from the running-apps-without-dual-booting dept.
Jana Schmid at CodeWeavers blogs:
It's that time of year again, when CodeWeavers launches yet another release of its core product CrossOver for Mac and Linux. After a year of development and months of vigorous testing, we're shipping CrossOver 14, which includes the very latest release of Wine 1.7.25. Together, the ninjas and pirates of CodeWeavers compiled a list of the 8 best features of the newly released CrossOver 14.
What is listed at #4, I think should have been at the top, but that's just me:
The core of CrossOver (Wine) has been updated with thousands of patches that do everything from fix existing bugs to help get new programs [running in CrossOver 14].
Perhaps there's something on the list such as the new unified interface/launcher that will convince you to get this payware implementation of Wine or to upgrade to the latest version.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by melikamp on Sunday October 26 2014, @02:37AM
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @02:57AM
Ta-da! The only difference between this site and the other is the COLOR!
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:08AM
That's not true.
This site has a responsive management, who fix bugs. The text handling is already greatly improved.
It also has fewer people, obviously. Not necessarily a bad thing.
But I still think they need to slow down the pace of stories. With the huge crowds on the other site, they can move the stories along at a pretty rapid pace - even though only a small fraction of the total readership has actually hit the story, it's already full of comments. Here at least for now the crowd is smaller so that does not work.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Arik on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:03AM
And I am usually the one that gets accused of zealotry. But seriously, they fund development of WINE, and manage to make a living selling a little polish on top of it while still releasing the core for Free. In the spectrum from Saint to Gates, they are hardly looking Gatesish.
Of course WINE is mostly used to run blobs, which is bad. But it's better to run them in WINE than to run them in Windows, and having to reboot is the least of the problems you avoid. It's a *very* useful tool in some cases. There are a lot of people that can use a Free OS with WINE but would have to give their whole computer over to a blob otherwise. There are a lot more that use it as a temporary crutch and eventually replace the final blob. How is that not a good thing?
So be nice.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:47AM
What free os doesn't come with a virtual machine these days?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:00AM
What free os doesn't come with a virtual machine these days?
VMs aren't a silver bullet here. They do some things better than wine, but other things worse. The most obvious example is 3d stuff, where wine usually wins, but there are also pros and cons related to other things, like system integration and access to peripherals. Some examples:
* Wine lets the windows apps interact more seamlessly with the rest of your system (for better or worse, depending on your vie), which makes it easier to integrate a windows app into a multi-app workflow without futzing with fake network shares in the VM and other oddities.
* Inversely, a VM sandboxes an app away from the rest of your system more reliably if that's what you ned.
* Hardware, such as pressure-sensitive tablets, can be used by wine without taking access to it away from the rest of the system, but can be flaky.
* A VM can use USB passthrough to let the guest OS use the hardware natively, but at the cost of blocking the host OS from using it.
* Non-3d apps are usually more accurately handled by a VM
* 3d apps, meanwhile, work better in wine most of the time.
Finally, running Windows in a VM requires you have a copy of Windows. Furthermore, you'll probably want a copy that's licenced to be run in a VM, something that's only become accepted by Microsoft for home users since Windows 8 I believe. So, if you're either philosophically opposed to buying Windows for some reason, or just philosophically opposed to buying Windows 8 (understandable), you may prefer to use wine instead if possible.
I find both useful for different situations.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:20AM
Precisely what do you mean by 3D apps?
I run Vmware all day long at work, and I haven't seen anything it won't handle. Even Games work great.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday October 26 2014, @06:14AM
When you said "what free OS doesn't come with a virtual machine these days" I took it to mean one of the open source solutions that are available in the package manager of various distributions. Generally meaning virtualbox, kvm, or xen. So, that's what I was commenting on. Vbox does well at it when it works, but it's very hit-or-miss with actually working.
I've had mixed results with direct3d and virtualisation, but I haven't tried VMware and didn't think you were referring to it given the wording of your comment. I'm not concerned with the open source status of vmware itself, so I might give the VMware player option a try and see how it does.
