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The Wine team has announced that version 2.0 of the Windows compatibility layer has been released.
The main highlights are the support for Microsoft Office 2013, and the 64-bit support on macOS.
[...] This is the first release made on the new time-based, annual release schedule. This implies that some features that are being worked on but couldn't be finished in time have been deferred to the next development cycle. This includes in particular the Direct3D command stream, the full HID support, the Android graphics driver, and message-mode pipes.
Do any soylentils still rely on Wine for that one irreplaceable application?
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:25PM
I realize it's more expensive than Wine's free-as-in-beer, but for my essential Windows apps I need for work, I use a Windows install on a VM. It's a lot less setup headache, less troubleshooting. I use Parallels myself, have used VMWare in the past. I know many people who use a similar approach.
There was a time when WINE was the best (only?) game in town for that one essential Windows app on a Linux box or Mac. But over the last 5 years, VM approaches like the one I used have become mostly painless as an end user product. If you need to run something in Windows, you can run it in "real" Windows.
I guess my question is who WINE is really for these days. Is it a matter of price? A matter of principle of not using Microsoft? Something elsE? What's the market niche WINE still occupies? I'm willing to believe there is one - I'm just seeing myself as someone who has issues I once needed WINE to solve, and now have what I consider better solutions. So I'm curious what the killer use case is nowadays.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:32PM
I use Parallels myself
Let me guess, you're one of these Mac using faggots who are always spamming up the tech support forums whining because their program doesn't work perfectly on Mac, or their program doesn't support mice with only one button, or their program keeps crashing on Mac and WHEN IS THIS ISSUE GOING TO BE ADDRESSED???? Well you paid twice as much for the privilege of being different. Guess what - you're different. Suck it up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:36PM
Gaming, with varying degrees of success. By far it's the single source of applications where high-performance requirements are pitiful when run on a VM*. I use it for whatever I can actually get working, and I have wineskin set up on the girlfriend's mac for Stick of Truth. I've had pretty good luck with popular, older games, but it's been disappointing on anything new or not very well known enough for anyone to have spent time trying to get it to work.
* Okay, so niche applications that need direct access to GPU like bitcoin miners and stuff like market data systems can't run on VMs either. But a lot of those have linux and windows versions available.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday January 25 2017, @11:40PM
> [...] applications that need direct access to GPU like bitcoin miners [...]
Mining Bitcoin with GPUs is still a thing?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 25 2017, @11:45PM
I know right. Haven't they moved on to quantum ASICKO cereal clusters yet?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday January 25 2017, @11:54PM
Hey, it was the first mainstream example of a GPU being used for something other than gaming that came to mind.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:51PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:40PM
I'm not firing up a VM to edit a few code files in Notepad++.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Wednesday January 25 2017, @10:51PM
Not being spied upon is certainly one. It's also a lot lighter than installing Windows in a VM. Have you seen how frikkin' big Windows is these days? It's also generally faster as the OS is not busy downloading and installing updates, sending "telemetry", or doing who knows what to the registry. I'm always amazed at the difference in disk activity in Windows versus Linux on the same machine. Linux never even flickers where Windows will have the disk light on continually ... pretty much at all times.
That said, I've tried to get RockSmith2014 running under both and neither has worked, although I actually got closer in Wine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:21AM
[WINE is] also generally faster
Your comment could be seen as a follow-on/mate to the comment by super_bob, currently directly above yours and posted a few minutes before yours.
Now I'm wondering if any Soylentils have made a comparison of the speed of any particular app running via WINE relative to that app running under Windoze.
I have heard that some calls to WINE are actually executed faster than the same calls to Redmond's OS.
(Years ago, I was able to make a clean break from anything MICROS~1, so I have no occasion/inclination to give this a try on my box.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:57AM
I'm taking into account the system load taken on by running Windows in a VM. This relates to it being a pig in general, and also to what I mentioned about it beating the crap out of the disk. I would guess that most applications run at a similar speed, tending toward running faster under Windows *natively*, although I as well have heard that some things do run faster under Wine.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:40AM
As someone who's done a lot of work on both, I'll put in my two cents. In general, I/O operations on Linux are considerably faster in my experience when taking account same hardware and same filesystems (or raw read/writes); for network performance alone, Linux generally has the edge. In terms of GPU performance, DirectX tends to wipe the floor with OpenGL equivelents on Linux. Part of this is likely due to driver quality and such, but I've seen even "tuned" Linux drivers provided by vendors fail miserably when compared to Windows performance.
