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I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows appli

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

mushufasa 7y ago
many of the applications for which you would want to run wine (e.g. gaming, the primary use) are performance-heavy. adding a layer of a vm is substantially more performance overhead.
- mchristen 7y ago
  That doesn't have to be true with hardware passthrough.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - junaru 7y ago
    You still run Windows in VM. Some people switched to Linux to get away from that.
  - implr 7y ago
    That is much more difficult, might require various unsupported hacks and for a truly robust solution you'd need two GPUs. For games having a Vulkan or DX12 (via DXVK) renderer, wine can be as fast as native Windows with almost none of the hassle. DOOM(2016) is a very good example.
  - Shorel 7y ago
    Many games ban the players for using that setup. Examples: Rust, Rainbow Six Siege, DayZ. All the games using BattlEye can be banned. On the other hand LoL handles GPU passthrough well.
jeremija 7y ago
I've heard some people use Wine to run VST plugins under Linux DAWs, because most professional audio plugins only support Mac or Windows unfortunately. Some (older) plugins are only available as 32-bit.
Aelius 7y ago
I used to run foobar2000 in wine, because no other linux media player scratched some of the itches foobar covered. There is even a foobar2000 package in the arch aur so it simply installs like any other pacman managed program. However, once I learned of the wine interface that is available on flathub (for flatpak) I immediately removed wine and its 32 bit components from my system- now that untidyness is neatly contained within flatpak dependencies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't flatpak'd wine solve this issue?
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  Yes, fb2k is the one Windows-only app I just can't let go. The library management, plugins, UI, extensibility, and configurability are just simply unmatched by anything else out there. I likes my music the way I likes it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Yes, except now instead of one horrifically over complicated package manager you now have to have two.
- aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  > foobar2000 I was sure that was a placeholder for you to avoid naming the program until one of the other replies to this comment seemed to confirm that it was in fact an actual name of a program.
- madprops 7y ago
  I'm using Clementine (qt) as a replacement, it's working very nicely :)
Shorel 7y ago
> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. No, the overhead of a VM is way too much for a single application. This is actually a disaster in the making.
folkhack 7y ago
Yeah - me too. As someone who's always needed Photoshop and Illustrator in my workflow I have tried to use wine on multiple occasions with no success. Never once was I able to get it configured to the point of usability/stability. VMware Workstation is the only thing that's ever scratched the itch. I've always thought that Wine is just a compatibility layer for games and entertainment because actual professional software can't run on it without crashing every 30 minutes.
- fifnir 7y ago
  why not GIMP and Inkscape?
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    I find asking these kinds of questions to people using professional software like that is akin to asking a professional c++ programmer "why not lisp?". Imagine you spend a career training on something and random people just tell you to do something else.
    - ionised 7y ago
      You spend a career training in skills, not training in specific tools. If you limiting yourself to a single tool and refusing to learn anything else you are doing yourself a disservice.
      - roywiggins 7y ago
        The problem is that everyone has their favorite tools, and a barrage of "what about <X>" when you are in no mood to invest the significant time and effort on a standing start for <X> when you've got your existing toolset warmed up already.
        folkhack 7y ago
        > when you are in no mood to invest the significant time and effort on a standing start for <X> when you've got your existing toolset warmed up already Sure, and on the contrary I've added Procreate on an iPad as my new illustration workflow because it absolutely kills vs. my old Photoshop/Wacom technique. This isn't a "I'm not willing to try new tools/invest time into learning because I'm comfortable" thing... it's a GIMP/Inkscape are not capable thing.
the_af 7y ago
I exclusively use Linux for work and personal use, and I only use Wine for games. It works surprisingly well, but sometimes requires some arcane tweaking (which you can google, thankfully). I can't see myself using Wine for anything else.
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  If you've got a tutorial for this I'd be interested (I really wanna run Sq8L on Linux in Renoise)
  - the_af 7y ago
    Hi! I really only use Wine for games. I wouldn't use Wine to run any other kind of software, but that might just be prejudice on my part. I can't point you to an exact tutorial. I usually just google "[name of game] wine ubuntu how to" or occasionally "[name of game] [problem I'm experiencing] wine ubuntu" :) I suppose you could follow the same procedure to install arbitrary software.
simion314 7y ago
Canonical or other distros should have stats about the wine and 32bit lib downloads, I would like to see those numbers too.
Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
I run mIRC on Wine. I know, I know, there are plenty of Linux native IRC clients. In fact, mIRC has been quite stagnant lately. But to me, its UI is still unsurpassed (20 years of muscle memory also help), and it has less latency than alternatives (even with Wine).
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  I would never ever have guessed such use case. Another proof that you never know how people will use your software. Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- Newtonip 7y ago
