Wine 2.0 Released (softpedia.com) 202
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: It's finally here! After so many months of development and hard work, during which over 6,600 bugs have been patched, the Wine project is happy to announce today, January 24, 2017, the general availability of Wine 2.0. Wine 2.0 is the biggest and most complete version of the open-source software project that allows Linux and macOS users to run applications and games designed only for Microsoft Windows operating systems. As expected, it's a massive release that includes dozens of improvements and new features, starting with support for Microsoft Office 2013 and 64-bit application support on macOS. Highlights of Wine 2.0 include the implementation of more DirectWrite features, such as drawing of underlines, font fallback support, and improvements to font metrics resolution, font embedding in PDF files, Unicode 9.0.0 support, Retina rendering mode for the macOS graphics driver, and support for gradients in GDI enhanced metafiles. Additional Shader Model 4 and 5 shader instructions have been added to Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 implementation, along with support for more graphics cards, support for Direct3D 11 feature levels, full support for the D3DX (Direct3D Extension) 9 effect framework, as well as support for the GStreamer 1.0 multimedia framework. The Gecko engine was updated to Firefox 47, IDN name resolutions are now supported out-of-the-box, and Wine can correctly handle long URLs. The included Mono engine now offers 64-bit support, as well as the debug registers. Other than that, the winebrowser, winhlp32, wineconsole, and reg components received improvements. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 2.0 from WineHQ's websiteS.
I remember 1.0 (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember when Wine 1.0 was released. It was quite a surprise, as Wine was one of the classic programs famous for never reaching version 1.0 despite working well and being extensively deployed for many years. NASM hit 1.0 around that time too, if I recall correctly. Vista had been released not long before that, and the following year Enlightenment E16 hit 1.0 too. Weird times... people began thinking that Duke Nukem Forever might end up getting finished and released after all.
But does X now work with it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But does X now work with it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
But can Cygwin run wine?
Re:But does X now work with it? (Score:4, Funny)
I hear it runs Cygwin [winehq.org] so there's that.
I'm trying to figure out why the heck anyone would want to do that, since both Mac and Linux offer a complete (and superior) shell already.
It's called a joke, you might want to read up on that :)
Re:But does X now work with it? (Score:5, Funny)
$ man jokes
No manual entry for joke
Nope, no help for you there either.
Re: (Score:3)
fixme:service:scmdatabase_autostart_services Auto-start service L"Lotus Notes Single Logon" failed to start: 2
wine: cannot find L"C:\\windows\\system32\\man.exe"
Turtles (Score:5, Funny)
They run Cygwin under Wine for their Apple ][e emulator, to run Logo. Once you're in Logo, it's turtles all the way down.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm trying to figure out why the heck anyone would want to do that, since both Mac and Linux offer a complete (and superior) shell already.
Because Cygwin now includes Wine as well.
Re: But does X now work with it? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But can it run Linux?! (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking that you run virtualbox on wine and you are good to go.
Re: (Score:2)
I know you're being funny, but no you really couldn't ever run virtualbox on Wine, even if Wine was 99% compatible. Just like the poorly named Windows Subsytem for Linux could not ever run VirtualBox for Linux. Neither system ships with an OS kernel. Rather they translate the system calls into the native kernel. Both systems are really aimed at providing the userspace needed to run these foreign binaries on a foreign kernel.
ReactOS on the other hand is an open-source Windows NT-compatible kernel that bor
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But can it run Linux?!
This isn't a stupid question -- WSL processes can not exec a PE. On the other hand, on my system, with qemu and wine binfmts, arch-test reports:
alpha amd64 arm arm64 armel armhf hppa i386 m68k mips mips64 mips64el mipsel powerpc ppc64 ppc64el sh4 sparc sparc64 win32 win64 x32
and you can run processes for any of these archs from any other, completely transparently.
On the other hand, in WSL you can start amd64 Linux ELFs and nothing else. A compat layer on Windows that can't even interact with Windows -- wh
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, in WSL you can start amd64 Linux ELFs and nothing else. A compat layer on Windows that can't even interact with Windows -- what's the point?
You can, at least, interact with the filesystem, and I think some forms of IPC work between the Windows and Linux worlds. This isn't new for Windows: NT 4 had a POSIX compatibility layer that, like WSL, was a separate OS personality. It implemented the minimum possible amount of POSIX (anything allowed to simply return not-implemented errors did) and gave you a completely distinct set of APIs. But it let them tick the checkbox...
