Five words sum it up: "Wine is not an emulator." This is also a clever acronym for the program Wine, which can help you run your Windows programs under Linux. Wine is an implementation of the Windows API that allows programs using the API to run on an operating system that doesn't natively support the application. It's important to note that Wine doesn't emulate a full x86 system but rather provides the software APIs that make it possible to run Windows programs. This allows a program to run at full speed, since no emulation is taking place. Emulation generally slows down software.
Let's install Wine on a Linux system, attempt to install an ordinary Windows application, and take a look at how well it works.
Downloading and installing
I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 for this article, so I'll download and install the latest RPM distribution of Wine from the Wine Web site. I need a version of Wine that supports glibc 2.3, and at the time of this writing, the version available on the Wine site supports only glibc 2.2. However, the Wine site offers a link to Source Forge, which hosts the version I need.
To install the RPM version of Wine that I downloaded for my Athlon-based system running Red Hat 9, I use the following command:
rpm -i wine-20030911-1rh9winehq.athlon.rpm
If you have a different version of Red Hat or a different processor, be sure to download the appropriate file and modify this command accordingly. On my system, which is pretty standard, the installation went smoothly.
What did it do?
Upon initial installation via RPM, Wine is configured and ready to start running Windows programs. In fact, Wine installs a couple of common Windows apps, such as Notepad and the (all-important) game Minesweeper.
Wine requires a "C: �drive" onto which Windows applications are installed. This is handled by the creation of a folder in /usr/share named wine-c. If you decided to compile Wine rather than use the RPMs, this location may be different. Figure A shows the familiar contents of this location on my testing lab's Red Hat 9 system. As you can see, the common Windows directories have been created; Wine uses these directories for program installation.
Talkback
Nice but your review is neither complete nor correct. Anything that can be run on Crossover Office can be run on Wine. Although with WINE you do need the technical insight to manually configure and enhance certain features. Comparing WINE to Crossover is akin to comparing Redhat 9 to the Linux Kernel. You can't make the comparison because one is not in competition with another. Rather, one (the linux kernel & WINE) is the respective basis for the others very existence (i.e. Redhat needs the Linux kernel and CrossOver requires the WINE API). So while I think it's cool you're keeping WINE in the public eye via this article I feel your article serves no purpose then to repeat what is already known.
That is CrossOver is an extension to WINE that allows people to more easily configure and run Windows apps on Linux. A more complete end-user package for the WINE API. However, with that being said it is kind of moronic to compare the two products. Another analogy can be made with Windows itself. Your comparison is akin to comparing Windows NT with the NT Command Console (CMD.EXE). As if one could even survive without the other.
Talking about Wine and Codeweavers to run Windows on Linux without mentioning the more popular and practical Win4Lin is like telling people that if they want to cross the river they need to build their own raft - each time they want to cross - without mentioning that there is a ferry right next door. Sure you have to have a Windows license - but what is REALLY free these days, or in other words, you get what you pay for. The Windows environment, running as a Linux process, gives you the fidelity of user experiece together with the greatest number or commercial and custom applications. And, most users, by denifition of being in transition, already have the Windows license so it is really a matter of being practical - accepting that you will need to use your Windows applications a little longer while you develop solid open source alternatives and operational experience - or being idealistic, and ultimately doomed, by insisting on cold-turkey conversions where you are sure to encounter user resistance and loss of productivity.
Yeah, Wine is noble and open-source and everyone's favorite pet project - but it is hopelessly flawed - the complexity matrix is too daunting. If you want to do the Linux community a service and further Linux on the desktop, you will encourage readers to make the transition in the most pain-free and productive manner possible - by using Win4Lin as a bridge for legacy Windows applications.
I knew from the first line that this was going to be no more then pissing and moaning that windows apps won't run under linux.
Well guess what brain-boy... THEY'RE WINDOWS APPS.
They weren't designed to run under linux. The fact that you even have the oppurtunity to _attempt_ to run them is a priviledge you should be thankful to the Wine developers for. Quit your bitchin'.
err... CrossOver Ofiifce IS Wine. It's just a commercial version with a easy front end.
Rather incomplete. It is true that just downloading and installing from the Wine project is not an undaunting project; however, there is a free version of Codeweavers Wine (no, it's not the tweaked commercial version that runs Office so well), that does run numerous Windows programs reasonably. Tweaking that installation is much easier than the base Wine installation in the article. I've run several heavy-duty commercial apps with that.
What's with all this running Windows apps under Linux stuff? I was looking forward to finding out what kind of wine would complement a session of BZFlag on my Mandrake Linux box.
Umm, crossover office uses wine. All codeweavers crossover applications are just nicely packaged wine.
The real benefit of wine (and even better, wineX) is games. Neither VMware nor Win4Lin have Direct3D support. WineX rocks for games, Pretty much any game that anyone really wants to play runs at or near full speed under wineX and it's all for a very very low monthly subscription fee. If you want commercial apps for a specific reason you shouldn't be messing around with emulators and compatibility, you should be using the real thing. Games on the other hand...
I got to page two of the article then gave up.
I have recently looked at Linux as an alternative to Windows for myself and clients.
Great it runs faster and there is lots of good quality software available at little or no cost.
Big But - To install software I want to simply double click on an icon, pretend to read the licence agreement then wait for the "finished" button to apear.
Until Linux is truely ready for the lazy user like me (and most of the world) I guese I will be stuck with Windows and the excelent freeware applications that I use.
The Wine developers seem to agree with the review;
see http://www.winehq.org/hypermail/wine-devel/2003/10/0236.html
"Think this is a fair summary of the current state of things. We really
need to fix InstallShield problems before we go to 0.9, so that people
can just install the apps that work."
CrossOver is a good way to run a few apps very cleanly. It fixes the problems in Wine
just well enough that the apps it supports run
well. The fixes in CrossOver usually find their
way into the main version of Wine if they're
suitable for general use. Everybody wins with
this arrangement. Hats off to Codeweavers for
finding a workable business model for
driving Wine development!
I generally don't know why people get so aggressive about this review: Well, for most- it's true, the end-user, not usually wanting or having advanced knowledge of linux (hence author) will not want to extensively configure, add, remove lines, use commandline etc. etc.
There was time I was cursing wine, because my windoze apps didn't work. Now I don't, but I'm more geek, than newbie...
Don't blame the author for recommending CrossOver, for my friends I would do so, since I know they're used to Windoze click'n'run attitude...
Rambo
although i understand the problems the author had, he should have looked a little more into wine.
I'm using wine in a production environment, as i'm progammer under navision native database.
I experienced no problems so far, although some applications refuse to work with wine (such as Groupwise). Nevertheless i can recommend wine for linux-users, if they really need to use windows applications in linux. But i'm sure if a linux user is looking for a program similar to what he's used in windows he will find. Keep in mind that openoffice is a substitute for microsoft office, even i know that microsoft office is running in wine.
Of course not! Abondon such stupid projects and use the energy to create working drivers and programs under Linux in stead. How far will will these "Winers" go? Untill we got blue screens under Linux? What's the idea of running Windows programs under Linux while these works best under Windows anyway? Linux can (or should be able to) make one forget Windows all together. If not, we're betting on the wrong horse.
Just my few worthless cents.