I've also noticed that IPC operations/message passing tends to be on the whole faster on Windows, likely due to the reliance on Win32 using named pipes, and other IPC mechanisms. Linux on the other hand tends to use file/socket-based I/O systems which requires a round-trip through the kernel. I don't have raw numbers to back me up but this is my general experience with both.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:44AM
Hell, I just started a raw diet, throw those numbers at me!
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:21PM
I can't say about WoW now, but about 10 years ago WoW had a faster FPS on WINE than Windows on the same box.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @11:51PM
winbox --- the only .exe i use
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:06AM
Large corporations that are switching to Linux desktops have always some cruft left that is just impossible to get working on alternatives and they are switching from Windows for a reason so they absolutely don't want to keep maintaining (and paying licenses) for Windows which are running on VMs.
I have personally witnessed the horror of trying to export/recode Excel macros to Open Office. They ended up installing CodeWeavers CrossOver Office (commercially supported WINE MS Office set up) for everyone that needed those macros.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:33AM
The guys in Munich hit this problem early on and developed (GPL'd) WollMux. [google.com]
Have you heard of that?
Did you give it a try?
...and OxygenOffice (a fork of OO.o, affiliated with SuSE) had decent M$Orifice macro compatibility for the most-commonly-used VBA stuff a bunch of years back.
The OO.o guys were resistant to incorporating that stuff, but the LibreOffice guys jumped on that like a duck on a june bug.
It seems clear that your efforts were before that fork.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:33PM
No, those macros were doing some internal business logic and had to import data from external databases and after doing their stuff export some to some other systems etc.
Maybe that OxygenOffice could have worked but I doubt, they went with RHEL anyway so no hope for even trying it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:07AM
Starcraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2. Oh and Rosetta Stone when I can remember to bother with it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:37AM
"Real" Windows costs money, and VMs are not cheap and easy to maintain. I doubt everyone can manage their own KVM/VMware pools of hardware very well, so for the average person that leaves you with VPS that support Windows. All of those cost extra to a significant degree. In other words, I ain't paying $16-20/mo just so that it is a Windows instance when everything else is the base rate.
The new Windows, and any Windows 7 with updates turned on, are telemetry nodes. All in the name of providing greater services (Cortana) Microsoft is transmitting as much data as possible outside of the system back to Microsoft and affiliates. They were caught sharing that data with IP collectives that like to sue people. They don't want to be left behind now that Amazon is literally listening 24/7 inside some people's homes.
With other operating systems and devices I can exact some measure of control over the flow of information, but Microsoft has become a bit too intense about it. You can't be sure whether or not the telemetry is really off without wasting a whole lot of time analyzing packets and dealing with critical updates outside of the Windows Update channels.
For some people telemetry is a deal breaker. I honestly don't know how Microsoft can expect Corporate America to just share all their business data with them. Enter WINE, which can help people use some Microsoft applications that cannot be migrated to Linux equivalents. WINE is just duct tape anyways. ReactOS will mature to the point it can emulate the entire Windows subsystems, but deliver the transparency that FOSS allows and my principles require.
Windows is actually dying at this point, at least in tech arena. Some of us may still support Windows 10, but the vast majority of us are now looking for a different solution to offer people. Microsoft has very little good will left with IT.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:02AM
Uhhh just FYI you can get Windows 10 for free now [windows.com] which if all you are wanting to use it for is gaming or running some Windows only program? Meh works good enough for that role.
Personally I'll stick with win 7 until the "Win 10 Pirate edition" comes out with all the adware/spyware stripped out. I already have the Win 8.1 Pirate Edition but I haven't seen anything 8.1 does that 7 doesn't so I haven't bothered upgrading and hopefully Vulkan will win the API before Win 7 hits EOL and I'll have no reason to have to deal with win 10 outside of work, pirate edition or not.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:23PM
Why do that though? Why fight Microsoft so hard for the privacy and dignity we deserve while computing with our devices that we own?
