11 ms·

This might be more appropriate as an AskHN but: What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? I used to keep trying it for running various poker clients on

by spurgu 4y ago

This might be more appropriate as an AskHN but: What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? I used to keep trying it for running various poker clients on Linux but none ever really worked properly. I also tried DelftShip (hull designer) on MacOS but couldn't get it to work properly, while an old version of FreeShip (from which DelftShip was forked) did however work IIRC. In short I've tried various apps throughout the years but have found nothing that's actually worked well enough to keep it running to this day. Last time I tried Wine must've been around version 5 though, maybe things have improved since?

The_SamminAter 4y ago
Mainly to run stuff like Photoshop, ResourceHacker, IDA, and other Windows-only utilities/programs. For gaming, I almost exclusively use Proton-GE (through the Steam client admittedly). For years on macOS, I used (try) to run stuff on Wine 2.7, with not terrible success. Since then, Wine has progressed leaps and bounds, although I haven’t actively paid attention to most of its changes.
calvinmorrison 4y ago
Mostly games. SimCity3000 runs well, as does Age of Empires and Age of Mythology
rwmj 4y ago
We use mingw to cross-compile binaries for Windows, and wine to run the CI tests. It's quite nice to deliver Windows binaries and never need to touch Windows.
- dosshell 4y ago
  How reliable is it? Have you encountered any tests that did not have the same result as on real Windows?
  - Salgat 4y ago
    Yeah that makes me nervous. At the very least just use a VM to test your production artifacts before deployment. Must not be a very important product they're releasing.
    - rwmj 4y ago
      It has never actually broken (or at least, no one has reported that if it did). But also it's an open source project, we provide the exe's best effort, if it's important you can compile it yourself. I have zero interest in using Windows even for one second if I can help it.
rxyz 4y ago
Last time I used Wine was for WinBox (mikrotik management software) and surprisingly it worked fine.
chungy 4y ago
> What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? I use Wine on Arch Linux, and pretty much use it to play games, and occasionally the HP PC Connectivity Kit for my HP48G+ calculator (this program was built for Windows 95. I wonder if it'd even work on modern Windows with a USB serial device that I have... but with Wine, I just symlink /dev/ttyUSB0 to COM1: and I'm good). It has a very high success rate for me, being able to run almost every game I throw at it flawlessly, both old and new.
duozerk 4y ago
Almost exclusively games, under Linux. This includes games that just came out - more and more they work out of the box thanks to dxvk and the wine-staging patches.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? Every computer should be able to run Ski Free, and Windows 9x versions of Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Hearts. Every. Computer.
- spurgu 4y ago
  Haha!
- speed_spread 4y ago
  Microsoft's true legacy to civilization.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chungy 4y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but I wonder if Windows Vista+ are even capable of delivering that. :)
bonzini 4y ago
Adobe Digital Editions, and stud.io (a LEGO CAD program).
aflam 4y ago
Libs that use C# but nobody wants to try building on Linux, Windows binaries we get as-is from outside the organization, C++ code relying on MVSC non-standardness, C code relying on a custom toolchain that can't be ported...
shmerl 4y ago
Gaming almost exclusively. Debian testing (Linux). dxvk and vkd3d-proton are essential for it together with Wine.
jokowueu 4y ago
I use wine to run steam when the steam Deb file for some reason just didn't work . I only use steam to chat though
monocasa 4y ago
No joke, mspaint from winxp. It's still my go-to pixel editor.
- asddubs 4y ago
  check out kolourpaint, it's basically the same thing except with transparency support and better compression for jpgs
coldpie 4y ago
Everyone using a Steam Deck, and almost everyone using Steam on Linux, is using Wine to run their games. It is shipped with the Steam client these days.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Valve's Proton is a fork+bundle of Wine. Proton is widely used, and works fabulously and often seamlessly to play Windows games on Linux, to the degree that Windows games often work better on Linux than they do on Windows, and Windows games often work better on Linux than the Linux versions of the same game. I would guess that the number of Proton users is orders of magnitudes higher than the number of vanilla Wine users.
- Topgamer7 4y ago
  Yes, and a lot of the focus of wine dev's reflects this. I'm presuming under the hood Steam is contracting the core wine devs as well.
  - johnny22 4y ago
    Yes, Valve contracts Codeweavers
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Which by the way, are hiring developers: https://www.codeweavers.com/about/jobs https://www.codeweavers.com/about/jobs (General Wine Developer + Software Support Engineer), I'm not affiliated, just like to game on my Steam Deck and more people making it even better, would be nice for me personally :)
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I am willing to agree. I am not exactly a super casual user, but I ran into issues with setting up Wine for some games. Proton, by comparison, allowed me to play Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XI and Adom with no special settings ( although admittedly, Adom technically did not need that treatment ). It is crazy how good it has become. Just for proton work alone, Steam gained a lot of goodwill from me. And that is not to diminish Wine. There is clearly a need for a tool that has the ability to run custom verbose scripts, but Proton mostly solved the gaming piece.
  - 4y ago
guerrilla 4y ago
Proton (based on wine) for games. Can't say I really have any other uses these days since most other things either work on the web or have been ported or have much better free software alternatives.