  I've been doing the same thing forever. mIRC is the first client I ever used and I tried other ones (XChat, BitchX since running irc in a terminal sounded appealing, Konversation) and they just felt wrong so I stuck with mIRC. It's been running perfectly in WINE since the late '90s.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  I'm surprised that nobody's made an open source clone, since it's a long-standing app, apparently better than the available alternatives, and fundamentally IRC just isn't that hard.
  - Shorel 7y ago
    They would do an Electron application.
snarfy 7y ago
I still run LTSpice on Linux using Wine. That's about it though. With the advent of WSL on Windows and my professional need to use both Linux and Windows, I don't have a lot of reasons to use Wine anymore, or desktop Linux for that matter. Windows + WSL is good enough, and better than the other way around of Linux + Wine or a VM. I fear Wine will become more and more irrelevant as time passes. Killing 32bit support doesn't help them any.
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  For work in Windows shop,sure, until I need Docker, although I could with faster I/O! For home and companies that don't architect themselves around specific workstation OS, Linux all the way. I personally rarely use Wine, if ever, but had to use it for my kids requiring software that was available on Windows only.
  - snarfy 7y ago
    I do a lot of varied development, some of it requiring visual studio.
  - cwyers 7y ago
    WSL 2 supports Docker now.
    - AlexeyBrin 7y ago
      Yes, and you need to run the Insiders edition of Windows, which is not a good idea to do on your main computer. Most people will expect until WSL2 is available in the standard Windows version.
jkaplowitz 7y ago
Fantasy Grounds is virtual tabletop RPG software, for doing things like playing D&D or Call of Cthulhu with friends over the internet. It's a desktop application which all participants install, and the players' computers connect to the computer of the person running the game. It has features to handle various polyhedral dice and modifiers, character sheets and stats, maps, etc. A full discussion of FG or a comparison vs the browser-based competitor Roll20 would be off-topic, but the company behind FG officially supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. Their app is a Windows app on all platforms. For Linux, they test and document Wine, and I can confirm firsthand that it works. For Mac, I think Wine is involved too, but although they do have documentation about that case, I think most of FG's Mac users (and many of their Windows users) install it via Steam without having to care about Wine. They don't have a version packaged through Steam for Linux. This example may go away in 2019 or in an upcoming year: they're working on a rewrite to be based on Unity. But this isn't a case where they can just use Unity for the next game in a series. They have a long-standing product with a lot of features and users that shouldn't be broken in the transition, and a small staff that has other priorities alongside the rewrite. The product just happens to be a tool for gaming. So the rewrite has understandably been a slow years-long background effort.
boybd 7y ago
15 years ago I considered switching to Linux. I depend on some Windows applications and, above all, I want to play games. Wine looked like it was almost there, so I intended to give it another try next year. Year by year I've been trying Wine again and again. As of today, it's still almost there. So, maybe in 2030? By now, I'll stay using Windows.
- Arkanosis 7y ago
  For games, give Lutris a try. For years, I've been reluctant to use Wine wrappers like PlayOnLinux, for no reason other than I don't like wrappers. I always ended up getting everything working with bare Wine, but at the cost of long hours (sometimes even days) of experiments. I've started using Lutris a few months ago (I gave up on getting Wine and DXVK play well together) and, well, that's a life changing experience so far: everything works out of the box. I has taken all the fun out of Wine configuration for me ;)
  - xmichael999 7y ago
    Lutris looks cool, given steam using Proton or whatever it is called is there an advantage to using this today? Thanks for educating me!
    - Arkanosis 7y ago
      If all your games are available in Steam, I see no advantage in using Lutris: in my experience, Proton works very well out of the box. For games that aren't available in Steam, Proton is of little help AFAIK, and that's where Lutris shines. Also, some people like having all their games in a single place, in which case Lutris may be a solution too, even for Steam games. As my “single place for games” is my shell, I usually skip Lutris and Steam GUIs to start games directly anyway, so…
- bluGill 7y ago
  You keep changing the goalpost. Odds are if you were willing to live with the versions you were using 15 years ago you would find Wine works just fine. Probably even if you just stuck with the versions you were using 5 years ago.
Arkanosis 7y ago
I use Wine from time to time, because some vendors (especially hardware vendors) still expect you to have Windows for silly reasons (eg. to write an update file on an USB key for a car GPS — I'm looking at you, Renault — or to unlock a phone bootloader — I'm looking at you, Xiaomi). That's a life saver in such cases and I can't state how grateful I am for Wine to exist. And no, I won't run Windows in a VM as I refuse to pay the “Windows tax”. (Also for games, I still rely a lot on Wine — even if mostly hidden behind Lutris these days.)
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  You can grab free Windows VMs that Microsoft provides for browser testing. They expire after 90 days, but they are usable for the purposes you mention (except gaming). https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Okay, I'll be that guy this time: Why the downvotes? This is a bit hacky and only allows temporary systems, but it appears to be functional, free-as-beer, and works fine for these random one-off cases.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Don't worry about the downvotes friend, they are merely silly internet points. Someone might come across the comment in the future and find it helpful, and that's all that matters.
      - Arkanosis 7y ago