Something I've been interested in is how, with the right hardware, you can dedicate a graphics card to a VM and use it natively. Native drivers, no translation layer, just native performance. Everything I've read on it makes it seem like the best solution for guaranteed performance, but at the cost of being more finicky to set up properly.
(Score: 3) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @07:20PM
Well, my company provides me with Vmware Workstation, and that's what I use. It use Vmware's own video drivers which have steadily improved over the years and pass through much if not all of capability capability of the native car's capabilities to the virtual machine.
Here is a slightly dated article on the issue:
http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2014/05/evolution-vmwares-3d-graphics-capabilities.html [vmware.com]
Most of my use of the capability was to enable bling in KDE desktops running in Virtual machines, or Aero in windows VMs, which is not the most demanding application. I've played around with xen and virtual box in the past but never spent much time on it.
I've often seen discussion on mailing lists about dedicating a video card to a virtual machine, but never understood the rationale for doing that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Monday October 27 2014, @09:04AM
Their handling of it seems interesting but unfortunately I wasn't able to give it a proper test like I wanted. I grabbed the free for non-commercial use one to do some testing, but got blocked by a couple problems. Most annoying is that it detected but refused to use my processor's virtualisation extensions for an unkonwn reason. Quick search online brought up claims that it's refusing because of a bug in the processor's implementation of AMD-V extensions, but that doesn't really help me until I do a system upgrade. VirtualBox still uses AMD-V without a problem, so any comparison I do wouln't be fair to vmware at this point.
The other problem was that for some reason, vmplayer had some really weird interaction with kwin that was locking input unless I killed the window manager. Found some possible fixes for that, but wasn't motivated to troubleshoot further and try to fix it because of the AMD-V problem.
Still, thanks for the tip. Even though it doesn't help me right now, I'll be trying again when I do a system upgrade, because the possibility of better 3d performance interests me.
I've often seen discussion on mailing lists about dedicating a video card to a virtual machine, but never understood the rationale for doing that.
The rationale is that you get native GPU performance out of it. You put in a second GPU, set up passthrough (same idea as USB passthrough, where the guest OS sees it and the host can't use it), and that VM gets native GPU performance, uses the guest OS drivers directly, etc. No special translation, you just have the VM OS running under the host OS but outputting to its own monitor independently.
The benefit is performance, but at the cost of needing some extra hardware. It requires specific virtualisation extensions that have to be supported by the motherboard, so it's harder to find. It's sort of a middle ground between normal virtualisation and just setting up a second system. Having two systems is going to be easier, but the passthrough setup lets you put more money into one system and use the resources more flexibly.
I've been really interested in it, though I'm probably going to have to switch to AMD GPUs if I decide to try. Nvidia supposedly started doing something to block consumer GPUs from using being used that way sometime around the GTX 500 series.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Sunday October 26 2014, @12:34PM
This is the obstacle no one thinks about. You also need to maintain it just as critically and keep it security-patched just as assiduously as any Windows box, and you need the crippling penalty of an Antivirus. And you have the added nuisance of a separate login and work all the controls of a separate OS.
Not to sound unkind, but where the heck did this red herring come from? The whole point of a VM is that the sucker inside of it can't tell he is in one. I never heard anything to indicate that Microsoft cares a rat's ass what you run it in once you pay the godawful ripoff price to buy Windows off the store shelf. And if they do, frankly, fuck em. It's none of their business and they're never going to find out.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:09PM
Not to sound unkind, but where the heck did this red herring come from? The whole point of a VM is that the sucker inside of it can't tell he is in one. I never heard anything to indicate that Microsoft cares a rat's ass what you run it in once you pay the godawful ripoff price to buy Windows off the store shelf. And if they do, frankly, fuck em. It's none of their business and they're never going to find out.
