Wine on Windows 7

Northrup · Post by **Northrup** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:26 pm

For some time now I have been researching the upcoming Windows 7, scheduled for release in 2009 - 2010.

Recently, a number of websites have stated that Microsoft is no longer including backwards compatibility with software from previous versions of Windows. From the number of sites, I'm guessing this is not just a rumor. And considering the almost infinitely massive list of Windows programs already in existence, previous users of Windows will not be very happy about it.

So, would it be possible to create a version of Wine that could run under a Windows environment as its own executable? I've tried sifting through the .zip archives, and only found the stuff that Wine installs to imitate Windows. So far the only other solution would be to install an older Windows on a virtual machine or by finding some kind of emulator, but after using Wine and seeing its friendliness, I believe a Windows version of Wine would be best for this task.

Thank you,
Ryan Northrup

P.S. If there is another section of winehq.org that is more suited for suggestions, then redirection would be greatly appreciated.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:05 am

Northrup wrote:For some time now I have been researching the upcoming Windows 7, scheduled for release in 2009 - 2010.

Recently, a number of websites have stated that Microsoft is no longer including backwards compatibility with software from previous versions of Windows. From the number of sites, I'm guessing this is not just a rumor. And considering the almost infinitely massive list of Windows programs already in existence, previous users of Windows will not be very happy about it.

So, would it be possible to create a version of Wine that could run under a Windows environment as its own executable? I've tried sifting through the .zip archives, and only found the stuff that Wine installs to imitate Windows. So far the only other solution would be to install an older Windows on a virtual machine or by finding some kind of emulator, but after using Wine and seeing its friendliness, I believe a Windows version of Wine would be best for this task.

Thank you,
Ryan Northrup

P.S. If there is another section of winehq.org that is more suited for suggestions, then redirection would be greatly appreciated.

Wine's objective is to run windows programs on *NIX (Linux, Mac, BSD, etc). windows is not *NIX so Wine won't run on it as simple as that.

Yes some dlls can be used as a replacement but that is pretty much limited to "peripheral" dlls - those that are built on another layer. Or some special cases, like d3d9 which is built on top of OpenGL.

Core dlls, such as kernel32.dll, user32.dllm shell32.dll, ntdll.dll & co won't ever work. And trust me, most of the "legacy" junk windows has is spread among those core dlls that do lots of nasty stuff to stay compatible with old legacy programs.

Marcel W. Wysocki · Post by **Marcel W. Wysocki** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:43 am

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:05:08 -0500
"vitamin" <[email protected]> wrote:

Northrup wrote:
For some time now I have been researching the upcoming Windows 7, scheduled for release in 2009 - 2010.

Recently, a number of websites have stated that Microsoft is no longer including backwards compatibility with software from previous versions of Windows. From the number of sites, I'm guessing this is not just a rumor. And considering the almost infinitely massive list of Windows programs already in existence, previous users of Windows will not be very happy about it.

So, would it be possible to create a version of Wine that could run under a Windows environment as its own executable? I've tried sifting through the .zip archives, and only found the stuff that Wine installs to imitate Windows. So far the only other solution would be to install an older Windows on a virtual machine or by finding some kind of emulator, but after using Wine and seeing its friendliness, I believe a Windows version of Wine would be best for this task.

Thank you,
Ryan Northrup

P.S. If there is another section of winehq.org that is more suited for suggestions, then redirection would be greatly appreciated.
Wine's objective is to run windows programs on *NIX (Linux, Mac, BSD, etc). windows is not *NIX so Wine won't run on it as simple as that.

I don't know if that works but perhaps one can run wine under cygwin, only if cygwin is ported to windows 7 of course.

--
Marcel W. Wysocki <[email protected]>
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Phobos · Post by **Phobos** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:39 am

there were talks about this (using cygwin and wine) http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/200 ... 00010.html... but I don't what happened in the end with that

PleegWat · Post by **PleegWat** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:32 am

Northrup wrote:

For some time now I have been researching the upcoming Windows 7, scheduled for release in 2009 - 2010.

