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How Wine works 101

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Re: How Wine works 101

#111

Post by barbs »

smoldesu wrote: post #71
monocasa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of games, Red Alert 2 off the top of my head. Never got it running even in compatibility mode and changing the bit depth.

I hate to be the "works on my machine" guy, but there seem to be multiple reports of it running perfectly fine: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio... However, I sympathize with the general funkiness of running old games. It's very difficult to play the original Diablo 2 through Wine unless you emulate a virtual desktop, which is frustrating to set up. If you're willing to give it another try…

I've run Diablo 2 just fine using Wine on various machines - the only issue being the inability to play fullscreen.

I feel like I had issues with the original Diablo, however. Maybe that's what you meant?

Re: How Wine works 101

#112

Post by alufers »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #95

> Wine has been in development for many years and came a long way. And still my daughter can't play "Sims 4" on her Linux laptop ... not because of the game itself but because of EA's pathetic program starter "Origin". Even Steam's Proton environment stopped working. So sad and frustrating. Isn't there a way to play this game without "Origin"? The mileage you get with Wine is highly dependent on the individual game.

Just to let you know: The pirated version works just fine with PlayOnLinux.

PS. I downloaded the cracked copy, and deleted it before 24 hours, which makes it legal where I live (Poland). Also I own a physical copy of that game, but I couldn't be bothered to get Origin to run.

Re: How Wine works 101

#113

Post by ntauthority »

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…

A more interesting variant of your question would be 'how come Wine is better at running decades-old Windows software (on systems such as Linux) than Linux is at running decades-old Linux software on Linux?'

... perhaps Win32 is a more stable ABI/API by design.

Re: How Wine works 101

#114

Post by chalst »

kgeist wrote: post #70
monocasa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of games, Red Alert 2 off the top of my head. Never got it running even in compatibility mode and changing the bit depth.

According to Raymond Chen, this usually happens when software relies on undocumented APIs or undefined behavior. When Windows removes undocumented APIs or changes behavior not covered by the documentation, such apps break and people blame Microsoft. For example, I remember one app used to programmatically find some kind of "Print" menu in Windows' desktop environment and call it to implement printing functionality. W…

Most of what I've read by Raymond Chen is about Windows 95. Does he contradict what people are saying about backwards incompatibility since Windows 8?

Re: How Wine works 101

#115

Post by dt2m »

Underphil wrote: post #74
pansinghkoder wrote: post #35

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

I can only speak for myself, but I use it for loading VST plugins in Linux.

How do you do this specifically? Do you use some kind of bridging software or do you make a shim for each plugin that loads Wine on the fly?

Re: How Wine works 101

#116

Post by goosedragons »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #95

> Wine has been in development for many years and came a long way. And still my daughter can't play "Sims 4" on her Linux laptop ... not because of the game itself but because of EA's pathetic program starter "Origin". Even Steam's Proton environment stopped working. So sad and frustrating. Isn't there a way to play this game without "Origin"? The mileage you get with Wine is highly dependent on the individual game.

Is this a recent change? I did have Mass Effect Legendary Edition (which was also through origin) up and running a few months ago thanks to Lutris. And I did get NFS Heat through Steam and it also boots up Origin and seems to work okay.

I would check out Lutris if you haven't. The Sims 4 is popular and so someone helpfully created an install script to get it running with Lutris:

https://lutris.net/games/the-sims-4/

Re: How Wine works 101

#118

Post by mmis1000 »

lozenge wrote: post #89
rcoveson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your plan is to maintain decades of backwards compatibility with software from thousands of third parties, it's going to involve maintaining some originally-undocumented behaviors that people exploited. That's what the wine developers got themselves into willingly, and it's what the Windows devs are increasingly shirking.

It's a question of priorities. Microsoft must have realised these edge cases were slowing development down and how many people really want to run a game or a CD burner software from 1998? Of course, this could all have been avoided with a proper universally understood spec like POSIX but it's too late for that now. (And POSIX never had graphics or sound support, which shows how big that project would be, with the chu…

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii...

I think this is the price they are(were?) willing to take. If they don't take backward compatibility seriously. Windows won't exist now at first place.

Re: How Wine works 101

#119

Post by account42 »

The choice of compilers in the godbolt screenshots is odd. First, GCC is the default compiler for Linux and what most is compiled with. But using Clang would make sense if it was also used for the Windows side to Limit the differences to OS details instead of irrelevant compiler differences like Clang optimizing printf to puts while MSVC doesn't.

Also, why link to wine-mirror on GitHub instead of Wine's own gitlab instance?

Re: How Wine works 101

#120

Post by dreen »

signaru wrote: post #79
bee_rider wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is apparently possible to run Wine on WSL. https://liliputing.com/wine-on-windows-lets-you-run-windows-... I wonder if you can run Cygwin on it.

Wine on Windows is technically interesting, even if others might argue that it's pointless. At the very least, these are also good tests of how much compatibility the layers provide. There's also WineVDM that actually solves a "need" to run 16bit Windows programs on 64bit Windows. I've considered using it for retro programming without leaving a modern OS, although DosBox may be a more reliable option. Now, if Win32s…

Wine on Windows would be great for running some 90s Windows video games.
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