Arbitrary restrictions are a big part of the Windows licensing model, though. If you wanted to use Windows 7 in a VM you had to have the ultimate version, and XP didn't allow it with any consumer versions, if I'm remembering correctly. It was only with Windows 8 that Microsoft stated adding provisions explicitly allowing VM installs, finally making its installation requirements less restricting.
Note that I'm only talking about the licensing. Any of them will install happily to a VM, but legally you're violating agreement. If it's home use it likely won't matter but could bite you in the ass in a production environment. I find the entire thing idiotic, but I don't make the rules, I just have to deal with them.
Sorry for not digging up links about the licensing but I'm posting from a tablet and it's painful enough just posting without trying to hunt down references too. I'll do it later if needed.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:23AM
But if you want to run your Windows application in a virtual machine, you still need that proprietary Windows. Of course you could also install Linux and Wine in that virtual machine, but then, what would be the point?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:35AM
Well, since my machine came with windows, having a license is not a problem.
Also at my day job, we have an MSDN subscription which means we get just about all the Windows licenses we can stomach. (We have to test our stuff on all versions of windows, even back to windows 2000, which is still in use in a lot of countries (because its bullet proof as windows OSes go).
And actually I do run Linux VMs on Windows Hosts, and vise versa. I even run BSD VMs under Linux. I can drag the whom virtual machine from a linux host over to a windows box and run it there too.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday October 26 2014, @12:42PM
Entirely beside the point. WINE is not a VM either. WINE is much better than a VM. It's a thin translation layer for Win16/32/(64) apps. You dont have the overhead and performance problems of a VM. It's a much neater and more economical solution, and more pleasant to deal with.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @07:31PM
I suspect you haven't really dealt with a good Virtual machine environment. Because Wine is anything but pleasant. Its finicky, obtuse, prone to failure at every little update, and sloooow. I always give up on it every time I've installed it.
Some virtual machine solutions do way better than wine at integrating windows applications directly into the Linux desktops (and vise versa). Just click on the Icon or menu and launch Excel on the Linux desktop, but its running in a virtual machine, and behaves as expected, rather than half functional emulated environment.
Or maybe it launches on anther machine in the office, and appears on your local desktop.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday October 26 2014, @08:44PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:18AM
Yeah and developers who write non-free software are agents of the devil.
All software should be free and developers should have to subsist on loose-change donations, because trying to earn a living is wrong.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:39PM
i have been using it for 7 years. With tar you can clone an installation to any new machine, so you are not forced to upgrade. The installation of dependent packages for Windoze ALONE is worth the fee. Every windoze application is quarantined in its own piece of FS - we could do with proper lock down but it is ok for most.
The number of broken windoze applications I have been forced to use to get data OUT of windoze is a reason to use it. Especially, scientific instruments...
Finally, if I played games I could do that too.
They put changes back into the main Wine tree, but what they sell is support. If you NEED a windoze app to run under linux, they have the tech staff that can help.
I do not work for them or have any other interest, but I am a very happy user!!!!
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Sunday October 26 2014, @08:50PM
That's great :) You can sleep easy, because every time they do something sneaky on your machine, like look at your files, they conveniently spare you from being informed. After all, if they actually showed you the source code, and the extent to which they spy on you, you would probably become very upset, and who needs that?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday October 26 2014, @10:35PM
i thought the source was open? it is just really difficult to build...
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Monday October 27 2014, @01:15AM
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday October 26 2014, @07:51PM
The difference is that I don't mind games being closed source, if I can run them in a jail isolated from a network. I *DO* mind my tools being closed source ... or under the control of a single entity (other than me).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 27 2014, @06:16AM
Wish we had the ability to stop stupid idiots from commenting. Crossover is Wine at it's core, and donates to wine extensively - both money and code. Crossover is hardly a "non-free Crossover blob".
