Wine 1.2 Release Candidate Announced 165
An anonymous reader writes "After evolving over 15 years to get to 1.0, a mere 2 years later and Wine 1.2 is just about here. There have been many many improvements and plenty of new features added. Listing just a few (doing no justice to the complete change set):
many new toolbar icons; support for alpha blending in image lists; much more complete shader assembler; support for Arabic font shaping and joining, and a number of fixes for video rendering; font anti-aliasing configuration through fontconfig; and improved handling of desktop link files. Win64 support is the milestone that marks this release. Please test your favorite applications for problems and regressions and let the Wine team know so fixes can be made before the final release. Find the release candidate here."
"emulator"? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
well, it's emulating a platform API (as opposed to hardware)
call it a compatibility or translation layer if you wish
but it is an emulator
(just not the regular (slow) kind)
Re:"emulator"? (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't emulate a platform API. It implements a platform API.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't emulate a platform API. It implements a platform API.
it's stateless?
Re: (Score:2)
No, it makes it a clone.
You wouldn't call DR-DOS an MS-DOS emulator or simulator, would you? WINE is a Win32 clone.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I see Wine as an (alternative) implementation of the win32/win64 API and libs.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a reverse-engineered implementation of the Win32 (and now 64) API. Your requirement for an implementation is erroneously strict.
Defined rules on MSDN (Score:3, Insightful)
Software cannot be implemented without adhering to a set of defined rules.
There are two sets of defined rules. One of them is the MSDN documentation for the Windows platform. Another less defined set is that a specific suite of programs, which by 1.0 included Office 2007 viewers, has substantially the same behavior on Wine as on Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
Note that MSDN is frequently a tissue of lies and only useful for vague guidance rather than as any sort of reliable source - so Wine development these days is mostly test-driven, such that Wine aims to give the same results on the project's tests that it does on Windows. There's even a testbot [winehq.org] to automatically run new tests against a pile of VM installations of original Windows.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
An emulator is any software which models a piece of digital hardware, exactly in the ideal case. (If it's something analog you're after, you approximate it by writing a simulator instead.)
You cannot "emulate" a software platform, you just rewrite it. Wine is a Windows API for Linux, BSD, and Mac. It's more like a clone than anything.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to throw in the word "interpreter" just to annoy you.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll toss in the word "Translator" to make it more precise.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll throw in the word "linker" just to confuse you both.
Instead of your application linking with "real" Windows binaries it links with an alternate implementation of those binaries.
In many cases an API function call is implemented without even making a call to X, GL, the native kernel, or any other part of Linux/Mac/etc. It is simply a reimplementation of the call. Translation does not fit here because it doesn't translate the Windows call to a native Linux call at all.
And really both Linux, Windows, and
Re: (Score:2)
I would agree with you and break it down like this:
Emulator - Software that implements or replicates the behavior and function of digital hardware
Simulator - Software that implements at a presentation level the behaviors and possibly the functions of some type of hardware; but does not model the hardware completely.
Translator - Software that changes one set of instructions into another set intended to duplicate the behavior of the original but prior to execution time.
Interpreter - Software that changes one
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Calling Wine an emulator cheapens "emulator" (Score:2)
well, it's emulating a platform API (as opposed to hardware)
Any more than a Linux PC's X server "emulates" the X API? Or your Qt library "emulates" the Qt API? If you use the term "emulator" to refer to anything that doesn't involve interpreting or dynamically recompiling machine code, that cheapens "emulator" to the point where every library on your system is an emulator. Where I come from, Wine is called a "subsystem", just like Qt and Gtk+ are "subsystems".
Re: (Score:1)
Does it run Crysis YET?
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, that's the purpose of qemu. As clips on youtube of wine running on an N900 attest. (x86 --> ARM)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for the N900, QEMU implements the emulation a bit far down the stack. You compile WINE as a native x86 app, then any system calls that it makes are translated to native system calls. You don't have to emulate the kernel, but you do have to run all of the userland stuff in the emulator. Fortunately, the client-server design of X11 means that this excludes most of the graphics stack, including OpenGL.
A better design, used by Transitive and others, moves the emulation barrier right up the API
But... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The link to WUBI is is somewhat inappropriate: WUBI is an installer that installs Linux in a file hosted on a Windows filesystem using something that works as a Windows installer (and creating a Windows uninstaller for the Linux installation.) But it doesn't run Linux under Windows.
So if you want a Linux under Windows distribution to talk about running under WINE what you really want is more Portable Ubuntu Remix [demonccc.com.ar], not WUBI.