        Well said. As the person you replied to, I find your answer helpful. Thank you!
    - q3k 7y ago
      Per the license terms [1]: You may use the software for testing purposes only. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. You may not use the software in a live operating environment. [1] - https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_terms_8_1_15.pdf https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...
striking 7y ago
A lot of people are extremely dependent on Wine (myself included) to run Steam games through Proton. I have a VFIO-enabled VM reserved for games that don't work, but it's much more convenient to be able to just play games on Linux.
sidthegeek 7y ago
I couldn't live without Wine (or Crossover). I develop web apps for a small company, and Ubuntu Mate is my primary development environment. A lot of our software relies heavily on Word and Excel because that's what our customers use. And Wine does a superb job of integrating Word and Excel into the Ubuntu desktop. Hats off the the Wine developers for the amazing job they've done.
deng 7y ago
> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. Running in a VM requires an additional Windows license. I'm not even sure if you're allowed to use an OEM license for a VM, or if you need proper retail or even one of those "VDA licenses". It's precisely this kind of stuff why I still use Wine.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Running in a VM requires an additional Windows license. I'm not even sure if you're allowed to use an OEM license for a VM, or if you need proper retail or even one of those "VDA licenses". Of I understand correctly, and I might not, you either need an Enterprise license or a VDA subscription and you need the user PC that will access the VM to also have its own desktop (pro or enterprise) license if you aren't using a VDA subscription x (that it, it is a license precondition for the VM license that the PC has its own license in addition to any licenses for VMs.) Windows desktop VM licensing seems to be oriented around corporate VDI setups, not desktop-on-desktop local VM use.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    If you're running it in a VM locally on a desktop, my understanding is that you're fine with a normal every-day OS license because the machine itself is what the license applies to. However, MS licensing is needlessly obtuse and, in my experience, nothing short of consulting with about a dozen different "specialists" will even approximate a correct answer, if one even exists.
  - deng 7y ago
    I think you are most definitely correct when you are running Windows on a remote VM, like on an ESX. But I always thought that things would be more lenient when you're running it locally, but I might be mistaken. I'm pretty sure though that an OEM will definitely not be OK.
ForHackernews 7y ago
I use Wine to run Adobe Digital Editions because the proprietary DRM is the only way to get library epub files onto my eReader. It's very valuable to me for this use case, and AFAIK, there is no viable alternative on Linux (other than cracking the epub DRM, which I really don't want to do and risk giving publishers an argument against public libraries.)
deafcalculus 7y ago
Teamviewer (remote desktop software) on Linux uses Wine. At least it used to; haven't used it in a while.
- deng 7y ago
  It's native now (uses Qt): https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Wait-is-Over-Presenting-TeamViewer-s-Native-Linux-Client/ba-p/36765 https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Wait-...
pgcj_poster 7y ago
A lot of people use computers that don't get reasonable performance with a Windows VM.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
I'm primarily a Mac user rather than a Linux user. Occasionally there is an app I want to use that just doesn't have a macOS version, so I use WINE because then I can run it nearly-seamlessly. A Windows VM can't conveniently access my files, takes up 20GB of disk space, needs regular updating, takes time to boot and shut down, takes up more screen space than the app window itself, requires a license fee, needs its own 2GB of RAM, etc. If and when WINE works, it “just” runs the app for me.
marktangotango 7y ago
Wine is an incredible peice of software. I tried it for the first time recently and I was deeply impressed. To the point I said to a friend “just write your apps Windows first and deploy with wine!”
imtringued 7y ago
Since the release of Valve's proton fork wine has gained a massive amount of relevance. Since 2018 it is possible to play thousands of steam games that are windows only on linux.
kbumsik 7y ago
> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. Not really nowadays. The seamless mode tends to be broken so hard with Windows 10 guest in Virtualbox, and VMWare's seamless mode (Unity mode) on a Linux host is dropped a few years ago. Most importantly, I don't want to run a full Windows VM in my low-powered laptop just to use KakaoTalk, the dominant messenger app in Korea.
jake_the_third 7y ago
Perfect timing. Yesterday, I urgently needed to run a piece of software on one of my systems. I had two versions of that software on hand: One for linux and one for windows. The linux version flat-out refused to run. In my desperation, I installed wine and (to my surprise and the surprise of my coworkers) the windows version ran flawlessly. Granted, the specifics surrounding my situation was far from typical, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of wine usage is also atypical in one way or another. Measuring wine's relevance by your own (or my own) use cases will likely only lead to inaccurate conclusions.
SwellJoe 7y ago
I only use Wine indirectly, but I use it frequently because a ton of Steam games that run on Linux use Wine under the hood. I just don't buy/play games that don't have a Linux version, as a VM was historically (maybe still?) too much hassle in terms of getting GPU to work, etc.
rs23296008n1 7y ago
I use wine so that I don't have to spin up a VM for just one application. VMs also involve a lot of overhead. It seems a little silly to boot an entire OS and have that entire infrastructure just so I can use a Notepad++ plugin I wrote 5 years ago.

