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Wine Software

WineConf 2004 Wrapup 190

Posted by michael from the red-white-and-rose dept.
IamTheRealMike writes "Well, the attendants are back home and the writeups have been written - WineConf 2004 is over, and Brian Vincent of Wine Weekly News fame has written a comprehensive account of the conference. Wine hackers the world over congregated in snow-covered Minneapolis to talk shop and try and locate the magic bullet to make Wine better, faster. Cheers!"
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WineConf 2004 Wrapup More

WineConf 2004 Wrapup

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  • ...and I thought they were talking about the drink! I was thinking "wine hackers"? Shouldn't that be "sommeliers [mastersommeliers.org]"? Man, it's still way too early in the day...

    • Re:I got confused... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MarvinMouse ( 323641 ) * on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:01AM (#8258486) Homepage Journal
      ...and I thought they were talking about the drink! I was thinking "wine hackers"? Shouldn't that be "sommeliers"? Man, it's still way too early in the day...

      Nah, Sommeliers are closer to quality assurance workers, than wine hackers. Wine hackers would be more like people who make their own wine at home, and try to get the alcohol content as high as possible.

      • Re:I got confused... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Nadir ( 805 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:02PM (#8259198) Homepage
        Alcohol volume in wine cannot go above 16.8% because the yeasts that attack the sugars will stop doing their thing at such concentration of alcohol.
        • couldn't you distil it or just add more alcohol afterwards to make it stronger?

        • Re:I got confused... (Score:3, Informative)

          by addaon ( 41825 )
          16.8% is absolutely not a hard limit. Yes, most champagne yeasts poop out around 16%... but then, most ale yeasts give up before 12%. With a slow fermentation and a good yeast, a mead can easily hit 18%... and rice wines (which have lower initial sugar concentration, it's really a much more complex process) can hit 20%, 22% with skill.
          • Ever tried freezing it? I understand that if you push the temperature a bit below zero, the liquid is over 20%.
            • Freeze distillation can be done, and it kills certain flavors a lot less than normal distillation... but it really is distillation, it's no longer a 'natural' wine. It's also a pain in the ass for little result; you can get to 40% if you try really really hard, but you'll be throwing away half of the good stuff. If you want a few percent more, get a better yeast. If you want a significant difference, distill properly.
    • by bc90021 (43730) on Thursday February 12, @04:49PM

      [...]

      Man, it's still way too early in the day...

      Wow... 4:49pm is early...? You sure sleep late. :-)

  • Perhaps this is an improvement? (Score:5, Funny)

    by samuel4242 ( 630369 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @10:49AM (#8258378)
    He pointed out that Microsoft Office now "just works. You can use it all day long and you won't see the difference." Then he added that wasn't 100% true because, "The Paperclip still doesn't work." Seems like Wine runs Office better than Windows.
    • Paperclip = worst feature ever. And it doesn't help that you can never uninstall the paperclip without unistalling Office. When you "remove it", it just hides it, but if you click on the wrong menu command, it still comes up.
      • It has nothing to do with the paperclip but I have found that having a search box immediately there to type in a help question is handy sometimes. The other day I was trying to add a caption to a figure but it was not putting them in the same table as my other labels so I asked clippy. Sure enough it said that images had to be inline for the labels to be able to group together.
        • I have found that having a search box immediately there to type in a help question is handy sometimes

          me too. it's called man.

    • ... I always assumed the Paperclip was a trojan horse on diet pills.

    • Codeweavers was joking that the next version of crossover would come in two version, standard for $70, and everything but Clippy for $100. Of course this assumes they manage to get all the code that Clippy uses working.

      I was at the WineConf2004, very interesting.

    • The last I heard, it still wouldn't run MSOffice 95, but I haven't bought a copy since then. So even though I have the deluxe version (I paid extra to get MSAccess included), it still won't run on Linux.

