1,076 developers, 15 years, one open-source Wine After 15 years of development, a running battle with Microsoft and persistent doubts about its viability, the first proper version of Wine - a middleware tool to run Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems - has finally arrived. Wine 1.0, the work of a staggering 1,076 programmers, has been released under the GNU …
I use it for the few "Windows-only" apps that for whatever reason, haven't been ported to Linux yet. The apps I use are of limited general interest (an excellent, no-cost, PSPICE simulator, provided by Linear Technology, and a freeware RF path modeling program), but are written only for Windows.
While I could easily replace WINE with a virtual machine, running Windows, that would require me to obtain a licensed copy of Windows. WINE is a far simpler solution, and one that works well for most apps, and doesn't require a license.
It's a fantastic achievement, and all praise is due to the Wine team, but they themselves will be (and have been) the first to admit that 1.0 is by no means “complete”.
Also, what on earth is “OS/X”? Some skunkworks project at IBM? Perhaps the fruits of the Apple-IBM collaboration which at the very least saw OS/2 running on top of the Mach microkernel?
Like hell it has. As an It manager for a small business who is just starting to roll out Ubuntu Linux machines in his environment, Wine has allowed me to use some outdated but necessary Windows applications. We're saving money on OSs and maintaining application homogeneity. What more could I ask for? Wait, the next version of Wine would be nice. Nuff said.
As a replacement for Windows, Wine is not going to cut it. Especially in a business environment, but as a means of getting a few fairly basic Windows programs and some older games to run.. It is invaluable. It's one of the first apps I install when I upgrade to a new version of Fedora, and has served me well so far. Each release gets better.
I've been moving off Windows gradually at home and work -- to Mac OSX, Linux and some Solaris x86 -- but there are still occasional applications that I've purchased that are Windows-only, such as Enterprise Architect ... or WinZip (for files using their AES-256 encryption).
I'm sure others have Windows apps they'd like to be able to run once in a while if needed.
I personally don't much mind paying for VMware or Parallels (under US$100) to run various OSes in -- an ability I find useful for several reasons -- but I do find it objectionable to pay over US$100 per computer for Windows XP if I only need it to run two applications once in a while.
That is, there's nothing in Windows (file system, Windows Explorer, or other built-in programs) that I need, it's merely a platform for apps that haven't yet made the leap to portability or web services.
Postulating for the purposes of discussion that Wine 1.0 will run the apps I need: is there a better choice out there ?
I tried Wine 5 years ago, 4 years ago, 3 years ago, 2 years ago, 1 year ago, 0 years ago, and it still only is good for Office 97 and partly Office 2000.
So I gave up and started using Staroffice / Openoffice.
If any other IT project threatened to take 15 years it would have been canned countless years ago!
Admrable to see such endurance in one's spare time, but I could have cut my grass at least 480 times in that period.
Wish they would have put all their efforts into making OpenOffice better, and making a better Open Source equivalent to Outlook than Evolution.
I've always regarded Wine as something of a running joke - freetards like to bring it up as proof of the obsolescence of Windows, neglecting to mention that any app that is remotely complex or unusual will likely run with major glitches, or require hours of research and effort to make run at all.
It might be fun for hackers, but for anyone who wants to do real work it's simply not worth the bother.
You're much better off using VMWare Workstation or Virtualbox. VM Workstation, as of version 6.5 (now in beta) can integrate guest operating system windows directly onto the host, so in most respects it's like running them natively.
And unlike Wine, it hasn't taken them 15 years to reach stability.
Both CrossOver and TransGaming Cider are based on Wine, and thanks to them, many more games are playable on Mac and Linux now. While it would be nice if game developers would actually learn to write cross-platform code to begin with (which would require reversing a LOT of inertia), this is a reasonable short-term concession while the games companies come to realize that there are lots of users who aren't on Windows.
Wow! 15 years huh. That's impressive.
