SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
For recreational use only.
(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]