How Wine works 101 • Hacker News Board

Re: How Wine works 101

#31

Post by gerdesj » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #19

gerdesj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS are profit motivated (by definition) and Wine is functionality motivated (again by definition). MS are currently hell bent on getting you onto a cloud subscription for Windows as a service (WAAS) because that is their current business model. The Wine project is hell bent on delivering functionality that you want and they think you might want. Wine is less about shuffling the start menu to the middle of the taskbar…

I'm no Windows fan, but this is not an accurate portrayal (d'oh!). Microsoft has historically put a huge amount of effort in (backwards) compatibility. Here's a famous example: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/windows-95-went-the-... . Related (sub) discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13450160 . It's possible that they changed strategy recently, but there is a very long history of extraordin…

Linux will shortly remove support for DECNet. That's deprecating something responsibly.

Your SimCity example was an easy win and yet more wankery. They have not put a huge amount of work in compatibility. MS have done just enough always and only enough. That is precisely what a large commercial business would do and they did.

Re: How Wine works 101

#32

Post by keithnz » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #6

What I'm curious about (and probably there are some good write ups about this somewhere) that how come modern Linux and modern Wine is better to run old Windows applications than modern Windows (7 to some extent but mostly 10&11). Did MS "intentionally" "left behind" certain APIs and system calls to sacrifice it for some greater good? Like I use Windows every day and have no problems at all. And I use Linux every day…

what old windows programs from Vista/XP/2000 can't you run on Windows 11? It has "compatibility mode", just select properties on the program and select compatibility, and select the OS you want.

Re: How Wine works 101

#33

Post by pclmulqdq » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #30

jldugger wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

as a regular user of wine (the application) something about the title made me think of wine (the drink)

I usually think of wine the application as WINE, while wine the drink gets all the other capitalizations.

Re: How Wine works 101

#34

Post by spoonjim » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

I thought I was going to get an explanation of why so many guys pay tons of money for fermented grape juice that tastes worse than just regular grape juice.

Re: How Wine works 101

#35

Post by pansinghkoder » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

Counterstrike represent! I'd love to see popularity breakdown of applications run by wine. What else do people use it for?

Re: How Wine works 101

#36

Post by quickthrower2 » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

Yes. If you are at a frat party and have a funnel in your mouth.

Re: How Wine works 101

#37

Post by quickthrower2 » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

metadat wrote: post #5

jldugger wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

Warning jldugger: Despite the topic being a prime candidate for a joke, it's a tough crowd in this thread.

I think the joke is good here, because the title is ridiculously ambiguous, and a technical article about how wine is made would suit HN as much as one about WINE.

But when people try hard to make a pun that isn't so good.

Re: How Wine works 101

#38

Post by danielheath » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 11:57 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #20

nine_k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Wine is to run older Windows software. Who needs the most modern versions, just pays for MS Windows. Windows, like DOS before it, adapts to run certain apps more efficiently, to sidestep their bugs, or to fulfill their assumptions which generally do not hold. I suppose Wine does a lot of the same. It pays a lot of attention tp running old(er) popular software smoothly. I suppose Wine has more adjustments…

> The point of Wine is to run older Windows software. Is this really true? What “newer” Windows software would not run under Wine “in principle”? (And, for that matter, what older Windows software wouldn’t run on Windows itself?)

I've had older windows software require _extensive_ compatibility profile tuning to make it run at all, including disabling some device drivers, using the legacy scheduler to stop race conditions in IPC, etc.

Re: How Wine works 101

#39

Post by allanrbo » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 12:00 AM UTC

Also a great description of how Linux binaries with dynamic library dependencies work.

Re: How Wine works 101

#40

Post by metadat » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #32

haunter wrote: post #6

What I'm curious about (and probably there are some good write ups about this somewhere) that how come modern Linux and modern Wine is better to run old Windows applications than modern Windows (7 to some extent but mostly 10&11). Did MS "intentionally" "left behind" certain APIs and system calls to sacrifice it for some greater good? Like I use Windows every day and have no problems at all. And I use Linux every day…

what old windows programs from Vista/XP/2000 can't you run on Windows 11? It has "compatibility mode", just select properties on the program and select compatibility, and select the OS you want.

What has been your experience with this method? It's not yet fixed a broken app for me.

When the compatibility mode doesn't help, then what's a mere mortal to do?