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Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

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Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#241
post #16

Wine is a project that I've grown a near-infinite level of respect for. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a lot of the work for Wine is boring and thankless. Digging through and trying to get exact parity with both the documented and undocumented behavior of Windows for the past 30 years doesn't sound fun, but it's finding every little weird edge case that makes Wine a viable product. The fact that Wine runs…

That's not boring at all. A lot of the works done in Wine can be fed back to ReactOS

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#243
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grass is always greener on the other side - many low-level programmers feel like an imposter when it comes to high-level systems such as CRUD apps.

They don't. The "simplicity" of using a "high-level" framework for someone who bit-shifts for a living is almost comical.

bit shifting isn't impressive lol

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#244
post #54

This is such an amazing accomplishment! Absolutely wild to see Linux basically re-implement Windows and doing it better, while MS is dead set on making everything about their software worse.

The full 16bit support here is a big thing especially given 64bit Windows (now everywhere) dropped it. With old games, there's thousands that are 16bit, and even odd cases where the game is 32bit but the installer for it is 16bit.

If I'm not mistaken, 16-bit x86 software cannot naively run in 64-bit mode anyways. It requires an emulator, like DosBox. Wine uses WineVDM. CPU-heavy 16-bit programs, or programs that are sensitive to timing, can be noticeably slower.

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AI, you can automate all the grunt work.

AI unreliability aside, Microsoft suing the hell out of them was always a concern. They do clean room reimplementation to insulate themselves from legal risks as much as possible, another incentive is not what anyone wants.

Well about clean room, you almost got a haircut due to Google v. Oracle in the Android-Java API dispute

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#246
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s astounding how badly Microsoft had to fumble their complete and unassailable monopoly on the standard video game runtime (ie Windows) for an upstart like Valve to be able to get WINE/Proton into a place where this is now possible. The mind reels. They had the biggest moat in tech, and now small shops are easily tossing homemade ladders across the gap. AAA gaming is an industry larger than all of Hollywood, and W…

There are huge swaths of workplaces that run on Google Docs. If you're using features of Excel and PowerPoint that doesn't work on Docs (except maybe fonts), it might be fair to say you're the one with the incompatible doc these days. K-12 education would be one such world.

Those aren’t the ones I am talking about. The global economy runs on Excel.

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#247
post #25

Before anyone gets too excited about ntsync, the performance gains are (with few exceptions) mild, usually in the lower single percentage range. These extreme gains are the result of benching against vanilla wine without fsync, anyone playing demanding games on linux would have been doing so using fsync. This is mentioned in the article but treated like a side note. I've been running benchmarks between both and while…

>These extreme gains are the result of benching against vanilla without fsync, which is what anyone gaming on linux uses Not for anyone using a kernel without these patches. Which would be most people.

Unless you are running an ancient LTS distribution, you at least have fsync. But then also recognize, with the ancient LTS distribution not carrying any enhancements for the last few years, your drivers are also out of date and games will play terribly for unrelated reasons.

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#248
post #16

Wine is a project that I've grown a near-infinite level of respect for. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a lot of the work for Wine is boring and thankless. Digging through and trying to get exact parity with both the documented and undocumented behavior of Windows for the past 30 years doesn't sound fun, but it's finding every little weird edge case that makes Wine a viable product. The fact that Wine runs…

I avoided using Wine (and Linux for gaming generally) for years on the sole basis that I assumed what they were trying to do was impossible to do well. Occasionally I’d try wine for some simple game and be impressed it worked at all, but refused to admit to myself that it was something I could rely on. (This was many years ago and I freely admit today that I was wrong.)

With Proton especially, which is WINE really optimized with all of the right options and a few other things, I play literally any game on linux and never worry about support. It hasn't steered me wrong yet in the last 3 or 4 years I think.

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I avoided using Wine (and Linux for gaming generally) for years on the sole basis that I assumed what they were trying to do was impossible to do well. Occasionally I’d try wine for some simple game and be impressed it worked at all, but refused to admit to myself that it was something I could rely on. (This was many years ago and I freely admit today that I was wrong.)

To be fair, early wine (when I first tried it) wasn't very usable, and for gaming specifically. So if you were an early enthusiast adopter, you might've just experienced their growing pains. Also, I assume some Windows version jumps didn't make things easy for Wine either lol

The hype/performance mismatch was significant in the 2000s for Wine. I’m not sure if there was any actual use case aside from running obscure business software.

Yes, there was “the list” but there was no context and it was hard to replicate settings.

I think everyone tried running a contemporary version of Office and Photoshop, saw the installer spit out cryptic messages and just gave up. Enough time has passed with enough work done, and Wine now supports/getting to support the software we wanted all along.

Also, does anyone remember the rumours that OS X was going to run Windows applications?

Re: Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains

#250
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myself. Forth it's easy, 9front C it's manageable but POSIX it's hell and managing both Unix descendants are a piece of cake. GUI interfaces for the enterprise came from Dante's hell themselves. I hate them, they are like the Madhouse from that Asterix movie making satire of the European bureucracy of the day. The often are oddly designed and they are not documented at all, you must guess the meaning by chance of wit…

lol you guys are being too nice. Building CRUD apps is just implementing business logic by gluing APIs together, there is nothing to understand except the business domain, which is only done through exposure, because business logic is random. And then the APIs which are all essentially a kludge because of the shifting business logic. Understanding low level code puts you on entirely different level because you can re…

Kernel developers know that, eventually, they'll figure out how the system works and is supposed to work.

CRUD developers know that they never, ever will, because business logic is insane.

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