In 1993 a project called Wine was started as a way to run Windows applications on Linux without using an emulator. Instead Wine serves as a compatibility layer that includes their own implementation of the Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL’s) that make the Windows applications tick, and there has been a lot of reverse engineering done to get it to the current state.
It took over 12 years for the first Beta version of Wine to be released, and after a whopping 15 years Wine 1.0 will be shipping on June 6th, 2008. This has got to be one of the longest development cycles to reach version 1.0!
One of their big goals for Wine 1.0 is to get Adobe Photoshop CS2 fully functional, which is something Google is sponsoring. With over 1,200 compatible Windows applications adding Photoshop CS2 to the list will definitely be a huge success for the team and the software as a whole.
I’m definitely excited about Wine 1.0, but you can bet the bank that Microsoft isn’t jumping up and down in their seats. Sure it means that they might sell more copies of Office, but as far as I know Microsoft has never exactly gone out of their way to help out Wine.
So it’s time to brake out the booze!
Even after i had completely switched over to linux there were still a few windows applications which i sorely missed. Thanks to wine i could make them funcional in linux. This is awesome. what i would dearly like is that more applications become compatible with Wine. so that you dont have to worry about that essential windows app.
best of both worlds
install linux then install windows with virtualbox.
[lifehacker.com]
Someday when Linux marketshare will be signifantly high, MS might implement the full Linux ABI and calling conventions, so Linux apps will run natively on Windows, no need for Cygwin, Mingw or SFU.
You mean break out the wine, right?
Hopefully more companies will take a similar initiative that Google has in making their products work well with Wine.
That is a nice way to go, but you do still have to have a valid Windows license to do that. With Wine it is completely free.
I sure hope that we see something like that, but I do believe it will be awhile before it comes up.
Is WINE better to use than virtualization on Linux, to run Windows Apps?
Yes and no. You’ll likely run into a lot of applications that don’t work 100% or at all, but if they do work then it is better. You’re not having to simultaneously run a second operating system which can really eat a lot of system resources.
Here’s a list of the applications that work with Wine:
[appdb.winehq.org]
They each have different classifications depending on how well they actually work.
A couple of months ago– on a thread re: what Windows would look like in 2010 (or 2012?)– I posted a comment stating that “by that time I wouldn’t be using Windows anymore” (paraphrasing).
Well, this development leaves me pretty much certain that this will be case! Give me the ability to run windows apps natively and what possible reason would I have for wanting/needing to run Windows Bloatware?! I left IE behind in ’99 and never looked back and with FF3 right around the corner, why anyone would still be using IE (if not absolutely necessary) is a complete mystery to me.
This logic serves me well when looking at Linux — a completely customizable OS that I can extend (or contract) to my needs is exactly what I want. And if Wine lives up to the billing, the last obstacle will be behind me.
15 years is a long time but well worth it if it can free me from Microsoft’s clutches!
The only problem that I’ve had with Wine is that it often doesn’t support the latest version of applications. For example, they just added support for Photoshop CS2 despite that CS3 has been out for a fair amount of time.
The thing that I do like about Wine is that their library of supported games is really becoming large, and that’s a good thing for gamers.
Really great news. Windows users which are still afraid of linux will find it much easier to try it (not necessary to like it, but at least to try it) if they can execute the same applications they execute on Windows. There’s still a long way to go through but, so far, the wine guys have been doing an excellent job.
Couldn’t agree with you more “IP”. Wine isn’t a comprehensive solution for running your Windows apps in Linux, but it sure supports quite a few programs. Guess you can’t really complain when it’s free.
Ryan, you can complain when it’s free but it’s called a bug report.
As for the longest release cycle I think they just wanted to beat Ethereal/Wireshark which just released their 1.0 after 10 years.
CS2 support is great, but CS4 is currently in beta. Will it work?