Where's Wine? (S5E7)

[Aq]

Do you use Wine? Do you feel like the project's making enough progress? Is providing the Windows API on Linux even a good idea?

[aigarius]

I use it (almost) every day to play WoW with my friends. Work wise, quite a lot of companies I know use Wine to run all kinds of old software: accounting software mostly.

[mrben]

I use it (almost) every day to play WoW with my friends. Work wise, quite a lot of companies I know use Wine to run all kinds of old software: accounting software mostly.

One of my friends has now moved to Ubuntu almost exclusively, thanks to Wine. He's a huge GuildWars fan, and it works fine for him under Ubuntu, so he rarely boots into Windows at all any more. He's also recently installed yWriter under Wine - a free (as in beer - not sure about freedom) novel authoring tool. It's good to remember than using Wine doesn't necessarily mean that you're running non-Free stuff - there are some good Free software apps that only run under Windows.

[R.Smith]

I do not use WINE, as there are no Windows programs that I am dependant on. That said, I still think it's a worthwhile project (especially since the WINE devs work closely with the ReactOS devs) and I quite liked the interview on the show; even if the interviewee wasn't very talkative.

[No']

Wine... French people... I'm sure there is a jok out there... well, ok, more seriously.

As a web developer, I do _have_ to test websites on IE6 / IE7, sometimes IE5.5 just to see if it renders the same. Quick spoiler: it does not.
When you want to work on a Javascript bug / CSS hack to edit, ec., you don't want to switch from Linux (where your dev environment lives) to Windows back and forth all the time. Plus, at work _and_ home, my PC has no Windows installed on it.
So I've used the IEs4Linux piece of software, that downloads Wine, sets up IE 6 (and emulates IE7 render engine). Plus, you get a notepad

(please, no troll about web standards - even playing by the rules don't help)

[Aq]

So I've used the IEs4Linux piece of software, that downloads Wine, sets up IE 6 (and emulates IE7 render engine).

Exactly what I do too, as mentioned

[Drom Kapult]

I use wine for various things and try to use it for many more things. It's definitely improving in leaps and bounds especially on the video front. It's lagging in I/O support but the latest release makes mention of that; time to try some apps again.

In the past I've used cedega for games like Max Payne (I and II), Tomb Raider (could only get III working), and others. Thankfully, wine is now progressing so well that it's making Cedega a largely irrelevant fork that will over time wither and die. You still need nocd patches unless you patch and build wine yourself.

I bought and subscribe to Crossover Professional because I like root installs of apps and because codeweavers are very good at working with the main wine project. I don't install any of their predefined apps and sometimes don't have Crossover installed because wine releases are more advanced but it's still a nice package and good from a simplicity standpoint. When I first started using Crossover it saved literally days of hacking around and dropping in dlls to get stuff to function and it's still the simplest way to use wine but with things like winetricks, the incredibly annoying wine doors and the advance of wine itself, it's no longer essential for people who don't like to spend days configuring their wine install.

I used to run MS-office under wine. The main reason for that was the lack of a decent word processor for Linux - this was before Sun bought Star Office. Now that Abiword does tables I don't bother anymore. It's not that I think Open Office is a pile of absolute shite of elephantine proportions with things to teach Microshaft about bloat: it's just that Abiword is so much better. Gnumeric is the best best spreadsheet program I've ever used. If I could only find a decent presentation program ...

btw there is a guy who already has Office 2007 running under wine (for those people who think it's important).

These days wine for me is a way of installing those Windows apps that people think they want but never use when they transition to Linux. It's also something I try to use for the programs that come with gadgets like my Inforad and TomTom (which runs on Linux itself but doesn't have a Linux client): this has largely been a waste of time as wine is still very bad with peripherals. In the end I relent and use Virtualbox (have you heard of it?) running XP. I only have a valid XP license because Sony refused to refund my Windows tax when I told them I was wiping it.

Nice show btw I particularly enjoy the fact that you annoy the Linux Action show enough to get a mention in every one of their recent shows but have you thought about thinking up the questions for interviews beforehand and maybe thinking about what you might do with responses other than "yeah right".

This is my first post btw. Hello.

[mrben]

I only have a valid XP license because Sony refused to refund my Windows tax when I told them I was wiping it.

Not sure that they're legally allowed to refuse you.

This is my first post btw. Hello.

Hi

[QuantumG]

There's been some rumblings at my work in regards to porting some software from Windows to Linux (and Mac) .. at first it was considered just impossible, because there's some Windows dlls that we depend on.. now we're considering using Wine to wrap just those dlls which you can link to the gcc compiled code. As this is all ia64 stuff, it's still a little questionable whether or not Wine will be up to it, but if we do it, I think that's just yet another reason why Wine is such a great resource.

[Allix]

I use wine for to run uni apps, i ve yet had a programme not work.
QuantumG : wine is only 32 bit, although it runs natively without 32bitcompat libraries on linux , there is no support for windows 64 bit of any past or present versions..

http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-c6d5592 ... add0412671

[Mall/UX]

I've been using it for years to run Lotus Notes; it's basically enabled me to run a Linux desktop at work when I otherwise would have had to resort to Windows. It's just so much more convenient than running a VM, and if you spend enough time on the colours and fonts then you can get the apps to integrate nicely with your desktop.

(As it happens IBM has finally got around to releasing a full Notes client for Linux which of course I've switched to, but I'm still not convinced that it's as good as the version I was running under wine).

I'm compiling the latest version now, in an effort to get Visio working - which unfortunately I also have to use for my job and for which there is no sensible native alternative (i.e. that reads the .vsd files that network engineers keep sending me). It's not that I enjoy running proprietary win32 code; sometimes you have to be pragmatic and acknowledge that in order to get paid you have to be able to interoperate with your peers.

Anyway, whether you agree with the politics or not, the wine developers have done an amazing job and I applaud Alexandre Julliard as a true unsung open source hero; what kind of dedication must it take to spend 15 years on any project, let alone one so tough?

[Drom Kapult]

Not sure that they're legally allowed to refuse you.

The Vaio shop is based somewhere in deepest europe. They just ignored all my emails and didn't call me back. In the end I gave up.

My most recent wine failure was Brainiversity. That's the kind of app you expect wine to eat for breakfast but it failed dismally. I've also tried running Rosetta Stone under wine to no avail (though some people claim to have succeeded with certain versions).

Wine has had so much work to get certain applications working (notes, word etc) that you can sometimes be fooled into thinking that going off-piste application-wise will just work and for a large number of apps that's true, which makes the failures more annoying.

I agree that 15 years of wine is a superb thing and it's a great surprise to me that Microshaft haven't tried hard to shut them down, especially after the commercial wine spawn started to show what was possible. The MS/Novell FUD agreement doesn't count, I don't think. Though it would be horrible to think of a Linux distro relying on wine, it's a useful transition tool.

[Fophillips]

After trying WINE I ended up to running Windows in a virtual machine in “seamless” mode without a Start bar, I don’t need 3D acceleration or any of that nonsense.

[Mig21]

Do you use Wine? Do you feel like the project's making enough progress? Is providing the Windows API on Linux even a good idea?

Wine never worked for me. I've been told that's because I have to copy some dlls from a windows box, but i couldn't be bothered.

I do think it's a good idea, but very difficult to do properly, for some reason.

[ode]

Wine has enabled me to run the few windows apps I needed to use. I probably would not have been able to run linux full time without it.

Make sure you check out the blog http://wine-review.blogspot.com/
It's run by one of the developers and frequently highlights highly desired software on Wine.

Another place to bookmark is Wine Weekly News
http://www.winehq.org/?issue=back