Slashdot Log In
Ask Jeremy White and Alexandre Julliard About the Future of WINE
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jun 26, 2008 02:15 PM
from the don't-keep-those-puns-bottled-up dept.
from the don't-keep-those-puns-bottled-up dept.
Last week, after 15 years of development, tempered by the need for arduous reverse engineering, the WINE project released version 1.0. What "1.0" means for WINE is neither that the project is finished, nor that it is perfect, but rather that the software runs a small subset of specific freely downloadable Windows applications. That's not to say it doesn't run scads of others, too -- the apps database is proof that thousands of programs run to at least some degree. Here's your chance to ask WINE developer Jeremy White and WINE project lead Alexandre Julliard (both of Codeweavers) about the future of WINE, or any other questions about the project that cross your mind. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply; please ask as many questions as you'd like, but limit yourself to one question per post. We'll pass on the best questions to Jeremy and Alexandre for their answers.
Related Stories
[+]
Technology: Wine 1.0 — Uncorked After 15 Years 638 comments
pshuke writes "After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
What about the small unique apps? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear people often say that its important for Wine to be able to run major applications like Office and Photoshop. However, from a migrate to Linux point, I think the thing that holds people up the most is the small propreitary applications that are written for a specific function. Is there going to be any focus on those programs in the future? Disclaimer, I realize that there are tens of thousands of such apps, but maybe many have something in common.
Re:What about the small unique apps? (Score:5, Informative)
Bugs in such apps are valid and they work hard on fixing them where at all possible. In fact, almost all such apps work just fine.
What tends to happen is that a given area of Win32 is covered to the extent that all apps written with a tool that uses that area then work. So e.g. we're desperately waiting for .NET 2.0 to work properly in Wine.
Parent
Re:What about the small unique apps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft can't even do that themselves...
Parent
Re:Think about what you're asking (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have any idea how difficult that would be? Emulating Windows down to the last undocumented quirk
Wine Is Not an Emulator
Parent
Re:What's that, a challenge? (Score:4, Insightful)
"For all we know..." ...first world countries will have reigned in their wanton wastefulness, everyone in the third world will not have want for food, shelter and medical care, media companies will decide that honest content delivery is more important than political statements and profit so will stop the practice of campaign contributions as well as ditch DRM, net neutrality will be enshrined in law and it will be discovered that Santa Claus does, in fact, exist.
Parent
Re:What about the small unique apps? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Most pressing issue... (Score:5, Funny)
10 years from now? (Score:4, Interesting)
If in 10 years the dominant platform is Linux, or OS X, where does that leave WINE?
Re:10 years from now? (Score:5, Funny)
If in 10 years the dominant platform is Linux, or OS X, where does that leave WINE?
Parent
Re:10 years from now? (Score:4, Funny)
No, that's a VNC client.
Parent
Re:10 years from now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can answer this one. WINE will still be around and used, because the (by then) 30 years worth of Windows software development will include applications still around and being used.
Also, using 10 years as the endpoint for Windows dominance doesn't address what happens between then and now. It's going to have to be gradual, and as development shifts to a different platform, I guarantee some developers will be tweak their code to run in either Windows or WINE, or use Winelibs to shoehorn most of their application onto OSX and Linux.
Parent
Re:10 years from now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:10 years from now? (Score:4, Interesting)
What plans do you have for better multi-threading support?
Parent
Re:10 years from now? (Score:4, Insightful)
familiarity > sanity.
Just ask 98% of the PC-using public.
Parent
No, wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
1.0 is used to mark the API as being stable: it is now safe to build your Windows' program's source code against the wine headers without having to worry about them changing in the future.
That a few of the important Windows applications work was a side goal: the wine developers merely thought that it would be fitting, given the apparent significance of the 1.0 release name, to perfect support for what they can.
Perhaps you're thinking of wine the wrong way. It is, first and foremost, a windows-compatible API for porting applications to posix.
Re:No, wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it, Wine was originally intended to be both (1) a set of libraries that Windows developers could recompile their code against to run on other operating systems; and (2) a compatibility layer to run unmodified Windows binaries on other operating systems. Which one was the "primary" intent of Wine originally?
Also, nowadays, it seems that the vast majority of people use Wine in mode (2). Few developers have used the Wine libraries to recompile their code. Is this a fair assessment? If so, how does this affect the way you develop the Wine codebase? Do you see this changing in the future?
Parent
Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
VMs are notoriously shitty at hardware-accelerated graphics.
But hey, if that ever changes...
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Running Windows in a VM means you need a Windows license. Using WINE, you don't.
Running Windows in a VM means your Windows apps are second-class citizens. Using WINE, everything is integrated into your regular desktop.
