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Wine Software Linux

First Release Candidate of Wine 1.0 Released 284

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the come-a-long-ways dept.
moronikos writes to mention that the first release candidate of Wine 1.0 was announced and released into the wild today. This new version includes only bug fixes as the team is in a code freeze while pushing for the full 1.0 release.
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First Release Candidate of Wine 1.0 Released More

First Release Candidate of Wine 1.0 Released

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  • but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by squidinkcalligraphy ( 558677 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:32AM (#23359056)
    does it run linux?

    • Re:but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:38AM (#23359082) Homepage

      does it run linux?
      No only windows executables, but you can run cygwin to get a linux-like environment ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by kaos07 ( 1113443 )
      I guess it could emulate Wubi?

      • Re:but... (Score:5, Funny)

        by dvice_null ( 981029 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:48AM (#23359122)
        Wine is not an emulator.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kaos07 ( 1113443 )
          I never said it was. "Emulate" was the closest term I could come up with.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by croddy ( 659025 ) *
          True, for certain extremely narrow values of "emulate".
          • Heck, you could say that Dosemu, QEMU, MAME etc. are not emulators. They are merely providing a compatibility layer, so that you can run non-native software. I guess the Winos are arguing that their layer is particularly thin, and decide to draw the line there.

            • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:06AM (#23359432)
              I am not familiar with MAME, but the other you mention are emulators, in that they perform byte-code interpreting of the program code (I guess MAME does too). Wine does not, it only provides an ABI-compatible implementation of (most of) the WIN32 API.

              If Wine would be an emulator, it would run equally well on PowerPC or SPARC hardware. It does not, you need the exact same hardware that the original program was intended for.

              Finally, for the semantically pedantic: yes, recent versions of Dosbox also have a "dynamic" execution mode which tries to do the same that wine does. Naturally, it only works when running Dosbox on x86-compatible hardware.

              • Re:but... (Score:4, Interesting)

                by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:25AM (#23359498) Homepage Journal

                Finally, for the semantically pedantic: yes, recent versions of Dosbox also have a "dynamic" execution mode which tries to do the same that wine does. Naturally, it only works when running Dosbox on x86-compatible hardware.

                QEMU does this too, as does any decent virtualization system. So emulation means translation between different kinds of hardware?

                • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

                  by poopdeville ( 841677 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @05:11AM (#23359664)
                  I don't know the answer to your question, but I can tell you this: Anybody with a strong opinion on the matter is full of shit.

                • Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)

                  by TheThiefMaster ( 992038 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @05:16AM (#23359680)
                  An emulator manually interprets the original system's machine code, solving a hardware incompatibility, a compatibility layer only implements an API (in Wine's case the Windows API), solving an OS incompatibility. Technically an emulator doesn't have to be on different hardware to the original, but it's fairly pointless to do.
                  Dosbox is technically both an emulator and compatibility layer, because it covers both hardware and OS changes, most emulators run the original hardware's OS (if it has one).
                  The Java Runtime would be an emulator if it wasn't for the fact that there is no hardware that runs Java bytecode natively (or at least, it came after the Java Runtime).
            • Wine executes the bytecode natively, only providing the APIs that the programs are expecting.
              The others actually emulate a CPU.

              Wine is not a emulator.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by slyn ( 1111419 )
          You could use wine to VM a windows environment and then install wubi + linux to run wine on, ad infinitum until your head asplodes.

        • Re:but... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:59AM (#23359626)

          Wine is not an emulator.
          I thought you drink it!?

          • Re:but... (Score:5, Funny)

            by mo^ ( 150717 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @07:03AM (#23360020)
            And then, instead of emulating wit, charm, charisma and irresistible sexual magnetism, it just makes you believe that's what it's doing.

            It's really just placing a layer between reality and perception.

            So definitely not an emulator.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 1336 ( 898588 )
        I've actually tested to see if Wubi can start in Wine (the answer is yes, though it depends on the version; rev 507 from http://wubi-installer.org/devel/minefield/ [wubi-installer.org] starts) I didn't push the install button though...

