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Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

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Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#61

Post by implr »

mchristen wrote: post #16
mushufasa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many of the applications for which you would want to run wine (e.g. gaming, the primary use) are performance-heavy. adding a layer of a vm is substantially more performance overhead.

That doesn't have to be true with hardware passthrough.

That is much more difficult, might require various unsupported hacks and for a truly robust solution you'd need two GPUs. For games having a Vulkan or DX12 (via DXVK) renderer, wine can be as fast as native Windows with almost none of the hassle. DOOM(2016) is a very good example.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#62

Post by RussianCow »

trollied wrote: post #58

I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft will release their own Wine-a-like subsystem some time soon. It's the missing link, and I can't see them ignoring it given how their direction has changed over the last few years.

I doubt that's the case. Everything they've been doing with WSL is precisely to keep you inside the Windows OS. It doesn't make sense to go the other way and give you a reason to use Linux instead.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#63

Post by EamonnMR »

oarsinsync wrote: post #51
0815test wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox ...or Virtualbox.

You're suggesting an emulator, which is absolutely correct and a worthwhile reminder that we can emulate 32bit without any problem. It's also worth considering the context, WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) provides an abstraction layer that doesn't require the overhead of an emulation layer. DOSbox is similar. (EDIT: apparently it's not, and is actually an emulator. TIL.)

Or the overhead of running an entire other OS.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#64

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

I had assumed that because 64-bit wine did the “Program Files (x86)” thing, it ran 32-bit Windows apps in a 64-bit process. But now that I think about it, that doesn't make sense.

WINE needs kernel and userland support for running 32-bit x86 code unless it adds an emulator, because WINE actually loads the Windows executable's binary code into the current process (I assume exec() is a good comparison?) together with OS shared libraries. Maybe relevant for understanding this: https://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_Developer%27s_Guide/Kernel_modu...

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#65

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #25
momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I run mIRC on Wine. I know, I know, there are plenty of Linux native IRC clients. In fact, mIRC has been quite stagnant lately. But to me, its UI is still unsurpassed (20 years of muscle memory also help), and it has less latency than alternatives (even with Wine).

I'm surprised that nobody's made an open source clone, since it's a long-standing app, apparently better than the available alternatives, and fundamentally IRC just isn't that hard.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#66

Post by philistine »

richard_todd wrote: post #8

I immediately wondered about macOS, which is dropping 32-bit support as well. One of the first links I found[1] seems to say that there is no 64-bit wine on macOS regardless of library issues, due to an ABI incompatibility. So on the surface it seems like the world is shifting under wine's feet, and they are going to need to do a second level of emulation eventually to keep 32-bit stuff running. [1]: https://forum.wi…

That's big news. It looks like if Wine is forced to emulate the CPU, the few benefits it has over a VM would be negated.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#67

Post by dralley »

trollied wrote: post #58

I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft will release their own Wine-a-like subsystem some time soon. It's the missing link, and I can't see them ignoring it given how their direction has changed over the last few years.

That was what WSL v1 was, literally.

WSL v2 is an actual linux kernel. They're moving in the opposite direction.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#68

Post by corey_moncure »

Aelius wrote: post #15
momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I used to run foobar2000 in wine, because no other linux media player scratched some of the itches foobar covered. There is even a foobar2000 package in the arch aur so it simply installs like any other pacman managed program. However, once I learned of the wine interface that is available on flathub (for flatpak) I immediately removed wine and its 32 bit components from my system- now that untidyness is neatly conta…

Yes, fb2k is the one Windows-only app I just can't let go. The library management, plugins, UI, extensibility, and configurability are just simply unmatched by anything else out there. I likes my music the way I likes it.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#69

Post by postit »

trollied wrote: post #58

I have a sneaking suspicion that Microsoft will release their own Wine-a-like subsystem some time soon. It's the missing link, and I can't see them ignoring it given how their direction has changed over the last few years.

This makes no sense. Microsoft is on the way to bring Linux inside Windows. They have zero competitive advance, fomenting another system at this moment.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#70

Post by Arkanosis »

boybd wrote: post #38
momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

15 years ago I considered switching to Linux. I depend on some Windows applications and, above all, I want to play games. Wine looked like it was almost there, so I intended to give it another try next year. Year by year I've been trying Wine again and again. As of today, it's still almost there. So, maybe in 2030? By now, I'll stay using Windows.

For games, give Lutris a try.

For years, I've been reluctant to use Wine wrappers like PlayOnLinux, for no reason other than I don't like wrappers. I always ended up getting everything working with bare Wine, but at the cost of long hours (sometimes even days) of experiments.

I've started using Lutris a few months ago (I gave up on getting Wine and DXVK play well together) and, well, that's a life changing experience so far: everything works out of the box. I has taken all the fun out of Wine configuration for me ;)

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