mushufasa 7y ago

many of the applications for which you would want to run wine (e.g. gaming, the primary use) are performance-heavy. adding a layer of a vm is substantially more performance overhead.

mchristen 7y ago
That doesn't have to be true with hardware passthrough.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- junaru 7y ago
  You still run Windows in VM. Some people switched to Linux to get away from that.
- implr 7y ago
  That is much more difficult, might require various unsupported hacks and for a truly robust solution you'd need two GPUs. For games having a Vulkan or DX12 (via DXVK) renderer, wine can be as fast as native Windows with almost none of the hassle. DOOM(2016) is a very good example.
- Shorel 7y ago
  Many games ban the players for using that setup. Examples: Rust, Rainbow Six Siege, DayZ. All the games using BattlEye can be banned. On the other hand LoL handles GPU passthrough well.

jeremija 7y ago

I've heard some people use Wine to run VST plugins under Linux DAWs, because most professional audio plugins only support Mac or Windows unfortunately. Some (older) plugins are only available as 32-bit.

Aelius 7y ago

I used to run foobar2000 in wine, because no other linux media player scratched some of the itches foobar covered. There is even a foobar2000 package in the arch aur so it simply installs like any other pacman managed program. However, once I learned of the wine interface that is available on flathub (for flatpak) I immediately removed wine and its 32 bit components from my system- now that untidyness is neatly contained within flatpak dependencies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't flatpak'd wine solve this issue?

corey_moncure 7y ago
Yes, fb2k is the one Windows-only app I just can't let go. The library management, plugins, UI, extensibility, and configurability are just simply unmatched by anything else out there. I likes my music the way I likes it.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Yes, except now instead of one horrifically over complicated package manager you now have to have two.
aeorgnoieang 7y ago
> foobar2000 I was sure that was a placeholder for you to avoid naming the program until one of the other replies to this comment seemed to confirm that it was in fact an actual name of a program.
madprops 7y ago
I'm using Clementine (qt) as a replacement, it's working very nicely :)

Shorel 7y ago

> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. No, the overhead of a VM is way too much for a single application. This is actually a disaster in the making.