X11 makes this easier on *NIX systems because it's intrinsically designed
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'd understand high-level communications not working, emulating them right would be a task as hard as wine's -- but on WSL, even basic execve("hello.exe") doesn't work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The STARTUPINFO structure you pass to CreateProcess() has fields hStdInput, hStdOutput and hStdError which do just that. An UNIX process can have more than these three descriptors, but I don't think anyone would expect them to work for a Windows process anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wine currently depends on certain Linux kernel features to load the COFF binaries that the WSL may or may not have emulated yet. But there's no technical reason Wine couldn't run under the WSL as Wine is a userpace program that doesn't require drivers or ring-0 instructions.
Re: (Score:2)
But can it run Linux?!
In Soviet Russia, Linux runs Wine!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Linux running Windows in a QEMU, running a Linux subsystem, running Windows in WINE. Let's see how many system resources we can hog without actually running anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Win10 alternatives (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That like jumping out of the frying pan into another frying pan. OSX and windows are just playing leapfrog with eachother.
Microsoft account to sign in... OSX had their version of that first.
All your updates in one lump instead of individual patches... OSX had it first, and doesn't even let you roll back either. full restore from backup or re-image from scratch are you options.
App store? OSX had it first; and even defaults to settings that only allow using it.
Having the local search hooked up to Bing? Anoth
Re: (Score:2)
Apple had it first as well.
Re: (Score:2)
This is news to me. Do you have a link?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The big difference is that Apple's updates don't have better than even odds of hosing your computer, unlike Microsoft who manages to brick people's computers on a routine basis.
As far as privacy goes, Apple has said repeatedly on multiple occasions that user privacy is a primary concern. I can't speak to the future obviously, but up till now, an OSX machine sends nothing to apple that the user doesn't allow. People have even tested this, and verified it. Don't want anything going to Apple? Don't sign in
Re: (Score:2)
The big difference is that Apple's updates don't have better than even odds of hosing your computer, unlike Microsoft who manages to brick people's computers on a routine basis.
On the other hand when apple updates to hose your computer, there is no rollback. And windows has a gazillion possible hardware configurations to cope with... Apple has tiny number.
And I've been through plenty of Apple's abortions. I had a 17" macbook pro that ran like molasses and couldn't hold a wireless connection after updating to snow leopard. As for windows update? Yeah, i've seen a few fails too. Although with 40x the marketshare who is surprised?
On ios where apple has a nice fat marketshare and only
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"You fucking liar."
Touched a nerve?
"This is false. macOS will stop you from running unsigned apps but you don't have to go through the App Store in order to do that. After all there are tons of big applications for OS X that aren't available in the App Store."
You're right of course. However, there are a ton of small and F/OSS applications that are not signed. I run into the warning dialog boxes about it all the time.
The funny thing here is that if Windows implemented a feature that required signed apps by d
Re: (Score:2)
Well, long ago Microsoft implemented an "Are you sure?" when you run an .exe you downloaded from the web to your dekstop.
They do like the "Are you sure?" method a lot - it basically gives you root on most people's running and not-locked desktop session (friends and family etc.), at least on Windows 7.
People did complain about Windows not running unsigned drivers. Otherwise, Microsoft has been most interested in locking down their themes. Like removing the color schemes in Windows 7's classic mode. One of th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Hipsters and mobile crapware. Microsoft wanted to emulate them. As usual, they've done a poor job.
Re: (Score:2)
Afaict MS has seen the writing on the wall.
People are replacing their computers less often and spending less money on each computer. When a computer costs $1000 a $100 or so windows license is tolerable, when a computer costs $200 it is much less so.
To discourage sellers of low end computers pushing Linux and/or potential purchasers of low end computers buying smartphone like tablets instead, MS has been practically giving away windows for low end computers. That helps to keep people in the windows ecosyste
Re: (Score:2)
I ditched Windows long ago for Linux and never looked back -- mostly because I ditched Linux for NetBSD shortly thereafter (and still never looked back).