      Of course, that's becoming less important...but just today I wanted to do a document with a section that was formatted in a different number of columns than the rest, and both KWord and OpenOfficeWriter kept insisting on reformatting the enitre document. (There's probably a reason, and a way to do it, but

  • CrossOver (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cozziewozzie ( 344246 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @10:56AM (#8258444)
    I wonder how many of the improvements can be attributed to the Crossover code. IIRC, the Crossover people release all their changes back to the WINE tree after a time. IMHO, this is a good example of a company staying alive while helping out the community.

    Anyway, running Office smoothly is a great thing. This and Photoshop are two very important steps to getting Linux on more desktops (last time I tried Photoshop, it crashed after a while and Office complained about some access violation).

    • Re:CrossOver ? with MS Blessings...? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by da5idnetlimit.com ( 410908 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:33AM (#8258795) Journal
      Well, the point had always been that the Office division of MS is a milk cow, System brings quite some money in but is attacked by Linux and XBOX Division (as well as the media division) is loosing money like hell...

      Wine continuation just means that when (rofl) Linux has dethroned Windows on the desktop(/rofl) Microsoft can with no problem continue pushing it's Office suite everywhere...

      Maybe putting all this devellopment time and brains on OpenOffice / MSOffice compatibility and TheGimp Tools/Dev/Filters would allow us what we really need..a really free, top to bottom OS...with all the goodies softs available for free...

      "This and Photoshop are two very important steps to getting Linux on more desktops"

      I might be wrong, but I think I'm closer to the mark than you are...

      Get Oppenoffice working for cheap AND MS doc compatible (almost totally done), push for the SMEs and Big Companies to get cheaper hardware by getting them Microsoft free and then you will see that Photoshop is announcing a native Linux version by it's nice, userfriendly editor...

      When you are at that point, most editors will come and shell out Linux versions... Binaries only, maybe, but Linux versions anyhow...

      Wine was all right and fine an idea 2-3 years ago, when Linux didn't fully have the basic apps.

      Now that we have them...

      There is only two position in IT Market, the best or the cheapest... If we get all for free, editors will try and provide the best for a fee... Or so it was to work ...

      • WINE is not just for "basic apps." (Score:4, Insightful)

        by autechre ( 121980 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @12:07PM (#8259252) Homepage
        Sometimes you have this old, closed-source 16-bit program (possibly for an old, out-of-date piece of external hardware) that you really can't replace because all of this other stuff is built up around it. The company isn't around anymore, but the version of the application won't run on modern, supported versions of Windows for some reason. This is where WINE can really help you out.

        It can help in other ways, too. My Playstation 2 was having a problem reading discs. In searching for a local repair place on the Web, I found out that several people sell cheap "self-repair" guides, but these are in some wacky Windows hypertext browser format (probably to prevent copying). Worked fine in WINE, and I had repaired my own PS2 for $10 in less than an hour.

        • Except my old versions of Micrografx Designer (4) and FormFlow, and MSWorks don't run under wine. All crash upon launch with 16 bit violation errors. Seems wine has lost some of its 16 bit compatibility.
          • I didn't say Wine was useless...

            Just, if you have that old 16 bits apps running on a dying computer, I'm sure you can find an old desktop somewhere, slap 98 or DOS 5 on it and keep it running...

            I made the jump to full Linux less than 6 month ago, and now all my computers are Linux Based (Firewall is Astaro Linux, web/mail is E-smith, the rest (file server + desktop) is installed with Knoppix Cluster (debian))

            Whenever I must do something Windows only, I ask my girlfriend for her keyboard, and later look f
        • Unfortunately, the applications that I have like that, Wine won't run either. It will run SAngband, but that's hardly a thing one would change a business decision about, even if it is my favorite version of Angband.

          What I need it to run are Encore by Passport Designs and Deneba Canvas 8 (getting closer, but it won't even load properly yet). (Photoshop I can replace with Gimp, but Linux doesn't *have* a decent Canvas replacement.)

