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Google intoxicates Linux users with Wine improvements

arstechnica.com — Improvements to Wine sponsored by Google have made it possible to run Adobe Photoshop and Dragon Naturally Speaking on Linux.

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  • Gijsterbeek, on 02/19/2008, -137/+8The tone of voice in the title of the article (..intoxicates..) isn't justified in the article itself. Mainly contains some observations on Google focusing on Wine improvements instead of using those resources to help out with native Linux solutions.

    At least, they try to make it work.
    • sirhomer, on 02/19/2008, -1/+83Intoxicate is a pun on wine as a drink. Excessive use of wine intoxicates it's user.
    • benchwarmer, on 02/19/2008, -15/+5Buried for sucking.
    • 350Zed, on 02/19/2008, -5/+5Your Wining is ironic.
      • Incomp3tnt, on 02/20/2008, -3/+1Whining*
        • belzoradon, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2His use of 'win(e)'-ing was very intentional and very ironic in itself, dont correct his amusement, please.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0By correcting his amusement you are ruining ours.

          Not that i had any. Too much trolling going on.
    • FTLJohnson, on 02/19/2008, -1/+5Ok, I'm comment spamming becuase I want some digger confirmation or denial on this... Does Photoshop run WELL under this... or what? Every time I've heard of Photoshop running on Linux in the past... it has not run very well.
      • mmmiiikkkeee, on 02/20/2008, -0/+5my understanding is that photoshop CS and CS2 run very well with wine, but the newest version CS3 does _not_ yet work with wine.
      • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -3/+4It will never run as well at the GIMP.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Actually...

          GIMP crashes, too. And Wine is extremely more stable in the recent releases than in the past. So that statement could very well become close to false some day.
        • lukeev, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1GIMP!? Oh how hilarious, really, I needed laugh!!!
      • sauvaget, on 02/20/2008, -0/+5yes, CS2 runs. Period.
        It starts slower and add-on functionalities like Bridge don't work. But apart from that, you can do just about everything.
  • ptFoe, on 02/19/2008, -8/+144The word intoxicated is a play on the word Wine, no need to get hysterical over it.
    This is a smart move by Google, this a cheap solution to get Windows users that want to swap but to Linux but because of certain applications won't.
    If these popular applications can be run on Linux then the Linux user base will swell. To the point where it would commercially viable for the software companies to release native versions of their product. Linux needs to get around 8% of the desktop share in the western world, for software companies to take note.
    Linux enthusiasts wrongly expect software companies to spread their OS, they are in the business of making software not promoting OSs.
    The lack of CMYK support in Gimp is ridiculous when people have been complaining out it for sometime.
    • saturn5, on 02/19/2008, -27/+5Software companies are in the business of making software and selling it at a profit. Linux users want software that's given away for nothing.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -22/+2Linux users? More like Ubuntu users.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0(This was funny and you know it.)
      • mrsteveman1, on 02/19/2008, -9/+3I agree that's a bad habit to be in, it is quite the wrong direction to expect ALL software on a platform to be GPL licensed and completely free of any financial cost. You DO NOT want all software to become entirely community development based. However there are some things that should be part of the OS itself, which Linux does quite well. The rest can be done by companies like Adobe etc.
      • Remmy, on 02/19/2008, -1/+26No we don't "want it for nothing". We prefer viable alternatives, free or for profit, that are open source so they can be made to suit or needs, however if such a solution does not exist, we are more than happy to use and pay for a product that can. This is the misconception that is Linux. People assume that we choose it for it's price tag when in reality we choose it for it's lack of restrictions placed on us. We aren't against commercial software, we would simply prefer said software to be open.
        • FKnight, on 02/19/2008, -12/+3Except to most Linux advocates I've run into, paying for software is a "restriction."

          How many of the audio and video codecs on your Linux machine are legal?
          • Fartag, on 02/20/2008, -1/+4The biggest points there are that OSS is non-restrictive in terms of use, code visibility, and code reuse and that free cost is a gigantic bonus. But, the "Linux advocates" you speak of are right too, (high) costs are clearly a restriction as well. How many people could use (without "pirating" it) software that costs $1 million? $10000? $1000? ... Counting down to free runs across different limits for different people.

            Also, _if_ a law makes certain audio and video codecs illegal to own or use, then it seems like that law is the fundamental problem, not those running contrary to it.
          • Remmy, on 02/20/2008, -2/+3My Linux machine has no use for codecs. I simply compile support for the formats I want in to the player I use. Besides that, can you name a consumer targeted codec that you have to pay for in Windows?
        • zmjone2992, on 02/20/2008, -2/+3most commercial software is closed source, and nobody buys codecs, because they aren't for sale or license to consumers
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+3All of my audio and video codecs are used legal. All of them.

          Paying for some software is pointless (I'm looking at all of those FFMPEG stealing bastard FLV related programs), but for stuff like the creative suite, i understand perfectly.
      • biffta, on 02/19/2008, -1/+13This is true of most Windows users I know too, they just use pirated software.
      • heathengray, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1And you know of how many Windows users who've paid for Photoshop?
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0I know nobody who's paid for photoshop ever.

          Maybe Bit Torrent encryption is tripping up anti-piracy groups. (I sure as hell hope so. XD)
    • TheBuzzKiller, on 02/19/2008, -8/+2i like gimp and all but i think it should change names to GINP (gimp is not photoshop) just so people stop bugging them to make it so. I personally don't use gimp because of the lack of MDI support which is offered in other linux programs such as Glade. Sadly I still can't afford photoshop even if it will run on linux. :(
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -0/+3Glade doesn't really have MDI. It only shows one window at a time. Plus, GIMP has an MDI, it just uses multiple windows. It does get annoying, but its possible to adapt.

        And, if your desperate for CMYK, it is in fact possible with a plug in. Sure, its not elegant, but atleast it works.
        • Ademan, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2I'd like to point out that GIMP's interface works quite well with some window managers, notably tiling window managers.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0True, true. And since X11 uses a multiple-desktop-per-monitor paradigm, it should be possible to move over all GIMP windows and have a desktop for it.
      • belzoradon, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1dugg down for being off topic =( sorry dude, i like gimp too
    • CoolWind, on 02/19/2008, -3/+10"lack of Photoshop support on the Linux platform has been significant impediment to Linux adoption in the graphic artist community." More importantly, it's also a significant impediment to anyone who has a digital camera and even a rudimentary knowledge of how to use Photoshop. Photoshop's 1 click auto-fix-it-all is indispensible for even amateur photographers. If you make sure not to over-expose your photos, Photoshop will automagically, and effortlessly, bring out the details in the shadow areas. I don't know of any other way to do that.
      • specz, on 02/20/2008, -1/+14You don't need photoshop for quickfixes like that, picasa's 'I'm feeling lucky' will do the job pretty well. It's free and 100% compatible with wine
        • brrrrbrrbrrra, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1"but I paid so much money for it!"
      • arjie, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1Amateur photographs pay the few hundred dollars to do that? They'd be better off getting some new lenses and a couple of polarisers. If you're talking about the Photoshop LE that comes bundled with the camera (it did, with my dad's, but that was years ago and Photoshop 6.0 LE) seems to work just fine.
    • geminitojanus, on 02/19/2008, -12/+18"The lack of CMYK support in Gimp is ridiculous when people have been complaining out it for sometime."

      Oh yeah, if it's so ridiculous why don't you add it to the GIMP? How much have you paid to have it added? How much work have you done to realize how hard it actually is to add? Can't answer these questions, there's probably a reason: It's a hell of a lot of work, nobody's paying for it to be done. You get what you pay for, and if you're not willing to pay the opportunity cost of CYMK support, then you shouldn't be using the GIMP.

