Installing Windows Drivers in WINE

Llewen · Post by **Llewen** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:34 am

I thought I read somewhere that it was actually possible to install
Windows drivers in WINE. I'm only asking because I have a Radeon 8500
on my sister's Linux box, and the Linux drivers really suck. I actually
can't even install the proprietary drivers, they are so out of date.

Is this possible?

John Drescher · Post by **John Drescher** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:40 am

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:10 AM, Owen Stairs <[email protected]> wrote:

I thought I read somewhere that it was actually possible to install Windows
drivers in WINE. I'm only asking because I have a Radeon 8500 on my
sister's Linux box, and the Linux drivers really suck. I actually can't
even install the proprietary drivers, they are so out of date.

Is this possible?

No. You can NOT do that. Find the latest binary drivers from AMD/ATI directly.

John

John Drescher · Post by **John Drescher** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:41 am

Here is a link:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

John

David Gerard · Post by **David Gerard** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:52 am

to list as well

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <[email protected]>
Date: 22 Apr 2008 13:49
Subject: Re: [Wine] Installing Windows Drivers in WINE
To: Owen Stairs <[email protected]>

On 22/04/2008, Owen Stairs <[email protected]> wrote:

I thought I read somewhere that it was actually possible to install Windows
drivers in WINE. I'm only asking because I have a Radeon 8500 on my
sister's Linux box, and the Linux drivers really suck. I actually can't
even install the proprietary drivers, they are so out of date.
Is this possible?

Nope - Wine aims to supply a compatibility layer for applications.

ReactOS has ambitions to support NT binary drivers, but I expect
they're a way off doing so as yet.

- d.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:52 am

Llewen wrote:I thought I read somewhere that it was actually possible to install Windows drivers in WINE.

Yes you read correctly. You _CAN_ install drivers and some drivers might even install properly. However the only "drivers" that Wine currently supports are the copy-protection type "drivers". In most cases these drivers doing extra checks on a system to verify presence of debuggers or any other "snooping" tools.

In the future it might be possible to use "filter" type drivers - like most USB drivers. They don't talk to hardware directly but interpret data received/sent from/to the device.

No hardware drivers are currently supported on Wine. And most likely no real hardware drivers will ever work on Wine.

Llewen · Post by **Llewen** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:34 am

John Drescher wrote:Here is a link:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

John

Ya, I'm aware of where to find the latest Linux drivers for this card. ATI has been releasing much improved Linux drivers lately for the Radeon series, however, they are only for the 9500 or newer. The Linux drivers for the 8500 date from 2006, and the last I tried I couldn't even get them to install on Debian Etch.

Llewen · Post by **Llewen** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:36 pm

I learnt today that the ATI drivers for my card were included when I downloaded and installed KDE. So I guess that is as good as it gets for this card unless ATI releases a new driver for it, which probably won't happen now.