          OTOH, if RoseGarden or NoteEdit ever start working well (including producin

    • I'd like to know that too (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I bought crossover partly because I wanted to support Wine, and I have know idea if I'm actually acheiving that or not. Anyone got any info?

      btw I've used Photoshop under the latest crossover and it ran fine, although ImageReady was pretty buggy.

      • Re:I'd like to know that too (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jeremy_white ( 598942 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:49AM (#8259025) Homepage
        We are only able to do the work that we do because of the money we receive from our customers, most of whom are single end users.

        All of our work on Wine goes back to the public Wine tree. I think its fair to say that Wine runs MS Office 2000, XP, Photoshop, and a wide range of applications only because of the money our customers have sent us. So, yes, I think it makes a huge difference, and we greatly appreciate it.

        Further, there is one misconception I wish to correct. We've actually changed our development process recently so that all of our Wine work goes to the public Wine tree as soon as our developer makes the change, without regard to CrossOver releases.

        Cheers,

        Jeremy White
        CEO, CodeWeavers

        • I personally want to thank you for the great work you guys did and are continuing to do. WINE in it's self has helped me get more newbies to linux than any other app/distro/idea.

          now if we could get a gnome wrapper that would put a wine-installed app from a windows app cd to put an icon in the gnome menu it would be that much closer to perfect.

          if a newbie can insert his windows app cd, run the installer under wine and have a application link inserted in a windows directory in the gnome menu that is alread

          • Re:I'd like to know that too (Score:4, Interesting)

            by jsebrech ( 525647 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @02:50PM (#8260905)
            if a newbie can insert his windows app cd, run the installer under wine and have a application link inserted in a windows directory in the gnome menu that is already associated with wine and that app

            Crossover office adds apps to the menu and desktop on my system (debian + kde). That's the diff between crossover and wine, you pay for the polish.
        • >>> All of our work on Wine goes back to the public Wine tree

          So where is the 6 months of work that Borland did on WINElib (with CodeWeavers, and paid CodeWeavers) to fix the multitude of threading and exception handling issues in the WINE sources? Borland submitted the fixes, but AFAICT, they were never accepted by the WINE maintainers due to "theological differences". Talk about a collossal waste of time and effort...

          I'm not talking about WINE the binary PE file emulator that tries to run Wind

    • Re:CrossOver (Score:3, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      Thank you Crossover. Of course, without free code from the community Crossover would never have gotten over the hump.

      This makes WINE an interesting case study in the difference between the GPL and BSD licenses. (Wine is "lesser GPL" which allows linking to non-free software (eg MS Office) but requires source code distribution for the library (eg Wine)).

    • I just want to run Adobe Pagemaker in Linux. I've spent too much time learning pagemaker to switch to another product, plus there aren't any linux equivalents, like Photoshop has Gimp.

      Since Pagemaker is the only thing preventing me from switching completely to Linux as my desktop, I would love to be able to run it in Wine. I've read about people having success with Pagemaker in Crossover Office. It would be nice to see that functionality in Wine.

      • Re:CrossOver (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 )
        I don't profess to be an expert, but you could try something like SGML or LaTeX.

        OOo and KOffice can print to PostScript or PDF, if you like.

  • I hate to whine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12, 2004 @10:56AM (#8258445)
    but wine still seems like one of those apps that need geek'ness to get things working. For whom are they aiming the product for these days, joe average?

    I appreciate what they are doing, but at the moment would it not be better to go 100% unix or 100% windows.

    • Re:I hate to whine (Score:2, Insightful)

      by caino59 ( 313096 )
      i'll bite...

      this just isn't for joe consumer, but for converting business over to a linux desktop.

      most system admins that would love to have linux on their place of employment's desktop will have no trouble setting up wine. all the users have to do is use it, not set it up...

      • I'm not so sure "most" system admins would love to have linux on the desktop. Your helpdesk and desktop support people are the ones who handle the quick little configuration problems and other quirks that happen day-to-day in the workplace.

