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Windows Android Programming Wine

CodeWeavers To Release CrossOver For Android To Run Windows Programs 66

Posted by samzenpus from the playing-together dept.
An anonymous reader writes: For the better part of three years there has been talk about running Wine on Android to bring Windows x86 programs to Android phones/tablets, and it's going to become a reality. CodeWeavers is planning to release CrossOver For Android before the end of the year. This will allow native Windows binaries to run on Android, but will be limited to Android-x86 due to struggles in emulating x86 Windows code on ARM. The tech preview will be free and once published the open-source patches will be published for Wine.
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CodeWeavers To Release CrossOver For Android To Run Windows Programs More

CodeWeavers To Release CrossOver For Android To Run Windows Programs

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  • How useful is this? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I know there exist some x86 Android devices, but how many could there really be?

    • Asus Zenfone's come to mind.

    • Owner of an Asus Zenfone 2 here. Stellar device for the sub $300 price point. Good screen, 4GB RAM, 64GB flash, micro-SD, and probably the only non-vanilla Android UI I have ever liked well enough to keep around.

      It's only weak point is the camera is closer in performance to a Galaxy S4 than the last year and current flagships with laser assisted focus and 4K video (LG G3/G4, Galaxy S5/S6, Nexus 6/6x). I am actually waiting for the Zenfone Zoom and probably going to jump straight to getting it should the

  • WARNING: --- Codewavers == Wine (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

    NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

    FAIL.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not a problem here. I've tried CrossOver on and off for a few years now; it's still shite.

      Honestly, I've had better luck using WINE for free. God only knows what Codeweavers have done that warrants a not-free fork of an admirable FOSS project.

      • Not a problem here. I've tried CrossOver on and off for a few years now; it's still shite.

        Way back when, I was considering releasing my software under Wine on Linux, under the terms of "if you run this product under Wine, you owe us nothing." (I didn't copy protect, I used registration enabling, and would have been delighted to enable everyone under Linux.) So, I got and installed Wine, and tested it. It broke. Really badly. Several system calls that weren't covered, or broken, or whatever -- they flat out

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by div_2n ( 525075 )

          Allegedly, their revenue stream from licensing is going down while interest and revenue from software makers in assisting in porting their Windows apps to Linux using their platform is increasing.

          I mean it stands to reason that people are not going to regularly upgrade Crossover if it's already running whatever app they want well. And so it stands to reason that they would target their development efforts to companies looking to port. Sooner or later, essentially all the important calls will be implemented

        • WINE isn't a product. It's an open code base.

          When you found unimplemented APIs you could: write around them, write them yourself, or pay someone else to write them. You chose to attempt to complain them into existence.

          Interesting choice.

    • Remember what happened when the **superior** IBM OS/2 had Win32 "emulation" (which really worked amazing well). Nobody would write native OS/2 programs cuz Windows was "good enuf".

      NATIVE APPS ONLY, PLEASE.!!!!

      When you think about it running windows programs under wine is more native than running android apps under ART. Windows software executes natively on the CPU under wine. Android java code has to be translated to machine code before it can execute.

      • Android java code has to be translated to machine code before it can execute.

        The method you described is what Dalvik used to be. With ART, that translation is done only one time, which is when you install the app. After that it's as native as something like compiled c#.

        • The method you described is what Dalvik used to be. With ART, that translation is done only one time, which is when you install the app. After that it's as native as something like compiled c#.

          Statement is applicable to both runtimes as Installation also occurs prior to execution. Reason for my comment was to invoke some introspection with regards to what "NATIVE ONLY" even means.

  • For the better part of three years there has been talk about running Wine on Android to bring Windows x86 programs to Android phones/tablets, and it's going to become a reality. CodeWeavers is planning to release CrossOver For Android before the end of the year.

    You know, if you want all this stuff ... then why the hell not buy a Windows laptop and get on with it?

    At no point in my owning of a tablet or any other portable device have I ever said "wow, I would like to run the full bloated pile of crap which is

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by garcia ( 6573 )

      What percentage of Android owners even remotely want any of this?

      Users don't know what they want until it is provided to them and, honestly, if you don't want any part of it, that's cool but perhaps it will really help developers port their work cross-platform and bring us to a completely different level.

      I would love to see Android or iOS apps come back across the divide in some cases, so there's likely a market in reverse.

      No sense in getting all fired up about CodeWeavers doing this.

      • Well if it means we're going from small devices with small apps and small amounts of resources to suddenly making them full on desktop machines, I just don't see the point.

        You can put anything you want on your device, me, I'm looking at this and thinking if Android starts to need as much resources as a full-on Windows machine it has a very good chance of wrecking the whole platform.