      That ridiculous old, burned out troll aside, people actually ARE working to make the GIMP support not only CYMK, but make it completely color space agnostic. This is the point behind the GEGL and BABL projects, which the GIMP now depends on (in svn). It'll be a lot of work to port the entire infrastructure of the GIMP over to using GEGL for its operations, but once it's done it'll never have to be done again because someone is complaining about it not supporting Pantone or LAB.
      • FKnight, on 02/19/2008, -9/+20"Use Open Source Software!! It's much better and more reliable than closed proprietary software and the source is open!!! It's FREE as in SPEECH!"

        "But it doesn't have this major essential feature I need for my industry"

        "SHUT UP. YOU'RE GETTING IT FOR FREE"
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+4Yeah, because someone who understands Open Source is REALLY going to just say that last thing.

          Did you take into account that geminitojanus is saying not to complain, not saying he should use GIMP anyways.
        • nemoder, on 02/20/2008, -1/+11If your industry really needs an essential feature then why not pay a programmer to add it? Because it is Open Source they won't even have to start from scratch or pay huge licensing fees to do so.

          Another option is to just donate to the project directly: http://gimp.org/donating/
        • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -1/+5I think it's important to realize that if these programmers were working in your industry, they'd've built GIMP with those features from the get-go. Throwing acronyms at a programmer (AKA not a graphics designer) isn't going to help, even once they understand it stands for "cyan-magenta-yellow-black". There's no turnToCMYK() function in any language that I know of. It might be helpful to explain why it's so important and give a pointer to something that describes this format. Or make it happen yourself if you know some code - or get someone else to do it.
          • spectecjr, on 02/20/2008, -4/+3Hmmm... any programmer who doesn't know what CMYK is... is not an experienced programmer. Or has their head buried in the sand. Especially one writing a graphics app.
          • nmnnotmyname, on 02/21/2008, -0/+0...Not all programmers care how a printer works, and just because your working on an open source program does not mean your an expert in the field.
        • geminitojanus, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1I didn't say to use open source software. I explicitly said DON'T USE IT if you can't afford the opportunity cost (that is, if you need CMYK, you shouldn't be using GIMP).

          If it doesn't do what you need it to do, don't use it. If it does what you need to do, why not use it? 98% of the people who use that troll don't understand what CMYK is, or why it's hard to add to something that has a full RGB pipeline end-to-end. It's silly to keep beating that old troll, as almost NOBODY has a CMYK printer in their home, nobody cares about color calibration in the monitor market, and nobody cares about color calibration in the home printer market.

          The few industries that DO care about these things (graphic design companies) all use Macs for a reason; they've got end-to-end color management, and have spend years and years developing their applications to aggressively support it. It's the reason Apple likes it best when you buy their monitors (even though they cost a lot more, Apple can control the color settings end-to-end without having to do extensive calibrations). It's the same reason that printing companies use Photoshop so often, it's because they've invested millions of dollars in getting color management right.
      • illegalcortex, on 02/20/2008, -1/+3I chose to pay for it by just shelling out some money for Photoshop. That cost a lot less than the amount of time I'd have to pour into coding for GIMP.
        • paulsmith288, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1What about when the next version of photoshop comes out - you had better get your wallet out.

          Improve gimp (or something else) and your feature will probably be in the next release and the one after that. Not costing you or anyone else anything.
        • geminitojanus, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1For the same money you'd pay for a single copy of Photoshop, you could have spent the same amount on fixing the GIMP, or half of that divided across two people. Or one-one-thousanth spread across a thousand. If all of the people who have spouted the meme about the GIMP not having CMYK spent a single penny on adding CMYK to the GIMP, the GIMP would have had it by now (and some developer somewhere would be sitting on a fat amount of cash).

          Seriously, if anyone cared enough, it'd do it by now. But nobody cares enough. And people will go right on pirating Photoshop to crop their photos and add "Hi Grandma" text overlays.
          • illegalcortex, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2"For the same money you'd pay for a single copy of Photoshop, you could have spent the same amount on fixing the GIMP"

            Not to be a jerk, but you clearly don't understand how much I get paid and hour.

            And yes, I waste time posting on digg, among other things. But there's only so much code a guy can write in a day and I'm already at that limit.
    • deltaandroid, on 02/19/2008, -6/+6I'm not alone when I say I want iTunes ported over. I know asking for iTunes makes me seem like the devils advocate to the awesome Amarok and such, but iTunes is really the easiest way to get synchronization with the new iPod touch and iPhone, its not very practical to compile the buggy source for the multiple sub-versions of libpod and such.
      • int19h, on 02/20/2008, -0/+6Songbird + iPod plugin are turning out pretty well
        • Daniel591992, on 02/20/2008, -0/+4Not when you have DRM'd files :(
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1I thought there were ways to "fix" that
      • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3Then don't compile the source of libpod (which by itself really won't help much for your iPod, by the way). Just emerge it, or use apt-get, or use yum or whatever.
        Plus, the abundance of alternatives for both Windows and Mac seems to suggest that there really are a lot of people who would prefer not to use iTunes.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -2/+0Hehehehehehehe.

          I should boot into my custom distro more often. No package management.
      • tech42er, on 02/20/2008, -0/+4Then bug Apple. They're the only ones who can port iTunes.
      • belzoradon, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1dugg down for off topic
    • mooninite, on 02/20/2008, -3/+16CMYK support is already in GIMP!! Good lord! They have full color profile support. This article is such BS and half of these comments are, too.

      Go download the latest stable version of GIMP 2.4.x and enjoy all your CMYK withdrawls.
      • jeriqo, on 02/20/2008, -11/+2Crashes during startup on a macbook, macbook pro, and PPC iMac.
        Lame.
        • mooninite, on 02/20/2008, -6/+8I'm sorry you're using a Mac. I run Linux on all my machines so GIMP works great on all my machines.

          Install a x86 and PPC linux distro. Trash your OS X.
        • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+6Umm, you might want to read the instructions. You've gotta install a few different things if you want it on your Mac.
        • paulsmith288, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2You shouldn't have to move over to linux. Open source means that anyone can make it run anywhere if they have the knowledge an time. Hopefully whoever is porting it over to OSX will do a better job in the future. But bravo to them for trying.
          • linuxpenguin, on 02/22/2008, -0/+1You don't have to move over - you just have to install some other things first.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/21/2008, -0/+0Take into account how much work porting it to Mac OSX really is...

          Its probably more the fault of the Xserver(because GIMP and its components are about the same on MacOSX), to be honest with you. It lacks tablet and other extra input support even! And guess who made that?
    • tobikow, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Just as Lil' John would be "crunk" on wine...
  • DiggLive, on 02/19/2008, -77/+5Why are Linux users never happy? Google is helping the Linux community and all they say is that it's not good enough and they're 'intoxicating' the users?

    Sheesh. I can't decide which is worse, Linux or Mac users.
    • num3thod, on 02/19/2008, -3/+49Truly amazing how dumb you are.
    • deviouskoopa, on 02/19/2008, -21/+4No one should ever ask which is worse, Linux or Mac users. Never.
      • deviouskoopa, on 02/19/2008, -8/+3...Because the answer is obvious. Sigh never mind.
    • DivineMonkey, on 02/19/2008, -10/+43"Sheesh. I can't decide which is worse, Linux or Mac users."

