Do you use WINE? If so, why?

[techieMoe]

I must say I'm confused as to the rash of people it seems that install Linux only to immediately try and hack some program designed for MS Windows and get it working with WINE. This just seems quite odd to me. It's not unlike buying a motorcycle and trying to fit a car spoiler on it as soon as you get it home. Is it not a more efficient use of your time to simply use both Microsoft Windows and Linux if you still have software you need in XP? Help me understand your reasoning here.

[carlosponti]

i hate the concept of wine, cadega, and etc. i try to find equivilant software in all cases but if i cant then i go ahead and use windows. i dont understand why if windows is not good enough for you to use that you would suffer through a hacked up version of a program working through wine to use a windows software product.

[DThor]

The whole motorcycle/car analogy(which is a great one) that's in that oft-quoted thread applies IMHO to the OS, not apps. Apps are tools - some of them are so hard-wired to the OS(e.g. network management tools) that of course it's meaningless on another platform, but others(such as many media programs, scientific analysis, etc.) are simply tools. Some users are attuned to the way some apps work, which is why a lot of digital paint artists turn up their noses at Gimp and cry for some way to run PS in Linux. Additionally, many other apps only have very poor imitations of featuresets of their longer-established cousins on the PC(music programs like Acid, discussed in another thread, is an example of this).

I have about 3 programs I run in wine on a regular basis, simply because I *like* those apps, nothing more, and there's not one that's as good on Linux. Doesn't mean I don't like Linux - the fact that wine exists and allows the possibility is only a positive thing in my books, and makes Linux even more appealing.

I've seen a single instance of a high-end digital imagery package(my biz) that's trying to cop out their Linux port and are wrapping the windows binaries with their flavour of wine. It's a joke, and no-one in our biz will buy it. They're too educated.

DT

[Zelmo]

I had to laugh when I heard your analogy of spoilers on motorcycles, because my best bikes have had spoilers.

So I guess it stands to reason that I use both wine and an offshoot. It just saves me the time of rebooting. Oh, and I guess it saves me from the annoyances of the Windows OS. And for now, at least, it saves me from trying to figure out why my latest video driver upgrade in Windows has made the display cease to work, rendering Windows utterly useless (despite my best attempts at resolving the problem the only way you can in Windows, which is to uninstall/re-install the drivers). Oh well, no big loss.

[fingal]

I voted no ... I used to use it quite a bit when I had unrealistic ideas about what it was capable of. It was a novel application and I wanted to try it out. Now I completely ignore it.

I'm not registering disapproval, as I have great respect for the free tools which ship with Linux; I just have no need for it.

[Cabhan]

I have both WINE and Cedega, though I use the former a great deal more than the latter. Further, I use these only for games.

Now, the obvious question is: why don't I just dual-boot?

Well, I tried that recently. Reinstalled Windows on a spare 20 GB partition. Installed Evil Genius and played it. Yay!

The next day, bluescreen. Every solution I can find for said error says that it's a memory issue. But Linux reports my memory perfectly (as does memtest). So bye bye that solution.

WINE and its offshoots are not flawless, nor are they intended to replace Linux apps. But for unique applications (in my case games, such as WoW), they can save us a lot of hassle.

[bigtomrodney]

I used it for a while to play games. I did so to break my dependancy on booting Windows, but moreso just to prove I could. To be honest I lost interest I had in PC gaming. It was never much anyway as I prefer console gaming (Not an FPS or RTS man). I might be tempted to try one last time as I have a copy of Half Life 2 I never gave a fair go but to be honest all of my computer work/pleasure is met perfectly within linux. There are no applications holding me back or that can't be replaced.

[techieMoe]

The whole motorcycle/car analogy(which is a great one) that's in that oft-quoted thread applies IMHO to the OS, not apps. Apps are tools...

Ok. To use your analogy I see trying to hack a MS Windows app to work in Linux is like trying to sand down a hex wrench to make it fit in a Philips screw head. Use the correct tool for the job. In the case of some software, that tool is Windows XP.

[devils casper]

No ! i dont use wine.... i want everything perfect..
there are a lot of flaws in wine ... i tried only once and never touched again.....

for me, there is nothing like love/hate for windows or linux... i use linux coz of its devlopment tools and open source allow me to do whatever i want...... i use windows coz of graphics and games.....

I must say I'm confused as to the rash of people it seems that install Linux only to immediately try and hack some program designed for MS Windows and get it working with WINE. This just seems quite odd to me.

well ! i think everyone want everything ........ whatever they missed in windows, get in Linux... and in Linux.. they try to have some windows+ too...

<=== { casper } ===>

[DThor]

Ok. To use your analogy I see trying to hack a MS Windows app to work in Linux is like trying to sand down a hex wrench to make it fit in a Philips screw head.

Naw, no hacking here. If I need to hack the crap out of it to get it to work, I don't bother. Also, I'm not like a lot of you - I'm all-Linux at work, almost all-Windows at home(games). I don't dual boot - did that for many years - simply too much of a pita, nuff' said there.

Also, I do beta testing for a small app which has a single developer that, as a part time job, provides a pretty good product. He's simply not going to be able to justify, or find the time, to port natively to Linux. Is he to be booed and hissed at, if he says "you can run it on Linux under wine, and I'm letting legit users do that as part of the license"? Is he a lazy s.o.b. because he's not staying up all hours of the day and night doing and maintaining a linux port for which I can promise he would be lucky to make a couple hundred bucks?

No way. He's simply providing an option. That's what wine is, an option. I find the politicizing of wine and it's progeny to be too much negative energy. You can't stop it, you can't make people feel guilty about it, and in fact it's not doing any harm. <shrug>

DT