miloignis 4y ago
Games! Or more specifically, game - with dxvk I've been happily playing through my GoG DRM-free copy of Cyberpunk2077 and combined with Steam+Proton for other games I have no need of my Windows partition anymore. I'm planning on removing it entirely when I have a free afternoon to redo my partition table (I use NixOS too, so if I save my userdata I can rebuild the whole system easily).
Underphil 4y ago
Using Windows-only VST and VST3 plug-ins under Linux.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Does that actually work? What DAW do you use?
  - Underphil 4y ago
    Like the other post said, it works great (for the most part). It can fall apart when the plugin creator has some draconian activation service but I avoid those plug-ins anyway.
  - chabad360 4y ago
    It does indeed, look up yabridge. I have been able to do it almost entirely issue free for many plugins (and even better, I can still keep a low sample rate).
    - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
      Well, thanks! I will have to try it out. VST plugins are about the last reason I have to keep using Windows on one of my machines. I had heard it wasnt very reliable in the past, but haven't tried yabridge.
nathanasmith 4y ago
I use Wine on Ubuntu and Manjaro to run Sierrachart, a Windows only futures trading software. I have no complaints whatsoever.
greatquux 4y ago
I use it to run: Notepad++ (I just haven't found anything I like better than it) - runs great and developer knows people use Wine to run it and makes sure it works Kaseya Live Connect / Remote Control (Kaseya RMM system) - the thing is basically a big QtWeb app, and runs surprisingly well TagScanner (an MP3 tag editing app, also works very well) Sometimes I think maybe I can run Office 365 on it, but I generally decide it's not worth screwing around with. I can totally get by fine with Evolution + EWS to connect to my Exchange server, and LibreOffice for editing documents.
- spurgu 4y ago
  I remember using Notepad++ back in the day (way over a decade ago when I still used Windows), mainly for it's speed and effortlessness in opening huge files, but also quite advanced feature set. > I just haven't found anything I like better than it I can personally highly recommend Sublime Text. The clear downside is that it costs money and is proprietary (the free version is usable though, with a nag screen) but it's lightning fast (and as Notepad++ also handles huge files gracefully) and highly extensible (although the built-in features are way more than enough for text editor use).
  - LeonenTheDK 4y ago
    For me, I've developed this workflow where I'll use Sublime or VSCode for active development, then Notepad++ for one-off files, or as a kind of on-going scratchpad. There's no reason I couldn't use the other editors the same way, but it's become so ingrained into how I operate it's difficult for me to change my ways.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Put me down for NPP as well, and also PuTTY. Yes, I know that there are hundreds of SSH clients on Linux, but how many of them are also telnet and serial terminal clients as well? More importantly, it's what I'm used to.
  - mkl 4y ago
    If by "SSH clients" you mean terminal emulators, the answer to > but how many of them are also telnet and serial terminal clients as well? is "all of them", and they all support way more such things than PuTTY too. I think what you're used to (e.g. the GUI rather than command line switches) is the only thing that counts here, as PuTTY is inferior in almost every other way.
guenthert 4y ago
LTspice It works like a charm in Wine on Linux, but afaiu the maintainer (developer?) puts some effort to assure compatibility with Wine.
cossatot 4y ago
I use Wine on Linux for Carlson Hulls (Delftship and Freeship being not as useful for stitch-and-glue). I tried to install wine on macos recently, and I want to say it wasn't supported for the most recent versions, but I don't remember the details.
- spurgu 4y ago
  Most of my designs have in fact been with hard chines. I must've tried Carlson Hulls at some point (because the name sounds familiar) but I'm not sure why I never started using it. I'll give it a shot next time I get inspired!
  - cossatot 4y ago
    It's got a super weird text format for the input. If you're interested, email me at my user id at gmail and I can give you some jupyter notebooks that parse offset tables in excel to make the .hul file.
    - spurgu 4y ago
      Sent you an email.
rcarmo 4y ago
I use it on Fedora to run Arturia software synthesizers, which I load into my DAW (Bitwig) via yabridge. It runs pretty much everything in their V Collection series (at least I haven't found anything that didn't).
lowleveldesign 4y ago
I use it for Total Commander. When I moved to Linux, I tried mc and Double Commander but I missed TC interface. I installed wine and with the help of winepath I could use all my custom tools shortcuts. There is a wiki section on the official TC site with great tips how to use it this way: https://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/Total_Commander_under_Wine https://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/Total_Commander_under_...
jlokier 4y ago
I used Wine to run the Altera (now Intel) Quartus FPGA developer tools on Linux (VHDL, Verilog, compiler, place & route, timing analysis etc).
- komadori 4y ago
  Why weren't you using the Linux version of Quartus?
Sniffnoy 4y ago
I use Wine so I can run foobar2000 on Linux.
- lousken 4y ago
  I use it as well, however plugins(themes) for foobar written in javascript using some activex just doesn't work for me even with gecko installed.
kqcso 4y ago
I'm a bit nuts, but I run Wine headless to host a niche product server for software developed on Windows many years ago. Using Wine, I can have one profile/prefix per customer, and run multiple customers on a single box without needing any Windows licenses. The way the original server was developed only expected a single customer per box (since they would be running it on their private network), but many customers have opted to have me host it for them, and a big rewrite was out of the question. It's been working out nicely for many years, with only a few bumps and bruises in the early stages getting everything stable.