    • Re:but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ardor ( 673957 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:18AM (#23359252)
      It would be SO ironic if one had to use Wine in Cygwin to play older games in Vista without crashes...

  • Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Raineer ( 1002750 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:33AM (#23359058)

    I'll drink to that!!!

    (seriously though...hooray WINE!)

  • Wait, What?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:38AM (#23359088)
    I was always under the impression that WINE, based on how it is designed, would never be finished, or even close to a finished release point. I mean, yeah, I know 1.0 doesn't mean it's done, just that it hit a specific milestone, but even so, WINE, being considered a ⥠1.0 version seems to me like it shouldn't happen until it can at least come close to running most everything thrown at it.

    Just my non-developer, non-programer, former WINE-user $.02.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hey, it wouldn't have to be done to work better than windows...

    • Re:Wait, What?! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TekPolitik ( 147802 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:12AM (#23359226) Journal

      being considered a 1.0 version seems to me like it shouldn't happen until it can at least come close to running most everything thrown at it.

      Nah, it just has to run more old Windows apps than the latest version of Vista. I think Wine as it was 10 years ago met that requirement.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is however better then Windows 1.0 and by the time it gets past the release candidate stage it will no doubt be ready for monthly bug fixes and occaisonal service packs. I seem to recall that a while back someone even managed to get some virus and malware running on it. Am sure that there has even been some headway made on DRM functioning in WINE as well though maybe in the same fashion as many get their Windows convinced the game dvd/cd is in the dvd/cdrom and other requests normally sent to Microsoft o
      • The following statement from parent got met thinking.

        Personally, I would prefer just to see more true Linux versions of software, particularly among the popular games.

        What if wine would be implemented in a distro like PCLOS or Ubuntu. Imagine if you can run Linux and pop in most any "written for windows" piece of software and wine runs it natively on linux?

        If wine were to be integrated in some of the larger distros I am convinced the larger exposure will speed along development, and speed the acceptance of Linux in the workplace.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slyn ( 1111419 )
      The 1.0 milestone means almost nothing towards how actually feature-complete it is, but rather how stable it is at running a small number of extremely common Windows apps, like Word and Excel.

    • Re:Wait, What?! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:21AM (#23359484)
      Wine is nowhere near finished. I was recently pointed to Wine's API stats [winehq.org], where the current state of the API implementation is stated. They are currently at 63% of the targeted Windows APIs.

      That said, quite a few apps are already working without problems in Wine. In order to be able to do a 1.0-release, they have selected a few (major) apps that have to be running flawlessly. I can't find a link for it now, but it's somewhat like:

      - Adobe Photoshop CS2 (or CS4?)
      - MS Office 2007 document viewers
      - Google Picasa

      That's a somewhat arbitrary list, and doesn't say anything about the 9765 [winehq.org] application that are listed in the AppDB, many of which work without problems. I think the 1.0 release does not constitute a milestone in and of itself, but it may help to expand its userbase, and hopefully we'll start to see a more dependable release cycle than just the bi-weekly "snapshot" release they have been doing.

      • Re:Wait, What?! - Those stats aren't accurate (Score:5, Informative)

        by vinn ( 4370 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @09:51AM (#23360888) Homepage Journal
        We know those stats aren't quite accurate. Here's basically how we generate them: we ask the various subsystems maintainers, "How close to complete do you think this is?" and then we munge in some true numbers on actual function calls (API's) exported by DLL's and the number we've implemented (and in and of themselves each API might not be 100% complete.)

        So take those numbers with a grain of salt. In some cases, it's completely possible a DLL will be nearly 100% functional with not many of the API's implemented at all. Microsoft has invented thousands of API's over the years and some have been dead on arrival - no one has ever used them. Even Microsoft doesn't use all of their API's. That's why within Wine development there's an often cited development method of, "Show me an app that actually uses that."

        Finally, Tom hasn't updated those stats in almost a year and we've done a lot of work since then. (Big kudos to Tom Wickline for tackling that stuff.)