Parent
Commercial Goals on Wine Project? (Score:5, Interesting)
Question:
With Vista stumbling terribly and now XP being removed from the marketplace, in the medium term do you see Wine / Linux as a true potential commercial viable alternative rather than just a niche as it is now? If so, what financial steps have you taken to prepare for legal threats?
Thanks!! :)
Re:Commercial Goals on Wine Project? (Score:4, Interesting)
If Vista is stumbling terribly with 10% growth in the past year, what does that say about Linux, which has seen only 0.2% growth - and has yet to break into the single digit? Top Operating System Share Trend [hitslink.com]
Vista will have 20% of the market in July. Four times that of the "MacIntel" - BootCamp - platform. Windows 7 may be simplified and more modular but it will still be Vista in its essentials.
Parent
Re:Commercial Goals on Wine Project? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like just ONE journalist to ask Microsoft how many individual Vista installations are pinging Windows Update. They keep trumpeting 150 million licenses shipped, but they know precisely how many of those are in use.
Parent
Reverse-Engineering Routine (Score:5, Interesting)
How does your usual reverse engineering work flow look like? (How do you start, short note on tools, do you use (unit) tests)
Wine in a world of virtual machines (Score:5, Insightful)
With virtual machines becoming ever easier to install and use, maintaining a Windows VM on my Linux desktop substantially reduces my need for Wine. Will Wine become an afterthought in another ten years as we move to desktops running multiple operating systems simultaneously?
XP or Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
Will the WINE project try to implement the Windows Vista APIs or will the project aim only for the Windows XP APIs? Seeing that Windows Vista didn't catch on and a lot of applications are still written for Windows XP. Maybe it is a good time to iron out the DirectX 9 and Windows XP DLLs.
WINE, dual-booting, and virtualization. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first started using GNU/Linux in 1999, I knew that if I wanted to run Windows apps, the best way to go about it was to dual-boot. Now, it appears that the most convenient way to run Windows apps is to run Windows in a virtual machine. Since both dual-booting and virtualization appear to be more convenient ways to run Windows apps than WINE, where does WINE fit in?
Re:WINE, dual-booting, and virtualization. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would argue that Wine is much more convenient than virtualization... when it works, that is.
When you run an app in Wine, it integrates (more or less) with your current desktop environment. It immediately has access to the same folder hierarchy. It also performs better (loading the wine libraries seems to have a lower overhead than loading a VM and an OS).*
The only downside to Wine is that not every app runs, and some apps run but are a bit buggy.
So I would say that Wine wins for convenience, whereas virtualization wins on "robustness": any app that runs on Windows will run on Windows in a VM. This is why I use both Wine and virtualization on my system: for most apps, I can just use Wine and it's treated like just another application. For those that don't work well in Wine, I can always open up the VM.
([*] Another aspect of performance to consider is things like hardware acceleration. Most VMs don't take advantage of 3D acceleration, whereas Wine in principle can.)
Parent
Status of Wine (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi,
Suppose that the APIs delivered with Windows XP are the 100% baseline for app compatibility that you want to achieve. Could you give an estimate of how much percent is already implemented and how much work it would be to implement the rest?
Thanks!
I ask this as a sometime contributer... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to ask what your plans are to improve the process of/increase the number of people contributing to Wine? Do you plan to provide more feedback on patches (they are often ignored without comment), for example? Do you see Alexandre ever trusting other devs enough to take over subsystems/individual dlls?
Wine on Mac OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
Wine seems to making large improvements on ease of use in Linux desktops, especially with the simple installation afforded by package managers. However, installation [winehq.org] of Wine on Mac OS X remains complicated.
Are there any efforts underway to simplify the use and installation of Wine on Mac OS X?
What's the biggest obstacle for wine? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about themes/skins? (Score:5, Interesting)
Should Wine encourage the developmnt of Linux apps (Score:3, Interesting)
Whenever someone runs a program in Wine, it is because there is demand for that specific Windows application on Linux. Should end users be encouraged to write to software developers and request Linux or Wine-compatible software?
alternate uses (Score:3, Interesting)
Wine for cross-platform dev (Intel Macs) (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Wine for a long time and its ability to run applications such as Framemaker, Photoshop, uTorrent and some other useful abandonware (Delrina Perform, anyone?) has improved my productivity significantly. Thanks for your hard work... and yes, I sent money!
I see Wine as the only serious option for rapid cross-platform development (Linux/OS X/Windows).
Now that the API is stable(r), is this how you'd like to see Wine evolve?
I'm excited to see Wine working in OS X on the Intel Macs. I have however run into problems in this configuration that I don't see with the same applications using Wine on Linux.
What are the challenges for Wine on OS X/Intel?
Office 97/2000 (Score:5, Interesting)
With you working for codeweavers (which produces the excellent Crossover Linux package), do you see a conflict of interest in wine not directly supporting MSOffice 2K at the gold level?
As a related question:
How do you decide which portions of the code you write goes to wine and which are crossover-specific?