Wow, this brings back memories! (Score:2)
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2009/20090614_wine_excel_2007.jpg
The Asymmetry (Score:3, Interesting)
Working at Microsoft and having a job of making Linux apps play on Windows would be kinda cool, because Linux has a reasonably small set of system calls (OK, we're not talking dozens anymore, its more like hundreds) and the overall userspace/kernel interface is well designed and explained in a number of good books.
Trying to make Windows apps play on Linux is an Sisyphean/Augean Stables type task, because the Windows API was designed to be horrendously difficult to copy (by OS competitors), and hard for application competitors (like Netscape, Lotus, or WordPerfect) to keep up with. If API's had 15 arguments each of which was a complicated struct, so much the better in the thinking of the MS Windows honchos.
As Steve Jobs put it: "They (Microsoft) have no taste."
underlines! (Score:5, Funny)
Highlights of Wine 2.0 include the implementation of more DirectWrite features, such as drawing of underlines
It truly is the year of the Linux desktop!
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using Linux exclusively for about 13 years. To me, 2003 was the year of the Linux desktop, and then every year since then.
Just because it hasn't achieved the popularity of Windows or OSX, doesn't mean it isn't just as capable (I've used a MacBook Pro for 4 years at work, and I still haven't been persuaded to make the switch at home). I installed it on my mother's ageing laptop a few years ago, and she's been pretty happy using it since then.
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes the odd thing can run on Wine. E.g., tool to edit a graphics card's BIOS to change the fan speed or clocks etc. ; BIOS is to be downloaded from the Internet or dumped from DOS. Edit your BIOS by running the tool in Wine. Boot DOS from USB (can be MS-DOS) or other means, then flash the modded BIOS to your graphics card.
Perhaps that's a silly example. But a simple, plain application with no particular dependencies or use of features has good chances of working. Like, about any single-author stuff th
How soon until it is included in ReactOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, 2.0 supports Windows 8 and 10 compatibility, both 32- and 64-bit. Actually, Wine 1.8 was the first to include Windows 10 compatibility ;)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, sort of: ReactOS and Wine already share a lot of code. I believe it's mostly userland DLLs because what's the part that can be shared.
Take into account that both aim (among other things) to implement the Windows APIs but they do it differently:
- WINE on top of Linux APIs.
- ReactOS on top of a Windows NT kernel.
So of course, WINE progress helps ReactOS but the latter also have to implement on their own many os level things (kernel, filesystem support, network st
Word 2013 rated garbage (Score:3)
Word and Excel 2013 are still rated as garbage. The 2013 installer is only rated silver. That's some great office 2013 support. Are we all using Trump style facts now?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, we are.
Use _hillary() to create a jail for office . . . :)
hawk
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Well it *did* just get released. Lets give it some time for people to compile binaries and test things out. None of the apps have been yet tested with 2.0
I'm not holding my breath, mind you, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Is Wine Useful? (Score:2)
Questions from the masses:
1. Can I open Chrome in it and watch netflix / other streaming services that people watch?
2. Can I download Steam on it and play a library of games without running into driver issues?
Especially #2.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Can I open Chrome in it and watch netflix / other streaming services that people watch?
Who cares? Netflix has been working in Linux-native Chrome for over a year now. There's no need to mess with Wine.
2. Can I download Steam on it and play a library of games without running into driver issues?
Most D3D9 games (and also the relatively-rare OpenGL or Vulkan titles) work fine. If you have a problem with any of them, it's usually an issue with 3rd-party DRM. D3D11 support still has a long way to go toward getting playable results.
Re: (Score:3)
Well to use an old Jerry Pournelle catchphrase from his Byte Magazine column, "you maybe won't need it often, but when you do need it, you need it bad".
Case in point. I run Linux Mint 17 LTS. When I moved from Windows one of the few Windows-only applications I wanted to keep was my usenet client - xnews. It is, IMHO, the best usenet client I've found over many years and I have it tweaked just how I like it. YMMV. So being able to continue to run it under Wine was a win for me.
so what ? (Score:2)
It begs the question (Score:2)
BF3 (Battle Field 3) under Wine (Score:2)
I'd do anything to play that game again (other than installing Windows a given).
BF3 is the best game I've ever played and I've play a lot of them yet BF3 just blew me away. I'd sure like to play that game again, I had 3000 hours into it and could still played 6 hours a day,
Crazy talk I know - , BF3 under Wine... but one can hope.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect you're just trolling, but still:
aannd... still no Direct3D 9 support.