      Windows users.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -1/+6lol. This is true. Always trying to get me to switch back. There is no replacement for Bash, Cygwin sucks, and MinGW takes too long to set up the way i like it and doesn't even have GCC 4 (Funny enough, i compiled a MinGW with GCC 4 on my Linux box in a matter of hours. Ironic?)
    • Atomic1fire, on 02/19/2008, -0/+12Either Digglive is being sarcastic
      or they dont understand that Wine is also the name of an alcoholic drink (thus the Intoxication pun they are loaded on whine....)
      • mvent2, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3He's too young to have alcohol so he doesn't get the joke.
    • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1Yeah - try reading the article... The article isn't negative, the title is just a play on words...
    • richbleak, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1I can't believe you were able to figure out how to use the tubes through which this post was carried.
  • whittmadden, on 02/19/2008, -1/+63I'm a linux user, and quite happy to hear news that Google is taking part in making Windows apps, work in linux. Would I prefer to see native apps? Yes I would, but I will not complain. I think Photoshop is a fantastic app, and the fact that I can run newer versions of it in Linux is great nomatter if it's run using WINE or not. I don't want to start a GIMP vs Photoshop flame war here either. A lot of people use and love GIMP, to me, its a matter of preference, and if I can use a version of Photoshop in linux that is still relevant, then thats wonderful.
    • eean, on 02/19/2008, -0/+13Google Earth and Google Desktop are released on Linux as native apps.
      • Atomic1fire, on 02/19/2008, -0/+8Improving wine is its own reward
        With the improvements that company's make to allow support for their products
        it means that it opens the door for Linux to conquer windows openly and with a software library
        • clockdist, on 02/24/2008, -0/+0Improvements to Wine is always good news. Just remember that compatibility generates more consumers. Look at what happened when Macs went Intel.
      • mrsteveman1, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1Google Picasa is not a native app, it is a win32 app compiled with the winelibs into a native binary format, ELF. It is still a windows app.
    • mrsteveman1, on 02/19/2008, -0/+5What may end up happening here is this, by the time companies like Adobe want to release their pro software for Linux, they might be able to do so quickly and cheaply by compiling it against the wine libraries. In effect it would be semi native instead of having to run under wine itself.

      This is not a bad thing, Google did this with Picasa and it helped them bring the app to linux quickly. Eventually the benefits of truly native applications will become worth the cost of development and these companies will start releasing native apps for Linux. Adobe already releases Reader and Flash for linux, other things will likely follow.
      • int19h, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3"In effect it would be semi native instead of having to run under wine itself."
        Wine is already semi-native. Wine is not an emulator.

        I even remember reading that one of the Wine-developers recommended running software through Wine instead of compiling in the Wine-libraries, since it wasn't really any difference. I'll see if I can find a link to that.
        • mrsteveman1, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1Wine is an execution environment, executables are still in the PE format, still think they are running on windows in most cases, and expect the entire WIN32 api to be present.

          In contrast, the winelibs stuff allows you to compile applications meant for windows into native ELF posix binaries, which then use the library directly from within the application.

          Theres a difference, and Google seems to have seen some wisdom in doing the winelibs thing, Picasa for Linux is a winelibs app.
    • Frost9999, on 02/20/2008, -3/+4My main app is Photoshop CS3 and I rarely see it compared with GIMP for the way I use it. I need something that can manage tens of thousands of photos as a workflow. There's no native linux app that does that well yet so I stick with Photoshop on Windows XP. If Wine can run CS3 with Bridge.. I'm in!

      PS - I wanted a Mac Pro, but the Mac Pro was too expensive and only as quick as my new Quad core Intel PC so I built that instead for 20% of the price. Love my little Macbook though :)
      • Yodacola, on 02/20/2008, -0/+120% is stretching it, bud. Mac Pros use server-grade hardware. Last time I checked, Mac Pros were still cheaper than Dell's workstations.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Then again, if you use Dell, your a ***** retard. Or ignorant, but usually just plain dumb.

          What happened to DIY? Mobo, Graphics Card, CPU, some drives and a case to put it in...
          And Apples are over priced for the hardware they contain, just not as much as people say. (Coming right down to it, probably cheaper than a dell with similar quality and class hardware)
    • nullx42, on 02/20/2008, -5/+3you,use,too,many,of,these,
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0Uhh.. that's not really necessary. Maybe there were a couple of places where it was unnecessary to use a , or places that could had been better off with a ;, but really, is it worth a whole post?
    • clockdist, on 02/20/2008, -5/+1Real Photoshop lovers use Macs.
  • EvoPsy, on 02/19/2008, -36/+21I don't know what any of this means.

    Bury me for commenting anyways.
    • verevi, on 02/19/2008, -3/+27Lemme guess. You're wearing nothing but denim and you're not a farmer?

  • UNCCEJ1010, on 02/19/2008, -1/+20Having PS run in Linux is nice. I just prefer to use that over the GIMP. It's a matter of habit at this point.
    • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2I'm one of those freaks who learned on the GIMP and get lost when someone shows me Photoshop. I've resisted stealing Photoshop all these years. I obviously am not going to shell out the money for it when I mainly make little graphic bits for doing CSS and the occasional logo or game sprite.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -2/+3I respect it when people use proprietary software just because they prefer it. That is fine. Even if its possible to adapt and then use the alternative just as easily, I think that the whole Open Source movement was all about having the ability to make a choice, not being limited to using proprietary software for anything.

      Though i can pwn a rather new Photoshop user with my GIMP skills (hah, they aren't really skills. Just experience to know how to do things. I'm not very artistic or anything like that, which ***** me off, but oh well.)
    • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1Same here - Although sometimes I do use GIMP, I just can't do much more than really basic stuff... Not so much because of the big differences, but the little things that make some tools work slightly differently and give me (a Photoshop user for four or five years) a result different from what I was expecting...
  • TheRealToma, on 02/19/2008, -3/+7:O
    Dragon Naturally Speaking is a well needed thing for linux. Theres some speech recognition stuff, but none as advanced as this. Would be so much better having native tho. As for Photoshop, its needed by some companies for design. GIMP is fantastic and I use it daily, but its not photoshop and I can see why photoshop kids would have a hard time converting. But hey, if youre converting OS's at the same time, you might aswell try to learn how to use GIMP.
    • shredswithpiks, on 02/19/2008, -1/+2posteration problems in GIMP. send halp!!!!
    • basic0, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2I do IT work in the medical field, and although I use Linux almost exclusively on my laptop and have set up Linux servers for work, I'd never recommend Linux as an end-user OS in my field for two reasons:

      1. No speech recognition software. Macspeech is currently in beta with their new version which uses a licensed version of Dragon's recognition engine. I would think if a big company like Google wanted robust speech recognition on Linux, they could license the engine from Dragon as well and write a nice application around it.

      2. No *simple* system for recording/scripting GUI actions (like Applescript, Automator, Quickeys, Type-it-for-me, etc). I've seen a couple projects that try to do this, but you still basically have to write Python or TCL scripts by hand. I'm a computer geek and I don't want to be bothered with that, so why would a busy doctor, nurse, or secretary?
      • int19h, on 02/20/2008, -0/+21. No speech recognition software?
        XVoice
        CVoiceControl/kVoiceControl
        Open Mind Speech
        GVoice
        ISIP
        CMU Sphinx
        Ears
        NICO ANN Toolkit
        Myers' Hidden Markov Model Software
        Jialong He's Speech Recognition Research Tool
        (from http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Speech-Recogn ... )

        2. No simple system for recording/scripting GUI actions?
        JW_Record_Playback
        xmacro
        xnee
      • tech42er, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1You're in the "medical field" and you need speech recognition and recording/scripting GUI actions software? What exactly do you do?
  • yaryarhumphump, on 02/19/2008, -4/+19About damn time!

    One step closer to getting rid of windows....
    • glitch77, on 02/19/2008, -1/+4Once all windows apps are supported on linux, Windows shall be no more! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!!

      One of my sentences is incorrect.
      • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1Was it "Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!!" ???
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/22/2008, -0/+1No, as a surprise, its actually "One of my sentences is incorrect."
    • theaceoffire, on 02/20/2008, -1/+5Already there, and I'm feeling fine.
    • hobo05, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1one step closer to supporting some arbitrary version of windows apps...nothing more, nothing less.Once a new or new version of a desirable app is released on windows again (that is unsupported by WINE), the whole process begins again.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Think, though. The API "emulation" gets stable enough and problems occur less and less and cause less trouble.

        But you already knew that, considering you know so much about the process already.
  • fatsobob, on 02/19/2008, -1/+5This is a major step in the right direction, but there are still a few programs left that I am really waiting for before I completely switch over from windows. Right now I run one machine with windows and two with Linux, but I primarily use my windows box for those programs.
  • Ph0biA, on 02/19/2008, -2/+14Dugg for Wine Pun....
    Now quit "Wine"ing...
    Pun
    • mpfarmer, on 02/19/2008, -3/+5Does this article "Wine"d you up?
      • LegendarySock, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2Stop making puns...