Re:Office 97/2000 (Score:5, Interesting)
> do you see a conflict of interest in wine not directly supporting
> MSOffice 2K at the gold level?
I want to use your excellect question as a springboard to expand to a broader question about the relationship between Codeweavers, Crossover Office and Wine.
I realize Crossover is what keeps you guys fed, clothed, etc. and more importantly for us users, adding code to the Wine repo. But there appear to be some downsides as well.
For example, take the original poster's question. CX has supported various versions of Office since the first release (since you actually managed to sell copies it is safe to assume the first release would run a version of Office well enough to have happy customers) but Wine isn't known to reliably run ANY version of Office with anything that would be called reliability. Is this something that will always be true, to drive sales of CX? Would outside contributions that removed these limitations from Wine even be merged?
More importantly than these specific questions, these issues and boundaries between Wine and CX aren't clearly spelled out. This becomes even more important now that Codeweavers is expanding the commercial product line into a game oriented product. We all realize Cedega is a bunch of leeches and probably won't ever be contributing anything of value back to Wine but if Codeweavers (meaning 'yall) also stop putting major functionality back into Wine or worse declining to merge competing versions...... Lots of questions, few answers.
But the biggest question I can come up with is this one. What would be the point of me (me taken as generic) considering looking at Wine with an eye to contributing unless I am first a Crossover Office customer? Because the odds are good that any particular missing feature in Wine is already implemented in CX, so one would first want to test there to avoid reinventing a wheel that probably wouldn't get merged anyway. So logically it is hard to see a motivation to contribute to Wine directly, and contributing to CX as an unpaid volunteer doesn't exactly give most free software devels a warm fuzzy feeling.
Mixed Free/Closed models are always a tricky balancing act. Clearly laying out what apps will be permitted to run under Wine and which will be reserved for CX would help people see where that line is going to be drawn.
Parent
Wine 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
API good+bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Notepad.exe works perfectly (Score:5, Funny)
I know making certain key applications work in time for the 1.0 milestone was one of the WINE team's goals, but I just wanted to thank the team, on behalf of everyone in the /. crowd, for making sure Notepad.exe was one of them. It was the first Windows program I tried to use under WINE and it performed flawlessly, making me feel a little more at home on Linux.
We Linux users have been putting up with the likes of vim and Kate and gedit for years, but all of these editors come with major caveats, such as multiple levels of undo and the ability to read both UNIX and DOS text files. With WINE I've been able to use Notepad to delete entire lines when I really mean to delete only one word, and get little square characters where carriage returns should be. I'm so pleased by this app that I'll probably move on to trying Paint.exe next (the silly GIMP airbrush tool isn't as satisfyingly pixellated as the one MS Paint perfected way back in 1995).
Keep up the good work in bringing the Redmond's best software to the Linux desktop!
WINE Gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
I've loaded WINE numerous times over the past years - primarily to play 'legacy' video games/simulations. I've had limited success with the specific stable of games I am interested in and own. I've also paid for Cedega which was equally dissatisfying. With the demise of Loki Software, and the limited titles that have been ported directly to linux by icculus.org and LGP to date - there is still a very large sector of games that many would say hold back adoption of linux as a gaming platform.
What are your views on WINE gaming, and what are you doing (if anything) to address this issue?
ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
How much do the Wine and ReactOS teams contribute to each other's projects? What are your personal takes on ReactOS? Do you think it can become a serious Windows replacement?
DirectX 10 (Score:4, Interesting)
Any plans to implement DX10?
Or at least make DX9 games (like HL2EP2) work decently.
MS-Office... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Wine did not exist would you start it today? (Score:5, Interesting)
USB support? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know about usb-storage support, it works perfectly, but what about full USB support?
Many USB devices require Windows apps to use them correctly. For me, Line6 USB products for audio come to mind, but i'm sure there are plenty of others.
From what I've seen in the wine-devel discussions, it looks like a tough challenge. Are there any takers yet? What are the main showstoppers? Or, am I totally wrong on my figures and these other USB devices are not used that much?
If these are a lot of questions, please stick to the first one :)
Future Development - DIB Engine? More RPC work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hm... I'll bite!
Over the past few years we've seen major architectural concerns calm down. The DLL separation took a while, we had the major filesystem rewrite, and then in the past year we had the big windowing changes. Oh, and then throw in the big changes to support copy protection, real services, and oodles of D3D updates.
So where does that leave us? Are there any major architectural changes in the pipe? There are rumors Codeweavers will integrate a DIB engine - what does that do and why is that necessary? What about in the RPC world? Jeremy - you've battled with audio, how do you feel Wine is doing with regards to audio support?
Re:Important! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Waste of Time (Score:5, Funny)
I tried Wine and it worked terribly.
(no, it's not, but for the purpose of the joke...)
Parent