        I don't know about where you work, but where I am, sometimes I wonder about how much our 1st level support knows about WINDOWS, much less linux!

        • you misinterpreted.

          i said "most system admins that would love to have linux..."

          not "most admins want linux..."

          big difference.

          i was basically saying that people that prefer linux will most often have a workable knowledge of the operating system and various tools and utilities that run on linux.

    • That's why it's 0.9 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:39AM (#8258885)

      Plus, Wine is not a product, it's a project. Codeweavers makes a product based on Wine, and so does Transgaming.

      Codeweavers product is aimed at people who want to use Linux, but communicate 100% with MS Office people. And use MS plugins in their Linux browsers.

      Transgamings product is aimed at the hacker/enthusiast who wants to be on the cutting edge running DirectX games on their Linux install.

      Eventually, Wine will be a near 100% replacement for the MS API. Buy a MS piece of software at CompUSA, drop it in your Linux distro, and it works perfectly.

      And once that happens, you will see Linux begin to take over the desktop. And that's why Wine developers are heroes. Keep up the good work!

      Weaselmancer

      PS: The submitter is hoping for the "magic bullet" that'll speed up wine, but may have missed just such a magic bullet in the article he posted. It's a shared memory wineserver, currently experimental. I'll quote from the WineHQ page:

      Gav showed a dramatic demo of American McGee's Alice running under both WineX and WineX with shared memory. In that particular game the sound and graphics threads needed to sync with each other at an astounding rate. Typical WineX performance produced about 50 frames per second. By moving to shared memory the framerate nearly doubled to about 95 a second.

    • I haven't but I'd expect the crossover and transgaming versions to feel less geeky.
  • to make Wine better and faser?? I Run word 97 on my linux box and its 100 times better and faster! I think they're not looking for a bullet but a WMD :-)

    Seriously though, Wine is one of the most impressive feats of software engineering I've seen, the ability to emulate a closed source platform is a real achievement.
    • Actually I meant development processes - Wine the project as opposed to Wine the software (which you are right, runs acceptably well most of the time). Wine is moving faster than ever before and is one of the most active open source projects around, but more people are always needed. If there is a magic bullet we can use to increase participation, and increase the efficiency of those already taking part, that'd be a valuable thing indeed.

      Unfortunately, nobody has yet come up with one.

      It'd be really gre

    • the version of wine I have (quite new) requires that I have a windows partition with everything installed there.

      and then it says it might ruin it, so recommends copying the whole thing.

      I'm not trying to flame/troll, but this doesn't seem like "emulation" to me... "MS Windows Emulator*!!!!"

      *MS Windows required.

      I guess the problem is MS copyrights meaning they can't just distribute the required files? or even attempt to reverse engineer?
      • Wow... I didn't realize they've changed their policy on that... I use a slightly older version of Wine (7/9/03) to run three win32 apps, and no I don't have a Windows partition.

        And on a slightly different subject, what's with all the trolls in this area? Does Microsoft hire moles to go flood the halls of Slashdot anytime someone points out that you can run some Win32 apps without MS Windows? Is it really necessary to point out that it's not a perfect solution, or a magic bullet?

        Hey, if you need to use s

        • what's with all the paranoia here?

          I do use linux. I only use windows for
          1. occasionally making some graphs with Excel
          2. watching DVDs (no support for graphics card acceleration)
          3. Virtual Pool 3

          the only other things windows has going for it for me is:
          1. I haven't found an mp3 player as good as MusicMatch Jukebox
          2. dcgui-qt not quite as user-friendly as DC++

          so maybe I'm wrong about wine since I don't really require or use it, I guess I must have been confused by the fact that the first thing winesetup say

  • Wine and DirectX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @10:59AM (#8258470)
    Next up, Tom Wickline put together a presentation about getting applications to run. Tom has worked quite a bit with Wine and CrossOver Office and had some tricks for getting things to work. The key to just getting something to run seems to be using native Windows DLL's. He has a copy of Windows 98 to copy things to and from. Generally he starts with CrossOver Office and adds the following things in this order:

    * Internet Explorer
    * DCOM98 (as opposed to DCOM95)
    * MDAC.Type
    * MS Scripting update (SCR56.exe)

    Lately he's even added native DirectX 8.1 to the mix. Some form of this combination will get Wine to run about 85% of the applications and games he's tested.