Recently, a number of websites have stated that Microsoft is no longer including backwards compatibility with software from previous versions of Windows. From the number of sites, I'm guessing this is not just a rumor. And considering the almost infinitely massive list of Windows programs already in existence, previous users of Windows will not be very happy about it.

So, would it be possible to create a version of Wine that could run under a Windows environment as its own executable? I've tried sifting through the .zip archives, and only found the stuff that Wine installs to imitate Windows. So far the only other solution would be to install an older Windows on a virtual machine or by finding some kind of emulator, but after using Wine and seeing its friendliness, I believe a Windows version of Wine would be best for this task.

Thank you,
Ryan Northrup

P.S. If there is another section of winehq.org that is more suited for suggestions, then redirection would be greatly appreciated

I think this would very much depend on what windows 7 is actually based
on. If it's posix based, you could probably run wine on it. In the (imo
much more probable) case it's a 'cleaned up' version of current windows
apis, running wine on it would be far from trivial, as would running its
apps in wine on other platforms.

Northrup · Post by **Northrup** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:49 pm

I strongly doubt Microsoft will change anything about Windows. And how exactly would running Wine be trivial? Especially if legacy support will be either reduced to mediocracy or abandoned completely?

From what I can tell, all that's needed to build a Windows version of Wine is a Windows installation, a copy of Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition (free download from microsoft.com), the Wine source code, and some knowledge of C++.

And besides running legacy applications on Windows 7, there are other benefits to running Wine on Windows. After all (hypothetically speaking), wouldn't it be great to run programs for newer versions of Windows on older, less expensive versions, or vice versa?

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:01 am

Northrup they hare doing the alterations to allow it.

Hypervisor allowing many versions of windows to be run side by side. Everything I have seen Windows 7 is not really to make the jump.

Windows 8 maybe.

You have another nice issue. Wine is tested a lot with gcc almost none with MSVC. So things could get really interesting.

There are a lot of other things that will make doing it hard Northrup. Ie MS posix layour all times recently I have looked are way out of date compared to current day posix standards. If it was upto date the would be a good chance wine could be built there. Thinking the MS posix layour has a gcc complier.

Also wine is C. And the issue wine has with MSVC are not really C++ relegated. Gcc and MSVC have different ammouts of standard incompatibility.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:06 am

On 24/04/2008, oiaohm <[email protected]> wrote:

There are a lot of other things that will make doing it hard Northrup. Ie MS posix layour all times recently I have looked are way out of date compared to current day posix standards. If it was upto date the would be a good chance wine could be built there. Thinking the MS posix layour has a gcc complier.

That's an interesting question - has anyone tried compiling Wine on
Interix (Windows Services For Unix)?

(Interix doesn't have an X server, but you can install Cygwin as well
and use its X server.)

- d.

Northrup · Post by **Northrup** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:12 pm

Hypervisors may be a potential solution. But if these "virtualization technologies" are the same ones in, say, Microsoft Virtual PC, then it would be extremely difficult for a perhaps less experienced Windows user to figure out how to rip .iso's, set up virtual drives, create and access virtual hard disks (which is already a huge pain to do since Microsoft offers minimal instructions on the matter), and transfer all their old programs onto this virtual computer.

It would be kinda cool if multiple Windows installations ran their programs in the same desktop, as to eliminate the whole concept of having an extra desktop within a desktop just to run the older programs. But with ANY kind of virtualization, a user would have to obtain a copy of the older Windows to run the older programs. And that would mean buying an older version of Windows if they buy Windows 7 computers. So, a user going from an old laptop with Windows 98 to a state of the art laptop with Windows 7 would be required to pay anywhere from $50-200, depending on which old Windows to buy. The alternative here is to download an .iso of ReactOS, which, as I'm sure many of you know, is designed to be an open-source binary-compatible Windows clone, but ReactOS is really buggy for an operating system, and is still in its alpha stages and not intended for regular use.