Great Job, but ... (Score:2)
... a tad late. :( ); these days thanks to SUN Microsystems (anyone remembers??) I fire up my Virtualbox, and chances are, the application works.
While I was fiddling with some Windows applications over the last 10 years, to make them work in wine (not too high a success rate,
Has one made some comparison of speed, resource usage, of major applications between running in wine and running in Virtualbox? Google has a few hits, though of old age.
Re:Great Job, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Apps are faster in Wine than VMWare. I tested Eve Online in both and it was noticeably faster in WINE. Both paled in comparison to running natively under WinXP on the same platform however.
Re: (Score:2)
versionings speed (Score:2)
15 years to get to 1.0 means a speed of a 0.0666 increase in the version number per year. This extrapolates to 3 more years to get to 1.2. So it's not surprising to see a RC only two years later.
(this post just nominated for the "worst use of extrapolation 2010" award)
Re: (Score:2)
It seems to me that the wine development process does not really scale well but they use also test based development and that seems to speed up the development cycle. Other aspects like the Dib Engine [winehq.org] are a governance nightmare of Wine. Though the patch is optional (has to be enabled) they didn't let it in although it supports some applications better and was a release target for 1.2. The Wine project management played Mornington Crescent with contributers for the DIB Engine for almost 10 years. It is a pit
Re: (Score:2)
Except of course that 1.0 and 1.2 are not real numbers. They are in fact two numbers separated by a dot. With real numbers 1.4 > 1.38. With version 1.4 1.38.
Re: (Score:2)
Bah, forgot about slashcodes complete lack of functionality. Should be "With versions 1.4 < 1.38"
No candidates, please (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually quite surprised with the more recent movement of Wine though. I remember assuming nothing was going to work. Now I can assume that it might work, which is a serious improvement, IMHO. Previously I never attempted to run something unless I looked it up in the App DB and now I just run the apps and see what happens.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the easiest ways to manage Wine versions and installing games: http://www.playonlinux.com/en/ [playonlinux.com]
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember 16 years ago on the Wine mailing list saying that spending time supporting Win16 was a total waste of time, and they need to concentrate on Win32 as by the time they supported either in a meaningfull wa, nobody would care about Win16 anymore.
Of course I was shouted down and flamed for my entirely accurate predicition. So of course huge amounts of time where wasted in the early days concentrating doing a really good Win16 emulation, that nobody could care less about for a decade now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes it sucks to be right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I care about Win16. The one thing I use Wine for is to run a 16-bit Windows application.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you want a medal? You would have been free to work on Win32, with most of the project focused on 16 bits. At the time everyone had work in progress, and much of that would be taken apart and rendered useless. What's wrong with finishing something before starting something else?
OK, here's your medal. You pointed out the blatantly obvious fact that operating systems were moving to 32 bits. 16 years ago was 1994, the first release of Win95 was imminent, there wasn't a whole lot of testing you could do,
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Even today, Windows 7 can run 16-bit code (scarily, 16-bit code can bypass security checks). You can turn off 16-bit support, if you research it.
The 64bit version of Vista and 7 cannot run 16bit code, actually. (Can't run the installer for Command & Conquer, for example) Wine now supports that part of the Windows legacy better than Windows itself.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, they are doing it because the 16-bit subsystem (NTVDM) uses the processor's virtual 8086 mode which is not available under x64. They would have to emulate the whole thing under x54, which is what Virtual PC [microsoft.com] does already.
15 years is quite a long time (Score:2)
Just consider that one of the BIG targets, namely Windows XP was a sitting duck for something like 6 years (XP Released in 2001, Vista released in 2007 to the general public)... And WINE was not able to get there...
Also, remember the metafile fiasco?.
WINE had excatly the same error. And I will take none of that "they are replicating the functions" crap.
If the WINE team had recognized this metafile crap as a security vuln themselves, they would have boasted about it from here to mars and back, and then added
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
How long did it take Microsoft to get to the same place?
Ouch. (:
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a chicken and egg scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
I've already sent an e-mail asking for my mistake to be reversed.
Just post a comment in the discussion (under your normal UID) and your mis-mod will be nuked. Unless of course your really, really need to mod that comment, but honestly it ain't that important!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Interesting)
About five years ago my employer introduced a web app for time sheets which would only work in IE. The new version works fine in generic web browsers and our thinking on this is that enough users wanted it on the mac that they were forced to fix their application.
A lot of development is now happening for iPhone and Android platforms which are sort of BSD and Linux respectively so I think Microsoft is losing slowly, but there is no one winner, which is probably good too.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, actually the Wine project management sabotages progress on key projects, e.g. Saferdisc protection [winehq.org] and DIB Engine [winehq.org].