What? Of course there is. [winehq.org]
If Wine was a commercial package, this problem would have been addressed one way or another
If you want a closed-source Wine, look at CrossOver. [wikipedia.org]
iTunes (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who said it was?
Re:Wine (Score:5, Informative)
I recall long ago (2003 maybe?) one of the Wine developers showed up on Tech TV and Leo Laporte asked him something like "if wine isn't an emulator, then what is it?" and the dude answers back "it's an emulator". I have a feeling that the rest of the wine devs were gritting their teeth at that though, but I never checked their mailing lists to see.
My understanding is that rather than an emulator, it's just an API wrapper, or alternatively a simulator or maybe "high level emulator", but I'm not an expert on how you name these things.
Re: (Score:3)
Either that or a series of tubes
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Someday you'll realize that life is hard enough without us making it harder for each other. Prove you have some worth in this world, and work to make life better for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wine is an emulator and it's not an emulator. You can run a Windows executable on the runtime or you can compile Windows source code and run it as a native executable. The latter would be more useful for things like porting games.
The performance of an application ported through WineLib is going to be identical to the performance of the Windows binary running through Wine. So WineLib is no more and no less useful for games than it is for any other application.
What WineLib does buy you however is lots of complications with the compilation toolchain as soon as your code depends on Microsoft-specific C++ features like the omnipresent #import directive [microsoft.com], Visual C++ project files [microsoft.com] (even with winemaker), or the MFC [winehq.org], etc. Things get complex
Re: (Score:2)
The performance of an application ported through WineLib is going to be identical to the performance of the Windows binary running through Wine.
Only if the libraries are as fast or as feature-rich as they are under Windows. For instance, if there are certain graphics routines that take advantage of particular hardware features or GL routines, but they are not available or poorly implemented in the wine libraries, then a problem will likely run slower than it would under Windows. It could cause graphical corruption, or the program might just instead fall back to doing graphics routines in software instead of hardware. Or it might just crash. Or all
Re: (Score:3)
The performance of an application ported through WineLib is going to be identical to the performance of the Windows binary running through Wine. So WineLib is no more and no less useful for games than it is for any other application.
No it isn't. A Win32 application running over wine involves more context switching and memory contention due to wineserver and other libraries eating up resources. In theory a natively compiled Win32 exe might be more optimal if MSVC ran more efficiently than gcc / clang but these days that's unlikely.
In addition, games tend to be self contained and only touch certain APIs. So the rest of the Wine runtime is superfluous bloat. Compiling and linking against winelib saves space on disk because the code that
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
My understanding is that rather than an emulator, it's just an API wrapper, or alternatively a simulator or maybe "high level emulator", but I'm not an expert on how you name these things.
It's an implementation of the Win32 APIs. Microsoft has implemented many of these twice (though often sharing code), once atop the services provided by the Windows 9x series of operating systems and once atop those provided by the Windows NT kernel. In this sense, WINE is no more an emulator than Windows 7 is when it provides reimplemented APIs created for Windows 95.
WINE is a little bit more like an emulator, in that it is often providing Windows services atop other APIs with a similar level of abstract
Re: (Score:2)
Keeping the nuance allows us to effectively communicate the differe
Re: (Score:2)
It seems that jargon nuance is lost over time. The term emulator in technical jargon refers to something emulating a separate machine code instruction set or other hardware
This is simply not true. Even in the '70s the term encompassed a lot more. There's a reason that the term 'machine emulator' was in common usage for a while. It's only recently that 'emulator' has been shorthand for 'machine emulator'.
The JVM itself is an emulator, emulating an invented instruction set
No it isn't, because for something to be an emulator there must be something that it is emulating. If the emulated thing does not exist, then it is a simulator not an emulator. The JVM isn't even that, it is a virtual machine.
Re: (Score:3)
A simulator doesn't actually do the thing it relates to. You can't go anywhere in a flight simulator. You can't kill anything in an RPG or gain any kind of experience. You can execute code in the emulated instruction set of the jvm. Destroying every C64 on earth would not magically turn the emulators into simulators just because the thing they emulate no longer exists. Creating a chip that uses byte code as its native instructio
Re:Wine (Score:4, Insightful)
I recall long ago (2003 maybe?) one of the Wine developers showed up on Tech TV and Leo Laporte asked him something like "if wine isn't an emulator, then what is it?" and the dude answers back "it's an emulator".