        ...you S"Wine"
  • sambapati87, on 02/19/2008, -8/+16"Improvements to Photoshop sponsored by Adobe have made it possible to run Adobe Photoshop under Mac OS X and Windows without Wine."
    • sirhomer, on 02/19/2008, -3/+5Hah! If only they'd support Linux too. :) It would save Google/Wine team a lot of work!
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -3/+2"Improvements to Photoshop sponsored by Adobe have made it possible to run Adobe Photoshop under Mac OS X and Windows without Wine."? Well, that's almost the stupidest thing I've read all day long.

      I think i know the category!! Is it "Things that completely miss the point"?
      • sambapati87, on 02/20/2008, -2/+4No, the category is "things that understand the point but understand that if you're paying $300 + for Adobe software, why not buy a fully supported operating system rather than trying to hack a solution together"
        • tech42er, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2Paying for Photoshop? Adobe turns a blind eye to individuals pirating Photoshop so they can remain a standard. They make their money on organizational licenses.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2You know what, your so hard-headed your barely worth this much talk. Its called missing the ***** point of using Linux. Think for FIVE MINUTES: Its not about the money. Its about the freedom. I don't give a ***** about your friend who uses Ubuntu or SuSE or whatever just because its "free" for money.

          Heres why i don't use the fully supported OS: Its supported by a company who cares about nothing but Money. As hippy as it sounds, Microsoft, no doubt, has evil intentions, and if they didn't, they would support Open Source. Think: Proprietary software is only proprietary so it can be sold.
          • sambapati87, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Dude, I use Ubuntu. And a Mac for my design work. Relax.
  • cave, on 02/19/2008, -0/+6Hmmm Photoshop CS2... If only they got Illustrator to work now, I could use Linux at work.
  • ethana2, on 02/19/2008, -0/+2Next up, sketchup. Google did more for us by bringing WINE to where it could run picasa than they ever would have done by making their own native port. I want to see Google apps bundled on some of these: www.dell.com/ubuntu
    Perhaps they're already in the partner repos..
    • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Sketchup is really neat. Kind of expensive (the free version doesn't seem useful), makes me want to roll my own dumbed down version as open source.
  • qbyte, on 02/19/2008, -11/+2Who cares about Dragon? Couldn't they find a more relevant application to make work better in Wine ... like iTunes or some of the cool PC games? Dragon sucks on Windows - it can't be any better on Linux! Who (other than those who need to because of a handicap) wants to TALK to their computer?
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -1/+9Well, in the same sense, Who cares about what you think? Besides, if you knew anything about Wine you should already know that these patches are fixing core compatibility issues at the source. Other applications stumbling upon the same issues as these two will no longer deal with it.
    • kenplaysviola, on 02/19/2008, -0/+3Well they did mention people with disabilities who can benefit from using Dragon Natural Speak. Is there a native Linux version of Dragon, or something similar?
    • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2who cares about iTunes? mtdaap for the server, And Banshee or Amarok for the synching/playing. far more powerful (and amarok has a nice confusing GUI for those who love Windows & KDE style of UI)
      Or are you one of those who have bought DRM'd music from Apple without first un-DRMing it?
  • leexy, on 02/19/2008, -5/+2That's all good and well, but where is the tutorial to get Dragon working on Ubuntu? I'm upgrading Wine as I type this, but have no idea if it'll work or not. Seriously folks, this is fantastic news, but quit digging useless ad-laden articles and please start focusing on Wikis and such.
    • ratrip, on 02/19/2008, -0/+2Just click the setup.exe of dragon. If Google has done a good job with Wine, it should be "just like Windows". (shudder).
    • FKnight, on 02/20/2008, -13/+2Weird, all I do is double click setup.exe. Oh wait, I forgot -- I'm running a mature, supported operating system, written by people who's mortgage is riding on their job.

      Have fun with your "Installing Dragon Naturally Speaking" weekend project :D
      • Netrilix, on 02/20/2008, -6/+2As much as I love Linux, I had to Digg you up for the "weekend project" bit. Well said.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+7You know, Its not always a weekend project. And Seriously, Wine is just here to get attention and provide temporary solutions, do you honestly believe that the OS itself has anything to do with how difficult it is to use an application written under it that is trying to emulate one of the worst APIs ever devised? (I honestly can stand POSIX, ALSA and all of those other insane APIs over the win 32 API... GTK included...)

        I can stand that Wine is not perfect, but really, it has NOTHING to do with Linux, Wine runs on Mac OSX also.

        Way to go.
      • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2You mean to tell me that there's people whose mortgages aren't riding on their jobs?
        If you mean to suggest that your software is written by for-pay programmers. . . then you might want to rethink that - I'm pretty sure the people at Google don't work for free.
      • tech42er, on 02/20/2008, -0/+6Guys, please stop feeding the ***** troll.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Don't worry, I'm about ready to hunt the troll >_>
  • CoolWind, on 02/19/2008, -0/+1Does anyone know if photoshop elements 5 will install and run in the latest wine and latest Ubuntu?
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -3/+1Probably, but its much easier to try, isn't it?

      To get the LATEST, latest wine, you must have GIT installed, the GCC tool chain, the development libraries for ALSA and X11 and probably some other things I'm forgetting. If all else fails, use Google, and they have a page at WineHQ just for doing the GIT and building from it (If you shorten it, its a matter of 3-5 commands, as long as the prerequisites are installed.)
      • specz, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3you don't need the development headers, just download the binaries for your distribution. eg: type "apt-get install wine" in debian or ubuntu.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -2/+1Does that do GIT?... I seriously doubt it.
        • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1If you add the Wine repo, then you have the latest WINE within two weeks - which is not bad
      • hudey123, on 02/20/2008, -4/+0You two just perfectly explained why people can't move to Linux yet. Until everyday users can install things in Linux just as easily as they do in Windows, Linux will remain at the bottom of the barrel.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2And you perfectly explained why most Windows users should never post anything on the internet. The same process and MORE work goes for compiling Wine on GIT on windows - If you use the package manager of Ubuntu, no need to touch the terminal.

          Of course there are other ways to get software on Linux! If you know anything about computers you should know there's always like 500 ways to do anything.

          And besides, Windows has its fair share of installer problems. Do remember that InstallShield getting screwed is easy, and then half of the programs you want to install/uninstall are now useless.

          Linux does have an alternative to install shield exes - its called RPMs. Any Linux based OS, even ones without RPM, should at least support installing it by extracting it, just for the sake of completeness, but they don't. Its not my fault they decided not to include any utilities or didn't integrate it well. My advice? Drop that OS and use one that does support at least installing RPMs.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Do not mention that compiling GIT Wine on windows would be redundant. I am aware. And it is possible with a cross-toolchain, or possibly Cygwin.
  • microchp, on 02/19/2008, -9/+1If Google can make WoW run flawlessly (sound, video, voice chat, all add-ons) on Linux, they may have my first born, or every other offspring I produce for that matter, for whatever purpose they see fit. For video I want to see at least 140fps or better consistently across all my machines. Voice chat should work just as well if not better than it does on XP. WoW is the only thing left holding me to XP. Everything else already works fine in wine or has a linux equiv that I use. When I say flawlessly, I mean out of the box, no hacks, no tweaks, no additional mods. Happy Clicky Flawlessly.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/19/2008, -2/+3If you desperately want it working in Linux, you should be able to use Transgaming Cedega. I know, Don't even go flaming me, I'm aware of the crap about Cedega. I just heard their hackish setup for running WoW worked OOB. I don't even play WoW so I wouldn't know. If you use Teamspeak, i'm almost certain that runs on Linux also. And one more thing, If your mic isn't working well, then you may also want to update ALSA, and if you must, tweak it until it does work. (I tweaked my setup and i got pwnsome results - Windows XP doesn't even sound as good as ALSA on this box.)
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -2/+2Ya I have read about all the ways people get it working in Cedega and wine. I have used WoW in wine before after fighting with it and ALSA for a few hours, only to have it break on each kernel/alsa update. I also get mixed results between gentoo and Fedora. My results also vary from hardware to hardware quite a bit. ALSA would be another great project for Google to take on as well.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -3/+0You know what i'd really want? I want Google to develop their own sound layer. ALSA is just.. fail.. Not as much as OSS, Alsa is quite nice a lot of times, but a new sound layer would be nice.
        • mooninite, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3Good lord what are you doing? You should never have to do any ALSA configuration. Last time I messed with it was... hm... never! In all my 4 years of Linux computing.

