Assessing Wine Distro for use as a Trading OS

[Racco]

I am new to Linux, and new to WINE. I saw an assessment of wine by "Spatry" in YouTube where he suggests it is a good environment to run Windows Applications in. I don't want to put words in Spatry's tutorial so I am here to see if it is feasible to do this. Plus he was way above my head on how to load and run a Linux environment.

I am a trader and I am sick of Windows (updates fail, and got problems no one can figure out), so instead of trading (my income supplement), I am spending days at the time trying to figure out what is wrong with the Windows OS (or, WOS for a pun).

So I am looking for a Linux alternate, where I can run all my trading applications and not worry about the OS.

What question would I need to answer if I was considering running WINE as the Linux OS environment? What do I need to do?

Respectfully.

[dimesio]

Wine is not an OS; it is a compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows programs on Linux, MacOSX, or *BSD. To figure out whether Wine will meet your particular needs, check the AppDB for the specific apps you need to run. http://appdb.winehq.org/

Note that you will have to learn how to install and run Linux before you can use Wine.

[Racco]

My understanding of what you said: 1. Wine is a layer...means I need to run a Linux OS first then load Wine; 2. "My particular needs" as you say were clear (trading applications, like NinjaTrading, Thinkorswim) and all the programs listed in the application database are games. I am not into games.

So, are you saying that Linux is not mature enough to supplant Windows then?

[dimesio]

My understanding of what you said: 1. Wine is a layer...means I need to run a Linux OS first then load Wine;

Yes.

2. all the programs listed in the application database are games.

Of the 12,189 entries in the AppDB, 6161 are for games. That's a substantial proportion, but far from "all."

If your particular apps aren't listed, that means no one has bothered to submit a test report for them, so you will have to test them yourself in Wine to find out if they work.

So, are you saying that Linux is not mature enough to supplant Windows then?

I don't get into those kinds of debates. It supplanted Windows on my desktop 6 years ago, and I've been very happy. Some people have had a similar experience, others not. It's really an individual decision.

[Racco]

Ok, so how do I get to the 12K Apps you mention? I only saw like 20. do i need a different register than the forum? how do i see them all?

[dimesio]

Click on "Browse Apps" in the menu on the left side of the main AppDB page. That will take you to a page where you can search for apps by name. The AppDB registration is separate from the forum's, but you don't have to be registered to search it.

[Bob Wya]

@Racco,

My personal experience of Desktop Linux began in around 2004 or so. However (full disclosure) I do come from a techie background - having used Sun Workstations + Unix whilst at University doing a Comp. Sci. degree. Actually whilst I was @Uni Linus Torvalds first had the idea for creating a new OS - later called "Linux".

To answer you question there are some technologies Linux does brilliantly (filesystems, security models, the new init system) - compared to Windows. On the flip side technologies in Linux are largely still dependent on the need of corporations. So the kernel may get lots of cool technologies - but Linux Desktop applications languish behind their Windows counterparts. In addition many 3rd party hardware vendors make half-hearted efforts to support Linux. Microsoft (as part of their BS "Hardware Certification" programme) will actually make providing Linux support harder. E.g. by having insider knowledge of poorly written BIOS's for Motherboards, etc. - and working around these with the manufacturers - since they are still the dominant force on the Desktop. Microsoft pours billions of dollars into Desktop Q/A - while you average Linux Desktop distribution operates on a miniscule budget by comparison.

Linux may dominate (along with BSD - another Unix derivative OS) within Server farms. However It's all about market share on the Desktop. The pre-install base of Linux Desktop/laptop PCs is still miniscule (but this is helped somewhat by the recent Chrome book programme by Google). One side-effect of this is that some 3rd manufactures (e.g. of printers) still produce 3rd rate Linux drivers as an "after thought"... Application developers also still mainly target the more dominant MacOS and Windows platforms.

The reason why most of the entries in the AppDB database are games - is because people want to use Linux - but they want to use native applications for important stuff they use day-to-day. The whole Wine project is run on a shoestring - development has been slow and torturous. For the average "geek" like me I look at what Wine can do today... I'm amazed and awed by what has been achieved so far. However for many Linux/MacOS users it's just a case of why does my "XYZ" binary, proprietary application, compiled to run only on a Windows OS, crash when I try it Wine... Accompanied by the usual rants at the tiny development team...

So is a Linux Desktop an "easy fix" - the answer is definitely "no" (if anyone tells you otherwise they are lying or talking about Chrome OS). If you are are having trouble administering MS Windows - then you will also have trouble administering a Linux Desktop install (well unless it's Windows 8 perhaps ). If you don't have a local "geek" friend who is into/uses a Linux Desktop (or a Linux User Group aka LUG) - then you will struggle a lot at first...


Just my $0.02
Bob

[DigitalMan]

I have to agree with what Bob said. I can not think of any situation a typical user could run into where Linux is the "easy" route. I happen to be a Linux specialist, and I haven't run Windows on my home machines for several years now, but I still experience plenty of issues - usually ones no one else can figure out, and at least one of those was related to updates

Sure, I joke that Linux is easier to fix than Win8, and for me it generally is... because I've been doing this for a long time, and Win8 breaks in "special" ways. Windows 7 is extremely easy to administer by comparison.

My honest advice is, if you want to be productive now, stick with Windows. If you encounter a real issue, like one of your trading apps outright not working, I can almost guarantee it's not going to run any better on Linux through Wine. Anything that does not interfere with trading should obviously be a lower priority if trading is what you're actually trying to do. Yes, one or more updates will fail to install at some point, it's just a thing that happens, and may or may not fix its self. Focus, do what you need to do, fix things later.

As a final point of reference, I had my own piece of productivity (that is, non-gaming) software I wanted to run, and previous reports say it worked fine. I spent half a week trying to get this thing installed, but it was having issues that no one has ever seen before, on Windows or Linux, caused by what specific distribution I was using (Fedora) not behaving; the details of this issue are still a mystery. Oh, I finally got it to work, but it required booting a different distro, working with the command line, linking folders across hard drives, switching folder possession around, moving files back and forth, reverting back to Fedora, and tricking it into thinking all was well the whole time.

And then, I changed one option in the program thinking it would allow for faster processing... and it made that program halt my system any time it was run, requiring me to do the whole thing over again. (Because a plain-text config file would have been far too easy, right?)

This may not be quite typical, but it does demonstrate that "simply" installing and running a program can be anything but, even for things that are supposed to just work fine.