Looks like FireFox isn't the only new record holder this week. Wine has now set a new record for poor project management and extended timelines. We need to identify the leaders of the Wine "community" and move them into public sector work - they'd fit right in.
So Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage tool directly checks for Wine (and bails out with a generic error message, I hope they have more proof), would this be any different if you were running mono or moonlight which are microsoft backed projects?
Anyway what products would you want that are Genunie Advantage protected if you aren't on a windows box?
Windows Defender
Microsoft Private Folder
Windows Media Player 11, hmm bloat ware
I'll stick with the originals
Playstation yes Xbox no
Flash yes Silverlight no
Google yes live search no
Internet yes MSN network no
Pdf yes Xps no
It's not all bad though, I like .Net.
I use both VMWare Player and Wine on my Ubuntu'd Thinkpad T60p.
Costs aside (VM Workstation+XP is not cheap) Wine still has its place.
My XP VMWare image takes at least a minute to start up and achieve proper speeds. Once running, apps under VMWare are nice and quick.
Apps under Wine start immediately, but run a little slower.
Choice is good.
After all, there are tons of PC gamers who are sick of M$ and then switch to Linux (it's my opinion that Windows is only good for the latest computer games these days), and for a handful they require extra tweaking but for the most part Wine works. Hopefully in the future game developers will start using open languages and release them for open systems, but at the time, it's not happening so much.
I've been happy with Wine for a long time. It's run the apps I've told it to run, though I tend to stay away from the beefy DirectX-heavy stuff. Now I shall go and grab the update.
No demand means no profit motive. No profit motive means lax development done in people's spare time over a couple hundred pints. Or, in the case of the 15-year-olds involved, candy and cola.
I'll bet the code is one huge mess. A big pile of spaghetti buried underneath dirty diapers inside a landfill that's got happy-feely open-source buzzword flowers growing on top.
What's with the dissing of the Wine project contributing programmers? Wine moved the Linux desktop forward as a viable option to those with old Windows apps, even if it didn't always work as easily as Linuxheads promised. It even added to the ability of people to move to Intel Macs. Even Windows users got benefits, since it helped the movement that put the heat on the MonSter. Diversity in the marketplace is a good thing.
All hail Wine, from this long time user. Congratulations to all the developers for being a key part of the revolution
To add to the general chorus: time not past!
If you have an unused copy of Windows around in a drawer, sure, you could say there's little need for Wine. VM and all that works much better. But as people noted above, it is a waste money (and unnecessary soul tainting) if all you do is run something every once in a blue moon. So Wine, if it works with your favourite app, is a great answer.
That said, I did have conflicting results with Wine over the years. For some apps it would be flawless, for others some small glitch would show up, for others still it would be unusable (e.g. menu bar absent). Anyway, for the odd unknown app out there I sometimes use, it has worked well enough that I haven't used Windows for more than 5 minutes at a time in some 8 years...
I've used wine for some time.
For some applications it's better than trying to run the app on a native windows platform. The example I can think of specifically was the Enterasys Roamabout management platform - this was hideously slow and unreliable on windows natively, under wine it was slightly less hideously slow and a great deal more reliable.
Vista was the last nail in the coffin for me.
I will happily admit that the corpse of Windows is actually stumbling around outside and somehow managing to avoid the torch wielding villagers, and it could bump into Dr Frankenstein any time (but he'll need to amputate the DRM and the bloatware)
Wine is great for those handful of really good Windows applications that you can't quite find a Linux/Mac replacement for, but that market is shrinking.
The only large chunk left that Wine doesn't usefully support is a wide range of games. But better games are coming out for Wii, PS-3 and Xbox. Once you can get a proper FPS control system on a console (i.e. keyboard and mouse, which is the only reason I kick the butts of my console-based friends at anything), I'll be formatting the hard drive...
