Does Wine perform it all?

[RikTelner]

What if program wants to enter regedit.exe?
What if it searches for UAC to ask for permission?
What if it asks for folder C:\Users\User\Desktop\Idunno ?
What if it wants to place itself in %programfiles%/AntiVirus

You claim that your program is able to emulate (without that it's emulator) many software of Windows. But I can't quite imagine it performing all of 4 tasks above.

[dimesio]

Why don't you just try it and find out?

[RikTelner]

How about I ask it here, before installing Linux on my PC.
Because last time I used Wine, it worked like terminal without effect.

[RikTelner]

So, no.

[dimesio]

Because last time I used Wine, it worked like terminal without effect.

I have no idea what you mean by "worked like terminal."

As for whether Wine will run the specific apps you need, you can look them up in the AppDB to see if anyone has reported on them, but ultimately the only way to be sure any particular app will run well enough in Wine on your system is to test it yourself in the distro you plan on using.

[oiaohm]

RikTelner your question is answer here. Partly.
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-c9e6502 ... 757a6738e3

Wine is technically a compatibility layer.

What if program wants to enter regedit.exe?

This finds wine version of regedit.exe its implements as much as we know applications request.

What if it searches for UAC to ask for permission?{/quote]
Wine does not implement UAC at all. Instead all UAC functions respond as if UAC is disabled. So far we have not had an application that requires this to work. Same is in fact done with user rights as well where wine responds to everything that its administrator. No need to emulate either if applications work without and there is no exact need. User rights might get implemented one day due to multi user installs of wine could find this useful.

What if it asks for folder C:\Users\User\Desktop\Idunno ?

This is path translation. Place $WINEPREFIX/dosdevices/ before it flick the \ to / and process with a native Linux case insensitive call. Shocking part is drive letters don't really exist in NT either. NT they have to be translated to Universal Naming Convention (UNC) before real access. If wine was emulating wine should be translating this to UNC then to Linux. Wine is not emulating this bit. This is the difference between compatibility layer and emulation. Compatibility layer as long as application does not notice you have done something completely different everything is ok. So wine takes the map drive path and directly translates.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/180362 Yes you hit some interesting bugs running services under windows if you start trusting drive letters.

There are also some interesting bugs that appear in wine when applications do take drive letter convert to UNC and attempt to access UNC path. Out box wine UNC is not set up. Again most applications are not using this.

What if it wants to place itself in %programfiles%/AntiVirus

Completely fail out box. Default wine environment does not define ProgramFiles if application is doing this you will have to set this environment var up. Out of all the applications wine support none use this. Again another compatibility layer thing.

Yes you are correct wine does not do all of those 4 correctly at all.

[RikTelner]

@oiaohm Thank you for your answer. You seem to be only not-self-glorified. Yet seems pretty basic, so if I want to install program (for example), Universe Sandbox (it has Linux version, but for just this example, let's assume there's only Windows version). I need to use this in terminal?:

Code: Select all

export WINEPREFIX=/dosdevices/Universe Sandbox/

@dimensio I tried to open a game, which was about driving a big bus. In place of it. It opened terminal and done nothing. Not even impact on performance.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the work that you point into program (you probably don't give damn),
I just want to check what program can do and what not. So I can know what I am standing on, before replacing
Windows with Linux.

[oiaohm]

RikTelner if you don't define WINEPREFIX wine falls back to its default ~/.wine. It is possible to use the fall back WINEPREFIX from graphical without dropping to terminal but its not something I recommend. Mostly because if the application fails you will want wine debugging information. Yes wine only prints this out to terminal. Wine does not have a event log file either. So run straight from graphical and it fails you will have zero clues why. After installed and its fully working you can use the straight up short cuts that don't bother opening terminal or keeping the logs.

