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harrisjamieh · Jan 12, 2006, 06:30 PM

I have been trying to get my head around what this whole wine/dawine thing is. Sounds to me like it runs windows apps inside a non windows OS, including OSX? Can anyone explain what it act is?

Cheers

Chuckit · Jan 12, 2006, 06:52 PM

That is basically what it is. WINE is a partial implementation of the Windows API so Linux users can run Windows programs. Darwine is a port of WINE to Darwin.

mduell · Jan 12, 2006, 08:24 PM

From the user's perspective it's a lot like Classic; it lets you run programs that were compiled for a different OS.

ghporter · Jan 12, 2006, 09:30 PM

It's an emulator that runs Windows apps on Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and OS X. I believe it means WINdows Emulator, but I can't prove it right now. EDIT: Oops. It actually means Wine Is Not an Emulator. From the Wine site: "Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix." This means that it is much better at running Windows software than an emulator would be.

Look here for the official Wine site and everything about it.

forkies · Jan 12, 2006, 09:50 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

It's an emulator...I believe it means WINdows Emulator

holy ****

Brass · Jan 12, 2006, 09:53 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

From the user's perspective it's a lot like Classic; it lets you run programs that were compiled for a different OS.

Some end users, maybe.

It's actually very different though. Classic actually loads the entire legacy operating system (which is why Classic take so long to start up).

WINE is simply the libraries that the applications need to call. So there is virtually no time required to get any environment running - the applications just run directly (sort of).

ghporter · Jan 12, 2006, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by forkies

holy ****

Please note that I fixed this. It does NOT mean WINdows Emulator. It is not, in fact, an emulator at all.

Apfhex · Jan 12, 2006, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Please note that I fixed this. It does NOT mean WINdows Emulator. It is not, in fact, an emulator at all.

Which is why it wasn't really feasible on PowerPC Macs... but with the switch to Intel, things get intriguing.

Tesseract · Jan 12, 2006, 10:49 PM

WINE runs Windows apps (provided the apps are supported) at essentially native speeds. As I stated in another thread, I used to run IE under WINE quite regularly on an old, slow Linux box since it was marginally faster than the natively compiled Firefox.

CharlesS · Jan 13, 2006, 04:41 AM

Originally Posted by Apfhex

Which is why it wasn't really feasible on PowerPC Macs... but with the switch to Intel, things get intriguing.

Well, they've been working on porting qemu-user to Darwin/PPC, which would allow Windows binaries to run on the WINE libraries with QEMU doing the emulation part (sort of like Rosetta works). Dunno if they'll ever finish it now that Apple's switched to Intel, though.

Chuckit · Jan 13, 2006, 06:23 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

It's an emulator that runs Windows apps on Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and OS X. I believe it means WINdows Emulator, but I can't prove it right now. EDIT: Oops. It actually means Wine Is Not an Emulator. From the Wine site: "Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix." This means that it is much better at running Windows software than an emulator would be.

If it were perfect, it would be. As it is, while WINE is certainly faster than an emulator, it's less likely to work correctly. It doesn't implement the entire Windows API, and the parts it does implement don't always behave exactly like their Windows counterparts. So it's hit-or-miss, but when it hits, it hits really hard.

JKT · Jan 13, 2006, 07:29 AM

Does anyone know if IE 5 and/or IE 6 run in WINE/Darwine? I need them to test my CSS but don't have (easy) access to a Win Box. If they do, anyone got any easy to follow instructions to get them installed and working... I tried using Darwine but couldn't even get it to run the included test apps...

Sophus · 09:27 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Please note that I fixed this. It does NOT mean WINdows Emulator. It is not, in fact, an emulator at all.

Correct. WINE is an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Linux sense of humor. It is a wrapper and some "reverse enginered" libs for running Windows applications native on UNIX operating systems. You also have the option of ripping the original Windows libraries from a windows partition or disk for better compatability. It used to be very buggy, but now supposedly works fairly well with many Windows apps. Been some time since I last used it actively...

Millennium · Jan 13, 2006, 11:09 AM

As others have mentioned, WINE is basically a set of libraries and such for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems which try to allow Windows apps to work without actually running Windows. It only works on X86 machines, because Windows apps only run on X86 machines unless you emulate them. Darwine was an attempt to make this run on PowerPC machines, but this is generally accepted by the rest of the world as technologically infeasible for a variety of reasons.

It seems fairly likely that the move to Intel will reawaken interest in Darwine, since without the need to emulate a processor it is once again technically feasible. However, do keep in mind that WINE doesn't actually run Windows, and so compatibility isn't likely to ever be 100%.

If you're interested in actually running Windows and OSX at the same time, I suggest watching the QEMU closely. The author has made an Intel-only plugin for it which he calls the "QEMU Accelerator". This turns QEMU from an emulator into a virtualizer: instead of pretending to be a piece of hardware it simply wraps around the real hardware to pass things back and forth. This allows you to actually boot Windows in the "emulated" environment while using real hardware, and this should provide much better performance than an emulator but better compatibility than WINE. At the moment, the QEMU Accelerator only supports Linux, but an initial Windows port has begun and I wouldn't be at all surprised if an OSX/Intel port were forthcoming.

CharlesS · Jan 17, 2006, 05:10 AM

Originally Posted by Millennium

As others have mentioned, WINE is basically a set of libraries and such for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems which try to allow Windows apps to work without actually running Windows. It only works on X86 machines, because Windows apps only run on X86 machines unless you emulate them. Darwine was an attempt to make this run on PowerPC machines, but this is generally accepted by the rest of the world as technologically infeasible for a variety of reasons.

It seems fairly likely that the move to Intel will reawaken interest in Darwine, since without the need to emulate a processor it is once again technically feasible. However, do keep in mind that WINE doesn't actually run Windows, and so compatibility isn't likely to ever be 100%.

According to this post, the port of qemu-darwin-user is nearly complete. The reason work progresses slowly on that particular component of the project is because the guy who does it only works on summer breaks, due to time constraints caused by studies.

I'm not sure why you like to portray the Darwine project as being dead, using past tense verbs and such, since looking at their news page shows that they've released three new builds in the past couple of months.

Xeo · Jan 17, 2006, 06:13 PM

OK, so this thread seems as appropriate of a place to post this question as anywhere else. How long until we see this, or Virtual PC, running on the Intel boxes? I like the idea of being able to run the Win programs I need to every now and then from within OS X than having to actually use my Windows box.

The only time I think I'd boot my Intel Mac into Windows (assuming that's possible, don't see why not) would be for games.

CharlesS · Jan 17, 2006, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by Xeo

OK, so this thread seems as appropriate of a place to post this question as anywhere else. How long until we see this, or Virtual PC, running on the Intel boxes? I like the idea of being able to run the Win programs I need to every now and then from within OS X than having to actually use my Windows box.

The developers themselves probably don't know when it will be ready yet.

The only time I think I'd boot my Intel Mac into Windows (assuming that's possible, don't see why not)

Presumably EFI makes it difficult at the present time. That's not to say that someone won't figure out a way, though.