IMHO, Wine's real benefit is that it allows you to run ancient Win3.1 apps that Microsoft hasn't supported since Win98. Some of these apps are actually best of breed, as later versions sucked like a Hoover on steroids, have caught bad cases of featuritis and bloat.
Examples:
Lotus 1-2-3 Release 5 (still the best spreadsheet!)
FontMonster
I'll be interested to see if Wine 1.0 has fixed the bugs I found in it when running Pegasus 3.12.
If Wine can actually run these programs hiccup-free, then at long last I see a migration path that doesn't involve any MS software at all.
Wow. Wine 1.0. I remember having trouble running flash on an early 0.8(?) version over a decade ago. And Firefox taking 8 million downloads in a day. How far we have come....
I'm just waiting for a 1.0 release of GNU Hurd now. Then I will know hell has frozen over and there is swine in the sky... that or I'm hallucinating (again). Whowuddathunkit....
(Aliens, 'cos BillH would've liked it)
"It was certainly a good idea 15 years ago, but its time may well have passed.®"
With applications like Parallels Desktop and VMware's Fusion doing pretty well i'd say there must be some demand for thei application.
All they need to do is carry on making it better and better then when they can (maybe) XP it will be a seamless transition to run ALL windows apps from within Unix, no one will want vista or Windows 7 and Microsoft will slowly wither and die.
This is my Utopian dream
Could you elaborate on what you mean by
"Since nothing works with Vista anyway, at least with Wine I have a chance"
I use vista, and I use it for producing music. I havnt found anything that wont work with vista yet...
And trust me when I say, setting up a pc as studio/mixing hardware, its very important everything works.
The only thing that wont work 100% is sony's sound forge, and thats only until I install .net.. you going to install .net on wine then I take it???
Wine is not just software it's also a body of knowledge as to how Windows actually works. They may know more than Microsoft having had to study things that microsoft have forgotten.
The knowledge can be sliced and diced in different way to make different products. For example the knowledge (I could call it Technology since thats the correct term for technical knowledge) could be used to run important Windows applications on machines far more powerful than anything Windows actually runs on.
I think Windows developers who prefer to develop for Windows should test their own programs under Wine rather than let someone else figue out the problems. It would not take too much work if you regularly tested on Wine during development. That way with very little effort your program would be cross compatable without having to write in Java or recompile source.
It doesn't matter if WINE is imperfect, albeit pretty darn good.
Strategically, what matters is that it removes a Windows advantage. A bit of history - windows is windows compatible, and has steadily leveraged its compatibility back from the days when Windows 3.1 was MS-DOS compatible. There were superior OS's available then (OS/2 etc, or the friendlier Macintosh), but none brought good MS-DOS compatibility along with them. So Microsoft grew its critical mass along with an acceptable, if inferior in many respects, OS.
WINE gives the possibility of a well-put together OSS-OS ;) like a linux distro, with a great set of OSS tools AND with 95% windows compatibility... and free. That is going to be part of some small but successful companies cost and productivity advantage. And the more that is the case, the closer they come to a critical mass situation. So WINE is pretty important in that case.
BLESS YOU Wine developers and every programmer who ever worked on it. Even those who may not have gotten your code accepted THANK YOU! Bless you all. Bless everyone who contributes from now until forever.
I must use some 3D software that has no open source Linux equivalent yet. Wine solved the problem.
Thank you. ^__^
WINE doesn't need to run every Windwoes program - it only needs to run enough of them to tip the balance.
High-end gamers will be left out in the cold for a little while, but that will change. Other than that, there are few Windwoes programs that the average user won't find better substitutes for in the *nix world. WINE will simply make weaning themselves of Bill's Bloatware easier.
I use it to run Irfanview and Autostitch, and they both run better under WINE than they do under Windwoes.
Paris, 'cos she undoubtedly enjoys a nice glass of WINE.