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:23AM
WINE had its chances when computers were slow and RAM was limited. However today it is much easier to run true Windows of your choice (one or many) in a VM. You get excellent integration, convenient backups, hardware-independent OS, and you can instantly switch between environments if you are not running in seamless mode. Today there is absolutely no reason to use WINE - even if it is bug-free and costs nothing. If it is payware ($60, like this one,) you will be better off buying the real thing.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @03:45AM
Agreed, VMs are where its at.
Wine/crossover has done a lot, but I don't like their pricing plan, where you end up paying full price every other year, for something you use less and less every year. The single thing most small businesses can't leave these days isn't MS Office, its Quickbooks, because what passes these days for accountants can't operate without it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Sunday October 26 2014, @04:06AM
Hey, whatever suites you...
I have Windows in a virtual machine but I still prefer Wine.
I like the simple direct access to the filesystem. Yeah, there are ways to get to host computer files on a virtual machine, but there is a little more resistance there.
I like having the ability to run multiple Windows applications AND multiple Linux applications running all in separate Windows that I can organize however I want. A virtual machine is a single frame in which all my Windows applications have to remain, whereever that frame goes all the Windows applications must go.
And, finally, my hardware isn't the latest and greatest. I can run a virtual machine with Windows and everything works well enough but my Windows applications in the virtual machine certainly don't run as well as they do under Wine.
That's my thoughts as a home user who prefers Linux.
If I were picking an OS to install on all the computers of an office, why would I chose Linux + Windows if I can chose just Windows? It wouldn't save me any money or work over just running Windows alone. Running only Linux and Crossover, that might be less work and less money.
I am kind of surprised about your $60 quote. I haven't bought Crossover in quite a few years as stock Wine is now good enough for me. I think I remember paying only $35!
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday October 26 2014, @04:28AM
VirtualBox implements shares as a network drive. It's not really "more resistance". If one feels any difficulty with configuring a share, he won't be able to even install the OS. Such a person needs an iPad :-)
Just use seamless mode [howtogeek.com]. I don't do that for my own reasons, but your reasons are different.
Well, that is indeed something that holds you back. However the hardware is not forever. It will fail sooner or later. Prices are low. You will get a new PC with at least 8 GB of RAM, a CPU with virtualization extensions, and you will not need WINE anymore. I'm glad that it works for you today, but my personal experience with it was spotty. If you need things to just work, WINE is not the way to do it.
The cost of Windows is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. To avoid Windows you'd have to build your own PC, and that could cost you more (in money and time) than to buy a prebuilt one, with Windows tax included. On this very box Windows 7 is the host OS, and Linux Mint (KDE) is the guest. There is no obvious advantage in reversing that arrangement. Perhaps saving on Windows tax is relevant to a poor student, but as people get older and richer, they value their own time and quality of their tools far more than some $50 that OEMs pay for a Windows license.
I just didn't know, so I checked before posting [codeweavers.com]. It is indeed $59.95. If you want to call them, it will cost you additional $19.95 per call. But you can save if you buy 6 months of support and upgrades for mere $49.95. Hell, with these prices Microsoft's stuff is plain cheaper :-)
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:18AM
The fake network share is still less convenient than normal filesystem access. Unless you share your entire $HOME as a share, at least, but that's probably a really dumb idea considering that VM install is far more likely to end up with a working virus than wine is. Which is another reason to consider using wine instead of a VM, actually.
Seamless mode is a cool hack but it's still just a hack. Weird visual artifacts when moving windows, you have to deal with the windows taskbar in addition to your normal panels, and there's no app integration. The last one can be a huge deal, too. You can't drag-drop files from a linux file manager into a windows app, for example. You also can't have entries in your DE's app launcher for the windows apps in a VM like you can with windows apps in wine. Wine has a lot of integration stuff that a VM doesn't have.
It also doesn't do as well with apps that use direct3d. The best workaround for this is using passthrough to give the VM a dedicated GPU, but that incurs a lot of price overhead beyond just the Windows licence, considering you need a CPU+motherboard combo that supports it, a GPU that supports it (newer nvidia cards try to explicitly block this use case), an extra GPU, an extra monitor, etc. If you don't care about those apps (usually games), it's a non-issue, but different people have different needs.
