Wine 1.0 — Uncorked After 15 Years 638
pshuke writes "After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot."
What will interest me is (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
So actually, getting products to say that they are "compatible with Wine 1.0" is the goal. That is also the reason that they are releasing: it gives vendors a stable branch to work with.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course such a program would be pointless anyway. If 'Designed For Windows' apps don't work under Wine then Wine itself has failed its objective.
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Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Informative)
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For others, I would advise to check whether your favorite application is in CodeWeaver's compatibility database [codeweavers.com]. This database is maintained pretty well.
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Interesting)
uTorrent already does, last time I checked.
I was debugging a Half-Life crash once and I noticed it checks the registry for Wine keys while starting up, probably for compatibility hacks.
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What will interest me is (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite a few in the non-commerical areana already do list Wine/XP/Vista etc...
However,Wine may be a little late to the game. Virtualization will give us all the features we once needed Wine for if done properly.
The other problem with Wine is the evolution of the Win32/64 API, and how it is slowly being replaced. Vista API technologies are not even on the radar, and have the potential to shake up the next generation of application development. (Search Channel9 on WPF
Microsoft sees a movement away from Win32 before too long, and even current applciations a lot of developers are working on projects that stretch from generic Win32 to fully hybrind Win32/WPF/DirectX all in one application.
If Virtualiation doesn't solve the divide, we still have Wine and Mono, and for any future, some of the backend of the current Linux kernel will need to extend to handle hardware with the same levels of abstraction, or shoving DX to OpenGL will not be enough when some of the core aspects of WPF is based around 3D UI that uses aspects of the OS to schedule and manage the 3D aspects so that two applications don't fight for 3D GPU resources, and currently only Vista's design allows for this.
(Didn't mean for this post to go negative, as there is a congrats to the Wine peeps in order, and even if Wine translation doesn't last forever is meeting a lot of people's needs now.)
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Informative)
But Wine and Mono don't require a commercial license and virtualization does. So while it may "seem" the same while running the application, there is a cost difference (unless you are pirating Windows).
Re:What will interest me is (Score:5, Informative)
Keep in mind, also, that there's a whole class of people who only need one or two killer apps to work. Sometimes it's something recent (Photoshop); often it's something like an old version of QuickBooks, or some obscure app that no one makes anymore. So if Wine runs legacy apps well, that's a very good start.
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OpenGL isn't in the Linux kernel right now; it's done through an X11 library. That could be extended if it's needed, but I'm not sure it is; it's possible to play Q3 in Linux while also running Compiz.
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Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Interesting)
getting someone to take the time to learn a new application. Even worse
is asking someone to relearn the same application that they have been using
for over a decade. 2007 completely changes the user interface, which
is not a good thing for the target audience: people that use computers for
document editing. All I hear is people wishing for the "old toolbars" back.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Insightful)
In this end of things typing speeds above 75 wpm are a matter of course; at that speed, taking your hands off the keyboard to use a mouse is a big productivity hit. Taking that hit plus the hit necessary to relearn an interface? Sorry, but I have deadlines to meet.
The most galling thing about it is MS's hubris (yes, I know, par for the course). They could have at least put in the ability to switch between the old and new interfaces to ease the transition and allow user choice. So confident were they that the new interface was better, that they forced us to make an either/or choice. If I had both, I could use the old interface when I had to and spend some time every day learning the new one. Instead it decreased our productivity.
Thanks guys...this is the worst call since they changed the help system to an online web-imitative help system.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Funny)
I can handle that.
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Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Funny)
The next step is to eat some pudding, it will make you feel better.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation you provided is very exclusive to a boss who is intelligent enough to realize the difference between MS Office and Open Office and having to work 100% of the year long.
In a normal business year, 99% compatibility is much closer to 1 day something going wrong, assuming your claimed statistics are even worth arguing.
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem solved!
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Funny)
Telnet. Into a VAX.
They are shown how to do this on their first day. Their coworkers can show them how if they forget. The IT guy will come hold their hands ONE MORE TIME if they still can't handle it. And if all that fails, guess what? Find another job.
If your workplace says "save it as a PDF," your workers will learn to put it in a fucking PDF, even if they whine for the first week. The slowest and stupidest of them will eventually have the steps "save as... PDF!" on a sticky on their monitor and it will get done. It only takes one boss to get 'er done.
For your stupidest customers, guess what you can do? EMBED THE FUCKIN PDF IN A DOC, LOL!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I recently received a contract from a residential contractor in this exact manner.
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If one of those days is a doc from your boss that either looks great on you computer and not on his or good on his and bad on yours. Could cause the question on why you are using that free crap.
If Office 2007 works anything like the previous versions, the documents will look completely different on different computers anyway. Document consistency from MSO to OOO is the least of your worries. Citing http://ancaluca.blogspot.com/2007/09/please-dont-send-me-doc-attachments.html [blogspot.com] , http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html#tth_sEc1.8 [goldmark.org] , and others.