- Topgamer7 4y ago
  I spent an hour trying to get Ark Survival Evolves server trying to run on wine a while ago. But gave up after a while. I used to host a service providing ark servers :P I've got some fixes in for wine. But debugging Wine can be quite a challenge, you need a lot of low level understanding.
  - kqcso 4y ago
    Agreed, it can be a challenge to debug. I probably spent a couple weeks getting everything working for my app server the first time around. It helps that I control the source code though, so I can lean on some old fashioned text logs to pinpoint problem areas. Wine updates can sometimes break things too (had some problems with early 6.0 releases breaking the network stack), so it's important to hold Wine updates and test new versions thoroughly before updating.
    - Topgamer7 4y ago
      What app were you running?
      - kqcso 4y ago
        It's an app I coded myself over the better part of 15 years now - it's nothing too exciting, just a LoB app for contract administration with a small but dedicated user base. The version I worked on before the current one was a local-only app. The current version was developed to be client-server. Toyed around with doing a web app all those years ago, but it didn't feel like the web as an app platform was quite there yet. I also had a fair amount of legacy code that was still useful that I didn't want to throw away completely. Anyway, after focusing so much time and effort on the client-server apps, it is finally time to focus on a web front end (only 10 years or so late!). So I've written a middle-tier (running under Wine) with Nginx in front it. The middle tier translates JSON over HTTP->COM calls, then translates COM->JSON over HTTP on the way back. It's a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, but it works and the approach has meant I can keep a tonne of existing code and keep adding features and improving existing features, which has been nice.
ravenstine 4y ago
I would have used it to run Macromedia Director 7 but had to resort to running Windows 98 through UTM (qemu) because I'm on an M1 Mac. Back in the day, I used it to run Halo: Combat Evolved for PC on my Ubuntu installation. Now I have no need for this, but Wine improved over the years to a point where the game actually ran pretty well. Apparently the 1.0.10 patch for the game from 2014 now has a Gold rating on WineHQ.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Master Chief Collection works extremely well on Linux. Only issue is anti-cheat...
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    Whoa, it does? I've played it on my M1 Mac using Parallels and it worked pretty well. That's amazing that it can even be run on Linux.
npteljes 4y ago
I use it to run my Windows games. In fact this became a bit of a hobby in itself, trying to make a game running by Wine. If everything else fails, you can always try a full fledged Windows VM. Performance is... not like bare metal, but the results can be surprisingly good.
sbbr 4y ago
The only app I use with wine on OS X is Mikrotik Winbox.
hot_gril 4y ago
Dwarf Fortress on Mac. There's a Mac version too, but it didn't work for whatever reason. Also TurboTax.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  The graphical version of DF also works great via Proton/Wine
ForHackernews 4y ago
Adobe Digital Editions to load ebooks.
xtracto 4y ago
I've always used it for IrfanView ... I haven't found anything close in all in one place functionality which is Linux Native. EDIT: There are two applications that I wish could be installed/run on WINE, but so far there's no luck: Tidal Music Windows Client, Google Drive Client. It is amazing that both two companies refuse to have a decent client for their applications in Linux :(
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Oh wow. That name brought back memories.
- therealmarv 4y ago
  For Google Drive I can deeply recommend paying once for https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/ using it myself for years and have not touched the official client for years (and I'm on macOS).
- sir_brickalot 4y ago
  Ha, I even moderated a german IrfanView forum back in the day until I switched to Faststone Viewer. Almost forgot.
- ephbit 4y ago
  Have you tried XnView?
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  You've never used rclone? Rclone is the bomb..
  - xtracto 4y ago
    I have, and i also bought a license of Overgrive, a good program. But both still arent as easy/set-and-forget as Google's main client in Mac.
- mmwelt 4y ago
  About IrfanView: I've found nomacs to be a good Linux native replacement.
BeetleB 4y ago
I'll be that guy: I use it to occasionally strip DRM from epubs that I've bought.
pmoriarty 4y ago
ThinkOrSwim runs great on Wine, as does Amibroker, and many audio plugins.
thewebcount 4y ago
I've been using it to try to run Steam, mainly to launch Portal 2 and play with friends. I'm on an Apple Silicon Mac running Ventura. It's a horrible experience. I have the macOS Steam client, and while it's a steaming pile of garbage UX-wise, it mostly works. But under Wine (or specifically CrossOver), it barely works. Here's what happens when I attempt to run Steam: - It takes around 1 minute to get auto-logged in. The macOS client takes 11 seconds (I just timed them both). - About half of the UI doesn't work. Fonts are missing, so there are buttons with no labels. If you scroll with the mouse, sometimes that locks up the page you're looking at and you can no longer use that page until you quit and restart the app. You can do other things and come back, but that page is dead for you now until the next app restart. - The Library screen works about 5% of the time. The other 95% of the time, it hangs during loading the page with the little Steam icon and the 3 dots under it. In order to play Portal 2 in those cases, I have to go to the store, search for it, click on it to go to its specific page, then click on the play button. - One or all apps will sometimes (about 10% of the time) just abort with no error message or anything. The app window and the macOS process just go away. You might be in the middle of