          Let me guess. You're using slackware and you're a first time Linux user. Good lord. Download Fedora 8 and install wine 0.9.55 and run WoW perfectly. No tweaking. No config file editing. Just double click and go. Of course, if you have a nVidia card you're fine. If you have an ATI card, forget it.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Well, Alsa configuration CAN be helpful. It really depends on your hardware.
        • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1@mooninite: This has been on Gentoo, FC8, FC7, FC6, Sabayon. I might try ubuntu as I hear that the support is much stronger on that side of the force, but I just haven been able to bring myself to do it.

          Again, this varies greatly with the hardware you are using. I have many different machines and am a good example of what people will run into in dealing with the mass market. I have made WoW work on wine in many different combinations and had to screw with ALSA and wine in most of those scenerios. yes, a few of my machines required little tweaking. ONE of them required no tweaking at all and that was good... until a kernel patch came out (That was FC8 on an ASUS board) It breaks on Gentoo every other update...

          I am happy for those here that install linux once, have wine/ALSA working fine and never patch their machines. For the rest of the world, this simply is not the case. By all means, prove me wrong. I would be very happy if I was wrong. :-D Get 100 non geeks you know to install linux and fire up WoW. I am quite familiar with the hardware that all my friends have and know that they will have issues in most cases. I do not want to be tied to supporting their machines, much less, mine. I am too lazy for that. I want to be gaming, not hacking.

          • mooninite, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1WTF? I have installed Linux on a dozen machines. Each had perfect sound with *NO* /etc/asound.conf editing. No editing of any configuration files whatsoever. Onboard sound, Creative SB Live! cards, you name it. I've used them. Also played WoW on each of them. Something is *seriously* wrong with your hardware if you have to do any config file tweaking.
          • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0No, not always. You've never experienced hardware problems in Linux then you're just plain lucky. It happens. Theres nothing that can be done about it happening - It happens on Windows too, and it will happen on Linux, and right now it happens to happen on Linux more often.

            I have to admit though, it seems the higher quality hardware i get... the better things work.
            Not to mention my friends all have problems with certain distros on pre-built boxes.
    • ratrip, on 02/19/2008, -0/+3Nice promise, from somebody who is too busy to screw around :P
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -3/+1Hahaha! Touché! Actually I have helped numerous couples have a baby, but it might prove difficult to give every other one to Google.... though I suppose I could get them to sign adoption papers ahead of time going forward.

        I only raid on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and not necessarily every week. That leaves several evenings to procreate.
    • mooninite, on 02/20/2008, -0/+8What kind of BS is this comment? World of Warcraft has been working on Wine for over *TWO YEARS* perfectly!

      Yes, with voice chat support! Go play WoW now! No tweaks required! Just install and double click on the icon! *GASP*

      With a nVidia card, of course, I get over 100fps in lots of places.
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -3/+1Wine+WOW does NOT work consistently across different Linux distros and different hardware (even if sound is working fine for the desktop and other X apps). Wine, ALSA, OSS are far from complete in this area. Yes, on one machine with an nVidia card and very generic hardware I was able to get about 170fps. That is one machine and the mass market does not have that machine. They have a wide mix of hardware and many different distros of Linux, each of which tweaks ALSA and kernel modules differently to handle sound. Each has its own build of wine that are not consist ant with each other. The biggest obstacle that will face the majority of people wanting to game in Linux is the sound support. Each distro has its own hacks to make that work and each distro manages to break it. The most challenging was this Lenovo t61p and one of my nVidia mobos.

        If Google helps build wine in a way that keeps each Linux distro from screwing with it (standardization) and further improves the situation by helping with sound support, then many people will embrace it instead of the handful that want to screw around with kernel boot options, ALSA configs, wine profiles, kernel re compiles and such. Yes, I know, many geeks are OK with having to screw around with it because that is part of the fun. I have grown out of that fun and would rather spend my time killing the other factions, killing mobs and getting ready for BT. More to the point, the majority of people everyone here wants to see switch won't even be able to screw around with it which means they will give up on it.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2Hah, you haven't grown out of geekiness, you moved it over to something that is even less productive. (Honestly, WoW is really REALLY geeky and kinda.. useless.)
    • Kr4t05, on 02/20/2008, -1/+4Please get a life. You're making the rest of us look bad.
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -4/+1A life is too expensive, otherwise I would ask for a rez.
      • sybesis, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1ah nah he doesn't make us look bad...he just make look windows user disrespectful...I mean WoW lol
    • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2WoW already runs better for me on Linux than on XP. several other people I know have the same experience. nvidia cards are still the best for Linux even though ATI went fully open spec.
      There are plenty of shell scripts out there that you run, stick in your WoW CD and it sets everything up in ubuntu for you. that's about as out-of-the-box as it gets.
      If it doesn't work on some distro that's the distro's problem not Wine's. Maybe you should only worry about a distro you actually run?
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1The two that I primarily run (FC8 and Gentoo) have never ending problems. Every laptop I have used has had these problems, as did my nVidia mobo, lenovo t61p, HP zd8230 and several other newer machines with nVidia mobo's. I had one machine that everything ran perfectly on (Asus mobo, nVidia card) but that was broken by a kernel update as well. I got it working, but the point is most people won't bother and will run back to XP in a panic.

        If everyone I knew that ran linux tried to run WoW, I would have to spend hundreds of hours fixing their machines. That means it doesn't work out of the box. If everyone I knew running XP were to switch because they read this thread and believed that it would work, I know that most of them would be really ***** off. Some here would go the elitist route and say that they shouldn't go linux then, but that again defeats the purpose of trying to make things run and pull people away from XP/Vista.

        The whole point of this is to get more people on to linux. I want that just as much as anyone. For gamers, it isn't there yet. Yes, a handful of machines work just fine, especially older ones, especially non-laptops. The problem is that people don't hold on to older gear for long, not everyone uses the same distro and not everyone uses generic hardware or hardware that is completely supported by a vanila kernel yet.

        I agree that nVidia video cards for workstations are certainly the way to go. I have had the least problems with them, even though I do end up using the nVidia driver instead of the nv supplied with X due to fps performance.

