
Wine On Android Is Coming For Running Windows Apps - microwise
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI5MjA
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NathanKP
_If Android gains traction on x86-based tablets and other mobile devices,
CodeWeavers has a lot of commercial opportunities for pushing the running of
Windows software on Android._

I honestly don't see how there would be that much of a market. Any native
Android implementation of a particular program will be much nicer to use than
a Wine emulated program. Really the only use I have ever found for Wine and
other emulation programs is for running Windows games on other platforms and
usually the performance is too poor or unreliable except in the case of very
old games.

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GigabyteCoin
SkiFree would actually be pretty fun on an Android.

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yareally
DOSbox has been out for Android for quite some time. Takes a little
configuring, but it works. I've seen people running windows 3.1 and win 95 on
Android as well.

<http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/>

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1325643>

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loeg
The reason WINE works is that it essentially runs x86 programs as-is and
provides the needed linkage (shared libraries) used by the Windows programs.
(Windows syscalls are usually issued through an intermediary shared library,
so WINE can trap them there.) Much of this work is re-implementing the various
libraries; bugs in WINE can usually be attributed to missing functionality
(incomplete or stubbed functions) or bugs in the WINE implementation.

Running an x86 program directly on ARM is … impossible. So maybe WINE on ARM
can serve to run WinRT applications… but none of the existing x86 Windows
applications can run without x86 emulation, which would be absurdly slow on
Android devices.

Edit: Another commenter says that the project wiki suggests using qemu to run
the x86 code on ARM, and then trap calls into native (ARM) WINE libraries.
This approach seems unlikely to yield good performance. I am concerned that
different C and C++ calling conventions means some additional work will have
to be done to cleanup function arguments at every call, which is just more
overhead on top of x86 emulation…

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mikecane
>>>So maybe WINE on ARM can serve to run WinRT applications

That would be a trick: How do you buy RT apps when not on a Microsoft-approved
device?

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jevinskie
Maybe you first buy them on a MS-approved device and either copy the app from
that device or are able to get a DL link that works on the other device.

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mikecane
But that would make you buy what you want to avoid -- an MS-approved device.

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jevinskie
Not everyone who wants to run RT apps on non-MS devices is trying to avoid MS
in every aspect of their lives.

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pippy
So we have windows apps on android, and android apps running on windows 8?

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habosa
I love ambitious projects like this, but I can't help but think this is a
waste of some formidable developer talent. First, running Windows apps on
Android will give Android even more of a battery life problem than it already
has. Second, this will possibly increase the chance that some software shops
will be even lazier in making native ports of popular applications and just
tell people to use WINE. Third, if people want this kind of experience they
should just buy a Surface Pro or some kind of Ubuntu touch device that can
already run WINE. Again, I applaud anyone who will undertake a project of this
difficulty but I just don't see the point.

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Raphael
You don't have to run Android on battery.

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ars
Do you need ARM applications, or does it emulate X86 too?

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digisign
Wine is not an emulator. ;)

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shmerl
This is misleading, since it means it's not a CPU emulator, however it's an
emulator of Windows in a sense that it mimics the Windows environment and
system libraries.

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duaneb
I always just assumed it was a tongue-in-cheek joke à la GNU.

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ikonst
<http://www.winulator.com/>

P.S. knowing this dude's previous work (coLinux), he's pretty good :)

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damian2000
Anyone know what the benefits/drawbacks are of running WINE on a MacBook/Linix
versus running Windows in a VM such as VirtualBox?

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jiggy2011
With a VM you will be able to run more software more reliably but suffer a
significant performance hit and require a Windows license for the VM and it
will take a chunk of your RAM.

WINE is more likely to be glitchy & unreliable with many programs, will
require special configuration in some cases and may not work at al in others.
However since it doesn't have to emulate a computer (it basically re-
implements parts of the Windows API) the performance is usually on a par or
only slightly worse than native windows. You don't need a Windows license to
run WINE however.

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btown
How difficult would it be to get Wine running on a jailbroken iOS device?

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digisign
It would be a waste of time; the devices are arm and not x86.

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duaneb
Windows runs on ARM too. Not sure any of the apps are worth emulating though.

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joelbm24
all this just to run internet explorer on a macbook

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UntitledNo4
<http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools>

