Hello dear Linux and Wine Community,
I would like to propose that we put some marketing effort - such as benchmarks and reviews, technical articles, online ads, or otherwise - into pitching Linux + WINE as the logical successor for one of the most widely used but very soon abandoned OSes, Windows XP.
More specifically, WINE often does an excellent job of supporting legacy Windows XP applications, especially those which have trouble migrating to Microsoft's newer operating systems. For example, graphics-intensive applications which make use of the old Windows GDI application programming interface, have an occasionally severe performance penalty when run under Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows 8, because all of these newer Microsoft OSes have only poorly written software emulation for GDI. Windows XP and *also* WINE, however, can achieve *much* better performance when running GDI programs, most likely due to better and more hardware-accelerated implementations for GDI.
Simply put, the decline of Windows XP is a golden opportunity to broaden the Linux user base:
"Does your legacy Windows XP application fail to run properly under Windows 7 or Windows 8? Lost performance? Newer software isn't available, too costly, too bloated, or has eliminated features you need? Try running your legacy Windows XP application under Linux + WINE. The results may surprise you".
This kind of pitch, combined with a few examples of benchmarking WINE with legacy GDI apps against Windows 7 / 8 might have a very positive impact on the Linux marketability.
We should collect a few suggestions for still-useful GDI programs from forum feedback and the AppDB rankings, and maybe set up a donation website to sponsor some articles and testing.
What do you think?
End of Windows XP = Time to Shine for Wine
Re: End of Windows XP = Time to Shine for Wine
gustep12 rule one don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Codeweavers behind crossover that is based off wine would be free to run such an advertising push.
gustep12 wine does still have many limitations. Wine project in fact still needs a lot of investment money to make more applications run.
2014 could also be a very hard year for wine. wayland and X11 server changes could cause wine project some pain.
The wine project also has to be careful about lifting peoples expected outcomes too high.
Wine is lacking proper multi user support. This is a major headache in deployments.
Codeweavers behind crossover that is based off wine would be free to run such an advertising push.
gustep12 wine does still have many limitations. Wine project in fact still needs a lot of investment money to make more applications run.
2014 could also be a very hard year for wine. wayland and X11 server changes could cause wine project some pain.
The wine project also has to be careful about lifting peoples expected outcomes too high.
Wine is lacking proper multi user support. This is a major headache in deployments.