        Anyway, this is why I stick by my statements and would rather see Google help improve the key components that are keeping many from switching, especially gamers. Fix these issues and I am confident that would be the epoxy coated one-way carbide coated screws would be in M$ coffin.
  • BobbyWu, on 02/19/2008, -3/+1Bury me for saying this: I think I understand the original post. One thing: If English is not your native tongue, please proof what you write for comprehension. _________ As for Photoshop - BFD - I have been using GIMP on LINUX and MAC for a few years - it works, although I am not in a production environment. Dragon - I agree with previous posts - it was awful on WINDOWS and why should it be any different on a Linux box??
  • epileet, on 02/19/2008, -2/+3wooo good work google!
  • Trixrox, on 02/19/2008, -10/+6Neat, but I can run Photoshop and Dragon Naturally Speaking on Windows...What is so great about running Windows Apps on Linux. Native is the way to go, until then I will continue to use the native opperating system that is supported widely...Windows.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+6Do you not understand why people do this? In the least offensive way possible, you kinda missed the point. The point was to draw attention to Linux by providing temporary alternatives to writing full replacements for commercial applications, at least for most of us. If Linux becomes worth the money because of the amount of users Wine attracts, then companies will likely see more reason to provide support - Besides, Wine can only do so much, Wine does integrate well but can't substitute for how well a native application can integrate. Adobe is making me happy right now though, with there native ports, even if they haven't took time to port there largest applications. For example, HaXe and Flex 2 is just pwnsome, and Adobe Reader 8 is a nice port (Bloatware yes, and i'd rather use KPDF or some other reader yes, but its nice for those who have grown to like Adobe Reader)
      • marx2k, on 02/20/2008, -2/+2agree, but dugg down for pwnsome. What are you, 14?
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2..uhm... Put down for use of a word? What, are you 5? Besides. I like pwnsome.
    • CoolWind, on 02/20/2008, -0/+9I'm tired of dealing with Windows Genuine Advantage. I want to be able to add and swap new hardware at will without having to talk to some bozo in India to get permission to reactivate Windows. With Linux there's no such problem. With Linux, once you get over the learning curve it's nothing but smooth sailing ahead.
      • microchp, on 02/20/2008, -0/+7Agreed. I once called them just for fun and to tell them I was going to bypass their checks and show others how to do it. The drone just kept reading off the card. I am convinced I was talking to a machine, probably running linux. (She didn't bluescreen once)
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2To add to that last thing, If you change some hardware, there is a chance that windows will stop booting altogether. (Safe Mode included) This happened for the third time to me about a month ago.
    • stix213, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0If you are fine with paying $$$ for an OS that crashes more often than Linux which usually is free, then go right ahead.

      By the way, how is all that spyware going? I wouldn't know since Linux is all but immune.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Hah, Linux isn't immune (If you use it right its damn near impossible to get though) but its unlikely that anyone would take the time trying to write a virus that will run on all Linux computers only to have it circulate on a very small scale (Aren't enough Linux desktops in the wild yet)
        • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1"(Aren't enough Linux desktops in the wild yet)"

          Um... how about the 60 to 70% of websites on the internet that run on Linux servers...?
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/23/2008, -0/+01. No longer true? I thought ever since GoDaddy moved their parked domains Linux / Apache 2 setups lost a bunch of their percentage.
          2. If it is true, aren't viruses more targeted toward desktops? DDoS attacks for the server... viruses for the desktop?
  • fokov, on 02/19/2008, -2/+4Can anyone point me in the right direction to understanding what is the legality of reversing engineering API calls on windows. Also, what does google gain by having people off Microsoft, besides attempting to stop its competitor from getting extra revenue?
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+21. Fair use, they can reverse engineer and document APIs and then a programmer may program it. That is perfectly legal.
      2. You already stated most of it, But also because Google supports Linux for whatever reasons (I support Linux, but i see no reason for Google to want End users using Linux.)
      • ours, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2For Google, Linux means people using an OS not controlled by one of their biggest competitors. Vista proposes as default using Live Search (I know you can change it be default brings mom and pop to Live and not Google). And Google had to wait for Vista SP1 in order to let the user to choose another file indexer then the default Windows one in order to ease users wanting to use Google Desktop Search.
        On the other hand, Ubuntu comes with Firefox that comes with Google search as default. That's good for their business and all round bad news for Microsoft. No OS sold, no web services pushed to customers.
        Google has a lot to win from Linux as long as the Linux community keeps loving them as they are today. Dumping cash on Firefox and Wine makes sense. But if someone else makes a better search engine, there could be some trouble if Firefox kept on promoting Google first.
    • Ademan, on 02/20/2008, -0/+7What wine does is known as "white room" (clean room?) reverse engineering, they treat windows (and all of its APIs) as black boxes, they implement what they hope will work exactly like windows by using the known input and output of functions, and the (shoddy) documentation of the win32 API and other libraries.

      This is perfectly legal.

      As for what google has to gain, I have no idea... I have yet to RTFA, but I think the idea was they didn't have to work on a native port of picasa? Something like that I think...
    • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+31. They're not reverse-engineering, they use official documentation when available and they use trial-and-error and best-guess when there's no documentation. That's not illegal. There's plenty of NES/SNES/N64/GameCube/Genesis/PS/PS2 emulators out there - why aren't they illegal? Because creating something like this isn't illegal, so long as you're not just reverse-engineering the original.
      2. Google isn't trying to get people off of Microsoft products per se. Google has gotten criticism in the past for not porting their own projects to Linux - WINE helps Linux users be able to use these products without them creating a port, and it also makes it easier for Google to create a port using the libwine libraries. People can still use MS products - WINE will also help, say, Office 2007 be able to run on Linux. This also helps the public's opinion of them - at least within the open-source community.
      Not to mention, Microsoft isn't a competitor - they're a monopolizer.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+11. Yes, they are reverse engineering code. Literally. Same with ReactOS. Fair Use partially covers this though.
        2. Microsoft is a competitor to Google per say. They are both software and search engine companies and both Google and Microsoft buy many others technologies.
        • linuxpenguin, on 02/22/2008, -0/+11. Okay, so they are. But only where they need to - where there's solid, up-to-date documentation available, it is counterproductive to reverse engineer.
          2. True and true. What's your point? I didn't say they weren't competitors ,although in the personal computer software field where this affects them. . . they're really not - Google doesn't have its own OS, game system, or office suite, and in my opinion you can't call what Microsoft has been doing in the area of search engines "competing".
          Something tells me that the little stab I used as the last sentence went over your head. . .
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/23/2008, -0/+01. Because much of windows internals are not documented or not documented well. Yes, there is a wide library of up to date docs, but they are not always completely correct, and they don't always provide in depth explanations.
          2. Not to split hairs, but Google does have is own OS, its just private :) Anyways, I got your point. Maybe it did go over my head. But i do know that Microsoft and Google are competing, in some sense.
  • digitallysick, on 02/19/2008, -0/+8lets get some .net 2.0 apps running linux. That would help me a ton...
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3You might want to look toward supporting Gnudotnet or Mono. The integration of Wine will help, more so than just the way you currently use Mono along with wine (by installing it :P)
      • digitallysick, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Mono works great for .net 1.0, but still need .net 2.0 last i checked
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1It has some 2.0 support. It sort of ran a game i wrote in C# Net 2.0.
        • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+12.0 has come along a long way in the last six months, last I heard.
    • marx2k, on 02/20/2008, -2/+2Visual Studio .Net in wine would be greeeeat
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1Not really.
        Its bloatware.

        Seriously, Get used to Code::Blocks, or if any bloatware Eclipse. The Microsoft compilers suck pretty bad at standards compliance anyways.
        • Kamujin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Seriously, get a clue. Hate MS all you want. Visual Studio is by far the best IDE on the market.

          It would also be great to be able to debug mono/.net apps under Linux. Sadly, Monodevelop doesn't currently support debugging.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0Hah. Best IDE. Whatever, I've used it for a long period of time. Its bloated out further than any normal person would need, and if you needed that on Linux too, you could set up Eclipse to do it.

          Plus... does ANYBODY like dealing with the non-standard Microsoft C/C++ compilers? There are small issues plaguing code I port to it. I don't remember any of the most recent ones, but they're pretty annoying.