selecting a game in the Steam client, or you might be in the middle of a game (either alone or with a friend) and it just ends. - When playing Portal 2 everything renders fine unless you're looking at it through a Portal. When looking through a Portal, random bits of geometry from around the level are displayed among the correct geometry, some textures are incorrect or missing while others are fine, etc. Just weird drawing problems. Once you pass through the portal, everything is fine. - It mostly plays at 60fps, but very rarely (maybe 1% of the time) starts dropping frames. That part is fairly impressive, honestly. So yeah, there seems to be some happy path for which it works fairly well, and anything off that is just random glitches, hangs, crashes, etc. I'm having a hard time understanding why the HN crowd thinks it's so great. This seems like the main use case, and others have claimed that Valve pays CodeWeavers (who make CrossOver) to make it work with their games, but it barely even works with the Steam client. I'm at a loss to explain it.
- capableweb 4y ago
  People who use Wine (Proton really) + Steam don't use Wine to run Steam itself, they run the platform native Steam client which manages the Proton installations (multiple versions) for them. So everything is native, up until game launch, then Steam launches the game via Proton (Wine). It works really well, considering what it is doing. I'm playing all sorts of games on Linux and my Steam Deck that I didn't even dream of being able to play before (including playing through Portal 2 on my Steam Deck currently :) ). I'm not alone in this, you can browse a user-sourced DB of experiences over here if you want further proof: https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=popular https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=popular Everything rated gold or above runs really well and you don't experience any problems at all. Silver is mostly working ok, besides some edge-cases or aggressive anti-cheats stopping multiplayer from working.
dotnet00 4y ago
As others have mentioned, gaming. I have a Steam Deck, which runs Arch under the hood using the Steam client to provide an essentially seamless gaming experience with Proton (which is built on Wine). Provides the efficiency and customizability of Linux with the gaming support of Windows in a handheld.
necubi 4y ago
WineVST lets you use windows audio plugins on linux, which goes a long way towards making Linux a viable DAW platform.
signaru 4y ago
If you're not using the latest distro (e.g. LTS) and don't want to compile programs from scratch, there are cases where it is easier to run the latest version of a program using the Windows version instead of the latest pre-compiled Linux binary due to requiring newer dependencies. Except for OpenGL issues that I haven't figured out yet, I found it easier to run the Windows Octave 7.3 on Ubuntu 22.04 with WINE.
sureglymop 4y ago
I use it for music production. I run Ableton Live through wine. Works pretty well these days.
- sprkwd 4y ago
  This is good to know. Thank you.
cozzyd 4y ago
Some stuff I've successfully used on WINE (on Linux only...I've never owned a Mac): SRIM/TRIM (http://srim.org/) u-blox u-center (https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/u-center) various other vendor software (e.g. power supply control GUI over serial, etc.)
112233 4y ago
PDF-XChange Viewer, the only program that I know that can passably be used to fill very complex pdf forms with many fields. Too bad crossover on mac keeps on breaking... I'm yet to find another pdf app that can substitute it on mac...
sir_brickalot 4y ago
I tried to use Wine on MacOS for 4 beloved Windows programs I still cant live without 10 years after I moved away from M$: - Foobar2000 (unfortiunatly very CPU heavy with audio problems, some incompatibilities) - Subtitle Edit - Advanced Renamer - Faststone Viewer All fairly ordinary tools but I didnt find suitable alternatives in all these years. Especially FB2K. Hope the Macos version will soon reach feature parity!
- spurgu 4y ago
  Oh nice, I used to be a passionate Foobar2000 user as well back in the day! Can't say I have a Mac alternative nowadays though, I'm using Navidrome[0] with all my music stored on a cheap VPS, this way I can play the music from wherever (including mobile[1]). And FastStone Image Viewer is also familiar. :) Seems like I've turned lazy (and "cloudy") in recent years, Google Photos is just so convenient. [0] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/ [1] I'm using Subtracks on Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.subtracks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.subtracks
  - sir_brickalot 4y ago
    I'm big into archiving. It's almost autistic how perfect I want my media to be named and tagged and bpm'ed and with fitting cover art and so on Foobar with the that wealth of addons helped a lot: - Buttons to search for images with artist and album name - complex renaming patterns - replaygaining - batch editing tags... There is so much I love (ed) about it! Haven't tried navidrome yet but was planning on installing a multiroom soundsystem with navidrom and snapcast. But that just serves a different purpise :-)
flobosg 4y ago
I use it for 1Password 4. It works quite well, including browser integration.
- capableweb 4y ago
  You don't feel a little bit worried about running such a old version for something as critical as secrets storage?
  - flobosg 4y ago
    Not really, but I might migrate to a newer version soon. I am wary of online (non-local) vaults, though.
failsecure 4y ago
I use wine to play Roblox with my kids and I don't have to dual boot windows. Works great on Linux mint and pop os
madduci 4y ago
I use wine to run the MSVC compiler in a Linux container, making it easier to manage in comparison to the windows containers, which require a Windows/Hyper-V capable host. Bonus, the wine+msvc combination is still smaller than using a windows container. Works fine, also for MSI file generation with Wix: https://github.com/madduci/docker-msvc-cpp https://github.com/madduci/docker-msvc-cpp
cobbaut 4y ago
Programs from Lego for Mindstorms NXT, LDD and Studio. Also Chromecacheview.exe, Maperitive and Civ-IV.