I would say using dosdevices in your WINEPREFIX path would be being confusing as in what you did the drive letter wine would be using would be in "/dosdevices/Universe Sandbox/dosevices". Also wine is normally place in home directories. Wine also does not take well to non Linux native file systems. So ext4 and btrfs and xfs and wine is mostly happy.

Place on NTFS or FAT wine is going to hate you by having strange and odd errors. This is part the case of not being emulation but translation so NTFS and FAT poor feature support to Linux comes back and bites.

[dimesio]

@dimensio I tried to open a game, which was about driving a big bus. In place of it. It opened terminal and done nothing. Not even impact on performance.

Without knowing what version of Wine that was, what game it was, and how you tried to run it, I couldn't even begin to help you troubleshoot that problem.

I just want to check what program can do and what not. So I can know what I am standing on, before replacing Windows with Linux.

That's understandable. The problem is that affirmative answers to general "can Wine do...." questions still won't guarantee that the app(s) you want to run will work in Wine. They could run into a bug no one knows about yet. I would not recommend switching to Linux on the expectation that Wine will run all the apps you need without having tested them personally.

[RikTelner]

@oiaohm

Place on NTFS or FAT wine is going to hate you by having strange and odd errors. This is part the case of not being emulation but translation so NTFS and FAT poor feature support to Linux comes back and bites.

Ok. Thanks. So, I have to point /dosdevices/_MyFavorableProgramDirectoryName_/dosdevices ?

@dimensio

Without knowing what version of Wine that was, what game it was, and how you tried to run it, I couldn't even begin to help you troubleshoot that problem.

You don't need to troubleshoot this anymore. I think game name had "Wheels" in it. I clicked on .exe file. Right click and I think I had Wine in context menu if this memory isn't corrupted. Then it prompted terminal, and nothing.

That's understandable. The problem is that affirmative answers to general "can Wine do...." questions still won't guarantee that the app(s) you want to run will work in Wine. They could run into a bug no one knows about yet. I would not recommend switching to Linux on the expectation that Wine will run all the apps you need without having tested them personally.

That why I am asking. You see, the less virtual bugs* I can find. The more I am convinced to switch to Linux with Wine.

* - Not actual bugs. I am just searching of what possibly could go wrong.

[dimesio]

* - Not actual bugs. I am just searching of what possibly could go wrong.

The four questions you asked don't even scratch the surface of what possibly could go wrong.

But if what you're looking for are the known limitations of Wine, one thing you didn't ask about is hardware: Windows hardware drivers will not work in Wine, and Wine's support for USB devices is very limited. (Perhaps you didn't ask because you already knew that, but I wanted to make sure you did. I've seen too many people on this forum who didn't find that out until after they had switched.)

[RikTelner]

The four questions you asked don't even scratch the surface of what possibly could go wrong.

Offcourse not! That's why I hate moderators. You aimlessly coming to threads saying what you think is right without even bothering to think about why (not), trying to convince everybody about it and if someone points it out. You make a hell of it. Oiaohm helped me more than you did. So why won't you spare your time, quit thread and leave me alone in discussion with him. I understand him, he understands me. You don't.

@oiaohm Could you maybe help me?

[oiaohm]

RikTelner with dimesio over all is good please don't be hard on him. I was one of the people who suggested him due to better personality than me. Yes me on a bad day is worse. Dimesio is trying to help you just you have asked a very generic question Dimesio is very good with exact questions on what to try to make X application work. This is not a issue of Dimesio being a moderator its a issue of your question taking a person out side their skill set and when doing the best they can is not exactly great.

To be correct I am better with the generic questions and Dimesio is better with the more targeted. Basically cool your jets a little RikTelner you need both of us. At times we both will get stuff wrong. It past of asking for support. I am in fact happy to see some of Dimesio posts he mentioned thing I forgot to.

To be correct dimesio has added a few points I had not covered like the big one major lack of USB support and very highly limited hardware interaction at all by wine. This is in fact something I should have mentioned due to the number of users we get who ask generic questions like you then come back upset when that stuff does not work.