        Tablets aren't laptops. If you want a laptop, get one. But please don't screw up the whole platform as suddenly there' needs

        • I see the point if Microsoft is money is behind this.

          Windows mobile being what it is, it behooves MS to have as big of a mobile presence as possible. If that means piggy-backing on Android, I think the current mentality and MS HQ says, "do it!"

        • Tablets aren't laptops. If you want a laptop, get one.

          Which company makes a 10 inch laptop that's not a detachable tablet anymore?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by garcia ( 6573 )

          Well if it means we're going from small devices with small apps and small amounts of resources to suddenly making them full on desktop machines, I just don't see the point.

          And that's totally fine. The point isn't what YOU want, it's what some private company wants to do and these actions will in no way, shape, or form negatively impact your life and thus getting all up in a huff about it is a little over the top.

        • Yeah, we know already. You already whined about this as AC above. If you don't want it, there's a simple solution. Ignore it and don't install it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nnet ( 20306 )
        \o/

    • Especially now with Surface and universal (Windows) apps.

      Didn't MS put money into Cyanogen? Perhaps this is related to the MS "run everywhere" strategy.

      I have never known Codeweavers to do anything altruistically so I am guessing there is money coming from somewhere for this feature.

    • i can run sql server on wine, so i can now have sql server on my phone! Awesome!

  • ...what was the business case for writing a library set for some very limited conditions?

    I mean, yeah, I guess it would be kind of cool to run Windows x86 binaries on certain models of smartphone and all, but honestly, under what conditions did they think this would be useful (beyond the obvious 'gee whiz' factor)?

    Mind, I'm not normally one to go reaching for business justifications and such, but I can't shake the feeling that they did this to, well, stay relevant. These days, if there's an application that

    • Re:I am curious about one thing... (Score:5, Informative)

      by morcego ( 260031 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @03:26PM (#50664289)

      Codeweavers has a very strong business focus, and most of the innovations are based on client requests.
      You can rest assured that, if they developed it, they already have a client willing to pay for it. Jeremy White is no fool.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unrtst ( 777550 )

        Agreed. I don't find it difficult at all to dream up good business cases for this. They'd just be guesses, but it's easy to imagine cases.

        * some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.

        * vm's still need a separ

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          * some enterprise based company has some windows only app. They want tablets in hands of users walking around (maybe for supervisors at a call center). Surface would make the entrance fee much higher than acceptable. Cheap android tables + a tweaked wine + their slightly tweaked app = MUCH cheaper. Could easily bring enough savings to be worth it.

          There are cheap Windows tablets too. Often running the exact same processor that the Android version runs.

          And by cheap, I mean $80 cheap. There's a bunch more arou

        • Yes I was thinking something similar.

          We recently had a situation where the business decided to buy the field force all iPads because they were going to change the whole business process around a new app which happens to only run on iOS. Midway through the project we discovered that a few of the field force have a critical business application which only runs on windows.

          We couldn't have used this specific solution since it is Android rather than iOS, but if it had been available then it would have been very

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd2112 ( 1535857 )

      I mean, yeah, I guess it would be kind of cool to run Windows x86 binaries on certain models of smartphone and all, but honestly, under what conditions did they think this would be useful (beyond the obvious 'gee whiz' factor)?

      I can see certain applications where it might be a good idea to deploy a legacy Windows application to tablets, but even in those situations it would usually be better to host the application on Citrix or some other application virtualization layer running on a server than have them running natively on the tablet.

  • How many Nexus 6's will I have to slave together to play Crysis?

    • You could do all of them and it still wouldn't be enough, since this app will be x86 only and the Nexus 6 is ARM.

  • androwish (Score:3)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @03:36PM (#50664359) Homepage

    I don't know how well their windows emulator works, but when emulators work they can be very helpful. I was trying to write a simple app for my nexus phone and started looking into it and found it was going to be overwhelming. But then I stumbled on androwish, a tcl/tk environment for android and found it trivial to write my app. So this was a case of a emulator/port saving substantial amounts of time.

  • x86 only? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It is already dead.

    Nothing else needs to be said, really.

  • Car customizer fits a 1952 Ford Flathead V8 into a Tesla Model S...

  • I still can't run Quickbooks on it.

  • That people install Bluestacks to run Android apps on Windows because there is nothing decent available natively. And older enterprise apps this will be good for are terrible with small screen/touch/onscreen keyboard. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

  • These announcements are being made every year: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015... Wine for Android is being worked on.

    Fact is: they have been working on it for 3 years, and it is still not ready. In this time, the first Intel smart phone has been launched (the Intel AZ210), upgraded to Android 4.0, then dumped by Intel and turned obsolete.

    So come back when it is actually released. And remember: "nearly" is marketing speak for not.

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