by spurgu 4y ago

The_SamminAter 4y ago

Mainly to run stuff like Photoshop, ResourceHacker, IDA, and other Windows-only utilities/programs. For gaming, I almost exclusively use Proton-GE (through the Steam client admittedly). For years on macOS, I used (try) to run stuff on Wine 2.7, with not terrible success. Since then, Wine has progressed leaps and bounds, although I haven’t actively paid attention to most of its changes.

calvinmorrison 4y ago

Mostly games. SimCity3000 runs well, as does Age of Empires and Age of Mythology

rwmj 4y ago

We use mingw to cross-compile binaries for Windows, and wine to run the CI tests. It's quite nice to deliver Windows binaries and never need to touch Windows.

dosshell 4y ago
How reliable is it? Have you encountered any tests that did not have the same result as on real Windows?
- Salgat 4y ago
  Yeah that makes me nervous. At the very least just use a VM to test your production artifacts before deployment. Must not be a very important product they're releasing.
  - rwmj 4y ago
    It has never actually broken (or at least, no one has reported that if it did). But also it's an open source project, we provide the exe's best effort, if it's important you can compile it yourself. I have zero interest in using Windows even for one second if I can help it.

rxyz 4y ago

Last time I used Wine was for WinBox (mikrotik management software) and surprisingly it worked fine.

chungy 4y ago

> What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? I use Wine on Arch Linux, and pretty much use it to play games, and occasionally the HP PC Connectivity Kit for my HP48G+ calculator (this program was built for Windows 95. I wonder if it'd even work on modern Windows with a USB serial device that I have... but with Wine, I just symlink /dev/ttyUSB0 to COM1: and I'm good). It has a very high success rate for me, being able to run almost every game I throw at it flawlessly, both old and new.

duozerk 4y ago

Almost exclusively games, under Linux. This includes games that just came out - more and more they work out of the box thanks to dxvk and the wine-staging patches.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> What do you all use Wine for (and on which OS)? Every computer should be able to run Ski Free, and Windows 9x versions of Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Hearts. Every. Computer.

spurgu 4y ago
Haha!
speed_spread 4y ago
Microsoft's true legacy to civilization.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chungy 4y ago
I don't disagree with you, but I wonder if Windows Vista+ are even capable of delivering that. :)

bonzini 4y ago

Adobe Digital Editions, and stud.io (a LEGO CAD program).

aflam 4y ago

Libs that use C# but nobody wants to try building on Linux, Windows binaries we get as-is from outside the organization, C++ code relying on MVSC non-standardness, C code relying on a custom toolchain that can't be ported...

shmerl 4y ago

Gaming almost exclusively. Debian testing (Linux). dxvk and vkd3d-proton are essential for it together with Wine.

