
Wine 4.0 released - KindOne
https://www.winehq.org/news/2019012201
======
sevensor
Having used Wine for a lot of late '90s / early '00s Windows games, I think
Win32-on-Wine is possibly the best, most stable game platform in history.
Modern laptops run games of this era without breaking a sweat, publishers
couldn't assume users had the bandwidth to patch everything after release, so
there's a playable game right there on the CD. Many CD-ROM games didn't bother
with copy protection (after all, who would copy a whole CD full of data?), so
you can play straight from an iso.

~~~
shmerl
You can get many DRM-free games on GOG. Most work fine in Wine on Linux.

~~~
Anarch157a
Many are actually DOS games running on Dosbox, so you don't even need Wine,
just re-wrap them in a native Dosbox feon your distros' repository.

~~~
shmerl
I'm talking about Windows games obviously. Many have native Linux releases
there as well and don't need Wine.

------
jononor
Funny how Wine has implemented Windows APIs on top of Linux (and Mac), and
Microsoft has implemented Linux APIs on top of Windows.

~~~
ken
Or sad. As a user and developer, 98% of the differences between these
operating systems don't really matter to me at all. They only exist because of
historical accident, desire for proprietary lock-out, or other pointless
reasons like ego. For anyone who didn't believe it, they've finally gone and
given a proof by construction.

We've abstracted over the CPU nicely. Without even thinking about it, my
software will compile and run on any modern CPU just fine. Excellent! But it's
dumb that we still have to learn about the specifics of the OS, just to write
a simple application. I wish they'd just pick some kernel-level API, some
common formats (filesystem, executables), some UI-level APIs, etc., and then
everyone could just write to that.

(That's basically what the web is, except the API is in terms of HTML/CSS/JS,
rather than CPU/RAM/disk/devices. You know you suck at standardization when
you're getting lapped by the _web standards_ committees. It's easier for me to
cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the different platforms I use.
What happened?)

It seems like every couple decades, a few companies get together to try to
make a standard operating system (Multics, Taligent), and it always falls
apart. We're just about due for another doomed effort!

~~~
jchb
> some UI-level APIs

This assumes that there is agreement on what the UI experience should be.
Navigation patterns, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures.. But there
is still active competition between OS vendors on UI. Just in the last decade,
the most common form of interaction with a computer has changed from mouse and
keyboard to touch and speech recognition.

> It's easier for me to cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the
> different platforms I use. What happened?

The web is a lowest common denominator. A web app is still missing a lot of
affordances that users take for granted in a native app on their given OS.
That is why still in 2019, there are new native iOS and Android apps being
developed. Look, there are even entirely new programming languages being
invented (Swift) or integrated (Kotlin) for the purpose of writing native apps
for those platforms.

Specifically regarding compile C, I don't see what your problem is compiling
C. You can even compile C11 on windows with Clang. Yes you may choose to
include a OS-specific header and it won't compile, but also your JS doesn't
necessarily run if you call some browser specific function.

~~~
int_19h
> This assumes that there is agreement on what the UI experience should be.
> Navigation patterns, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures..

We had that for a while.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access)

And most DEs even implemented it to some extent. But they didn't converge as a
result of that.

------
maheart
I've been a fulltime Linux user for 15+ years, and up until last year I
avoided using Wine (because I didn't require it -- I didn't need any Windows
tools, and I wasn't a gamer).

On my last holiday break I wanted to install and play a few games, which
included using Wine to play Windows games. I was pleasantly surprised at how
well it worked. Out of the ~10 games from GOG that I installed, all of them
worked.

Great work.

------
mushufasa
WINE is so great.

I wish there were a more user-friendly way for people to use it, without the
command-line and winetricks. I use wine on macOS, but I usually hesitate
before diving in, because I know it inevitably involves some gymnastics. Even
with Wineskin Winery (which is no longer maintained?).

Will WINE ever be at a point where it would be stable enough to make the case
for non-technical users? Another comment joked about public offices -- would
it be absurd to think offices could run linux instead of windows, saving
licensing costs, using WINE where legacy software is necessary?

I would have started using WINE even earlier if the documentation were more
approachable. I think they've improved over the last few years, though the
site still looks like an antique forum system rather than cutting-edge tech +
design, like you would see from a startup's website.

~~~
biggestdecision
Valve has been doing a lot of work here lately, they've essentially made Wine
into a first party citizen of Steam (in the form of Proton). So Wine is stable
& easy enough for non-tech users - at least for gaming purposes. But there
isn't the equivalent for general software yet.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
That said, I was attempting to run a Proton game a few weeks back and it kept
failing silently. Running from the terminal revealed a missing dependency,
which I apt-getted and now it works fine. So while I agree that Proton is
fantastic, there's still some work to be done in making it more friendly for
"non-tech" users.