    That's cool and all, but DirectX 8.1 is outdated. EverQuest, for example, upgraded to DirectX 9 this week, breaking support for anyone who ran it in Linux.

    I was about to move completely to Xandros 2.0 on a home machine, knowing that, if the included CrossOver Office wouldn't run EQ, WineX would. Now I'm comtemplating a dual-boot machine. But that doesn't work as well since our home file/print server is being booted into a new OS.

    Unfortunately, most people only play the latest and greatest when it comes to games.* And to keep people centered on Linux when it comes to gaming, latest DirectX support needs to be a top priority.

    * (Me, still playing EQ five years after its release, being an obvious exception.)

    • Re:Wine and DirectX (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:04AM (#8258519)
      And to keep people centered on Linux when it comes to gaming, latest DirectX support needs to be a top priority.

      Of course, I mean for the Wine folks. For the rest of the Linux community, getting developers to release native Linux games is more important.

    • Re:Wine and DirectX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      And me still playing Grand Prix Legends and Red Baron 3D would be another exception. There may be more of us out that than you realize.

      And while implimenting the latest DirectX might well be of some high priority it is inherently impossible to achieve in a timely manner, with regards to people who will only run the latest and "greatest" games. Wine will always be at least a generation behind.

      So why not start from the beginning and work up, getting games people already have to run?

      My Windows partition exi

    • Re:Wine and DirectX (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Centered on linux" amounts to hacking the kernel, or doing cool open source work, or just getting _NOVEL_ shit done using an alternative OS (I would like to say "free software" instead here, but that's not necessarily the case, for better or worse). Honestly, what's the point of keeping people centered on linux by emulating Window$?

      I haven't kept up with WinE for a long time, but I do recall it used to be necessary to have a few proprietary binaries for it to work, i.e., it's not even free-as-in-beer-wind
      • it's not even free-as-in-beer-window$-emulation

        Note that I use Xandros. Free as in beer isn't that important to me. Free as in "I'm free to switch to another distribution if I start to dislike Xandros, and my apps will still work" is what matters to me. If CrossOver Office starts to bug me, then I can go to WineX and it will work about the same.
        • If CrossOver Office starts to bug me, then I can go to WineX and it will work about the same.

          The focus of crossover office and winex is entirely different. Crossover office targets desktop apps, while winex targets games. As a result crossover office runs apps like office and photoshop much better, but winex supports directx 9 and runs the majority of popular games.

          Ofcourse, improving the win32 api's to run either desktop apps or games will improve the ability to run the other category as well, which is
  • If you hackers watched the Simpsons properly, you'd know that the secret to making Wine faster is to put anti-freezein it.
    • the secret to making Wine faster is to put anti-freezein it.

      Ah... but it would hardly be a proper Win32 emulator if there some anti-freeze in it... might as well get rid of the blue screen while you are at it!

  • Did the attendees make it back home too? (Score:3, Funny)

    by cruff ( 171569 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:03AM (#8258504)
    I read that the attendants are back home. Are the meeting attendees geriatric geezers that needed help at the meeting? :-)

    • Not at the meeting, but getting around outside of the meeting. Friday before the high temperature was -15F (~-23C), pretty much everyone consideres that cold, though some have seen colder. Saturday and Sunday were warmer, but it snowed, meaning getting around was dangerous.