OOo - For The Rest Of Us (Score:3, Interesting)
I switched another office that had already bought copies of Office 2008 for Mac, but the spreadsheets from Office 2003 never translated quite right. So they converted everything to OOo instead of wasting another couple of tho
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily. It could also mean that only 1 user in 100 will have a problem with it. I've been running Open Office for well over a year without encountering any problems (in Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD) that prevented me from getting my work done.
And as someone else already pointed out, even MS products don't accomplish 100% compatibility. I've had more problems with moving files between different versions of Microsoft Office than between Microsoft Office and Open Office (or different versions of Open Office).
Although of course, your mileage may vary.
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I find OO a useful tool for basic previewing of MS Office documents and doing trivial word processing and spreadsheet tasks. For those purposes, it's nice, and I really appreciate having it available. The GP's view that it's
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By deleting the incomplete msxml dlls and setting winecfg's settings to use the native versions, then installing microsoft xml.. You can install and run Microsoft Office 2007. I do find it a little disappointing that Wine didn't set getting Office 2007 working out of the box as a goal for 1.0, as it really currently just relies upon finishing two DLLs.
Sad to say, but probably because
7.0.0 CrossOver Linux - June 17, 2008
* New application support:
o Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and limited Outlook)
I'll still be buying a copy though.
Duke Nukem Forever! (Score:4, Funny)
I predict a multitude of such responses- "Wine 1.0 shouldn't have been released until it could run..."
It would be interesting to know what factors determined that it was ready for 1.0 release. Personally, I suspect it was a rounding error (perhaps they were using Excel in Wine 0.91 and it accidentally rounded up to version 1.0).
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Office 2007 runs on Wine 1.0 too. (Score:5, Funny)
Let me be the first to say.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let me be the first to say.... (Score:5, Funny)
If you wanted to be truly the first to say, you should have tried something more like: "Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."
reference [youtube.com]
Perfect windows compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not slighting them in the least as they have done a Herculean task to get to this point, but i do wish they had made the actual MS office suite a requirement for 1.0, not just the viewers.
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Next step is to ship this with Linux UMPCs (Score:5, Interesting)
The next step is to encourage the makers of UMPCs to ship Wine with their units. Then users can run some of their legacy apps on the sub-$500 machines.
Bah! I'll wait for version 3 (Score:4, Funny)
I've marked my calendar for June 2038...
Should have delayed the release slightly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the main commercial sponsor (Score:5, Informative)
It's a small shop and very sympathetic. They also read Slashdot. Jeremy, the CEO, is active here as user jeremy_white [slashdot.org]. Befriend him [slashdot.org] to let his comments show up as +5.
Disclaimer: I'm just a happy customer since version 4 (about 5 years ago).
Re:Don't forget the main commercial sponsor (Score:4, Interesting)
The lead developer also happens to make money on the working branch of the program. What happened to all the hippie good feel? And the fix to get current version to work with 2007; http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=586545&cid=23825339 [slashdot.org] requires people to remove a couple of file and install the right ones, bit convenient they left that thing out?
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Great, something to download (Score:5, Funny)
Get it while it's hot? (Score:5, Funny)
site is dead (Score:3, Funny)
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winehq slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if they were running IIS through wine to serve the page?
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Better luck next time hippie.
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Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and bread.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes great with vintage Windows apps.
Many a true word was said in jest. Back in 1998 I wrote a small Windows program at work (~3000 lines of Turbo Pascal 7.0, Win 3.1) and tested it at home on Wine on Slackware. It worked fine.
Wine is an astonishing project. It deserves a lot of credit.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Take it step by step (Score:5, Insightful)
Porting a software project can be a very nontrivial task, taking many manyears of work to complete. Few companies are willing to invest this kind of work (and money) for what seems to be a rather small customer base. They could, though, be willing to invest in a few tweaks to make it run on an emulator that would accomplish, from their point of view, the same thing: Letting Linux users use their software.
Companies are usually reluctant to develop for a platform with a small customer base. They do, though, accept making a few tweaks to get a foot into the market.
Currently, the only argument for people to keep using Windows is that Wine can't handle EVERY SINGLE Windows application. When there is no important application left that doesn't run well on Wine, people will more readily switch (Linux+Wine == Windows, from a user's point of view, but about 100-300 bucks cheaper).
And THEN it's time to ask software companies to develop for Linux, with it being the bigger market.
Re:Take it step by step (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Take it step by step (Score:5, Insightful)
At the point in time you describe, it will be easy for Windows users to switch to Linux, and there will be incentive for them to do so since it is generally cheaper and they would have more apps available (all Linux apps plus Windows apps under Wine) -- that much I agree with. However, one could argue that developing for the Windows API would still be the bigger market, since developing for Windows would give you an application which would work on Windows or Linux-with-Wine. Until the size of the Windows-only customer base is smaller than the Linux-only-and-I-won't-or-can't-use-Wine customer base, there will still be incentive to develop for Windows. There may be other reasons to develop for Linux instead (ease of development, more plentiful developers, etc), but a bigger market is not one of them as long as you continue to account for Wine.