~~~
JetSetWilly
Is it not the case that if you use the steam runtime then libraries should be
there? Ultimately valve are targeting steamOS not linux as a whole. Some linux
distros (eg arch) have a package that bundles the steam runtime which should
make such issues go away.

~~~
chupasaurus
Steam runtime doesn't have every lib ever made, can collide with libraries in
the system, and game devs might not include some dependencies because of
licenses without notice. I think GP had the latter case.

------
rixrax
Find how your favorite apps do - link to Wine application support db:
[https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5839)

I'd like to really Thank Wine developers! Because of your efforts pretty much
only time I need to use Windows desktop is when I need Adobe Lightroom CC and
Premere Pro and it looks like v4 is improving on that as well.

------
jenscow
I remember first trying Wine - I actually installed (well, compiled) XFree86
just to try it - I was proper cli-only in those days. After a long weekend of
compiling, I was finally able to run a very slow instance of mIRC - for less
than a minute, then it crashed. I was amazed.

2 decades later, my Wife + kids are now able to enjoy The Sims 4 and SimCity
on their Linux machines, thanks to the hard work of the Wine team!

And with the additional work of Crossover, Word & Excel too.

These four non-trivial applications, built without any portability in mind,
work flawlessly.

------
navinsylvester
I think Wine and Samba played a pivotal role in Linux adoption to those who
are in someway tied to Windows land.

Of all the memories with Wine, the best one is still how Red Alert 2 worked
flawlessly.

------
aboutruby
Some major games seems to not be working because of the anti-cheat system:
[https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41670](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41670)
(PUBG, Fortnite, etc.)

~~~
rubberduckyman
That stinks. Considering how well Fortnite is doing, I am a bit surprised that
they haven't made a Linux version.

IDK how much it would cost to make a Linux version, but I would think the
amount of money from microtransactions they would be getting would make up for
it

~~~
Raymonf
It must have to do with the lack of profitability, especially after developing
an anti-cheat solution.

I'm not 100% certain if EasyAntiCheat supports Wine at all, or even Linux at
all, but that's what they (Epic Games) use. If not, they'd have to write an
in-house solution that probably won't work.

In the past (again, I'm not sure about the present), CS:GO was victim to
having a Linux client; rather, people figured out that it was much more
vulnerable to exploits due to it not having a working anti-cheat solution.

~~~
Nullabillity
> I'm not 100% certain if EasyAntiCheat supports Wine at all, or even Linux at
> all, but that's what they (Epic Games) use.

It does. EAC detects Wine, and can load a Wine version if the developers
enable it. There have also been a few cases where they enabled it upon player
requests (without dev involvement).

------
shmerl
Wine has progressed quite a lot in the last year. Paired with dxvk especially,
many quite demanding Windows games became completely playable on Linux.

The next big missing thing now is Wayland support (though it already works
through XWayland).

------
lostgame
It didn’t have game controller support before? I’m surprised and seem to
recall game controllers working before.

~~~
snvzz
It had the support, from /dev/input/js? or /dev/input/event?. Now it also
supports leveraging libsdl's joystick support.

------
voycey
Wait - Wine is available on Android? I use Wine for a few things - would be
great to have those apps on my Android device!

~~~
steve19
Last time I checked it worked for Android on x86, since wine is not an
emulator. I do recall there being some experiments with wine running on arm
via. A x86 emulator.

~~~
farmerbb
There's ExaGear, which is basically Wine with an x86-to-ARM translation layer
running underneath. Note that the app is quite pricey at $30.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eltechs.ed](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eltechs.ed)

------
reidrac
I'm Debian user and I usually install the packages, and the shipped version of
the software is just fine for me.

Occasionally I may want to use the newest version of a particular application
and I've found that instead of installing dependencies and compiling myself
the Linux version, it is way easier to download the Windows binaries and run
them with WINE. In some cases, it even works better! (e.g. full screen
support)

------
djaychela
Back in the day, I dreamt of being able to run Cubase on Wine, and not have to
deal with Windows at all, but I remember being told (this was maybe 2002?) by
someone who claimed to have the inside line that there was the possibility
that Cubase would run on Linux 'soon', natively.

That became less of an issue when Windows 7 came along as it worked so well,
but now I know the next hardware revision of my studio PC will probably need
to run Windows 10 (which I detest using), I'm looking misty-eyed at it again.
But I know that Cubase is immensely demanding, and no doubt uses lots of odd
Windows APIs that Wine doesn't cover (or cover fully), so that's just a pipe
dream which gets awoken every time I see a new release of Wine come along and
I somewhat foolishly check the app database only to find the last versions to
test were years ago and were 'garbage'!

