Wine 8.0 Released — and Plenty of Improvements are Included (omgubuntu.co.uk) 59
An anonymous reader shares this report from OMG! Ubuntu:
Developers have just uncorked a brand new release of Wine, the open source compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Linux.
A substantial update, Wine 8.0 is fermented from a year's worth of active development (roughly 8,600 changes in total). From that, a wealth of improvements are provided across every part of the Wine experience, from app compatibility, through to performance, and a nicer looking UI....
Notable highlights in Wine 8.0 include the completion of PE conversion, meaning all modules can be built in PE format. Wine devs say this work is an important milestone towards supporting "copy protection, 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers, x86 applications on ARM", and more.
A substantial update, Wine 8.0 is fermented from a year's worth of active development (roughly 8,600 changes in total). From that, a wealth of improvements are provided across every part of the Wine experience, from app compatibility, through to performance, and a nicer looking UI....
Notable highlights in Wine 8.0 include the completion of PE conversion, meaning all modules can be built in PE format. Wine devs say this work is an important milestone towards supporting "copy protection, 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers, x86 applications on ARM", and more.
Codeweavers (Score:5, Insightful)
Reads like the major updates are largely the work of the commercial outfit Codeweavers - "32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers, x86 applications on ARM".
Nothing wrong with that - I'm actually one of their customers. But it's nice seeing that work get to everyone (thanks mostly to the GPL, I'd think).
Re: Codeweavers (Score:1)
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Lots of shit works. Lots of shit doesn't work.
I'd say my success rate has probably been about 50/50, which is a lot better than 0/50. A lot of the time, you can also massage things into working by installing native libraries for stuff instead of using the WINE implementations.
I play quite a few games using it (or more accurately, "supported builds of it", a la Codeweavers or specialized derivatives of it, a la Proton)
I think about the only thing I run on it in t
Re: Codeweavers (Score:5, Informative)
What works in Wine? Or if it is simpler to answer, what does not? Does MS Office work? Autocad? Games? What is not working?
You can get information on application compatibility with Wine from the Wine Application Database [winehq.org].
For example there is 1060 entries in "Productivity" category and 887 entries in "Scientific/Technical/Math" which also include some versions of AutoCAD [winehq.org].
Re:Codeweavers (Score:4, Insightful)
Paying for WINE seems silly, but you're really paying for their development of WINE, and they push all of it upstream.
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Well, that's how open-source is supposed to work, isn't it? The developers work on the code, and you can use it under the open-source license. If you want support, you pay for it, which is how
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Wine Is Never Enough.
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Really? I've had the opposite experience - almost everything I've tried in WINE works just fine.
Of course it's usually the programs that are hardest to replace that completely refuse to work at all. I think Fusion 360 was the last brick wall I ran into. Of course if I remember right I couldn't even get it running in a VM, so it's a good bet it's intentionally broken as part of its copy protection.
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One thing I'll note - I've had the best luck by specifically looking for distros with a solid, well-tuned WINE package already available for them. I've been off Linux for a while, but seems like Ubuntu had a decent one years ago.
Especially for good looks - I've had several distros over the years where I just couldn't get WINE fonts to render nicely. There's obviously a trick to it, since they look great in other distros, but after a few hours of digging online and editing config files to no avail I finall
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It's been years, and I couldn't really give you a first-hand suggestion specifically for games - though SteamOS would probably be my first stop. It is after all a whole distro tuned specifically to maximum gaming compatibility and performance, including a strong WINE showing from what I've heard. Don't know how good the hardware support is though. Prior to SteamDeck I seem to recall it getting mostly-abandoned after a few years of "Steam Boxes" failing to gain traction. Seems like SteamDeck is really cat
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Tell us your secret, lol.
I've tried to get stuff working under Wine more than a few times, so maybe it's me.
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My best luck has been picking a distro with a well-configured WINE package available in their base repository that just worked. Install WINE, run Windows program installer, program works great.
I've been off Linux for a while, but Ubuntu used to have a decent one.
I don't think I've ever gotten the WINE teams reference package to work well. (couldn't swear I've ever gotten it to work at all)
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My experience is very similar. (macOS Intel) In fact I just downloaded the Codeweavers demo yesterday and it ran exactly 0/7 of the (older) games I tried. (Hard to try a lot since the downloads are generally so huge.)
A couple of years ago I did get Guild Wars 2 (DX11) working using Wineskin and play it frequently, but that's essentially the only software I've ever got running properly. Even then it's just... playable, but not awesome.
*sad panda* because it always feels like it's almost there every time
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I started playing GW2 recently, using Wineskin for my Mac, and Lutris for my Linux host.
The Lutris install was much easier to bootstrap, even with the initial difficulties I had with an old video card.
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By now, I've simply gotten pretty well used to living without the software I would have used WINE to run anyway, or found good-enough alternatives.
Mirrors my experience exactly. Even after repeated attempts I never really got it working quite right, and realized I probably never would.
One by one I found native Linux apps to replace my Windows apps, and that was that.
There are only a couple of Windows apps I'd ever be interested in running at this point, and frankly they're not essential; they're just apps I prefer over the Linux replacements.
For example, SnagIt, a good windows screen cap program with a handy little editor. Nothing fancy but it's perfe
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I've run a lot of stuff on Wine successfully. Mostly I use it or Proton to run games these days, and a surprisingly high percentage of them work correctly. A lot of this is down to Vulkan support, because this works great everywhere, unlike Direct3D which works some of the time. Even D3D support has improved through Vulkan thanks to DXVK, which translates Direct3D into Vulkan much more successfully than Wine translates Direct3D into OpenGL.