The dude in question was Alexandre Julliard, Wine's project leader. The goal of the show was to present Wine so there was a sort of rehearsal during which the journalist said he was going to say something like "so Wine is an emulator" to which Alexandre would object. But during the live interview the journalist actually said "so Wine is not an emulator" which caused Alexandre to take the opposite stance as per the rehearsal. I'd say he a better as a tech leader than as a PR guy and I certainly wouldn't want it any other way.
Even so he did not say that Wine would emulate CPUs which was the common understanding of the word 'emulator' at the time. It's still true that Wine will not deal with CPU emulators or virtual machines. Both of these aspects are best dealt with independently of Wine. So anyone who needs that should run Wine and their application inside their VM or CPU emulator. Except in pathological cases, if the VM / CPU emulator is fast enough to run the application it's still going to be fast enough if you add Wine to the mix.
Wine is a reimplementation of the Win32 and Win64 APIs on top of the Unix (and X, OpenGL, Cocoa) APIs. It's not all that different from Glib and GTK+ which provide their own system and graphics APIs on top of the underlying system APIs, be that Unix or Windows. Of course the Windows APIs were not meant for this so there are some extra complications and side effects (e.g. %fs register usage [wikipedia.org] conflicts on some platforms), but not so much for the general case.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There are several parts to wine.
One is a big set of libraries that act as substitutes for the windows ones, either implementing functionality themselves or translating it to calls to native Linux libraries.
Another is a binary loader that knows how to actually load windows binaries into the right place in memory (which is tricky because you have to make sure Linux doesn't put any shared libraries there first) and resolve their imports against both windows dlls and the wine-specific libraries.
Another is a pro
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wine (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because originally LAME was a set of patches against the "dist10" MPEG reference software sources. As such it was not an MP3 encoder. It took some time before all the original reference source was removed. Only 82 days left till the last of the MP3 patents expires...
Re:Wine (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that sentence requires its own article here on slashdot!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Emulation" has a strong connotation with a software implementation of CPU hardware
It shouldn't, and these days I don't think most people make that association anymore. Environments can be emulated as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes it can. Some of the Engineers at my office used to run SolidWorks 2012 on CrossOver. Looks like Wine runs it with some workarounds:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec... [winehq.org]
Re: Can it run AutoCAD or Solid Works yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing that WINE doesn't leak users (design) data back to Microsoft? This could be -exactly- why you would want to run pro tools on WINE these days... It's precisely why I was thinking the same thing when I read the comment.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing that WINE doesn't leak users (design) data back to Microsoft?
Neither does Windows which does not tie into specific applications to leak data.
And even if it did, no one will find it in the clusterfuck that is Microsoft user data. It's probably the best and most secret place to store your data.
Re:Can it run AutoCAD or Solid Works yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps he wants to run those applications and run his preferred OS at the same time.
Re:Can it run AutoCAD or Solid Works yet? (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? You'll pay for AutoCAD or SolidWorks, but are too cheap to buy Windows? You deserve what you get, I guess.
You think I run Linux because I can't afford free-as-in-beer windows? Newsflash: many Linux desktop users already have the windows license when it came bundled with the computer. Our reasons for discarding the windows install has nothing to do with price.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And almost nothing that the rest of us want.
I'm so happy for you that Wine meets your needs. It falls quite short of being a practical substitute for Windows for everything I've ever wanted to use it for.
Re:6,600 bug fixes?! (Score:4, Insightful)
A bug fix isn't a bug fix in the normal term. As far as wine is concerned, a bug is "this random program x doesn't work"
Re: (Score:2)
No of course not!
Wine
Is
Not
Emulated
Re: (Score:2)
Kinda runs counter to his whole spiel about cutting down latency and api overhead for VR applications.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe more accurately, the Windows ABI being the universal one thanks to Wine. DirectX can be hit-or-miss, especially if you don't have gallium drivers on your system.
Carmack always used OpenGL for his game engines too, a tradition maintained in Doom 2016 as well, despite being developed and released after his departure. The Vulkan version even runs well in Wine.