      Not everyone had a car, and you can't get around in Minneapolis without a car. So some of the attendees were also attendants for those who didn't get a car.

      Wine hackers are cheap. Nobody went for the expensive hotels. Some manag

  • Win32 port anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:11AM (#8258582) Journal
    *sigh* still no signs of a Win32 port...

    • Re:Win32 port anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

      by wild_pointer ( 263802 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:23AM (#8258691)
      Here [microsoft.com] Some Bill guy is working on it. It's not yet as stable as Wine but looks promising ;)
    • Actually there has been some work (its only on mailing lists, not public yet) of getting wine to run under cygwin, which is almost a win32 port.

      Of course wine should also run cygwin (as it's a windows program), so eventually you will be able to run wine under itself :)

    • There are several signs of win32 ports.

      Some people are replacing Windows DLLs with Wine DLLs. (mostly for testing).

      Some people are trying to get Wine running under Windows.

      the ReactOS people are doing really cool things trying to make a windows clone that uses Wine.

      Depending on your definition of running, all or some of the above might be of interest to you.

    • Don't joke. There is a large collection of Windows software that simply doesn't run on Windows XP. I'm talking about software from the Win95-Win98 era. This software does run under Wine! I would love to see a port of Wine to Windows XP.

  • What can't (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    someone invent an API,ABI,execution or whatever to work on all platforms.

    You know one code to rule them all.

    BTW I know of java, but really I cannot see anyone making doom 3 using java3d or premier using javamedia.

    Sorry, excuess my ignorance.
    • someone invent an API,ABI,execution or whatever to work on all platforms.

      While that wouldn't be impossible - we have cross platform toolkits already e.g. Qt and wxWindows - the problem is getting everyone to use it. Developers who only do MFC for example aren't going to switch to Qt just because they could compile it on Linux, which they probably wouldn't want to bother doing anyway. The only way something like this could possibly work is if Microsoft made it their new "standard", and what are the chances
    • You can use Python and the Pygame libraries, and that will probably work for all but the most intensive 3d fast action stuff.

      The big problem with "all platforms" is that once you start including different architectures (x86 and PowerPC, for example) then emulation gets more complicated, as you have to emulate all of the underlying hardware.

      Of course, we have near-perfect emulators for video game consoles which run on PCs, but the platform doing the emulating is going to have to be a whole lot beefier than
  • Unfortunitly Wine (Winex) still doesn't play games very well. I purchased wine a little while ago and was unimpressed. In fact, games are the ONLY reason I still have a xp partition. The following link is to their database of applications. http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=897
    • WineX can't just support every single game released for Windows, this is simply impossible, at least right now.

      However, WineX supports the big hits pretty well, Call of Duty, Max Payne 2, Warcraft III, check out their list of supported games [transgaming.com].

      If you are a subscriber, you can vote for games to get more support, and if the game is popular enough, they'll work on it.

      WineX works great with supported games, and has dramatically decreased my Windows boots.
    • perhaps you should get a playstation.
      • A copy of Windows is cheaper than a console, and plays better games...
        • Price of a Windows XP copy:
          here [microsoft.com]
          Price of a PLaystation 2:
          here [modchipstore.com]
          as you can see is not that much more expensive, so you can devote your Linux Box for Linux games and completely rule out the other OS. Also you have to purchase Wine, windows upgrades, etc.
          Porting games to Linux is much more appealing since full advantage of hardware can be taken. It has to be appealing in economic terms.
    • Your absolutly correct (unfortunitly I accidently hit the send button while I was previewing) The Other game I play from time to time is Everquest, which doesn't work well either. No problem though, I truly believe they will work out the bugs eventually. Better yet. We need to get game programmers to just port over to Linux !