jokowueu 4y ago

I use wine to run steam when the steam Deb file for some reason just didn't work . I only use steam to chat though

monocasa 4y ago

No joke, mspaint from winxp. It's still my go-to pixel editor.

asddubs 4y ago
check out kolourpaint, it's basically the same thing except with transparency support and better compression for jpgs

coldpie 4y ago

Everyone using a Steam Deck, and almost everyone using Steam on Linux, is using Wine to run their games. It is shipped with the Steam client these days.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Valve's Proton is a fork+bundle of Wine. Proton is widely used, and works fabulously and often seamlessly to play Windows games on Linux, to the degree that Windows games often work better on Linux than they do on Windows, and Windows games often work better on Linux than the Linux versions of the same game. I would guess that the number of Proton users is orders of magnitudes higher than the number of vanilla Wine users.

Topgamer7 4y ago
Yes, and a lot of the focus of wine dev's reflects this. I'm presuming under the hood Steam is contracting the core wine devs as well.
- johnny22 4y ago
  Yes, Valve contracts Codeweavers
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Which by the way, are hiring developers: https://www.codeweavers.com/about/jobs https://www.codeweavers.com/about/jobs (General Wine Developer + Software Support Engineer), I'm not affiliated, just like to game on my Steam Deck and more people making it even better, would be nice for me personally :)
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I am willing to agree. I am not exactly a super casual user, but I ran into issues with setting up Wine for some games. Proton, by comparison, allowed me to play Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XI and Adom with no special settings ( although admittedly, Adom technically did not need that treatment ). It is crazy how good it has become. Just for proton work alone, Steam gained a lot of goodwill from me. And that is not to diminish Wine. There is clearly a need for a tool that has the ability to run custom verbose scripts, but Proton mostly solved the gaming piece.
- 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago

Proton (based on wine) for games. Can't say I really have any other uses these days since most other things either work on the web or have been ported or have much better free software alternatives.

miloignis 4y ago

Games! Or more specifically, game - with dxvk I've been happily playing through my GoG DRM-free copy of Cyberpunk2077 and combined with Steam+Proton for other games I have no need of my Windows partition anymore. I'm planning on removing it entirely when I have a free afternoon to redo my partition table (I use NixOS too, so if I save my userdata I can rebuild the whole system easily).

Underphil 4y ago

Using Windows-only VST and VST3 plug-ins under Linux.

MattPalmer1086 4y ago
Does that actually work? What DAW do you use?
- Underphil 4y ago
  Like the other post said, it works great (for the most part). It can fall apart when the plugin creator has some draconian activation service but I avoid those plug-ins anyway.
- chabad360 4y ago
  It does indeed, look up yabridge. I have been able to do it almost entirely issue free for many plugins (and even better, I can still keep a low sample rate).
  - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
    Well, thanks! I will have to try it out. VST plugins are about the last reason I have to keep using Windows on one of my machines. I had heard it wasnt very reliable in the past, but haven't tried yabridge.

nathanasmith 4y ago

I use Wine on Ubuntu and Manjaro to run Sierrachart, a Windows only futures trading software. I have no complaints whatsoever.

greatquux 4y ago

I use it to run: Notepad++ (I just haven't found anything I like better than it) - runs great and developer knows people use Wine to run it and makes sure it works Kaseya Live Connect / Remote Control (Kaseya RMM system) - the thing is basically a big QtWeb app, and runs surprisingly well TagScanner (an MP3 tag editing app, also works very well) Sometimes I think maybe I can run Office 365 on it, but I generally decide it's not worth screwing around with. I can totally get by fine with Evolution + EWS to connect to my Exchange server, and LibreOffice for editing documents.

spurgu 4y ago
I remember using Notepad++ back in the day (way over a decade ago when I still used Windows), mainly for it's speed and effortlessness in opening huge files, but also quite advanced feature set. > I just haven't found anything I like better than it I can personally highly recommend Sublime Text. The clear downside is that it costs money and is proprietary (the free version is usable though, with a nag screen) but it's lightning fast (and as Notepad++ also handles huge files gracefully) and highly extensible (although the built-in features are way more than enough for text editor use).
- LeonenTheDK 4y ago
  For me, I've developed this workflow where I'll use Sublime or VSCode for active development, then Notepad++ for one-off files, or as a kind of on-going scratchpad. There's no reason I couldn't use the other editors the same way, but it's become so ingrained into how I operate it's difficult for me to change my ways.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Put me down for NPP as well, and also PuTTY. Yes, I know that there are hundreds of SSH clients on Linux, but how many of them are also telnet and serial terminal clients as well? More importantly, it's what I'm used to.
- mkl 4y ago
  If by "SSH clients" you mean terminal emulators, the answer to > but how many of them are also telnet and serial terminal clients as well? is "all of them", and they all support way more such things than PuTTY too. I think what you're used to (e.g. the GUI rather than command line switches) is the only thing that counts here, as PuTTY is inferior in almost every other way.

