*How good is Wine?

[GaryHeart]

Hello World,

I am a newcomer to this technology. I am very pleased to have found it and VERY interested in using it, as a better-cost alternative for schools where I teach open source & Windows technology. I travel the world, and help set up schools in underprivileged countries where it is very expensive to acquire the Windows desktop. Wine seems like a VERY good solution, much better than basic Linux where there is no real economic model. It is kind of a give-and-take when you have to make choices of what to install.

So I ask this group. How far along is wine? Does it match on Par 100% with Windows XP, as far as the API is concerned. My bigger question is, what is the Fidelity/Accuracy of the API against wine? My concern is, if there is allot of divergence, then it would seem like a waste of time to teach kids and adults to program on Wine, if there are shortcuts, or custom API calls.... where such knowledge could not be really applicable for them in the general computer industry yet.

Please let me know. I would like to spend more time on this, and contribute to this group and product however I can, financially and otherwise. I hope to understand what is going on in this brilliant movement here with Wine. Thanks!

Best regards,

Gary Heart.

[Dotan Cohen]

2009/1/5 GaryHeart <[email protected]>:

Hello World,

I am a newcomer to this technology. I am very pleased to have found it and VERY interested in using it, as a better-cost alternative for schools where I teach open source & Windows technology. I travel the world, and help set up schools in underprivileged countries where it is very expensive to acquire the Windows desktop. Wine seems like a VERY good solution, much better than basic Linux where there is no real economic model. It is kind of a give-and-take when you have to make choices of what to install.

So I ask this group. How far along is wine? Does it match on Par 100% with Windows XP, as far as the API is concerned. My bigger question is, what is the Fidelity/Accuracy of the API against wine? My concern is, if there is allot of divergence, then it would seem like a waste of time to teach kids and adults to program on Wine, if there are shortcuts, or custom API calls.... where such knowledge could not be really applicable for them in the general computer industry yet.

Please let me know. I would like to spend more time on this, and contribute to this group and product however I can, financially and otherwise. I hope to understand what is going on in this brilliant movement here with Wine. Thanks!

Best regards,

Gary Heart.

Wine is very good, but it does not match the Windows API 100%. What
app do you want to use?

--
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il

×

[DanKegel]

I'm VERY interested in using [wine] as a better-cost alternative for schools where I teach open source & Windows technology. I travel the world, and help set up schools in underprivileged countries where it is very expensive to acquire the Windows desktop.

Cool!

what is the Fidelity/Accuracy of the API against wine? My concern is, if there is a lot of divergence, then it would seem like a waste of time to teach kids and adults to program on Wine

It's pretty good... for the most commonly used apps, at least.
We try very hard to match the needed parts of Windows 100% accurately.

Most people do not program on Wine, but some Windows IDEs
do run on Wine anyway. It's always better to use native Linux apps
if they are available. What apps exactly do you use in your courses?

Please give Wine a try. The best thing you can do is give us a list
of the apps you need (after winnowing it to remove apps that have
native Linux equivalents), and start filing bugs against Wine for
any new problems you find running those apps under Wine.

[David Gerard]

2009/1/5 GaryHeart <[email protected]>:

So I ask this group. How far along is wine? Does it match on Par 100% with Windows XP, as far as the API is concerned. My bigger question is, what is the Fidelity/Accuracy of the API against wine? My concern is, if there is allot of divergence, then it would seem like a waste of time to teach kids and adults to program on Wine, if there are shortcuts, or custom API calls.... where such knowledge could not be really applicable for them in the general computer industry yet.
Please let me know. I would like to spend more time on this, and contribute to this group and product however I can, financially and otherwise. I hope to understand what is going on in this brilliant movement here with Wine. Thanks!

Although it's had an official 1.0, Wine is still in my experience
very-good-beta quality.

You cannot yet presume a given app will work. However, in my
experience, I'm more surprised when an app doesn't work than when it
does.

The more recent and larger an app is, the less likely it is to work,
to some degree. Chrome, Safari, Office 2003/2007 are good examples.
Anything relying on .NET 2.0 or later is frequently problematic - .NET
2.0 installs somewhat, but quite a lot of it still doesn't work
properly.

The way Wine development works is typically *not* to implement a
complete API per the MSDN documentation in one hit - rather, it's
first implemented as stubs (it claims to have a function but doesn't
actually), then whatever bits are used by real-world apps are
implemented as needed. This means Wine does *not* implement everything
Windows XP supplies, but it does implement most of what is actually
used by real-world applications, which is considerably less - and
holes are filled in as we go.

So the answer is:

1. Pick your applications.
2. Test them all in Wine, check they do what they need to. (When they
don't, file bugs. If a bug exists, read it to see what the difficulty
is.)
3. If Linux equivalents exist, use them instead!


- d.

[GaryHeart]

I deleted a message, (this one) which had a post about a Windows API idea.

[Nick_S]

I'm lost... what the heck just happened?

[austin987]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:48 PM, GaryHeart <[email protected]> wrote:

AFAICT, you asked about the current status of wine, then posted tons
of emoticons and SCREAMING POSTS today.

Frankly, I don't know what you're talking about.

--
-Austin