Ask Jeremy White and Alexandre Julliard About the Future of WINE 346
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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
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!! :)
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)
Re:Important! (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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)
At what point is Wine done? (Score:1, Interesting)
I know the obvious answer is, "When it runs 100% of the applications that Windows does." But achieving that most likely would require far more resources than Wine has had to date, and it's not something you two can accomplish alone.
So at what point do you personally say, "That's it, I'm satisfied, I don't need to improve this anymore" ? Is there any set of applications that would make you happy? Do you have any such criteria?
What about themes/skins? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 years from now? (Score:4, Interesting)
What plans do you have for better multi-threading support?
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?
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.)
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?
A provocative business question (Score:1, Interesting)
Aren't you (Codeweavers, in particular) in the business of putting yourself out of business?
In Wine HQ "Why Wine is so important" you state that it solves the chicken and egg problem "Until Linux can provide equivalents for the above applications, its marketshare on the desktop will stagnate. But until the marketshare of Linux on the desktop rises, no vendor will develop applications for Linux."
So if Wine is the solution to that problem, doesn't that mean that once the problem is solved, Wine will no longer be needed (apart from for running some legacy apps but that is a development need that will come to an end). When Linux is mainstream, virtually all new apps - except perhaps Microsoft-made - will be released for it too so to elaborate on my main question; if (or when) Linux becomes mainstream and the only major apps not released for it are those by MS, do you believe the need to run them on Linux suffices to keep you in business?
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?
API good+bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Compiling with Wine (Score:2, Interesting)
Planned 64-bit support? (Score:2, Interesting)
Most desktop machines today are capable of 64-bit support. When will we see WINE running 64-bit Windows apps? Wikipedia says that this was to be considered after the 1.0 release. Well, 1.0 has been released, so can we expect to see 64-bit support in the future?
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?
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.
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)
About that (genuine query) (Score:1, Interesting)
Is there a way to run a program in Wine (development version? debugging version?) that will log all OS calls and can be sent off to the devs to show where and what calls are made.
I ask because I've used Wine and one application (MS Wine) still has a lot of problems but I can't collect the information Wine gives about what's gone wrong in a way that makes sense to me. Some "bug drop" version to instrument would help me help them with what OS calls are there or not.
Re:What about the small unique apps? (Score:1, Interesting)
I think the important thing to run is games. Gamers are a significant subset of the computer using society.
There are thousands (if not millions) of games that will never be ported, for various reasons. Many old games do not have the company or the source still there, even if there was the will to do it.
Similar games or clones are rarely able to replace the original, also for various reasons - how would you replace WoW or Counter-strike?
Even if, starting tomorrow, ALL games came in a Linux version, there still would be all those other games that won't run. And of those thousands/millions, at least thousands of them are so important that they need to be playable for a long time to come.
Some people only think that if the new games comes for Linux, it will all be alright. Those people are rarely gamers. There are so many many classics that will never stop being great and worth playing. That is why the MAME, ScummVM and similar projects are so popular...
Anyhow. Games should not be seen as applications in the regular sense, but rather documents - in this case, documents locked in the proprietary Win32 API/DirectX format. OpenOffice solved to Word lockin, Wine could solve this one.
The old games do I own and wish would play in Wine? PlaneScape:Torment, Grim Fandango and Crimsonland would be good candidates. There's of course tons more, but we'll have to start somewhere. :)
Dot Net Framewwork (Score:2, Interesting)
what is the goal of the wine project? (Score:2, Interesting)
Premise:
I was a very hopeful wine user, and even tried to contribute
some small improvements to the project that never went anywhere
(support for the undocumented INI empty section and empty keyname
features of the profile kernel32 API), partly since I had
no real windows to test on, partly since I could not establish
a good dialog with the developers, partly because the applications
using this undocumented behavior are not the big known apps.
Question:
Currently wine strategy seems to be (correct me if I am wrong),
to target one application at a time, privileging the big known
apps, with less interest in supporting the smaller apps,
or in breaking them with new versions:
is there any chance that after getting most of the big apps
working, the current strategy will be changed to focus on a
more generic solution, matching the win32 API as closely as
possible, in order to support most if not all of the small
programs, and thus enabling much more migrations to free
software-only solutions and thus achieving world domination?
(http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html)
Thank you -
Future proofing legacy software (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that XP is at the end of life, I think Wine has an important role in keeping legacy software alive. One such app is Macromedia Freehand. This vector drawing program still has a dedicated following, even though it hasn't seen an update since Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005.
As far as I can tell there is no way to open Freehand documents in Linux. XP will not be available for much longer, and Freehand MX is not Vista compatible [blogspot.com]. There are a lot of graphic artists with a lot of data still in Freehand format, and they're going to need to access their art on modern operating systems.