folkhack 7y ago

Yeah - me too. As someone who's always needed Photoshop and Illustrator in my workflow I have tried to use wine on multiple occasions with no success. Never once was I able to get it configured to the point of usability/stability. VMware Workstation is the only thing that's ever scratched the itch. I've always thought that Wine is just a compatibility layer for games and entertainment because actual professional software can't run on it without crashing every 30 minutes.

fifnir 7y ago
why not GIMP and Inkscape?
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I find asking these kinds of questions to people using professional software like that is akin to asking a professional c++ programmer "why not lisp?". Imagine you spend a career training on something and random people just tell you to do something else.
  - ionised 7y ago
    You spend a career training in skills, not training in specific tools. If you limiting yourself to a single tool and refusing to learn anything else you are doing yourself a disservice.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      The problem is that everyone has their favorite tools, and a barrage of "what about <X>" when you are in no mood to invest the significant time and effort on a standing start for <X> when you've got your existing toolset warmed up already.
      - folkhack 7y ago
        > when you are in no mood to invest the significant time and effort on a standing start for <X> when you've got your existing toolset warmed up already Sure, and on the contrary I've added Procreate on an iPad as my new illustration workflow because it absolutely kills vs. my old Photoshop/Wacom technique. This isn't a "I'm not willing to try new tools/invest time into learning because I'm comfortable" thing... it's a GIMP/Inkscape are not capable thing.

the_af 7y ago

I exclusively use Linux for work and personal use, and I only use Wine for games. It works surprisingly well, but sometimes requires some arcane tweaking (which you can google, thankfully). I can't see myself using Wine for anything else.

EamonnMR 7y ago
If you've got a tutorial for this I'd be interested (I really wanna run Sq8L on Linux in Renoise)
- the_af 7y ago
  Hi! I really only use Wine for games. I wouldn't use Wine to run any other kind of software, but that might just be prejudice on my part. I can't point you to an exact tutorial. I usually just google "[name of game] wine ubuntu how to" or occasionally "[name of game] [problem I'm experiencing] wine ubuntu" :) I suppose you could follow the same procedure to install arbitrary software.

simion314 7y ago

Canonical or other distros should have stats about the wine and 32bit lib downloads, I would like to see those numbers too.

Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago

I run mIRC on Wine. I know, I know, there are plenty of Linux native IRC clients. In fact, mIRC has been quite stagnant lately. But to me, its UI is still unsurpassed (20 years of muscle memory also help), and it has less latency than alternatives (even with Wine).

tambourine_man 7y ago
I would never ever have guessed such use case. Another proof that you never know how people will use your software. Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
Newtonip 7y ago
I've been doing the same thing forever. mIRC is the first client I ever used and I tried other ones (XChat, BitchX since running irc in a terminal sounded appealing, Konversation) and they just felt wrong so I stuck with mIRC. It's been running perfectly in WINE since the late '90s.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
I'm surprised that nobody's made an open source clone, since it's a long-standing app, apparently better than the available alternatives, and fundamentally IRC just isn't that hard.
- Shorel 7y ago
  They would do an Electron application.

snarfy 7y ago

I still run LTSpice on Linux using Wine. That's about it though. With the advent of WSL on Windows and my professional need to use both Linux and Windows, I don't have a lot of reasons to use Wine anymore, or desktop Linux for that matter. Windows + WSL is good enough, and better than the other way around of Linux + Wine or a VM. I fear Wine will become more and more irrelevant as time passes. Killing 32bit support doesn't help them any.

dorfsmay 7y ago
For work in Windows shop,sure, until I need Docker, although I could with faster I/O! For home and companies that don't architect themselves around specific workstation OS, Linux all the way. I personally rarely use Wine, if ever, but had to use it for my kids requiring software that was available on Windows only.
- snarfy 7y ago
  I do a lot of varied development, some of it requiring visual studio.
- cwyers 7y ago
  WSL 2 supports Docker now.
  - AlexeyBrin 7y ago
    Yes, and you need to run the Insiders edition of Windows, which is not a good idea to do on your main computer. Most people will expect until WSL2 is available in the standard Windows version.