        So what Wine really aims for is to take the most common few thousand API's and try to do them really well. Then we flesh out some bits around that. Then we stub out things around that and finally there's bits we just haven't even started.

    • Re:Wait, What?! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Daengbo ( 523424 ) <daengbo AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:56AM (#23359598) Homepage Journal
      The Wine 1.0 Release Criteria are that the following work:
      1. Photoshop CS2 tryout
      2. Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer 97 and 2003
      3. Microsoft Word Viewer 97 and 2003
      4. Microsoft Excel Viewer 97 and 2003
      That's all they're targeting. I think it's a great idea to get to that level first, then expand without regression.

  • So what's the definition? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @02:54AM (#23359140)
    I mean, I've been running Windows software under WINE for *years*. What's their definition of "1.0"? Does it really mean anything, or will we be getting 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc monthly afterwards anyway just like before? Or is 1.0 some "complete feature set" release, suggesting that I can now run any windows software (I doubt that's true, considering that even MS Office is still a bit shaky).

    http://www.winehq.org/?announce=1.0-rc1 [winehq.org] pretty much has a list of bugfixes&features, just like any other release. Where's the beef in "1.0"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iamacat ( 583406 )
      Would you hold Wine responsible for bugs or use of undocumented internals in the programs that do not run? Plenty of software breaks just by being run on a new version of Windows, new service pack or a new video driver.

      1.0 release can be just defined by some milestones set ahead of time. For example, implementation of all published APIs in a set of DLLs, minus a few documented exceptions.

      • Re:So what's the definition? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by paskie ( 539112 ) <pasky@ucw.HORSEcz minus herbivore> on Saturday May 10, 2008 @08:28AM (#23360410) Homepage

        Would you hold Wine responsible for bugs or use of undocumented internals in the programs that do not run?

        If the applications are wide-spread, for that matter, yes, I would. Wine's point is not to emulate ideal Windows environment but to make Windows apps run on Linux, and if working around bugs in them that don't show in Windows is what it takes too, it should do it. Microsoft also does plenty of regression testing when making new version of Windows, often adding workarounds for widespread older apps - in that case it's controversial but Wine is even more clear-cut here.

        If it's just about implementing the documented APIs, that shouldn't be that hard after all, but that's not where the devil is, I believe.

    • Pretty much arbitrary, but it marks a point of fairly good stability & usability.

    • I've got your definition right here (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 10, 2008 @06:32AM (#23359926)
      The beef is described at
      http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleaseCriteria
      In essence, 1.0 is just another release,
      but with more stability (e.g. a month's
      codefreeze and only very careful bugfixes)
      and a few longstanding bugs
      (e.g. serial I/O, dos apps) fixed not because
      lots of people need them, but because it just
      seemed wrong to reach 1.0 without fixing them.

      Dan Kegel
      Wine 1.0 Release Manager

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by theeddie55 ( 982783 )

      is 1.0 some "complete feature set" release, suggesting that I can now run any windows software

      Not even windows can run any windows software.

  • Do we still need to wait for SP1 ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Marbleless ( 640965 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:00AM (#23359160)
    .. before it is usable? :)

  • Hooray! Long live Wine 1.0! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linebackn ( 131821 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:03AM (#23359176)
    I think this is great Wine is finally reaching "1.0". I am hoping this version will be treated as a longer lived, stable, supported branch. This way developers might seriously target Wine as a platform or at least consider it a real "Microsoft Windows Compatible" target (Yea, it would be better if ports of apps were targeted to be Linux or Mac OS X native)

    Sure it won't run all Windows apps perfectly - but then again, neither does Windows! There are lots of apps out there that have various bad code that often shouldn't even run at all but somehow gets away with working under a generic Windows XP install. Then they crash under Wine, Windows Vista, or even XP under odd configurations. And then there are the ones that do things different under different versions of Windows to get around bugs or varying behavior in Windows.

    Also having a longer lived "1.0" branch would mean tips and tricks to getting individual programs to run would not become obsolete quite as quickly, and a Wine "1.0" users would not have to worry as much about apps breaking every few weeks.