Not everything you will be told when you ask a generic question will be linked to your question. Some will be linked to our prior experience with other users and the trouble they come back with after asking that type of question. Yes moderators have the habit of providing these answers. Basically grow a little thicker skin and learn to just ignore some answer that don't apply to you and accept at times support people and moderators have no choice but to provide that extra information..

Ok. Thanks. So, I have to point /dosdevices/_MyFavorableProgramDirectoryName_/dosdevices ?

You did not get what I am getting at here. Wine itself creates a path dosdevices. Pay to avoid using same pathname as something wine internal. Mostly because you will get instructions at times tell you todo something in dosdevices path in wine to fix issues.

export WINEPREFIX=/dosdevices/Universe Sandbox/

Most people WINEPREFIX look something like WINEPREFIX=~/winegame or WINEPREFIX=/media/$username/drive/somewhere/winegame.

/dosdevices in a path on a Linux system is simply odd. /media and /mnt under Linux hold drive mountings that are not OS or home normally.

Now my big worry is that you are calling your top path /dosdevices I would guess this would mean fat/ntfs partitions. Those don't mix with wine.

RikTelner I have gone as far as I can go without exact applications. Lot of wine is application by application.

Problem with windows is the shim/application compatibility system. This patch applications on the fly under windows from a database telling it what patches to apply. So yes if an application works is very much application by application.

Wine is fairly good but it has it limitations some come from what windows does in background that you never see.

[Turbine]

I think you're not fully understanding what wine provides.

What if program wants to enter regedit.exe?

Then it can, it comes with regedit.

What if it searches for UAC to ask for permission?

UAC is an optional thing, when it's disabled a lot of broken apps on Windows begin to work. So it's not necessary.

What if it asks for folder C:\Users\User\Desktop\Idunno ?

Then it gives it that folder, it has a windows bottle containing the Windows filestructure.

What if it wants to place itself in %programfiles%/AntiVirus

Then it lets it install there, %PROGRAMFILES% is an environment variable after all.

The core essential environment for Windows are provided. Getting a program to actually work is another matter.. You're better off finding a native port. Wine crashes on 99% of programs and the utilities like winetricks are largely broken. (Most library packages have broken links/bugged/errors)

[oiaohm]

The core essential environment for Windows are provided. Getting a program to actually work is another matter.. You're better off finding a native port. Wine crashes on 99% of programs and the utilities like winetricks are largely broken. (Most library packages have broken links/bugged/errors)

Turbine the percentage that fail in wine is not exactly know 99% is being way too hard its somewhere between 70 and 90 that don't work first time. winetricks itself there are a list of problems some outside our control. Like Microsoft likes changing download links for things so winetricks has to be update often. Also winetricks is win32 only.

Turbine and you fairly much have reworded one of my earily posts in this thread on everything else.

[Simon of Aragon]

What? 99% LoL

I wasn't going to comment on this until I read this. I have used WINE since about 2010. I only needed it for games. I don't have any working apps that are not covered by my Linux distro. For the most part, I still use the 1.4 default on my system without issues. A few graphic intense and newer games require a higher version and I have 1.5.31 installed as well. So I have no issue running multiple versions on my current system. There is only one game I cannot run out of the many I own. Rift is a free to play online MMO and it is only because they keep changing their software and I just got tired of playing keep up with their "tweaks".

@ the OP: RikTelner
WINE is not an emulator, it is an overlay, replacement of a block of stored instructions or data with another. I am not a programmer, I am in the medical field, so it is not that technical that one can't understand how to use it. I tried out the PoL version (which is not supported here) but all they did was dress it up with a fancy GUI. I took the time to get to know Linux before learning about how to run WINE. I would suggest you get comfortable with Linux and then use WINE for anything that isn't covered by your Linux OS. Most Linux distros can be tried out on a Live CD before you even install. I ran dual boot for about 3 to 4 months between XP and Kubuntu.