jkaplowitz 7y ago

Fantasy Grounds is virtual tabletop RPG software, for doing things like playing D&D or Call of Cthulhu with friends over the internet. It's a desktop application which all participants install, and the players' computers connect to the computer of the person running the game. It has features to handle various polyhedral dice and modifiers, character sheets and stats, maps, etc. A full discussion of FG or a comparison vs the browser-based competitor Roll20 would be off-topic, but the company behind FG officially supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. Their app is a Windows app on all platforms. For Linux, they test and document Wine, and I can confirm firsthand that it works. For Mac, I think Wine is involved too, but although they do have documentation about that case, I think most of FG's Mac users (and many of their Windows users) install it via Steam without having to care about Wine. They don't have a version packaged through Steam for Linux. This example may go away in 2019 or in an upcoming year: they're working on a rewrite to be based on Unity. But this isn't a case where they can just use Unity for the next game in a series. They have a long-standing product with a lot of features and users that shouldn't be broken in the transition, and a small staff that has other priorities alongside the rewrite. The product just happens to be a tool for gaming. So the rewrite has understandably been a slow years-long background effort.

boybd 7y ago

15 years ago I considered switching to Linux. I depend on some Windows applications and, above all, I want to play games. Wine looked like it was almost there, so I intended to give it another try next year. Year by year I've been trying Wine again and again. As of today, it's still almost there. So, maybe in 2030? By now, I'll stay using Windows.

Arkanosis 7y ago
For games, give Lutris a try. For years, I've been reluctant to use Wine wrappers like PlayOnLinux, for no reason other than I don't like wrappers. I always ended up getting everything working with bare Wine, but at the cost of long hours (sometimes even days) of experiments. I've started using Lutris a few months ago (I gave up on getting Wine and DXVK play well together) and, well, that's a life changing experience so far: everything works out of the box. I has taken all the fun out of Wine configuration for me ;)
- xmichael999 7y ago
  Lutris looks cool, given steam using Proton or whatever it is called is there an advantage to using this today? Thanks for educating me!
  - Arkanosis 7y ago
    If all your games are available in Steam, I see no advantage in using Lutris: in my experience, Proton works very well out of the box. For games that aren't available in Steam, Proton is of little help AFAIK, and that's where Lutris shines. Also, some people like having all their games in a single place, in which case Lutris may be a solution too, even for Steam games. As my “single place for games” is my shell, I usually skip Lutris and Steam GUIs to start games directly anyway, so…
bluGill 7y ago
You keep changing the goalpost. Odds are if you were willing to live with the versions you were using 15 years ago you would find Wine works just fine. Probably even if you just stuck with the versions you were using 5 years ago.

Arkanosis 7y ago

I use Wine from time to time, because some vendors (especially hardware vendors) still expect you to have Windows for silly reasons (eg. to write an update file on an USB key for a car GPS — I'm looking at you, Renault — or to unlock a phone bootloader — I'm looking at you, Xiaomi). That's a life saver in such cases and I can't state how grateful I am for Wine to exist. And no, I won't run Windows in a VM as I refuse to pay the “Windows tax”. (Also for games, I still rely a lot on Wine — even if mostly hidden behind Lutris these days.)

toomuchtodo 7y ago
You can grab free Windows VMs that Microsoft provides for browser testing. They expire after 90 days, but they are usable for the purposes you mention (except gaming). https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Okay, I'll be that guy this time: Why the downvotes? This is a bit hacky and only allows temporary systems, but it appears to be functional, free-as-beer, and works fine for these random one-off cases.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Don't worry about the downvotes friend, they are merely silly internet points. Someone might come across the comment in the future and find it helpful, and that's all that matters.
    - Arkanosis 7y ago
      Well said. As the person you replied to, I find your answer helpful. Thank you!
  - q3k 7y ago
    Per the license terms [1]: You may use the software for testing purposes only. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. You may not use the software in a live operating environment. [1] - https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_terms_8_1_15.pdf https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...

striking 7y ago

A lot of people are extremely dependent on Wine (myself included) to run Steam games through Proton. I have a VFIO-enabled VM reserved for games that don't work, but it's much more convenient to be able to just play games on Linux.

sidthegeek 7y ago

I couldn't live without Wine (or Crossover). I develop web apps for a small company, and Ubuntu Mate is my primary development environment. A lot of our software relies heavily on Word and Excel because that's what our customers use. And Wine does a superb job of integrating Word and Excel into the Ubuntu desktop. Hats off the the Wine developers for the amazing job they've done.