    At any rate, Wine has come a very long way - I remember when it was just trying to be a Windows 3.1 clone!

    • Re:Hooray! Long live Wine 1.0! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:04AM (#23359430) Homepage

      I am hoping this version will be treated as a longer lived, stable, supported branch.
      WINE will never become quite like other software, which define their own features. Think of it like a web browser with lousy standards support (not that the Windows API is anything like a standard), there's really no point in creating a very long-lifed branch that scores 58%. You do some development and you're at 61% and the new version is just better and should replace the old one everywhere. The only real reason to keep a stable branch is to keep people from getting hit with regressions. Because all kinds of software runs on top of WINE, it can have some really bad regressions as applications can go from platinum (runs flawlessly) to garbage (not at all) because it does something in the initialization that failed. So yes, a more stable branch than the biweekly development snapshots is good. Any older branch than say 3-6 months I think will be pretty useless.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        (not that the Windows API is anything like a standard)

        You're wrong. There are two types of standards: De jure (ISO and alike) and de facto standards. Win32 API is THE de facto standard for desktop applications. If you want your software to run on 95% of desktop computers you either adhere to that standard or be obscure. Wine is a chance for Linux to be less obscure on the desktop (it is more or less a successful server OS now, on desktop it has been around 0.5% and not growing).
        • Wine is a chance for Linux to be less obscure on the desktop (it is more or less a successful server OS now, on desktop it has been around 0.5% and not growing).

          Nice troll, but...

          Linux went from 1.25 percent in May of 2007 to 2.02 percent in March of 2008. That is 61.6 percent increase in market share in nine months. [Put another way,] that is 82 percent annual growth in installed computers.

          http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9910263-16.html [cnet.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      WINE could be stabilized into a fairly complete API, even if it's a subset of the more obscure win32 world. Developers would then be in a position to target it in a similar fashion to Carbon on OSX, which allowed apps to run on both OS9 and OSX in a fairly consistent way. Oddball corporate apps could be migrated with less expense than a full rewrite.
    • I believe the wine developers have already stated that they are not creating a long-lived 1.0.x branch, and instead continue their new versions every 2 weeks.

      I think it's reasonable at this point, given how many bugs they fix every two weeks.

       

  • Y'know (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:03AM (#23359178)
    When I switched from Windows to Linux, it turned out that I was able to function without specific applications, there are Linux equivalents for pretty much everything.
     
    • Seems like you don't have much experience in that department or your needs are really generic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by WK2 ( 1072560 )
      Wine is often used for games. It is also used to run in-house Windows software that would be expensive to port, and Windows-only programs that don't have a Linux equivalent, such as Photoshop.

      That being said, I had pretty much the same experience as you, at first at least. When I switched to Linux, I didn't really need any Windows apps, and didn't even bother installing wine. Since then, I've used wine a few times, mostly for games, and while I hardly use it, I keep it around in case I need it.

    • Re:Y'know (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Haeleth ( 414428 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:23AM (#23359280) Journal
      Well, yeah, it depends on what you need, doesn't it? What you say is true for many, maybe even most people, but that doesn't mean nobody needs Wine.

      If you have to interoperate with Windows users who use specific software, and the Linux equivalents can't read/write files from that software sufficiently well for your purposes, then you may still find yourself looking for a way to run the Windows programs. This used to be the case a lot with MS Office; modern Linux office apps are pretty good at interoperating, so it's not an issue so much, though there are still a few rare cases where the Linux software won't be able to duplicate what MS Office does quite well enough. (Complex VBA macros that automate other Windows applications, for example. Though I don't know offhand whether Wine can handle those either, and frankly anyone who uses them deserves the pain they cause :)

      Then there are the cases where the Linux programs are genuinely inferior. Again it's a question of whether that actually matters. For example, GIMP is good enough for most casual users and even many professionals, but still a lot of people are inevitably going to find there are things they need that it doesn't do, and then they're going to want a way to run Photoshop.