Freehand almost works on Wine 1.0. It requires a dll download to run, then it works pretty well, except that the 'more fonts' menu doesn't work. It's 99% there. So my question is, is there going to be a push to get important legacy apps like Freehand 100% perfect? Or is the focus going to continue to be modern windows apps?
3D: Direct* vs OpenGL/ALSA/SDL/whatever (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all, I'm not a hardcore gamer. I do play Diablo II with Wine, and play the native NWN game on Linux - and surprisingly, the former works better.
Even though I haven't been following the Wine project eagerly, I see it as my best way out of Windows because of games (I have pretty much everything else covered by Linux).
Hence my question: I guess you have had your share of requests to port Direct* APIs to whatever platform Wine supports today. How hard has it been? Would you say that Direct* _is_ a better all-rounded API for games than what is available on the platforms that Wine runs on today?
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.
Priorities (Score:1, Interesting)
What are your biggest priorities and how well are they being worked on and fulfilled currently?
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.
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 :)
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.
Runs in Wine label for game labels and reviews? (Score:3, Interesting)
WINE shouldn't really release like a label or logo for games of some type that would allow buyers of some games to know that said game would play on an alternative platform than windows like Linux with WINE of course. that way it could help get the word out to regular people that yes many of the applications that you pay hundreds of dollars for can run on an open platform. you could do it through the website and the developers of other applications and games could include links to their apps being supported and links to bug fixes and stuff.
Good work, guys! (Score:1, Interesting)
I was able to get the PC version of Oblivion running on Linux, via wine.
That's something which some Windows people have failed at, even though the game is written for Windows!
Applause and congrats are due all around.
Hmmm. That makes me wonder if you've ever thought of porting Wine to Windows? ;)
Re:I ask this as a sometime contributer... (Score:1, Interesting)
Why are you hypocritically not allowing developers to submit patches under a nickname (as if they could not lie about their real name)? Why are bugs ignored? Why are people who have seen a disassembled windows dll, again hypocritically, prohibited from contributing, as if no developer ever traced into a library function while debugging?
How has Microsoft interfered? (Score:1, Interesting)
How has Microsoft interfered in the success of WINE? Any good examples?
How implementable is windows? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hi,
Many thanks to wine developers for providing such an application. I would like to ask a few questions.
1. Is windows API exhaustively documented by MS? If yes, why is wine lagging behind so much? If no, why is nobody suing MS?
2. Among all windows apps on earth, what is the approximate percentage of windows apps that use undocumented hooks/syscalls/apis in MS Windows?
My best wishes.
Re:What about the small unique apps? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
How Many Man hrs to get 99.999% (Score:3, Interesting)
Number of people ask what percent along are you.
Looking at where you are now, and what it's taken to get there... can you give an estimate of MAN hrs to get to a number of MILE stones you might pick..
win 3.1, win 95,win 98, win 98se, 2k, XP. .net versions
server versions
Vista?
direct x versions
(no i didn't miss ME is there anything that "requires it?")
I would think it's understood that one can't give 100% accurate numbers but i think it might be of value to everyone involved to have an estimated times for some target goals.
And thank you for your time and all the hard work you have put in to this.
Do you plan on marketing to the mainstream? (Score:2, Interesting)
[If] when WINE reaches a satisfactory point of development, do you plan on marketing WINE in similar fashion to the "Games For Windows" campaign? How do you plan on getting WINE out there into mainstream as a big "name"?
Regression test suite (Score:1, Interesting)
Q: Previous interviews of eminent wine developers ([1] [2]) show the common need of a better regression test suite/framework. Is it the time to start some serious planning about it? Would existing (e.g. AutoIT, [3]) technologies help in the task?
FrancescoP
[1] http://www.winehq.org/?issue=348#WWN%20Wine%201.0%20Interview%20Series!%20%20Interview:%20Alexandre%20Julliard
[2] http://www.winehq.org/?issue=346#WWN%20Wine%201.0%20Interview%20Series%20Part%201,%20Dan%20Kegel
[3] http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
.NET (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Reverse-Engineering Routine (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks for the links. They explain debugging, but they don't answer what I was getting at: If you know there exists a certain function in a library, how do you find out what it does (and how it does it), and how do you assert that your new implementation does the exact same thing.
Re:Future Development - DIB Engine? More RPC work? (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing I wonder about future development (besides the obvious "what's planned for WINE 2.0?"):
There are lots of tweaks and dependencies that have to be taken into account when installing Windows applications in WINE. There have been some attempts to address this issue in WINE-Doors, Winetricks, and Crossover, but I can't detect any systematic approach to handling this issue in WINE itself.
Are there any plans to simplify this process? Have you considered looking to package managers (e.g. apt) to take care of listing out dependencies, downloading/installing them, etc., at least for things that are available online?
Because it would be great, IMO, if I could do something like set up an additional APT repository and type something like "apt-get install ie6-wine" and have it all taken care of for me.
I'm sure that's a lot to ask, but are there currently any plans in the same vein?