          As for using .NET... .NET is bloatware too, and so is mono. So if you really like annoying the ***** out of your users, your heading down the exact path you need to be.
          • Kamujin, on 03/15/2008, -0/+1Yeah, you keep trying to debug your memory leaks and corrupt pointers. I've got real work to do.
  • Leetamus, on 02/20/2008, -3/+0now if they could just get Flash working! (not the plugin..., the prog!)
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3Uhh... I've ran Flash 8 in Wine, i Believe Flash CS3 with some... "help" (ahem, the licensing system doesn't like wine) I'm not certain though, my memory is really blurry.
    • RaiKitsune, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2I remember running Flash 8 perfectly in Wine awhile ago.
      • Leetamus, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1I thought it had crashing issues when moving the floating controllers, has that been remedied in the last few months?
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Not sure exactly what you meant, but i used Flash 8 for at least a year without any crash issues (Well maybe 1 here and there but not anything annoying.)
  • xxl3w, on 02/20/2008, -10/+8Confused. If you're virtualizing Windows under Linux to run programs, why Linux? Ohh, because you have to pay for windows. Thank god Photoshop is free. Still confused about the whole Windows/Linux battle. Back in win95/win98/win98se/winME days, I totally understood. XP is stable. I've never had problems with crashing. If you've had problems with crashes, you installed hardware incorrectly or installed spyware.
    • theMADone, on 02/20/2008, -1/+3the point you're missing is its as much a david and goliath thing as it is about system functionality. no one wants to see microsoft be the only viable choice for operating systems, and the current ubuntu distro i use is equally as stable as xp, but is so much less likely to catch spyware in the first place! oh and as u correctly pointed out, it is free!
    • zeromancer, on 02/20/2008, -0/+4there's nothing wrong with windows if you run it properly, which most people don't. but the only reason i use windows is for photoshop and games. but you still suck at hating on linux.
      • fokov, on 02/20/2008, -1/+3Why is everyone stuck in fan boy mode? I personally like both XP, Vista, and a bunch of the Linux distro's. Not everyone just likes ONE type.
    • xxl3w, on 02/20/2008, -3/+1I have no problem with Linux. I love Linux. The best thing about Linux distros is LiveCDS. It's an easy way to rescue a Harddrive without removing the harddisk and putting it into another machine. I'm currently dual booting ubuntu/winXP, but I only boot into ubuntu to update. Maybe, my many problems with Wine have made me the hater I am :P. /me hates ATI. You act like people don't have a choice. There's ALWAYS a choice. You don't HAVE to order a machine with XP preintsalled. You can build it OR order a bare system without an OS. Then install ubuntu. Most people don't want to do this, hence when winXP is preinstalled. There is not a demand for linux at the moment. That's why Microsoft has no problem controlling the market. Instead of exclaiming "IT'S FREE, IT'S FREE. NO SPYWARE". Linux needs something to distinguish itself from the pack. Other than running stable webservers with Apache, I see nothing. In that case, I'd go with BSD anyday.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+4Welcome to today's list of People that Miss The Point Completely xxl3w.
    • CoolWind, on 02/20/2008, -0/+9Xp is great except for Windows Genuine Advantage. But the biggest problem is that your XP upgrade path is Vista. I don't want Vista. Period. Therefore, Linux is the obvious way to go. Screw the Microsoft and Apple monopolies. Break free with Linux.
    • OrangeTide, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3and if photoshop is the ONLY program a person runs then you might have a point. But people often run Linux professionally because they need it for some reason. And it's great when you can avoid buying people TWO machines to get their work done.
      Linux is stable for me and the filesystems available for it are noticeably better than NTFS. But mainly I run Linux for the apps that run on it.
    • Ademan, on 02/20/2008, -0/+4I switched to linux permanently after 6 months of dual booting because of:
      1. package management (seriously, it's an absolute dream, my first experience with it was installing apache, mysql and php after my friend had convinced me to try linux, I had previously done the same on windows. On XP I had to download apache, install, dick around with the config file, install mod_php, dick around with the config file, install php_mysql, dick around with the config file even more, and then finally i had my stupid WAMP server. sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql DONE, everything worked. I did it through a GUI as well)
      2. customizability. You don't need a thousand shoddy third party HACKS to customize linux (regardless of desktop environment). It was built that way, totally modular, and totally customizable
      3. development tools. There was a legion of development tools waiting to be used, new languages ready to be installed at the drop of a hat, IDEs, advanced text editors, compilers, everything. The only development tool i missed was visual studio 2003
      4. Did I mention package management? There are alot of other reasons why package management rules, not the least of which is redistrobution, on windows showing a program I wrote to a friend required me to either package a ton of DLLs with my program (bandwidth isn't free...), or have them download redistrobutable installers in order to run my crappy programs. On linux you can have someone download a couple of dependency packages and run your program, or even better package it up and have it all install cleanly and nicely.
      5. This one is really minor (and totally based on opinion), but I think clearlooks is the best looking theme for any platform ever.

      Those are MY reasons, some may not matter to you, some people may have other reasons, whatever...
    • tech42er, on 02/20/2008, -0/+2Linux is a much more powerful and more secure operating system. It's also free and open source. It does, however, have a bit of a learning curve, especially if you want to learn bash and shell scripting.
    • stix213, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1XP support from Microsoft is not that far from the end of life. After that you will be stuck with Vista or whatever OS Microsoft comes up with next. If you stick with MS you are then stuck with whatever decisions they make. You can have all the Microsoft DRM and Windows Genuine Advantage you want. If you enjoy flipping your laptop over to enter the cryptic product key during a Windows install that is fine.

      I want my OS DRM free
      I don't want a single company to dictate what i can and can't do
      I don't want a forced upgrade path (directX 10 only for Vista anyone?)
      I don't like cryptic product keys
      I don't want to convince an Indian dude over the phone that my copy is legit just cause I wanted to reinstall for the 3rd time this month
      I don't like bloatware
      I don't want to reactivate just because I changed the hardware more times than Microsoft allows in a single month

      If you actually like all that stuff, then go right ahead and stick with MS
    • srg13, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1Simple - I want to use Linux, and the only Windows application II need to use Photoshop.
  • ronaldmonster, on 02/20/2008, -6/+4Someone develop a Zune driver to work with wine and I'll switch.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+5Wine is not for drivers... Obviously to devs, we'd need kernel level emulation. That would actually be something I'm highly interested in helping develop, but i already tried doing it on my own, and it was just a fail - I don't know enough to go from scratch.
    • marx2k, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0I would like Zune support. I Havent bought an mp3 player since my MiniDisc recorder a few years back. I do not want a shoddy iPod and see Zune as a better value amongst the current mp3 player lineup. I would certainly buy one if I could up/download to it from Linux.

      Microsoft, you're losing a sale.
      • belzoradon, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1look into the iRiver, both ogg and Linux compatible out of box
    • linuxpenguin, on 02/20/2008, -4/+2Not worth the time - I hope they stick to making drivers for stuff worth using. For example things that don't resemble a turd.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Well, what they should do is stop *****.
      Windows XP? Good.
      Microsoft Visual C++? Almost good... sort of.
      DRM Codecs installed by default? Bad.
      Having a download manager just to get the pile of bloated ***** that is MSN messenger? Retarded.
      Genuine Advantage? WTF?!
  • laxdragon, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3CodeWeavers (www.codeweavers.com) helped Google for much of this work. If you want to support the Wine project and see it improve check them out.
  • myt29, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3Codeweaver is the maker of Crossover Office. I'm using Crossover to run WoW and many Steam games and it runs perfectly - sometimes even faster than my Windows machine.
  • hudey123, on 02/20/2008, -3/+0People actually use Dragon Naturally Speaking?
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+6Yeah. As far as i know, the software is in fact, intended to be used by people.
      • 1timeuser, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Mostly by mutants though.
        • andyakadum, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Mutants aren't people, or is that freaks?
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Mutants and freaks are both people.

          (However, those things that we still refer to as people who still write code in BASIC and languages based off of it are not.)
    • diggian, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Its used by Dragons, dump ass
      The clue is in the name.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Damn, II should've known back when I noticed how much better it worked when my dragon was using my computer to check his email >_>
  • Dropperbr, on 02/20/2008, -3/+4I had wine installed.. and i could say it does a pretty good job!
    My problem was with steam to play games.. but using wine i can even install fonts with .exe
    6..7 months ago.. i could run PS7.. and CS
    Soo I'm glad.. so see improvements
    But I'm using XP now..
    I can run.. anything.. and it just works.. !

    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -3/+7Again, for the 100 billionth time tonight. The fact that Windows software works on Windows is ACTUALLY KNOWN!! *shudders* OMFG, WE KNOW. REALLY. TRUST US. You miss the point.
    • sybesis, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1do you know any great terminal for windows that is a great as xterm + bash + gnu tools + anyother thing i installed on my comp?

      or may be there is a file browser as usefull as nautilus? ah a software that upgrade every app on my computer when there is a new version...i'm not talking about self upgrade from quicktime...