  • WINE Windows Driver Support (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrNybbles ( 618800 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:18AM (#8258650) Journal
    Jan had to reimplement about 300 functions in order to make the driver, NTFS.sys, work. Jan used four different methods to implement the necessary calls:

    Pass the call straight through to ntoskrnl.exe (yes, the real WinXP ntoskrnl.exe)

    It would be nice if someone worked on native NTFS support for writing to the disk that worked as well as it does in Windows. As far as I know the 2.6.x Linux kernels support writing that can't make a NTFS file larger on the disk.

    What seemed to interest everyone was not the fact that the native NT drivers can be used for filesystem access, but how it could be extended to support other drivers. In particular, native Windows printer drivers, serial drivers, video drivers, and networking drivers may be able to be implemented using a similar method. All that special hardware using "Win" soft drivers might be possible to get working.
    I hope they get some support for Win9x drivers too since I have only one program on Windows that WINE can't run because of some special drivers it installs and expects to work. At least that's why I think it's not running. That's one problem with Windows support: Windows is not one operating system.

    • Re:WINE Windows Driver Support (Score:5, Informative)

      by Derek Pomery ( 2028 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:31AM (#8258763)
      Oh, no prob. If Windows does it, should be a snap for those Linux boys.
      So, you wouldn't happen to have an NTFS spec handy? Maybe you could get one from MS?
      So far, I consider Linux reading NTFS and writing verrrry carefully without changing number of blocks a file uses to be impressive given it is all reverse engineering.
      But hey. There's a solution, maybe you remember seeing this posted on /., multiple times?
      NTFS full write [slashdot.org]

      Oh, and btw, WINE does work with 95 too. Check your configs and documentation.

  • Legality question.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:25AM (#8258702) Journal
    If calls are being passed directly to/from drivers like NTFS.SYS and the actual WinXP kernel, does using Wine require a licensed copy of XP?

    AFAIK you can't freely redistribute the XP kernel and system drivers.

    Will we see WINE shut down at MSFTs whim one day?

    • Re:Legality question.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrNybbles ( 618800 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:38AM (#8258868) Journal
      WINE does not require a copy of XP except if you want to have good NTFS support. Many people who want or need good NTFS support already have Windows XP. If you want good NTFS support and don't have Windows XP then you are probably out of luck.

      The Linux Kernel 2.6.x so far does not have very good NTFS writing support. With few exceptions I would suggest not using 2.6.x NTFS support until it nolonger says it is experimental. Also, I think the NTFS.SYS driver from WINE calls the Windows XP driver ntoskrnl.exe. The NTFS.SYS talked about in the article is part of WINE.

    • No it doesn't require a licensed copy of XP to run wine. But to run any of the drivers that ship with XP, especially ntfs.sys, then yes a licensed copy of XP is required. This is the basis for the captive-ntfs driver also. It requires you have XP already installed, then grabs its ntfs.sys and then uses that to mount the filesystem. If you don't have XP, then you can't legally use the ntfs.sys driver at all.

  • Wine still a pain (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 )
    While win is great and all, and I hope it gets better it has too many problems that are not being addressed. The biggest problem is how much of a pain in the butt it is to configure. Wine needs some sort of easy or automatic configuration tool. I mean, when it's easier to set up xfree86 than it is to set up wine we have a problem.

    The second and most obvious thing is that because wine exists then less software will be made for linux in the meantime. There is at least one person out there who said to themse
    • The second and most obvious thing is that because wine exists then less software will be made for linux in the meantime.... this is the biggest barrier to linux taking more market share.

      Why? Who cares?

      The average user wouldnt care if the app their running was compiled for linux natively, or is being emulated, so long as it works seamlessly.

      A WINE that worked, was effortless to install, had a compatibility with XP in the high 90%'s (including the latest DirectX - big issue, games are probably the most

    • I just downloaded the latest Wine about 3 days ago straight from WineHQ. The new winecfg is excellent. It's way better than the old TK one. Clean tabbed interface, and it's as simple to configure as any other app.

      Weaselmancer

      PS: You said, "The second and most obvious thing is that because wine exists then less software will be made for linux in the meantime."

