8 ms·

I'm curious what the majority of use cases are these days for using Wine over virtualization, containers or something like AWS workspaces?

RussianCow 9y ago
Gaming is a big one, or any programs that need direct access to the GPU, which can't (feasibly) be run in a VM with good performance.
- serf 9y ago
  pci passthrough makes that statement untrue nowadays.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Still, gaming without the need for Windows is a huge plus that Wine is enabling for Linux gamers.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    PCI passthrough requires twice the amount of GPUs, for the same performance, if you want to game both on Linux and Windows.
  - zbentley 9y ago
    PCI passthrough is still quite tricky to get right on many systems, and most of the people doing it reliably and stably with common hardware are pretty strong linux users who configured a KVM host to do passthrough. Also, installing, updating, configuring, and maintaining Windows in a VM is substantially more hassle than installing a game in a CrossOver container. More people are familiar with doing the former than the latter, but the latter is still a lot less effort.
anowlcalledjosh 9y ago
Personally, I'd much rather run my old Windows games directly from Linux than spin up a whole Windows VM – it's much more convenient.
bigbugbag 9y ago
foobar2000 as there is no good audio player on linux, also gaming, old windows apps, photoshop, ...
- Sniffnoy 9y ago
  Seconding foobar2000, I also use Wine for that.
- shmerl 9y ago
  > there is no good audio player on linux Practically nothing beats mpv IMHO as a general purpose media player, with VLC being second best. I can do this: mpv https://danielamosboots.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-square
  - brightball 9y ago
    SMPlayer is pretty solid
- SXX 9y ago
  Did you tried DeaDBeeF? It's pretty much like foobar and there is plugins that make it even closer.
- cthor 9y ago
  Clementine is better than foobar imo
oelmekki 9y ago
It's been a while since I haven't use wine. Actually, it's been since Steam started its push for linux support in games. But it still happens that I will use wine for games I really want to play and which do not have linux support (it's extremely rare I want a game that bad, the last one was No Man's Sky). Being able to launch them just like a native app when I feel like playing is a huge advantage (not even sure it would work properly in a virtual machine, with its dedicated RAM and CPU limits). So I guess my usecase for wine is "gaming fallback". Not that I speak for the majority, obviously, let see what other people have to say about it. :)

RussianCow 9y ago

Gaming is a big one, or any programs that need direct access to the GPU, which can't (feasibly) be run in a VM with good performance.

serf 9y ago
pci passthrough makes that statement untrue nowadays.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Still, gaming without the need for Windows is a huge plus that Wine is enabling for Linux gamers.
- kuschku 9y ago
  PCI passthrough requires twice the amount of GPUs, for the same performance, if you want to game both on Linux and Windows.
- zbentley 9y ago
  PCI passthrough is still quite tricky to get right on many systems, and most of the people doing it reliably and stably with common hardware are pretty strong linux users who configured a KVM host to do passthrough. Also, installing, updating, configuring, and maintaining Windows in a VM is substantially more hassle than installing a game in a CrossOver container. More people are familiar with doing the former than the latter, but the latter is still a lot less effort.

anowlcalledjosh 9y ago

Personally, I'd much rather run my old Windows games directly from Linux than spin up a whole Windows VM – it's much more convenient.

bigbugbag 9y ago

foobar2000 as there is no good audio player on linux, also gaming, old windows apps, photoshop, ...

Sniffnoy 9y ago
Seconding foobar2000, I also use Wine for that.
shmerl 9y ago
> there is no good audio player on linux Practically nothing beats mpv IMHO as a general purpose media player, with VLC being second best. I can do this: mpv https://danielamosboots.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-square
- brightball 9y ago
  SMPlayer is pretty solid
SXX 9y ago
Did you tried DeaDBeeF? It's pretty much like foobar and there is plugins that make it even closer.
cthor 9y ago
Clementine is better than foobar imo

oelmekki 9y ago

It's been a while since I haven't use wine. Actually, it's been since Steam started its push for linux support in games. But it still happens that I will use wine for games I really want to play and which do not have linux support (it's extremely rare I want a game that bad, the last one was No Man's Sky). Being able to launch them just like a native app when I feel like playing is a huge advantage (not even sure it would work properly in a virtual machine, with its dedicated RAM and CPU limits). So I guess my usecase for wine is "gaming fallback". Not that I speak for the majority, obviously, let see what other people have to say about it. :)