guenthert 4y ago

LTspice It works like a charm in Wine on Linux, but afaiu the maintainer (developer?) puts some effort to assure compatibility with Wine.

cossatot 4y ago

I use Wine on Linux for Carlson Hulls (Delftship and Freeship being not as useful for stitch-and-glue). I tried to install wine on macos recently, and I want to say it wasn't supported for the most recent versions, but I don't remember the details.

spurgu 4y ago
Most of my designs have in fact been with hard chines. I must've tried Carlson Hulls at some point (because the name sounds familiar) but I'm not sure why I never started using it. I'll give it a shot next time I get inspired!
- cossatot 4y ago
  It's got a super weird text format for the input. If you're interested, email me at my user id at gmail and I can give you some jupyter notebooks that parse offset tables in excel to make the .hul file.
  - spurgu 4y ago
    Sent you an email.

rcarmo 4y ago

I use it on Fedora to run Arturia software synthesizers, which I load into my DAW (Bitwig) via yabridge. It runs pretty much everything in their V Collection series (at least I haven't found anything that didn't).

lowleveldesign 4y ago

I use it for Total Commander. When I moved to Linux, I tried mc and Double Commander but I missed TC interface. I installed wine and with the help of winepath I could use all my custom tools shortcuts. There is a wiki section on the official TC site with great tips how to use it this way: https://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/Total_Commander_under_Wine https://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php/Total_Commander_under_...

jlokier 4y ago

I used Wine to run the Altera (now Intel) Quartus FPGA developer tools on Linux (VHDL, Verilog, compiler, place & route, timing analysis etc).

komadori 4y ago
Why weren't you using the Linux version of Quartus?

Sniffnoy 4y ago

I use Wine so I can run foobar2000 on Linux.

lousken 4y ago
I use it as well, however plugins(themes) for foobar written in javascript using some activex just doesn't work for me even with gecko installed.

kqcso 4y ago

I'm a bit nuts, but I run Wine headless to host a niche product server for software developed on Windows many years ago. Using Wine, I can have one profile/prefix per customer, and run multiple customers on a single box without needing any Windows licenses. The way the original server was developed only expected a single customer per box (since they would be running it on their private network), but many customers have opted to have me host it for them, and a big rewrite was out of the question. It's been working out nicely for many years, with only a few bumps and bruises in the early stages getting everything stable.

Topgamer7 4y ago
I spent an hour trying to get Ark Survival Evolves server trying to run on wine a while ago. But gave up after a while. I used to host a service providing ark servers :P I've got some fixes in for wine. But debugging Wine can be quite a challenge, you need a lot of low level understanding.
- kqcso 4y ago
  Agreed, it can be a challenge to debug. I probably spent a couple weeks getting everything working for my app server the first time around. It helps that I control the source code though, so I can lean on some old fashioned text logs to pinpoint problem areas. Wine updates can sometimes break things too (had some problems with early 6.0 releases breaking the network stack), so it's important to hold Wine updates and test new versions thoroughly before updating.
  - Topgamer7 4y ago
    What app were you running?
    - kqcso 4y ago
      It's an app I coded myself over the better part of 15 years now - it's nothing too exciting, just a LoB app for contract administration with a small but dedicated user base. The version I worked on before the current one was a local-only app. The current version was developed to be client-server. Toyed around with doing a web app all those years ago, but it didn't feel like the web as an app platform was quite there yet. I also had a fair amount of legacy code that was still useful that I didn't want to throw away completely. Anyway, after focusing so much time and effort on the client-server apps, it is finally time to focus on a web front end (only 10 years or so late!). So I've written a middle-tier (running under Wine) with Nginx in front it. The middle tier translates JSON over HTTP->COM calls, then translates COM->JSON over HTTP on the way back. It's a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, but it works and the approach has meant I can keep a tonne of existing code and keep adding features and improving existing features, which has been nice.

ravenstine 4y ago

I would have used it to run Macromedia Director 7 but had to resort to running Windows 98 through UTM (qemu) because I'm on an M1 Mac. Back in the day, I used it to run Halo: Combat Evolved for PC on my Ubuntu installation. Now I have no need for this, but Wine improved over the years to a point where the game actually ran pretty well. Apparently the 1.0.10 patch for the game from 2014 now has a Gold rating on WineHQ.

goosedragons 4y ago
Master Chief Collection works extremely well on Linux. Only issue is anti-cheat...
- ravenstine 4y ago
  Whoa, it does? I've played it on my M1 Mac using Parallels and it worked pretty well. That's amazing that it can even be run on Linux.