On the other hand, having an easy-to-use and easy-on-developers Linux API available on Windows does the opposite -- software companies could develop for Linux and get apps that target both the Linux and Windows markets, thus targeting a bigger market than just Windows.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Interesting)
With WINE, Microsoft officially loses control over their Windows API. It's like IBM with the ISA vs. MCA architectures around the 286 era. Microsoft desperately wants to move to something else, ANYTHING else, so that they can maintain control of their API, so that developers have to write to the Microsoft API, and so that customers still have to buy Windows.
But if there is a WINE that is reasonably stable, that's no longer the case. Case in point: I develop a cross-platform application with PHP-GTK, which has been ported over using the Win32 API. I can write software that's immediately usable on Windows, Macintosh, and *nix. But I haven't released an actual installer for *nix, simply because nobody's asked for one. And if I decide that I want to support *nix, I have to go with at least one of two options:
1) Pick a distro or five and build packages for each every time I issue a new release. (as often as weekly!) This is pretty much a guaranteed FAIL since everybody has their own fav distro...
2) Release a Windows installer and test it against WINE to ensure reasonable compatibility.
I'm going with option 2 for now. Note that I prefer this even when using a toolkit that's natively a *nix toolkit. It's not because I don't love *nix, it's because I have no desire whatsoever to deal with customers who are often barely competent to turn their computer(s) on and try to get them to recompile ANYTHING.
Win WINE, the most successful development platform in existence becomes an open-source platform, and will quickly deflate the Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft has no choice, simply because the very thing that's kept them in the business (the massive base of WinXX applications) now becomes the very thing that they cannot abandon.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Interesting)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/240770 [launchpad.net]
Please add your thoughts as a developer to the bug. Thanks.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)
But, but, but, choice is good! And, the more choices the better! It can't possibly hurt the community to have to choose from 15 different possibilities! That's just crazy talk!
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a very nice niche PM.
It will never really hit mainstream thus wont do any damage.
RPM does need to die though.
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am writing you to inform you that even though you only write Windows apps, I (somewhat) successfully managed to get it to run on my Linux operating system. Please start making a Linux version of this application post haste so you can not gain a customer (I have already hacked your app to run in linux) and increase your development costs. An added perk is the fact that you will be required to support the Linux version rather than just telling me to "run it in Windows" when I call. The extra staff you hire for your support center should help the unemployment rate.
Thanks Again,
A Wine User
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (Binary Emulator and Library)
Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows applications on Linux.
Applications are run at full speed without the need of cpu emulation. Wine
does not require Microsoft Windows, however it can use native system dll
files in place of its own if they are available.
This package includes a program loader for running unmodified Windows executables
as well as the Wine project's free version of the Windows API for running programs
ported from Windows.
Homepage: http://www.winehq.org/ [winehq.org]
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
If that were true, the default permission level would not be Administrator unless you go out of your way to reconfigure it.
You are conflating two very different things. The permissions in the system and privilege level of the user.
The default permission level for new users in Vista is still Administrator: Not sane.
This is simply confirming your ignorance. An "Administrator" in Vista is simply someone who is allowed to elevate their privilege level. It is loosely equivalent to the "admin" group in OS X or the "wheel" group in UNIX.
I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Interesting)
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To be honest, I've only ever had to run one or two programs with those compatibility modes.
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Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Funny)
16 bit and 64 bit = bloods n crips.
--Toll_Free
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Interesting)
Remote desktop is kind of a joke in comparison.
Remote desktop is just better. Vastly more usable on low-bandwidth (or high latency) links and when your session drops out for some reason you can reconnect and not have lost everything you were working on.
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Informative)
Remote desktop is kind of a joke in comparison.
Remote desktop is just better. Vastly more usable on low-bandwidth (or high latency) links and when your session drops out for some reason you can reconnect and not have lost everything you were working on.
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Informative)
X is not a giant frame buffer. It has vector operations, combined with raster operations.
X11 is a wrong option over high latency links because it is designed to provide a very high performance at low latency ones.
For high latency links, use NX which is much faster than VNC + compression (being VNC a giant frame buffer, is faster than X11 because the latency issues).
NX does compression, but most importantly solves the latency issues by cumulating requests avoiding roundtrips.
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Informative)
There actually is a win32 binary version of wine that runs in cygwin. They say it was created as an additional test of the code's portability, and for some other reasons that I can't remember right now. Funny but TRUE!
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Funny)
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Joke -->*
You --> O
/|\
Re:I would really like to try this out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FINALLY! (Score:5, Insightful)
the same can be said of Windows....
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Personally I've always found it better to run windows applications on Windows, either installed on the machine or in a VM.
Personally, I get at least as good stability, and usually better performance, running (supported) Windows apps using CrossoverOffice, the commercial version of Wine.
Crossover is fine if it just happens to work well with the one or two applications you actually need. If you're looking to run a larger selection of applications or something they don't support well, then a VM or native install is really the only option. Personally, I don't think this needs to be the case. I think CodeWeavers has a very flawed business model that has hampered them more than anything else. They could be making significant money from small business (and larger business).
The problem I have
Re:Get it while it's hot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slightly offtopic question (Score:4, Informative)
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This is the solution I found for my business.
technoid_
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