WineOS

[SodaPOP326]

I just want to throw out a suggestion. I think it would be great if the Wine team made a Linux based Operating System with wine out of the box. I have seen a team of developers make an operating system called ReactOS, But it seems like it needs A TON of work still. If Wine were to make an Operating System using Wine, It would help people that cannot afford Windows with a OS capable of their Windows based programs. Plus, It would be tons powerful than a stock Windows Operating System. I suppose all of the Linux distrobutions out there already, someone put together somthing like I am talking about. But in my opinion, If the Wine team come up with thier own OS, there would be a lot more efficiency and reliability. Let me list some conveniences:

1. It would possibly run great on a system that cannot support more than bare-boned Windows XP.
2. Running Windows programs on a ext4 partition would be very reliable and fast.
3. Individuals Running WineOS would save about $200. (That is my estimate of how much Windows costs )
4. Imagine gaming with WineOS! Windows games would run a lot reliable then Windows due to the ext4 partition.
5. Wine could have a install wizard that allows the individual to pop in a Windows disc and install native DirectX or Windows system files.
6. You could still use Linux programs to your own liking

This could also bump up the popularity of Wine by millions! There could be a lot put in to this OS! I hope the Wine team will see this and give it a shot. Please reply if you think this would be a good idea! Wine team, Please message me at "[email protected]" if you have an opinion on this.

[oiaohm]

SodaPOP326 this has been suggested many times its not going to happen any time soon.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11112 Yes this bug is a big start of problems. Wine itself is not multi user.
Next wine itself is still having work done so it can get performances better than half that of windows for a large number of games.

Lets go down your points.

1. It would possibly run great on a system that cannot support more than bare-boned Windows XP.

True but a machine like that may bring its own problems. Please be aware that wine brings some of its own overhead. So not all applications running in wine use less resources. Some require more. Wine sometimes uses less but also uses more.

2. Running Windows programs on a ext4 partition would be very reliable and fast.

Not exactly true either. btrfs with its snapshotting is a match up to NTFS. Apples against Apples. btrfs
not exactly the fastest. ext4 has many advantages over fat32 but is not exactly a head of NTFS for reliability.
Equal grade file-systems the performance is close to the same once you add in wine own overhead.

Problem here is when it comes to games most games are not disc IO bound they were designed for the fact Windows is slow doing this. Most games are CPU and GPU bound. The GPU bound is a major problem.

3. Individuals Running WineOS would save about $200. (That is my estimate of how much Windows costs )

Even 200 dollars over a live of a machine is not too bad. But the real price is 150-20 USD(yes depending on volume acquirement).

4. Imagine gaming with WineOS! Windows games would run a lot reliable then Windows due to the ext4 partition.

Lot of game reliable issues happen under wine as well. Due to bug for bug compatibility. Running wine does not help here. When wine started the project goal was a bugless version of the Windows ABI/API problem is bugless version will not run many programs.

5. Wine could have a install wizard that allows the individual to pop in a Windows disc and install native DirectX or Windows system files.

Not wine objective. Wine will never be extracting files from Microsoft Windows install media. Wine objective is to be able to run without native Directx part or system part from windows where possible. Currently all the parts wine normally replaces are gettable from run-times Microsoft provides. Using native parts removes wine options to use short cuts to native for higher speed.

6. You could still use Linux programs to your own liking

Yes this means wine would have to package up a Linux program Windows manager as well.

Maintaining a full Linux distribution takes lot of resources. Those resources at this stage would be better targeted at fixing wine major bugs like poor performance due to not exploiting video cards effectively.

[etwineb]

SodaPOP326 this has been suggested many times its not going to happen any time soon.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11112 Yes this bug is a big start of problems. Wine itself is not multi user.
Next wine itself is still having work done so it can get performances better than half that of windows for a large number of games.

This bug always made me wonder, why use plain text files for the registry instead of a file based db like sqlite? The transaction system allows a quite strong resistance against corruption and it is still an easy to read format. (sure, not as a plain text...)

[oiaohm]

etwineb

This bug always made me wonder, why use plain text files for the registry instead of a file based db like sqlite? The transaction system allows a quite strong resistance against corruption and it is still an easy to read format. (sure, not as a plain text...)

Not work is the simple answer. A registry hive format does not map into a sql database. In memory the reg files appear in registry hive structures to applications. So store in sql read from sql convert to registry hive in memory ok this is horrible and never will be done. So its either implement windows registry hives or use registry text files.

Then there is another reason not to implement on disc binary hives is Microsoft is free change it at any time. Users then will want to use wine to edit windows registry hives. Yes another list of headaches. .reg files are really easy to add any extension Microsoft should ever dream up.

End result we are stuck with .reg files with a service protecting them.