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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

#111

Post by cwyers »

Narishma wrote: post #107
oarsinsync wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

DOSBox is an emulator.

Which is one of its big selling points - old DOS games were used to direct hardware access. Some of them even depend on the clock rate of the PC they're running on. So an emulator that can convert Roland and Soundblaster to modern sound and such is necessary for making old DOS games playable.

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

#112

Post by cwyers »

bluGill wrote: post #80
boybd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You keep changing the goalpost. Odds are if you were willing to live with the versions you were using 15 years ago you would find Wine works just fine. Probably even if you just stuck with the versions you were using 5 years ago.

If someone wants to use Windows applications to interact with other users, using a 15-year-old version is really not going to cut it. Office, Photoshop... all of those big ticket Windows apps have added a lot of things in 15 years. You could get that level of compatibility from Libre Office and GIMP.

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

#113

Post by cwyers »

dorfsmay wrote: post #36
snarfy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still run LTSpice on Linux using Wine. That's about it though. With the advent of WSL on Windows and my professional need to use both Linux and Windows, I don't have a lot of reasons to use Wine anymore, or desktop Linux for that matter. Windows + WSL is good enough, and better than the other way around of Linux + Wine or a VM. I fear Wine will become more and more irrelevant as time passes. Killing 32bit support d…

For work in Windows shop,sure, until I need Docker, although I could with faster I/O! For home and companies that don't architect themselves around specific workstation OS, Linux all the way. I personally rarely use Wine, if ever, but had to use it for my kids requiring software that was available on Windows only.

WSL 2 supports Docker now.

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

#114

Post by pjmlp »

EamonnMR wrote: post #10

WINE needs 32 bit support. The bulk of windows programs that people still care about are from the 32 bit era, and as they point out many 64 bit apps use 32 bit installers. Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox.

I wonder which ones, my Windows boxes are pretty much 32 bit free, except for when there isn't an alternative.

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

#115

Post by samb1729 »

deng wrote: post #103
q3k wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the license terms [1]: You may use the software for testing purposes only. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. You may not use the software in a live operating environment. [1] - https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...

Apart from this being essentially an EULA an therefore not necessarily binding in your country, I don't think that doing the stuff described in the OP would violate these terms.

And if it does violate the terms, let's remember we live in the real world and absolutely nothing will happen to them as a result

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

#116

Post by smacktoward »

EamonnMR wrote: post #10

WINE needs 32 bit support. The bulk of windows programs that people still care about are from the 32 bit era, and as they point out many 64 bit apps use 32 bit installers. Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox.

Like Bochs? http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

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

#117

Post by iokanuon »

jjwhitaker wrote: post #110
coldpie wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change Ubuntu is proposing is far less harsh than what macOS is doing. Unlike macOS, Ubuntu will still run 32-bit processes, you just have to provide all of the userspace libraries. Applications like Steam for Linux already do this for binary compatibility reasons, so their usecase won't change much. Wine's official Ubuntu packages currently rely on the OS to provide these userspace libraries. They would "only" n…

I wonder why Wine doesn't have those libraries on standby. I can understand keeping installer/total install size and footprint down for any application but especially emulation which is already complex and going to push hardware. If Wine includes the right components, what performance hit may be suffered? Or maybe I have this wrong and it won't really matter.

Yeah, it doesn't really matter as wine would just have to load the 32 bit libraries from a different location (say, /usr/lib/wine/lib32 instead of /usr/lib32).

Also, Wine is not that kind of emulator. It provides windows-compatibile libraries but does not do CPU emulation so there's no real significant performance hit. [0]

[0]: https://superuser.com/a/14600

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

#119

Post by schrijver »

peterangular wrote: post #45
scrollaway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find asking these kinds of questions to people using professional software like that is akin to asking a professional c++ programmer "why not lisp?". Imagine you spend a career training on something and random people just tell you to do something else.

Err ... yeah - now you make it sound like I'm incapable of learning/trying new software. Yes I've tried those alternative solutions and they don't have the same sort of polish and workflow as everything else. Find me ONE professional graphics designer who works 100% in GIMP and Inkscape - they just don't have the same feature set. If you do find people using GIMP and Inkscape in the professional world they almost alw…

> Find me ONE professional graphics designer who works 100% in GIMP and Inkscape

My partner does, as do a number of studios and collectives I know in Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris and Porto. They use of course way more tools than Gimp and Inkscape, but work on Linux and exclusively with Free and Open Source software.

For them I feel it’s both about the philosophy, the challenge, and discovering new ways of working. Trying to reproduce an Adobe way of working will always feel lacking. Yet working in a free software ecosystem will make you also discover new tools (Latex, Graphviz etc.) and new ways of working (a lot of people are experimenting with doing print layout with HTML for example).

Of course sometimes it is painful--preparing for print production and especially spot colours without Adobe Acrobat is difficult and requires a a collaborative process with your printer. But it also comes with the thrill of trying a different creative model and the exchange with a small but thriving community of people who are excited about these things.

EDIT: This is not to say that it would be a viable approach for everyone. It’s just to say that such designers do exist, and to try to make their motivations more clear!

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

#120

Post by RussianCow »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
RussianCow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It doesn't make sense to go the other way and give you a reason to use Linux instead. It makes sense for every business unit except Windows to make it easier to run their software on Linux/MacOS (for desktop software, more the latter, for server software, more the former.) A common shim that lets you so that with the same codebase rather than maintaining separate Linux and MacOS versions or porting the whole exists…

I could be wrong, but I think the overlap of people who use Linux but would also pay for Microsoft software like Office is small enough to not justify the engineering effort.
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