) without interference from the main Wine developers. Once Corel ships their next Wine(Lib) based stuff there should be an almost complete merge, except for any dirty hacks :)
  • While Wine is great / gets greater for all the old applications that folks would like to use, the best tribute the the *other* projects in the free software world is that not everyone awaits it anxiously.

    True, the WordPerfect suite uses it, but for the most part ... who needs it!? :) (A semi-serious question, as in, "What specific apps do you want Wine to run?")

    Imagine the future with:

    (The distro of your choice, plus:)
    - KDE 2.0 - KDE is already quite nice
    - Eazel - looks insanely promising
    - Gnome 2.0 - even 1.2 is jawdroppingly slick

    There are plenty of competent solitaire games for Linux already;)

    On the other hand, unless Adobe or Quark get on the ball, Wine may still be the fastest way to use a full-fledged DTP program under Linux. Has anyone had success with that?

    timothy
  • ..preparing to begin on the road towards..

    So, exactly what kind of time frame is that, Hemos? ;-)
  • With the restrictions of the antitrust trial including the opening or at least the "timely" publication of the Windows API specs, and a stable Wine both not too far away, I think Bill may be feeling just a little bit close to the fire: after all, the difference between Windows and Linux used to be ease of installation and variety of apps available. The latest installs are no-brainers, and Wine means that Linux will have more applications than Windows (all the Windows apps + all the pre-existing Linux apps).

    The death of Microsoft is no longer something we wish would happen. It's now a practical possibility, and may even be inevitable.

  • While I respect the amount of work that has been put into Wine, I have to wonder why they are doing it. The Win32 API is a continually evolving and complex target. As IBM found out, Microsoft is hostile towards anyone who tries to emulate Windows. If you release a perfect emulation today, Microsoft will add or change something tomorrow.
  • The built in posix compliance is very basic - there is a product called interix [microsoft.com] which turns nt into Unix - I'm not sure if they got the official Unix cert from Open yet, but I remember that they were going to. Dunno if it actually works though ...
  • Is there a way to run Netscape plugins for Windows under Netscape for Linux ?

    I fiddled around with Wine last year, got a few apps to work, but was unsucessful with either Quickbooks or browser plug-ins.

  • Media Player is audio-only at this time. And there are easier ways to play mp3s on Linux ;)

    But WiMP (WindowsMedia Player) plays all the Microsoft trade-secret/patented formats (wma, asf, etc.) and XMMS doesn't. Now all we're missing is QuickTime (MPEG 4) audio.

    (WindowsMedia is shoved together because WiMP also runs on Mac computers; therefore, WindowsMedia is a separate technology from Windows OS).
  • For some companies, it is certainly not just a "comfort zone thing".

    Many companies use software that was custom written by consultants just for them. It has their business rules coded right into it and perfectly fits their day to day operations. I know - I have written some. There is no way they can afford to have it rewritten for Linux, they could barely afford it in the first place. And now the business is built around the software, with years of records in the database that they need to be able to access.

    What can they do? Before WINE, they were stuck with Windows. Now, if they are lucky, the software can run under WINE. And if not, maybe they can afford to have the consultant make some small changes to the software to get it to run under WINE. Much cheaper than a rewrite!

    You know, you sound a lot like an advertisement for Sun. "The only dot com office suite around". Yeah, whatever. And last I heard, Sun had NOT released any software under an Open Source license. The Sun Community Source License is NOT open source, please don't claim that it is.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • I don't miss any vital application that doesn't under Linux already.

    But most users at my location won't switch their home machines to GNU/Linux until it can run one or more of these apps:

    • Netscape Communicator, connecting to the Internet through software modems (analog [linmodems.org] or DSL [slashdot.org])
    • Unreal Tournament
    • EverQuest
    • Freespace 2
    • Ultima Online
    • Diablo II (when it's released)
    • Hlf-Life
    • AutoCAD (we have a site license with permission to take it home)
    • Microsoft Visual C++ (or another compiler that can make MotherFuckingCrap apps)
    __________________________________________________
    It's DMCA, not DCMA, idiots!
  • Isn't POSIX compliance an all or nothing affair? MS have done
    everything in their power to make it a one-way compatibility, but it
    looks to me as if the MS OSs are becoming much more UNIX-like in their
    approach.
  • reminds me of the phrase "we are almost pre-IPO"
    (=


    Zetetic
    Seeking; proceeding by inquiry.

    Elench
    A specious but fallacious argument; a sophism.

  • It's time for WINE (corrected) (Score:4)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday May 29, 2000 @07:31AM (#1041012) Homepage
    (Sorry about the bad version; please moderate that one down and this one up. Thanks.)
    This is very timely.

    As others mentioned, the Microsoft antitrust decree [usdoj.gov], scheduled to be signed by the judge tomorrow, has a big impact on this. 91 days from now, Microsoft will have to disclose their key APIs. Here's the relevant language from the latest version:

    • Disclosure of APIs, Communications Interfaces and Technical Information.
      Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces that Microsoft employs to enable--
      • i. Microsoft applications to interoperate with Microsoft Platform Software installed on the same Personal Computer, or
      • ii. a Microsoft Middleware Product to interoperate with Windows Operating System software (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on the same Personal Computer, or
      • iii. any Microsoft software installed on one computer (including but not limited to server Operating Systems and operating systems for handheld devices) to interoperate with a Windows Operating System (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on a Personal Computer.
      To facilitate compliance, and monitoring of compliance, with the foregoing, Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii).

      c. Knowing Interference with Performance.
      Microsoft shall not take any action that it knows will interfere with or degrade the performance of any non-Microsoft Middleware when interoperating with any Windows Operating System Product without notifying the supplier of such non-Microsoft Middleware in writing that Microsoft intends to take such action, Microsoft's reasons for taking the action, and any ways known to Microsoft for the supplier to avoid or reduce interference with, or the degrading of, the performance of the supplier's Middleware.

    When all the dust settles, operating systems that run Win32 apps will be a commodity anybody can build, like PCs and BIOS chips.

    And remember, all this takes place before any appeals.

    1. The poison brought from Redman will be extracted from my equipment.

      Uh, you probably meant Redmond. Unless your computer was poisoned by a native American.

      [Robin Williams voice] "Hmmm...White man take our land, treat us like dogs...here, take some Tobacco! Heheheh....

  • As I understand it, it's not emulation. (WINE = WINE Is Not an Emulator). Rather, it works by providing the Windows API via the Linux API. No emulation or simultion is involved.

    IMHO, far from being backwards, this could prove to be Linux' crowning triumph. Not because WINE allows people to use Windows products, but because OS' will no longer be viewable as single, closed entities in their own right, but as interfaces.

  • "What specific apps do you want Wine to run?"
    I don't think that's the right question. Better one might be: "Would you like to keep using linux and still develop programs for windows (as it still is much more popular OS)"
    My point is that even if you don't want to run windos-apps. There are much more of those who do.
  • I suspect that this is a "because it's there" thing. Hillary had to climb Everest. These people had to prove that they could build a non-MS Windows.

    We have to admit it is the result of heavy duty sleuth work.

    Even if WINE never achieves the full level of Windows 95/98, it will still be a major achievement for these people. They should be congratulated for having tried.

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