Guys, relax a little. I haven't tried Wine yet, this is a nice reminder. I have 5 screens going to 4 linux boxes and 1 windows box. Other than testing our software what would I ever want to run on windows? Only stuff from my past: Paint Shop Pro 6 (the sweet spot), Ecco (sadly demised), Terragen (Port it to Linux morons!), Pov Ray (Linux Gui sucks), Portal . Hmmm will Portal work? Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe Myst (the 3D version). Otherwise, it doesn't matter. All my real work, programming, OpenOffice, Freemind, is on Linux. Compiz Fusion (I'm still on Dapper Drake) gives me 4 screens of mischief. If Wine 1.0 works, I can pitch my stinking commie Lenovo box and turn it to the light! If not, well, It's just another 200 watts and 1.5 square feet under my desk. I think we need a rasta icon so that we relax more! Wait! NO!
Paris, because she relaxes!
The very latest version shipping with Ubuntu 8, allows me to finally play my Gamehouse, Reflexive and my kids edu games straight through my Linux box. Some older kids games refused to work under XP, it's too modern, even with Win98 compat mode set, but Wine allows them to work perfectly, no graphic of sound glitches.
All you doubters, shut up, until you actually try the latest version. Just 'cos it won't run BioShock or Crysis, so what? It's not designed for that, it's designed as support layer to allow slightly older desktop apps to run, but if the latest desktop apps and games stick to the bog standard Win32 API, as quite a few do, then it runs them fine.
I think the 'chance' Matt Mc is referring to is his chance of converting everyone he knows to Linux. Evidently he can't just leave people that aren't using it the hell alone. Like most Linux people, sadly, if this site's comments are anything to go by. It's like that sketch I heard about ages ago where someone always says, "You don't wanna do that, you wanna do THIS!" Where this is whatever he's doing. Genuine offer of help to improve the lives of others? Busybodying? Desperate attempt to vindicate himself by converting others? You decide! Still, at least he's realised it's 'people' and not 'my mates'.
and wine allows me to play the only games I want to play, Civilization IV works great (Civ 3 was fine as well) and GTA SA/VC although I'm now waiting for them to bring out the latest addition for PC so I can get that.
I also find that CIV generally plays smother on WINE than it used to on windows.
It is also important to note that Wine Is Not and Emulator, the whole point is that the application is running natively on your hardware, not on an emulation or virtulisation layer. As already mentioned Virtual machines take time to boot etc. and the application is not running natively, although VM's are very useful and I do make use of them at times, their scope is totally different.
It might have been better if they hadn't bothered. Windows users considering a switch to Linux are continually told 'and if you NEED some of your windows programs, you can run them in WINE!'
This does Linux no favours whatsoever.
It still doesn't work on *most* Windows software. I've tried it on a whole raft of Windows stuff - games, graphics apps, text manipulators, databases, etc - and either they don't work at all or (even after all the required tweaking and tinkering) they're so slow/broken that they're useless. Potential Linux users should really be told, ' and if you NEED some of your windows programs, there's an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny lottery-winner-type chance that they might not run TOO badly in Wine.'
If only all those years of programming effort had gone into something useful...
"I'll bet the code is one huge mess. A big pile of spaghetti buried underneath dirty diapers inside a landfill that's got happy-feely open-source buzzword flowers growing on top."
Well, why don't you go and have a look and see for yourself then? And what makes you think Windows is any nicer internally anyway?
The thing about writing Open Source code is, knowing that people will look at the code you've written, you try very hard to write the kind of code that people will not want to laugh at. Whereas when you write closed source code, you can think "nobody will ever see this anyway, so I'll just see what I can get away with". If you don't believe me, look at the Source Code for the very first ever OpenOffice.org release (which was just the old StarOffice codebase, given a bit of a light dusting.)
So how much longer have Microsoft had to make a stable secure working version of windows? I certainly have some sympathy with the wine developers when their actual target is an ever changing blancmange.
Okay, so 2000 apparently wasn't too bad, but then Microsoft seemed so embarrassed by that, they decided to develop vista.