deng 7y ago

> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. Running in a VM requires an additional Windows license. I'm not even sure if you're allowed to use an OEM license for a VM, or if you need proper retail or even one of those "VDA licenses". It's precisely this kind of stuff why I still use Wine.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Running in a VM requires an additional Windows license. I'm not even sure if you're allowed to use an OEM license for a VM, or if you need proper retail or even one of those "VDA licenses". Of I understand correctly, and I might not, you either need an Enterprise license or a VDA subscription and you need the user PC that will access the VM to also have its own desktop (pro or enterprise) license if you aren't using a VDA subscription x (that it, it is a license precondition for the VM license that the PC has its own license in addition to any licenses for VMs.) Windows desktop VM licensing seems to be oriented around corporate VDI setups, not desktop-on-desktop local VM use.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  If you're running it in a VM locally on a desktop, my understanding is that you're fine with a normal every-day OS license because the machine itself is what the license applies to. However, MS licensing is needlessly obtuse and, in my experience, nothing short of consulting with about a dozen different "specialists" will even approximate a correct answer, if one even exists.
- deng 7y ago
  I think you are most definitely correct when you are running Windows on a remote VM, like on an ESX. But I always thought that things would be more lenient when you're running it locally, but I might be mistaken. I'm pretty sure though that an OEM will definitely not be OK.

ForHackernews 7y ago

I use Wine to run Adobe Digital Editions because the proprietary DRM is the only way to get library epub files onto my eReader. It's very valuable to me for this use case, and AFAIK, there is no viable alternative on Linux (other than cracking the epub DRM, which I really don't want to do and risk giving publishers an argument against public libraries.)

deafcalculus 7y ago

Teamviewer (remote desktop software) on Linux uses Wine. At least it used to; haven't used it in a while.

deng 7y ago
It's native now (uses Qt): https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Wait-is-Over-Presenting-TeamViewer-s-Native-Linux-Client/ba-p/36765 https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Wait-...

pgcj_poster 7y ago

A lot of people use computers that don't get reasonable performance with a Windows VM.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

I'm primarily a Mac user rather than a Linux user. Occasionally there is an app I want to use that just doesn't have a macOS version, so I use WINE because then I can run it nearly-seamlessly. A Windows VM can't conveniently access my files, takes up 20GB of disk space, needs regular updating, takes time to boot and shut down, takes up more screen space than the app window itself, requires a license fee, needs its own 2GB of RAM, etc. If and when WINE works, it “just” runs the app for me.

marktangotango 7y ago

Wine is an incredible peice of software. I tried it for the first time recently and I was deeply impressed. To the point I said to a friend “just write your apps Windows first and deploy with wine!”

imtringued 7y ago

Since the release of Valve's proton fork wine has gained a massive amount of relevance. Since 2018 it is possible to play thousands of steam games that are windows only on linux.

kbumsik 7y ago

> My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. Not really nowadays. The seamless mode tends to be broken so hard with Windows 10 guest in Virtualbox, and VMWare's seamless mode (Unity mode) on a Linux host is dropped a few years ago. Most importantly, I don't want to run a full Windows VM in my low-powered laptop just to use KakaoTalk, the dominant messenger app in Korea.

jake_the_third 7y ago

Perfect timing. Yesterday, I urgently needed to run a piece of software on one of my systems. I had two versions of that software on hand: One for linux and one for windows. The linux version flat-out refused to run. In my desperation, I installed wine and (to my surprise and the surprise of my coworkers) the windows version ran flawlessly. Granted, the specifics surrounding my situation was far from typical, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of wine usage is also atypical in one way or another. Measuring wine's relevance by your own (or my own) use cases will likely only lead to inaccurate conclusions.

SwellJoe 7y ago

I only use Wine indirectly, but I use it frequently because a ton of Steam games that run on Linux use Wine under the hood. I just don't buy/play games that don't have a Linux version, as a VM was historically (maybe still?) too much hassle in terms of getting GPU to work, etc.

rs23296008n1 7y ago

I use wine so that I don't have to spin up a VM for just one application. VMs also involve a lot of overhead. It seems a little silly to boot an entire OS and have that entire infrastructure just so I can use a Notepad++ plugin I wrote 5 years ago.