~~~
Nullabillity
Have you tried Ardour? I'm definitely just an amateur, but it has worked fine
for my needs (coming from Cubase LE).

------
rurban
Am I the only one testing software libraries cross-compiled to windows on
wine? I do use Appveyor native, but for debugging tricky issues I rather use
wine on Linux or macOS, than spinning up a Windows VM and try to debug it
there. I just have to maintain seperate win32 and win64 registries and ENV
vars.

~~~
vbarrielle
I'm very curious of your setup. Do you use wine to cross-compile your windows
binaries?

~~~
rurban
No, just to test the mingw compiled libraries. The old tea.org CI was doing it
similar.

setups: [https://github.com/LibreDWG/libredwg/blob/master/build-
aux/s...](https://github.com/LibreDWG/libredwg/blob/master/build-aux/smoke.sh)
[https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/build-
tools/s...](https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/build-
tools/smoke.sh#L254)

------
ferrolho
Why is this not working even though the new binaries are already available at
[https://dl.winehq.org/wine-
builds/ubuntu/dists/cosmic/](https://dl.winehq.org/wine-
builds/ubuntu/dists/cosmic/)?

``` $ sudo apt update $ apt-cache policy winehq-stable winehq-stable:
Installed: (none) Candidate: 3.0.4~cosmic Version table: 3.0.4~cosmic 500 500
[https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu](https://dl.winehq.org/wine-
builds/ubuntu) cosmic/main amd64 Packages ```

------
ttoinou
Anyone using Wine to run Adobe softwares (Photoshop, PPro, AEfx...)?

~~~
simlevesque
Photoshop works great with it. I used it for years before switching to Gimp.

~~~
bufferoverflow
So you only experienced the old Photoshop under Wine. I hear the latest
Photoshop CC doesn't work well under Wine.

~~~
evolve2k
Oh I heard that was specifically one of the big steps forward in was it Wine
3.

Keen to know if anyone’s experiences with Adobe CC products.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Did you check the db at WINEhq.com, IIRC it used to work really well but is
problematic now.

------
skrowl
I'm looking forward to getting 3d acceleration in ChromeOS this year so I can
try stuff like this (albeit without audio for now).

------
platz
I was pretty happy when I found out Lead Pursuit Falcon 4.0 Allied Force works
perfectly on wine

------
ww520
Is there any way to run Wine on 64-bit MacOS? Wine seems to be stuck on
32-bit.

~~~
shmerl
Wine supports 64-bit for years.

[https://wiki.winehq.org/AMD64](https://wiki.winehq.org/AMD64)

[https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Wine#Shared_WoW64](https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Wine#Shared_WoW64)

~~~
ww520
When I ran 'port install wine,' I got the "error wine cannot be installed for
the configured build_arch 'x86_64' because it only supports the arch(s)
'i386'."

~~~
shmerl
I guess whatever is your source, they didn't build 64-bit one. So you can ask
those who maintains that repo.

It clearly should be buildable for 64-bit.

See:

[https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS](https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS)

[https://dl.winehq.org/wine-
builds/macosx/download.html](https://dl.winehq.org/wine-
builds/macosx/download.html)

~~~
nottorp
Their installer says "64 bit support (optional)". It's not selected by
default.

------
pgnas
Fantastic !

At this point, there is very little reason for federal, state and local
government to be saddled with millions in license costs

~~~
jussij
A decade ago one major local government agency did in fact move away from
Windows in the hope of avoiding those costly license fees.

They found out it can also be quite costly to run Linux as an alternative:

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ditching-windows-for-
li...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ditching-windows-for-linux-led-to-
major-difficulties-says-open-source-champion-munich/)

~~~
xvilka
Most likely there were just bribed by one unnamed company, or promised some
investments - the time correlates with expanding their office in Munich. So I
would not trust Munich's claims at all. Despite recent whitewashing of
Microsoft image they were never practicing a fair business.