Sorry, still giggling at the idea that you think the current crop of unstable, proprietary bloatware we see in the shops, or those private sector projects that quietly get dropped don't suffer from poor project management and extended timelines.
Well having migrated from CRAPOS over two years ago, to OSX, Wine managed to get my translation software working, meaning more dosh to spend on more important stuff.
I am hoping I can get, with the latest version, my mechwarrior games to work that would be nice, as I have named all the enemy mechs with such nice names (Barmy, BigEars, Wacky Jacqi, Shrub, Bliar etc) and give them no weapons!!!
@ "I have found it often runs heavy number crunch stuff faster than in windows, Games like HL2, Guildwars run straight out of the box."
i would hesitate a guess that this is due to linux not supporting all the fancy AA and AF modes on games, since linux drivers arent a priority for nvidia/amd. how does it work on directx? since thats the main dev platform these days since opengl lost pace
does wine run photoshop and clone dvd properly? cos thats about all i use at home!
and please dont say use gimp - its like comparing a ferrari to a fiat panda :)
@ Daniel Hall - sack of soundforge... doesnt nuendo /cubase do all that these days?
No, it really does run faster (for some apps) under wine than under windows. The underlying OS is quicker and the API calls can be no slower (some can be slow enough to wipe out the OS speed advantage and then some).
And One of the reasons for the 1.0 release is to be 100% compatible (as much as it is with any genuine windows OS anyway) with Photoshop CS2.
Clone DVD? How about using
$ dd if=/dev/dvd1 of=/dev/dvd2
?
Or use K3B et al?
And as to your Gimp jibe, what the fuck are you on, boy? It's more like comparing a large family saloon to a large family hatchback. Different.
"any app that is remotely complex or unusual will likely run with major glitches"
I use Wine to run only one Windows program on Linux - SlingPlayer. I'd consider this both very complex and unusual - streaming live TV from a remote device, remote controlling it and displaying the video in acellerated DirectX.
SlingPlayer works perfectly in Wine, just like on Windows, and lets me watch my SlingBox from Linux. SlingMedia provide instructions for doing this, which is quite easy.
I am impressed with the slingplayer support. Impressed also with Sling providing a guide to make it work.
Most of all - I am impressed with the effort of the Wine team [and associated initiatives such as Crossover/Darwine etc.]
I have watched WINE for the last 10 years - and while it is still unable to run voipcheap for me - I think it is a truly impressive feat [as noted above].
Well done guys
P.S. Who's Paris? - I bet she doesn't use voipcheap to make calls
I have experimented with it a few times, and as I prepare to ditch Winblows with its NSA + ??? back doors, and of course uncountable numbers of security and other holes, along with thousands of buggy app crashing updates
... I am wondering will it run WarPath? That was the most awesome Win3.11 game :) I still have my copy! Also I have found it to be many times faster in *some instances* than say XP or 2000.
PH, cuz EVEN SHE could use Linux these days!
Yes, but MS made money in those last 15 years and provided good paying jobs to lots of people during that time. WINE just sucked up a bunch of resources and provided nothing in return for the people that "helped make it happen".Bad Idea. Bad business. Commercial Failure.
WINE fails - just like the DVD Rewinder you got for Christmas.
Oh yes, Money, Money, Money .... give it up Bill, you've got more than enough.
And of course, there's the good paying jobs of all those working for the numerous companies Microsoft has steamrolled out of business, because they're so desperate to be an old robber baron style monopoly.
BTW, Microsoft are well know to actually pay well below market rates, hence Bills desperate need to import workers from offshore. Well paid jobs, indeed. Indentured slaves more likely, especially given the quality of the output of late.
Still laughing at your cold closed world. I know many people who love to contribute freely to the things they find interesting or are useful to others, and I'm not just talking about IT here.
But hey, you're probably the sort that helps little old ladies across the road, then demands payment for services rendered...
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