      And finally we have the fundamental matter of freedom of choice. Some people just prefer various proprietary Windows applications, and it's good that they can have the freedom to choose to retain those, even if the Linux equivalent would work just as well. Linux is all about the freedom to use your computer how you like, after all!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by joe 155 ( 937621 )
        for me the only windows application I want is iTunes (with USb support). Not being able to put music on my mp3 player without burning it to CD and then using my girlfriends crappy ancient dell w/ celeron processor is a tad annoying... because of what Apple has done with the Touch in terms of how you get music on it* I'm not sure there will be another viable solution for getting it to work with linux anytime soon

        Interesting you used to be able to do it wirelessly from linux using ssh but they have effec

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )
      I occasionally use Wine to access some e-books in a proprietary format, and I've once successfully used it to extract a Pocket PC-installable .cab from a .exe installer (snip rant about publishers who assume that everyone with a Pocket PC has a Windows desktop). It's not something I use more than once every few months, but it's nice to have it around.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uglyduckling ( 103926 )
      I've been using various flavours of Linux as my primary OS for seven years now, switched from Windows 98SE / Windows 2000 back in the day. Seven years later there's still nothing that compares with Dreamweaver for fast standards-compliant web development and Indesign for printed media.

      Now I've got a bit more money and don't want to spend my weekends battling with substandard software to do the bits and pieces of pro bono web and print design I do in my spare time I've convinced my wife to let me buy a Mac

    • Re:Y'know (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @06:45AM (#23359964) Journal
      Emphasis mine:

      there are Linux equivalents for pretty much everything
      And that's the killer. If 95% of what you need runs on one platform but 100% runs on another, which will you choose? I know businesses that are still running Windows 9x, out of support, because it still works and it runs their in-house VB4 application. If Linux (or FreeBSD or Solaris or whatever) can also run this VB4 application - for which there is no non-Windows equivalent because it was developed in house for a specific purpose relevant only to that company - then they can consider these platforms for their upgrade when they do finally get around to it. If not then they're locked in.

      The point of WINE is that, for a lot of people, there is one important app keeping them on Windows that has no open alternative. Without WINE, they have to keep a windows [virtual] machine around. With it, they can switch.

  • Candidate version number (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cothol ( 460219 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @03:07AM (#23359204)
    So, this would be Release Candidate version 0.01 right? ;-)
  • Just 2 more years until the actual 1.0 release?

    Seriously now, this is good news. What bottle of wine should I open on the release day? Cab, merlot, syrah, late harvest... yup, late harvest cabernet it is!

  • I remember using it some time in 2004. It's been in development for quite a while...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

      I remember using it some time in 2004. It's been in development for quite a while...

      I used it to play games in 1998. 2004? Big deal. I've got cheese older than that.

  • Wine - an unmitigated SUCCESS! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @04:45AM (#23359558) Journal
    Just look at the list of applications supported by Wine [winehq.org] and you'll understand why I say that. Basically, if I can run Civ IV, Heroes IV and other strategy games on Linux, and with Matlab having a Linux version, there's very little to justify my using Windows. OK, there's Fruityloops, but that's it!

  • what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by sproketboy ( 608031 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @05:36AM (#23359742)
    Before Duke Nukem?
  • Nice to see Wine going 1.0. Does anyone know how much this impacts ReactOS?

  • Mac Binaries? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @06:49AM (#23359976) Journal
    Does this mean they'll start releasing binaries for OS X soon? I've compiled it a couple of times, but it's a lot of effort (you need to check out things from two separate svn repositories, run a script, hunt bugs, then compile for every version), and since they claim in the first paragraph of the front page to support OS X I'd really expect them to have regular binary builds.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) *
      Buried down at the bottom of the FAQ it says:

      If you are running OS X there are no official builds yet. The main reason is that Apple X11 is badly broken, and Wine doesn't run well with it. We don't like giving users a bad impression of Wine.