If you're hoping for it to run shiny new applications, though, you w
Advantages over official .NET port? (Score:3)
I'm curious. Now that Microsoft has officially ported .NET Core to Linux, what advantage does Wine offer?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en... [microsoft.com]
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Direct3D stuff.
Re:Advantages over official .NET port? (Score:4, Informative)
Running everything that isn't .NET....
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^ this, or more specifically: everything that isn't .NET Core or 6 or 7.
Microsoft's runtime compatability story with all the .NET Framework/.NET Core/.NET versions is about the same as it is with Windows versions across the "Windows platform": it's a joke, a bad joke.
There are so many versions and incompatibile versions about there you actually need three different runtimes installed to get maximum compatability: .NET Framework 3.5 with latest updates (this covers everything in the .NET Framework 1-3.5 rang
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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So, serious question...your opposition to Microsoft is *emotional*? Or is there something specific Microsoft did to draw your hatred?
Not that I think Microsoft is wonderful. They are, and behave like, a big corporation. Lots of people hate big corporations, but usually they have something specific about them that draws their ire.
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Someone with a 8-digit UID asking a 6-digit UID if they're a child or a teen.
There's another explanation:
The shit they got busted for is literally the norm these days.
MS was the last giant to fall on the antitrust sword. Today, it wouldn't happen.
OP probably just doesn't find them as evil as you.
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MS was the last giant to fall on the antitrust sword. Today, it wouldn't happen.
MS got away with a slap on the wrist
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I hope so, I'd love to see the landscape shift in this regard.
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Since you asked, I'm 56. I used DOS 1.0.
In your entire rant, you didn't name a single thing Microsoft has done to draw your hatred, you just repeated over and over how evil and hateful they are. I think you don't actually KNOW anything specific they've done that is evil, you just know you hate Microsoft.
And if you were to name something, I'd challenge you to show that Apple hasn't stooped equally low.
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You remind me of Donald Trump, insisting over and over that the election was stolen, but never finding a single credible instance of a specific fraudulent event that would have changed the outcome. Just keep repeating over and over how you feel, it might make you feel better and more sure of your opinion.
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Microsoft set back computing at least a decade, maybe two, and never did anything to make up for it. The only justice is restorative justice. Microsoft deserves every iota of hatred which has ever been aimed in their direction, and anyone who says different is selling something (even if only to themself.)
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Microsoft set back computing at least a decade, maybe two
Would you care to elaborate? How exactly did Microsoft set back computing?
Like the original Microsoft-hater, you haven't expressed anything specific, just hatred. Maybe they deserve it, but I'd at least like to know what they did to make you so angry!
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It's quite a laundry list, stuff like ensuring their competitor's software would fail on their OS (the whole "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus won't run" stuff, but they did that with Novell too), but here's a few off the top of my head if you want to know why some people might still be salty about Microsoft.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Most of their misdeeds are centred around trying to ensure that Windows was the only viable system. Java and its potential to run anywhere as interpreted bytecode was a threat s
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Microsoft's past crimes are well-documented, and well known to those who were around at the time. And I complained about them about as loudly as anyone.
But Microsoft's behavior today is constrained by the fact that there now is competition at every level of the computing stack. It cannot get away with most of its past shenanigans, so, for the most part, its recent behavior has been much better than in the past. (Not perfect. But better.)
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Microsoft's past crimes are well-documented, and well known to those who were around at the time. And I complained about them about as loudly as anyone.
But Microsoft's behavior today is constrained by the fact that there now is competition at every level of the computing stack.
Moving the goalposts
Re: Advantages over official .NET port? (Score:2)
.NET Core applications are a ridiculously tiny fraction of Windows applications.
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I'm curious. Now that Microsoft has officially ported .NET Core to Linux, what advantage does Wine offer?
Is Microsoft Office built on .NET?
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The .NET Core on Linux cannot run Win32 applications, only .NET Core applications (which are written in C#, not C++ or C)..
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Got it, thanks.
Win32 is now very, very old. There isn't even a 32-bit version of Windows any more. So if you're running legacy software, I can see why Wine would be needed. But anything less than 20 years old should probably work on the official .NET port.
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Intuit is %@@#@!! (Score:1)
I have one Windows machine I use. It's unplugged from the network. I use it to run Quicken 2013. I think more recent versions are some sort of subscription beast. I've tried to use Wine to run Quicken 2013, but it doesn't work. CrossoverOffice lists Quicken 2013 as not working. I hope hope hope wish wish wish Wine can get Quicken 2013 to work. That would mean I could finally dump this awful Windows box.
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Why not run it in a VM? Windows runs very well in KVM/QEMU. 3d support is not very good*, but you won't need that for Quicken. With libvirt it's very highly manageable.
* There is GPU passthru but that's not really convenient.
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If Windows behaves as badly in a VM as it does on metal, I don't want to even try it. Unscheduled forced updates and long logins have made W10 unusable.
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Great work by Codeweavers and Valve (Score:2)
Valve has even made portable console that runs Linux and that is a huge commercial success. That required making most of Windows games work pretty well on Linux which is an astonishing achievement. It also required making a launcher/UI that is easy enough to u
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Valve has even made portable console that runs Linux and that is a huge commercial success. That required making most of Windows games work pretty well on Linux which is an astonishing achievement. It also required making a launcher/UI that is easy enough to use to convince gamers to use it
Nobody uses Steam because they want to. It is shit from stem to stern, and the best thing you can say about it is that it's less terrible than other similar programs like Origin. People only use it because they have to, in order to play games with Steam DRM.
too old for this, maybe (Score:2)
I've considered using WINE to access some Windows apps but given my old prejudice about Microsoft, it would probably still live on a separate Linux machine from my main workstation. And the most interest in using WINE at the moment would be to access what is describes as the best Atari 8 bit emulation available, Altirra. That would likely be all it would do.