Hopefully there will be some kind of compatibility layer for Windows 7 to run older programs, even if Wine is not the answer.

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:06 am

interix Windows Servies for Unix is out of date posix really badly out of date.

So lot of reworking would be required.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:07 am

2008/6/3 oiaohm <[email protected]>:

interix Windows Servies for Unix is out of date posix really badly out of date.
So lot of reworking would be required.

What's the state of Wine on Cygwin?

(The wiki page http://wiki.winehq.org/CygwinSupport appears to be
about running Cygwin on top of Wine, not the other way around.)

I understand this is actually quite difficult, because Cygwin
exercises Windows quite hard and Wine exercises Cygwin quite hard ...

- d.

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:27 am

2008/6/3 David Gerard <[email protected]>:

What's the state of Wine on Cygwin?
I understand this is actually quite difficult, because Cygwin
exercises Windows quite hard and Wine exercises Cygwin quite hard ...

I see it's largely been abandoned and needs someone development-minded
to bother trying again some time

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273
http://www.winehq.org/site/fun_projects
http://www.kerneltraffic.org/wine/wn20021129_146.html#9
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-de ... 11256.html
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-de ... 11671.html
http://developers.slashdot.org/develope ... 8220.shtml (the
link there doesn't work)

As Vista (and Windows 7) become worse and worse at supporting old
Windows crapware, this could actually become quite a useful niche for
Wine. If it's feasible!

- d.

Ove Kaaven · Post by **Ove Kaaven** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:42 am

David Gerard skrev:

2008/6/3 David Gerard <[email protected]>:

What's the state of Wine on Cygwin?
I understand this is actually quite difficult, because Cygwin
exercises Windows quite hard and Wine exercises Cygwin quite hard ...
I see it's largely been abandoned and needs someone development-minded
to bother trying again some time

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273

Why has someone closed this bug? It's not exactly done yet. Nobody
working on it isn't a reason to close a bug (especially one linked as a
todo item from the WineHQ website itself)...

http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-de ... 11256.html

This one seems irrelevant, it's apparently talking about Cygwin on Wine,
not Wine on Cygwin. Cygwin on Wine might even work now, and in any case,
would be far easier to do than Wine on Cygwin.

As Vista (and Windows 7) become worse and worse at supporting old
Windows crapware, this could actually become quite a useful niche for
Wine. If it's feasible!

Sure. I think this bug #273 totally underestimates the difficulty of
this task (tricky as it might be, compilation is just one hurdle, you'd
also run into serious threading and loader problems when trying to start
the thing), but it could be done.

I'd offer to do it in exchange for a boatload of money, but I don't
think my current contracts would allow me...

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:35 pm

On Tuesday 03 June 2008 08:41:23 am Ove Kaaven wrote:

David Gerard skrev:
2008/6/3 David Gerard <[email protected]>:
What's the state of Wine on Cygwin?
I understand this is actually quite difficult, because Cygwin
exercises Windows quite hard and Wine exercises Cygwin quite hard ...
I see it's largely been abandoned and needs someone development-minded
to bother trying again some time

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273
Why has someone closed this bug? It's not exactly done yet. Nobody
working on it isn't a reason to close a bug (especially one linked as a
todo item from the WineHQ website itself)...

Looks like the original reporter abandoned the bug: Looks like this could
very well be a WONTFIX item.

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]

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Ove Kaaven · Post by **Ove Kaaven** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:47 pm

Paul Johnson skrev:

Looks like the original reporter abandoned the bug:

Don't think so, James Hawkins isn't the original reporter.

Looks like this could very well be a WONTFIX item.

Don't think so either. It could be fixed, and it's a good idea to fix
it. Of course it might still take years before someone can actually be
bothered to do it, but that doesn't make it abandoned or wontfix. It
should just make it an open wishlist-type bug.