      Think of Wine as a gateway to Linux. Yeah, there will be less of a compelling reason to write native Linux apps. That is, until it takes of

  • ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dcuny ( 613699 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @11:46AM (#8258996)
    For me, the most interesting thing happening in Wine has been the ReactOS [reactos.com] project. Basically, it's an attempt to clone the Windows NT operating system.

    There have been a number of attempts to clone the Windows OS in the past (i.e. Freedows and the Alliance OS), but most of them have self-destructed with no real product.

    The ReactOS, on the other hand, has managed to get the core NT working, and has been added the Wine libraries to supply much of the functionality. Earlier last month they released a version with a functioning Windows Explorer clone [reactos.com], and they seem well on the way of reaching the goal of running OpenOffice and Mozilla by October, 2004 [reactos.com]. The target of a fully functional Windows OS replacement is only about a year away.

    • VERY impressive.

    • For me, the most interesting thing happening in Wine has been the ReactOS [reactos.com] project. Basically, it's an attempt to clone the Windows NT operating system.

      I would imagine that thanks to the story [slashdot.org] that came through 6 hours later, ReactOS will start improving a great deal faster.

      Tainted or not, once the source is out there you can't put it back in the bottle.

  • same old wine story (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been using Linux for 10 years. Back in the day there was dosemu and wine. The story was that wine was getting close, wine was getting better, wine was getting usable.

    Every once in a while I would give wine another try and find that wine was still not working. I don't think very much has changed in 10 years with the wine project.

    At this point I have no interest anymore in using wine, I just use linux and native linux apps.

    IMHO the wine developers should focus their efforts on linux and native linu
  • I'd think it would be a nightmare compared to a standalong product like Office because you have to log into a windows domain (or do you?)

    Also, like perhaps many others my laptop dual-boots to Linux on one side and Windows XP on the other. Can I use Wine to run things from the (read-only, under linux) NTFS Windows-XP partition? That would be fantastic. (Currently I do this with VMware but the boot time is annoying and the memory usage of course is ridiculous).

    • I forgot to say ,the reason I ask is because I looked at WineHQ's supported applications list [winehq.org] and there are only 9 apps listed as working properly? And none of them is Office, which the story summary specifically claims works! There is another database of supported applications [winehq.org] at wineHQ, but you have to register which it isn't worth doing just to decide whether to download Wine at all.

      • I forgot to say ,the reason I ask is because I looked at WineHQ's supported applications list [winehq.org] and there are only 9 apps listed as working properly?

        This is not the compatibility list, this is the *officially* supported applications list. If an application on this list does not work properly, you are encouraged to piss and moan about it. It does not mean nothing else works. Many applications all the way up to Photoshop and Flash MX work pretty well under recent releases, and many OpenGL games,

  • I've heard quite a few times how wine is bad because it makes native versions less likely - IMNSHO quite the opposite is true since when/if most windows applications become usable in Linux using wine companies making those apps are quite likely to port them as well. Why? Because wine can prove that there's a market for the application among Linux users (presuming that the company does its market research properly and the users are clever enough to tell the company that they are running it using wine) and co

  • Best Linux word processor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrm677 ( 456727 ) on Thursday February 12, 2004 @02:45PM (#8260831)
    The best word processor running on Linux is Microsoft Word.

    In OpenOffice, I tried to create a simple numbered list, where I stop the list but then continue it at a later point in the document, but I couldn't figure it out.

    MS Office on cross-over Wine is what I use and I am productive.
    • In OpenOffice, I tried to create a simple numbered list, where I stop the list but then continue it at a later point in the document, but I couldn't figure it out.

      I just opened up OpenOffice and did it without even thinking.

      I made a numbered list.
      I put an empty entry in the middle where I wanted the list to seperate.
      I backspaced over that number.
      I hit return a couple of times, to seperate the two halves of the list.

      I even tested adding entries to the first half of the list and guess what? It worked just

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