Re: (Score:2)
No, that is part of the usual Mornington Crescent game. New arguments get invented and the goal post is moved. Max did play according to the rules, tried to satisfy all requests.
The best we have so far is "DIB engine should be integrated into GDI32". This is not a problem, because both Max and AJ share this goal, but if I understand correctly, Max doesn't want to invest the effort (which is a lot) until the current design is validated by inclusion into upstream source.
Asshole! The point is of course that Ben Klein is also no authorative source, because the master has no time to speak his mind. So everyone keeps guessing. What about simple commercial interests or incompetence?
Read the history [winehq.org] and read bug 421. There is no way for an inclusion of any DIB engine. When all requirements are satisfied
Re: (Score:2)
Had WINE supported that program we would have ~30 computers now running Linux and the business saving money, but because WINE didn't run that program well enough, they decided to stick with Windows.
I would not trust wine with anything critical. I've had too many programs work on one version of wine and fail on a later version. Tons of programs with "gold" reports in the App DB fail to even install for me, let alone launch.
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Interesting)
Native software is fine, but a compatibility layer won't hurt. In fact, WINE is great for running legacy, closed-source software whose development is long dead with no native build going to be made.
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is funny because one of the traditional perceived strengths of Windows is its backwards compatibility.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's even funnier if you consider the option of running WINE on Windows: http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOnWindows [winehq.org]
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux already extinguished mainstream BSD. It did as much to kill SCO as the lawsuit. It killed HURD. Face it: Linux got critical mass first, and wiped out a lot of the open-source competition. By Android, it's likely to kill a bunch of cellphone OSs, maybe even Palm, possibly even iPhoneOS.
Which is not, in fact, a bad thing. If anything, we need to unify Linux even more, so it can start killing some commercial systems. I'd love to see it wipe out the commercial Unices. Hell, I wouldn't cry over it killing OS X. And I've already planned the party for when it kills Windows.
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Informative)
Don't get too far ahead of yourself, the only ones dead so far are SCO and HURD.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get too far ahead of yourself, the only ones dead so far are SCO and HURD.
And IRIX and SVR4.
Re:The Wrong Way (Score:5, Insightful)
The way things are going, Solaris will be dead soon too (especially if Oracle keeps doing what its been doing)
Re: (Score:2)
Is SCO actually dead now? They appeared to go through quite a time of being undead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
<MonthyPython>I'm not dead yet.</MonthyPython>
When is anything open source dead? I mean it takes only the minimum of fans to keep making "new" releases and it's still technically alive, even if the market share is practically gone. Closed source projects are easy to see, it's when it stops being sold, the developers are fired and that's the end of it. Open source projects just slowly turn into a ghost town where the dust balls roam but where it really only takes one person to resettle to revive
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
By Android, it's likely to kill a bunch of cellphone OSs, maybe even Palm, possibly even iPhoneOS.
But under the hood, Palm WebOS is Linux. Mhhhm, perhaps it's just my deranged mind, but I can't help but wonder whether that would legally classify as suicide, fratricide or maybe even cannibalism...
Re: (Score:2)
>By Android, it's likely to kill a bunch of cellphone OSs, maybe even Palm
Um, Palm's OS, which is WebOS, is just as much Linux as Android is. And it is more open in many ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is not, in fact, a bad thing. If anything, we need to unify Linux even more, so it can start killing some commercial systems.
Hell no! Who is this “we”? Your multiple personalities?
Linux is not supposed to be unified. That is a strength! A good thing. And you know what it’s called?
It’s called freedom!
Linux does not need to win over every last retard. Linux does not need to become a drop-in imitation for Windows. Because that is like telling a spacecraft to imitate a car because people are used to cars. If you run behind something that moves freely, you can never catch up. Because it will have moved on to a
Re: (Score:2)
Wine is also available for Mac OS X [winehq.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously the reason Macs are being held back. Instead of encouraging native ports to Mac, software vendors don't see the point and use Wine's existence as an excuse to not port.
Wine hurts Mac OS!!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of, if not THE, main reasons given by people as to why they prefer MS Windows to other OSs (Mac or Linux) is that all of the software thewy own, and almost all of the software that they need/want, runs on Windows and not anything else.
Take that out of the equation and you remove a major hurdle to switching.
The fact that "it's always following" is neither here nor there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More people than don't want to run any of them at all.
I'm not saying it's perfect: just that cross compatibility is a major issue for non-Windows platforms, and anything that is trying to add compatibility for programmes will inevitably be working on things that are post-release.