Failure is catastrophic. Once you fail to protect yourself, once the pirates fail (even once) to turn off telemetry, Microsoft has all of your data. All of your keystrokes. Every single thing you ask Cortana for help with. I dunno about you, but that seems like a losing battle. Or at least one in which you may be running a possibly compromised operating system.... either by the pirates or Microsoft. It's not like Microsoft cloud data is zero knowledge or anything. Far from it, they peruse that data to offer you "enhanced services".
At this point we need to pick our battles. I think we need to push as hard as possible for another operating system that can handle both games and work. Linux is getting better every single day for supporting games natively, and projects like WINE and ReactOS will ultimately make it possible to have an alternate Microsoft-like environment to run programs. For older retro gaming, there is nothing realistically stopping us from running Windows XP in a dedicated VM, or waiting for ReactOS to mature sufficiently to run all older programs natively.
Normally, I would agree with you. Since Microsoft is attacking Business Data, and as a BUSINESS, I'm forced to surrender my Business Data to an untrusted and untrustworthy vendor.... well... the only options now are non-Microsoft options. If I'm going to have to work that hard for business reasons, I'm sure as hell not going to keep Microsoft going in my personal life too.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Hairyfeet on Friday January 27 2017, @07:18AM
Because Linux is a server OS and Apple sucks just as hard? I'm sorry but Linux is a shitty desktop OS, its support for the latest hardware is poor (and its support for older hardware frankly ain't that great) and the reason why is obvious...servers don't need support for desktop hardware. If you look at the amount of money spent on Linux and who spends it? Its Red Hat, HP, VM hosting companies....all corps that need servers NOT desktops.
Hell Linux still doesn't have features that Windows introduced with XP (where is a simple system restore for when an update goes bad? Where is a simple rolback drivers button for when a driver craps out? Oh yeah it don't exist even after 17 fricking years) and as long as there is no way to make any money of Linux desktops? That isn't gonna change, even Canonical is more about cloud than desktop anymore.
Does this make Linux worthless? Nope it makes a kick ass server, or if you want an embedded OS that isn't gonna be hooked to the net, like a media jukebox? Linux works wonderfully for that. But I'm sorry but the latest and greatest Linux doesn't have feature parity with windows and OSX from a decade ago, it isn't gonna compete with Windows or OSX, spyware or not. This is why Windows Pirate Edition will have more users in a month than Linux has had in 20 years, its just a better desktop.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Friday January 27 2017, @01:45PM
Hit tab twice when "LILO" is showing was it the last time I had to do it (gives you a menu, select with arrows and enter)..
Yeah, not been happening to me for that long (more than ten years).
apt-get install package/stable
-or-
apt-get install package=version
-or-
dpkg -i fullnameandpathto.deb
Some dists even has graphical package managers that you can get a list of all installed packages and pick which version you want of all that your machine are aware of - so yeah, it is there.
But overall you're probably better off just doing apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (or hitting "update" and then "upgrade" in your clicky-thing, same thing really) and not running testing, unstable nor experimental (ie - stick to stable) unless you are comfortable with reading and following instructions.
So, it is there - just that you need to know that you are doing a downgrade (you know, the antonym of "upgrade") or an install of a specific version when you search for it.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday January 27 2017, @01:49PM
Sorry if it came off a bit hard - spent parts of last month with tellung people (over phone) to click on icons that they insisted wasn't there despite them listing them when asked to list what they see. One of the issues was indeed solved with the update/upgrade.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:04AM
I guess my question is who WINE is really for these days. Is it a matter of price? A matter of principle of not using Microsoft? Something elsE? What's the market niche WINE still occupies?
Some things to consider:
• First, the elephant in the room: games. Gaming in a VM is possible if your hardware supports GPU passthrough and you jump through the necessary hoops to make it happen, but it's not available to all and it's quite a bit more work than wine, especially with things like PlayOnLinux assisting with game setup.
• You can attempt to emulate different versions of Windows without owning them all, and you don't have to worry about the different licensing rules of each. It's sometimes useful to pretend to be Windows 98 for old software installs, for example.