      Anjuta on windows? Glade Istanbule or Xine or even Totem that can read iso without any crapware like daemontools
      Can windows mount a iso file natively?

      Can windows forward userinterface i'm not talking about vpn or vnc i mean redirecting an app just like if it was running on my computer..?
      i mean...what do i get from windows? windows media player...Movie maker?
  • timmers0, on 02/20/2008, -5/+4Great. More Wineing linux users.
    heh.
  • Awspire, on 02/20/2008, -14/+2WINE is a waste of time. Its like overclocking your PC, you might get a bit of a boost, but the instability can creep up at your most crucial time of need. If you've deluded yourself into believing Linux is where its at for an OS, then I guess its better than nothing, but thats not saying a whole lot.
    • andycr512, on 02/20/2008, -2/+8Your post reeks of troll.

      "If you've deluded yourself into believing Linux is where its at for an OS,"

      Your line of thinking is wrong. "Linux isn't the best choice for me, so it must not be for anyone else, either!" Windows is a giant waste of time for the work I do. If I were to use Windows, I would lose a great deal of time each day making up for its shortcomings in relation to my work. Your work may be different. You should learn to accept that.
      • marx2k, on 02/20/2008, -1/+6I'm sure he can troll just as effectively in Linux.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1You being born was a waste of time.

      (...Too mean?)
  • deadbaby, on 02/20/2008, -0/+8I gotta hand it to Google. They are executing an amazing war on Microsoft right now on all fronts. They certainly won't win every battle but they are succeeding at diverting Microsoft's resources and generally getting under their skin.
  • AppleMacMan, on 02/20/2008, -11/+2Ok, I know who Google is but what's Linux?

    UPDATE:
    I had to google that and I found out it's an OS with a 0.67% market share. ROFL! (^__^)

    • tito13kfm, on 02/20/2008, -2/+6It may have that small of the DESKTOP market share. But add in all the LAMP and other servers and you start to see that you aren't dealing with such a small number any more.
    • SpyDerMann, on 02/20/2008, -0/+10You know, the same thing was said about Firefox when it came out.
    • 1timeuser, on 02/20/2008, -2/+7Yeah, but whats Mac OS X?

      UPDATE:
      I just found out its an OS with a moderate portion of the market share whos users are all smug little idiots that make silly ascii faces and spend thousands of dollars on hardware they most likely wont ever fully utilize.
      • Faust06, on 02/20/2008, -4/+1Smug little idiots? OS X users are the most sympathetic users to Linux you'll find. We're the most closely related to Linux, cousins if you will. And don't call us smug users. The Mac community is a very closely knit community, very similar to that of the Linux crowd. We do a great job of weeding out the crap, and making sure that the best software is promoted. People don't buy Macs by accident, they know what they're buying, how much it costs, and what they want to do with it, again very similar to Linux users. If you want mindless drones, go to Best Buy and purchase Vista.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+1Dissing the Kool-Aid?...*ahem*

          You can't generalize Mac users. Not now not ever. Don't try. Not all Mac users are the same. Alot of people complain that Mac is better than Linux, a lot complain the opposite, a lot team up with Linux or even dual-boot it on their Apple computers. And their opinions on Linux vary. I don't use Mac OSX and right now i don't use Windows. I'm trying FreeBSD and run Linux most of the time. However, I think Windows XP was a good OS aside from its licensing system, and that not everything that comes out of Microsofts gates are bad (Just, they bought it from someone else >_>)
        • Smok3y, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3It's definitely not fair to generalize in such a harsh fashion, you can't possibly say every Mac user is like that. That said, I'm not a big fan of Apple either. The very thought of their proprietary hardware becoming mainstream makes me shudder.
        • UKsHaDoW, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1There hadware is exactly the same pc's, except they have efi which is the successor to bios.
        • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -1/+0Well, not exactly - the older ones had PowerPC processors. I wish they would've kept it that way, it made Macs unique. But the show must go on I suppose.
    • mvent2, on 02/20/2008, -1/+2Yeah! Who cares about stability, speed or features? My OS is the best because lots of other people use it!
  • paulsmith288, on 02/20/2008, -0/+3Am I the only one who sees bad in this? Wine is a nice bit of software but it has one fundamental problem. Just like windows - it locks you into intel (well x86 anyway).
    Linux is great because you can run it on your toaster - I dont want to see that taken away. Maybe because I am a PPC linux user that Im pis*ed off.
    • tgoose, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Well, it's one step further away from total lock-in. If (and I'm not suggesting this is about to happen) WINE users started to become a large proportion of, say, Photoshop users, then Adobe could well sit up and take notice and release a native version. Then, you can complain directly to them about hardware support.

      Alternatively, more people running Linux *in general* means that the alternatives such as the GIMP improve to a level where they become useful for a greater proportion of current Photoshop users (personally it's more than enough for my needs, but clearly in some people's perception, whether founded or unfounded, it is not enough for them.) Then you can have happy times with your PowerPC and/or toaster running image manipulation software for sure.
    • Kamujin, on 02/20/2008, -0/+1Consider Wine a transition tool.
    • stix213, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Sorry to tell you, but Apple (the PPC overload) has unilaterally decided that the PPC platform is dead. Even though they said that they would continue supporting it with newer OS releases, that turned out to be a lie.

      Since the platform is dead, you shouldn't expect anyone else to suddenly start supporting it. Another Apple user gets bit in the ass....
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0*ahem*

      Qemu User mode is your friend. You want Windows emulation on your PPC Linux, its probably possible with some work, without having to use a full new Linux x86 desktop or Windows x86 desktop atop of it.

      So yeah, if you REALLY want to run Wine or Cave Story or Whatever else on your PowerPC Toaster, then you might want to look into Qemu. XD
  • jacekpoplawski, on 02/20/2008, -0/+4Thank you, Google.
  • Werrismys, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Windows is a dead platform. Wine has been a short-time "solution", now it just seems kinda pointless.
  • shykilla, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Adobe Photoshop should ported to Linux same like Maya that have Linux version of that software.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0Maya for Linux has a slight suck factor.

      Mainly the layout changes and the keyboard shortcuts.
  • zugzub, on 02/20/2008, -0/+0PFFFTT I would be more impressed if they could get Google Sketchup to run on WINE. Or better yet release a Linux version of it. Right now my only alternative is either dual boot, (a pain in the ass). Or run it on a VM
    Which also happens to be a pain.
    • nmnnotmyname, on 02/21/2008, -0/+0Actually, I've gotten the free version of SketchUp working in Wine, but it had the GUI redraw problem. I know I found a way around it before but i just couldn't reproduce it... I should have documented it.
      • nmnnotmyname, on 02/27/2008, -0/+0w00t! I just realized the newest wine in fact handles this.

        Google SketchUp seems to be working fine, with a single tap to the registry (the hwok reg key or something like that must be swapped to one.)
  • pedepy, on 02/21/2008, -0/+1nice indeed to see google get involved with the linux community - however its true that we'd like to see them promote native apps rather than 'wine based' versions.

    I start to see more & more software site that advertise has being compatible with linux, only to find you're downloading a .exe with a buncha .dlls to run under wine .. There's a reason most of us bare with running linux despite all of it's shortcomings - we like the way it's made better than windows - and as such installing windows software with dlls and such isnt very appealing.

    BTW i think google is gonna come up with a distro of it's own sooner or later - to get a piece of the OS cake Apple & MS are fighting over. Its already started to happen and Im sure it'll just grow from here. Dunno if that would be a good thing or not, we'll just have to see..
  • askthequestion, on 02/22/2008, -0/+1funny headline.

    already heard about the improvements of wines photoshop installing a while back.
    before that
    cs2 kinda worked okay. a few glitches though.

    good improvements.
  •  

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