Although it has to be said that WINE is getting better and better at running things with no tweaking straight out of the box.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wine was testes for virus compability not so long ago. Turns out they use obscure APIs that Wine doesn't support yet, so most of them don't run. Of course, as Wine gets better, more will.
I would just disable the filetype association of .exe files with Wine, and run the necessary apps with a menu entry like "wine app.exe", so any virus those employees downloaded would simply sit there.
Re: (Score:2)
Wine was testes for virus compability not so long ago.
How ballsy of them to test for viruses! :P
Re: (Score:2)
More aggresively -- WINE is one of the best ways for Linux to embrace, extend, and extinguish -- beat Redmond at their own game.
But not very successfully, it would seem:
Top OS System Share Trend [hitslink.com] [June 2009-April 2010]
OS Platform Statistics [w3schools.com] [March 2003- April 2010]
How many FOSS projects - and how many proprietary/closed source programs available for Linux - are ported to Windows or begin as native Windows apps?
Re: (Score:2)
Do we actually need Wine anymore?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can't (legally) run a Windows VM without paying Microsoft for the OS.
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you assuming he didn't pay for his VM?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He's not. He's saying it's an extra cost to consider.
$200 retail Windows vs. $200 Acer Aspire Revo (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is probably cheaper to buy an OEM copy of XP than pay someone to try and get it working in Wine.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't legally run an OEM copy of XP in a VM. OEM copies of Windows are only licensed for use as an operating system on the PC hardware they are sold with.
Re: (Score:2)
Many of us have laptops that came with Windows XP and paid the Windows tax but have installed Linux... We should be able to use the Windows that we paid for on that hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
It's cheaper for _one_ person to buy an OEM copy of XP, but once the software works with Wine, it becomes a little cheaper for _everybody_ to use Wine.
Re: (Score:2)
Wine isn't only a way to run Win32 binaries under Linux/Mac/etc, it's also useful if companies want to port their software over without a large budget: they can link their existing code to WineLib implementation of the WINAPI. They can even have a mix of architectures: Win32 for the core using WineLib, and then a small module with Linux specific calls for better integration with the system.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't help but question the continued usefulness of Wine, though. I recently tried to run some apps in Wine and failed. I ended up just running the app (and several others) in a VM (VirtualBox) - a no-muss, no-fuss solution.
Do we actually need Wine anymore?
Oblivion is pretty playable inside Wine, even on my 2008-era processor and some people have got Fallout 3 going, though I haven't.
To the best of my knowledge - and I did a lot of Googling when Windows 7 ate itself the other week - no-one has ever got either game working inside a VM, it's just too resource-intensive.
Re: (Score:2)
i had Oblivion running great around 1.1.25, but somewhere after that it wouldn't run it.
i've read a couple posts where people are blaming the ATI drivers.
has this been fixed?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly, while isn't a fart in the wind like it was 17 years ago, Linux most definitely is not a major force in the desktop computing world. MOST of what people use Wine for is just that: desktop computing. Market share is a teensy blip for that type of Linux computing ... and the places where it IS much bigger tend to spend virtually nothing on commercial software.
All that forcing people to write natively to Linux instead of using Wine will do is starve those people of apps and slowly push them to Windows.
I'
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Do we need to explain to you how a hyperlink works too? hint: it's the first one in the summary.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Dude, Chibi Ace is almost as cute as Chibi Luffy. c|:0D
Re:But Windows 7 Is So Schweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, WINE isn't meant for people who are using Windows... It's great that Windows suits your purposes, I'm happy that you are happy but otherwise don't give a damn. However, it is naive (and terribly offtopic) to suggest that nobody needs to run Windows applications on non-Windows platforms anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My [syntap.com] god [ucla.edu], Wine [winehq.org] has [tatanka.com.br] no [7-zip.org] use [utorrent.com] whatsoever [playonlinux.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Why run uTorrent in Wine when there's plenty of perfectly good native torrent apps?
Re: (Score:2)
I used to but I use transmission now because it works just as well and at least I don't have to worry about it being owned by Bittorrent Inc and not having a backdoor...
Re: (Score:2)
Utorrent is always on the list and instantly updated when a new version comes out. Linux and Mac clients like Transmission, not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
runs natively
You're not a very good troll. Try again later.
(Hint: this is a Wine thread.)
Re: (Score:2)
In other words you're saying:
Yo darkmeridian, I'm happy for you and Imma let you finish, but Linux with Wine is the best combination of ALL TIME.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure.
Also, I love fish sticks.