      I wonder how old that entry is and if it's still true -- I know that early versions of X11 for OS X were pretty bad, but it seems like since 10.3, everything X11-dependent I get from Fink or build myself works just fine. Hopefully the Wine folks will take another look a

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        Wine worked fine with the version of X11 that came with 10.4 if you disabled GLX (so no Direct3D, but everything else worked). With the experimental builds that were available based on X.org 7.2, and (I think) with the version included with 10.5, this is supposed to be fixed, but I haven't tried building WINE since then. If you get the OS X build from CrossOver, they bundle their own X server, which would be another option for the WINE folks - get the bits of x.org that they need, build a known-to-work-wi

  • Thank you, Wine developers! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @07:34AM (#23360160)
    I'd like the opportunity to thank all of you who have been working hard on Wine all these years.

    Recently Wine has saved my butt at work when my Windows machine auto-upgraded me to IE 7 (even though I have auto updates turned off). I was hard-pressed, then, to be able to reproduce a JavaScript bug that apparently was only present on IE 6 (and not 7, nor FF or Opera).

    Being able to install IE 6 on my Ubuntu box was a godsend, and it worked well enough that I was able to reproduce the bug and fix it.

    Kudos to you guys for your fabulous work, and thank you!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hab136 ( 30884 )
      You could have also used a virtual machine, such as VMWare ($$$) or MS Virtual PC (free). In a testing environment, these have advantages over Wine such as system snapshots.

  • I think we have Vista to think for this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlwmohawk ( 801821 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @08:58AM (#23360560)
    The problem with wine has always been the moving target that is Windows. That's how Microsoft keeps itself relevant. Using its monopoly position to keep everyone on the upgrade treadmill.

    With Vista so terrible and, really, only new machines going vista and old machines staying as they are on XP, the XP level of the Win32 API has remained fairly stable for a good number of years. In fact, it may be unlikely that Microsoft will ever be able to unify the user base on a new version of the API again.

    (And yes I know that there are still users of 3.1, W95,W98,W98SE, etc. but these are static installations that typically don't buy new software.)

    Wine, moving forward, has a very good chance of capturing a usable market because ISVs are reluctant to abandon XP in any meaningful way.

  • Can you help us? [t-shirt opportunity within] (Score:5, Informative)

    by vinn ( 4370 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @10:01AM (#23360984) Homepage Journal
    Alright guys, this release is 15 years in coming. I'm not aware of any other free software project that's taken 15 years to get to 1.0.

    We know we've got some core architecture just right. That's taken a long time to get there. Now we have a lot of bug squashing to do and in many cases it's pretty amazing how quickly regressions can be found, bugs tracked, etc if we just have a few more eyes on this release.

    So we put together a list of things you can do to help us out - check it out here:
    1.0 regression hunting [winehq.org]. And hey! We're giving out t-shirts to the folks who help us out the most.

    Notice we didn't say anything about jumping in and writing code? You're certainly welcome to, and in some cases there might even be some low hanging fruit. However, without development experience on Wine's codebase your valuable time might best be spent regression testing your favorite game!

    As always, thanks for all the support!

  • On moving targets. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Saturday May 10, 2008 @01:54PM (#23362740) Journal
    With regards to the "windows is a moving target" discussion that always comes up with WINE, the "but specific versions, particularly legacy ones, aren't." answer sufficiently addresses the platform's past. In fact, I strongly suspect that WINE on *nix could be a serious contender when certain cranky legacy systems have to be replaced. What I've seen less about is the future. The new .net stuff is probably mono's department; but loads of common windows stuff is still win32. There the moving target problem still exists.

    It would make the future very much easier if the case could be made to software vendors that the *nix market is, or might soon be, of value. They would then have an incentive to keep WINE in mind while developing. The changes wouldn't need to be immediate or radical, just trying to keep out of ill-supported areas of win32, where possible, and bringing things that they run into to the WINE team's attention.

    Obviously, some vendors would not, for technical or business reasons, be willing or able to do this(Office, some games, etc.); but those that can would be useful. In particular, this might be really helpful to address the class of critical but unsexy apps that *nix is often weak on. Bookkeeping, inventory, payroll, various other stuff in the category of boring but common business niche software.

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