• You can isolate programs with their own separate environments via the WINEPREFIX environment variable. This is much lighter (RAM, disk space, CPU) than running separate Windows VMs for every application.
• Each WINEPREFIX can have wildly differing configurations. Seamless windows, a fake desktop, different .NET versions, different sets of supporting software, different Windows versions, etc.
• If you're using a separate WINEPREFIX per application, it's less of a problem if applications misbehave vs. using a single VM for multiple Windows apps.
• You can also just delete the WINEPREFIX directory and it's completely gone, no leftover cruft like you tend to get with Windows app uninstalls.
• Data sharing among WINEPREFIXes (and the OS itself) can be much more seamless than among VMs if desired. For example, I have multiple WINEPREFIXes pointing to a single Steam install so that I can manage Steam and game updates in one place, but use different wine configurations for games that have different needs.
• Inversely, it's also easy to isolate specific applications by removing access to anything but a WINEPREFIX's virtual c:
• Better OS integration. When an installer attempts to create various system shortcuts, wine quietly turns them into proper wine shortcuts for use by your environment. These launcher entries even retain your WINEPREFIX settings, so you don't have to constantly micro-manage them unless you want to.
• Unlike a Windows VM, you don't have to deal with an entire second operating system's updates. Starting a Windows VM sporadically means every attempt to use it results in being bombarded with OS updates and VM reboots. This gets even worse if you run multiple VMs, whereas Wine is updated through a single central installation and only has to update some supporting software (Mono) occasionally.
• Works better with certain types of hardware, like graphics tablets. If you want to use, say, Photoshop with a graphics tablet, doing so with wine is much more convenient. With a VM you have to use USB passhtrough, which means you can't use it in the host OS at all during that time.
The only reason I don't use wine is if whatever I want to use doesn't work correctly. It's always the first thing I try before resorting to a VM or dual-boot, and cost has nothing to do with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:36AM
Nerdfest and edIII have both mentioned Telemetry.
Now even Hairyfeet has mentioned the spyware.
Rich (945) has mentioned LTspice.
If I was still working, that would probably be on my list.
Windoze on bare metal? Absolutely not.
I don't have the time to figure out how to constantly adapt and outmaneuver a software supplier who puts MY best interests LAST.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:23AM
XP - in a VM, stayed up.
Win7 - in a VM, self-destructed.
Wine is welcome with v2.0, IF stuff works. I have several applications that I would like to run despite the passage of time. Setup with Wine so far was a nightmare, so hopefully 2.0 fixes a lot of that.
As for "Wine 2.0 released" ... I consider it "released" when I see it in the official repository and updates for my distro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @07:58AM
How is running Windows in a VM less trouble shooting? A VM stops neither malware, nor Windows Update changing settings to useless defaults.
If the answer is "you can just wipe the VM without touching the rest of the system, then we are back to the argument about a lot less setup headache. Because there is a lot of that every time one reinstalls Wiindows.
Of course Wine is not immune to malware, it's rare to hear people getting Wine infected, and the few cases I have heard about have been deliberate attempts. And the situation will get worse as compatibility gets better. But Wine IS immune to Windows Update, something that has caused a ton of problems lately, with updates that break Windows, good and bad updates bundled together in "rollup" updates, and even unauthorized updates to Windows "Surface Edition", aka. Windows 10.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:17PM
Even if you regularly use a native Windows install Wine is still useful. I once even attempted (unsuccessfully) to get Wine running on native Windows -- because there's a lot of old Windows apps that Wine will still run, but modern versions of Windows won't (And I'm including XP as "modern", and yes I've tried all the "comparability mode" settings which as far as I can tell do more harm than good). Sure, you could go try to pirate a Win9x copy and hope it's clean and fire it up in a VM, but why bother with all of that when it works just as well -- if not better (acts like a native app) in Wine?
I haven't installed a Windows VM in a few years. I used Wine just last night. VMs are great for servers, but for desktop use they're still pretty awful. If you really have absolutely no other choice they'll get the job done, but if you can use something like Wine you'll undoubtedly have a better experience. It's got better compatibility, better hardware access, and you don't have to jump through hoops if you need to share files with the host system.