Both options have their own problems, and it doesn't look like either one is going to make the other obsolete any time soon, if ever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @04:52AM
Sorry, no, CPU speed and RAM capacity aren't responsible for the popularity of virtualization. CPU speed hasn't improved significantly in the past decade, and you could always shove tons of RAM into a machine, for a price. The big change was hardware-assisted virtualization for x86. Software-based emulators were total crap before 2005 because VT-x and AMD-V didn't exist yet. The virtualization tools that are massively popular today aren't even emulators in the strictest sense, when the hardware already does most of their work for them. Virtualization is easy and reliable because x86 is a virtualized platform now.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday October 27 2014, @06:13AM
Actually there is. I refuse to pay for a license of Windows and I'd rather not pirate it. Office I'd pay. with WINE I win. Your requirements may be different, but that doesn't mean there is "absolutely no reason to use WINE" like you put it.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:31PM
There are several places where Wine works far better than a VM.
I have DOS games that have trouble running under Windows 9x. Windows 9x games that have trouble running under XP or later. Even after enabling that joke they call "compatibility mode". So, I could install four different versions of Windows in four different VMs, dick around with kernel modules every time I try to use VBox (because I update the kernel more than I use VBox), spend a few hours trying to figure out why the hell my virtual machine has no 3D acceleration...or I could just run all the apps under Wine, because they all run flawlessly there without any of that trouble. No to mention the question of where the hell you'd get licensed copies of all these old versions of Windows these days if you wanted to do it legally.
Hell, once I even needed to install Wine on Windows. Even a *native Windows install* can't always replace Wine.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday October 26 2014, @04:52AM
This submission is nothing but an advertisement for a commercial product. Not even thinly disguised. There isn't the slightest hint of any interesting new information about this. This "story" shouldn't have been passed by the editors.
On topic, there continues to be a long list of common Windows applications, including things like Internet Explorer 10 and Microsoft Office 2013 that are list as "Known not to work". It's been over a decade since I last looked at Wine or CrossOver as a possible solution to anything. I'm amazed that the Wine project is still viable at all, and doubly amazed that CrossOver is still a viable commercial product, given the number of apps that still don't work well with it after so many years. Not sure who the target audience is these days for CrossOver. If you're buying these commercial Windows apps or games anyway, might as well drop a few dimes on Parallels and a Windows license and be able to run anything you want without worrying about compatibility issues.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:16AM
While I agree with you that this is a slashvertisment, I'm not sure why you think anyone would run wine or crossover just to run Internet Explorer? I mean, that's just wrong on so many levels, I scarcely know where to begin!!!
Now Office 2013, might be a problem were it not for the fact that LibreOffice seems way more than adequate for any interaction with other windows users. Further, Microsoft goes out of its way to prevent their stuff from running under Crossover, so why would they want to try and fight that battle? Just run OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Microsoft is shouting at you that they don't want you as a customer. Why won't you listen to them.
You nay be overstating the case, because HowToGeek [howtogeek.com] has an article on running office on wine. Besides, Office for Linux [extremetech.com] may appear as soon as Microsoft notices people moving to OpenOffice on Linux.
The list of things that DO work is pretty large. However I don't find many of those things even on my windows machines, so I'm not sure that matters.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26 2014, @06:13PM
a slashvertisment
The GP was correct, but has managed to miss the point of this site.
My crappy submission has spurred lots of interesting comments on VMs vs a compatibility layer as well as the pluses and minuses of each.
As a guy much wittier than I am might say "Mission fucking accomplished". [xkcd.com]
why[...]anyone would run wine or crossover just to run Internet Explorer?
The Windoze Registry only allows 1 version of Internot Exploder at a time to be installed on a Windoze box.
A web developer who wants to check his work against multiple versions of MICROS~1's notoriously incompatible browser could minimize his headaches by getting additional versions of that dreck via WINE.
-- gewg_