npteljes 4y ago

I use it to run my Windows games. In fact this became a bit of a hobby in itself, trying to make a game running by Wine. If everything else fails, you can always try a full fledged Windows VM. Performance is... not like bare metal, but the results can be surprisingly good.

sbbr 4y ago

The only app I use with wine on OS X is Mikrotik Winbox.

hot_gril 4y ago

Dwarf Fortress on Mac. There's a Mac version too, but it didn't work for whatever reason. Also TurboTax.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
The graphical version of DF also works great via Proton/Wine

ForHackernews 4y ago

Adobe Digital Editions to load ebooks.

xtracto 4y ago

I've always used it for IrfanView ... I haven't found anything close in all in one place functionality which is Linux Native. EDIT: There are two applications that I wish could be installed/run on WINE, but so far there's no luck: Tidal Music Windows Client, Google Drive Client. It is amazing that both two companies refuse to have a decent client for their applications in Linux :(

BeetleB 4y ago
Oh wow. That name brought back memories.
therealmarv 4y ago
For Google Drive I can deeply recommend paying once for https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/ using it myself for years and have not touched the official client for years (and I'm on macOS).
sir_brickalot 4y ago
Ha, I even moderated a german IrfanView forum back in the day until I switched to Faststone Viewer. Almost forgot.
ephbit 4y ago
Have you tried XnView?
xen2xen1 4y ago
You've never used rclone? Rclone is the bomb..
- xtracto 4y ago
  I have, and i also bought a license of Overgrive, a good program. But both still arent as easy/set-and-forget as Google's main client in Mac.
mmwelt 4y ago
About IrfanView: I've found nomacs to be a good Linux native replacement.

BeetleB 4y ago

I'll be that guy: I use it to occasionally strip DRM from epubs that I've bought.

pmoriarty 4y ago

ThinkOrSwim runs great on Wine, as does Amibroker, and many audio plugins.

thewebcount 4y ago

I've been using it to try to run Steam, mainly to launch Portal 2 and play with friends. I'm on an Apple Silicon Mac running Ventura. It's a horrible experience. I have the macOS Steam client, and while it's a steaming pile of garbage UX-wise, it mostly works. But under Wine (or specifically CrossOver), it barely works. Here's what happens when I attempt to run Steam: - It takes around 1 minute to get auto-logged in. The macOS client takes 11 seconds (I just timed them both). - About half of the UI doesn't work. Fonts are missing, so there are buttons with no labels. If you scroll with the mouse, sometimes that locks up the page you're looking at and you can no longer use that page until you quit and restart the app. You can do other things and come back, but that page is dead for you now until the next app restart. - The Library screen works about 5% of the time. The other 95% of the time, it hangs during loading the page with the little Steam icon and the 3 dots under it. In order to play Portal 2 in those cases, I have to go to the store, search for it, click on it to go to its specific page, then click on the play button. - One or all apps will sometimes (about 10% of the time) just abort with no error message or anything. The app window and the macOS process just go away. You might be in the middle of selecting a game in the Steam client, or you might be in the middle of a game (either alone or with a friend) and it just ends. - When playing Portal 2 everything renders fine unless you're looking at it through a Portal. When looking through a Portal, random bits of geometry from around the level are displayed among the correct geometry, some textures are incorrect or missing while others are fine, etc. Just weird drawing problems. Once you pass through the portal, everything is fine. - It mostly plays at 60fps, but very rarely (maybe 1% of the time) starts dropping frames. That part is fairly impressive, honestly. So yeah, there seems to be some happy path for which it works fairly well, and anything off that is just random glitches, hangs, crashes, etc. I'm having a hard time understanding why the HN crowd thinks it's so great. This seems like the main use case, and others have claimed that Valve pays CodeWeavers (who make CrossOver) to make it work with their games, but it barely even works with the Steam client. I'm at a loss to explain it.

capableweb 4y ago
People who use Wine (Proton really) + Steam don't use Wine to run Steam itself, they run the platform native Steam client which manages the Proton installations (multiple versions) for them. So everything is native, up until game launch, then Steam launches the game via Proton (Wine). It works really well, considering what it is doing. I'm playing all sorts of games on Linux and my Steam Deck that I didn't even dream of being able to play before (including playing through Portal 2 on my Steam Deck currently :) ). I'm not alone in this, you can browse a user-sourced DB of experiences over here if you want further proof: https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=popular https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=popular Everything rated gold or above runs really well and you don't experience any problems at all. Silver is mostly working ok, besides some edge-cases or aggressive anti-cheats stopping multiplayer from working.

dotnet00 4y ago

As others have mentioned, gaming. I have a Steam Deck, which runs Arch under the hood using the Steam client to provide an essentially seamless gaming experience with Proton (which is built on Wine). Provides the efficiency and customizability of Linux with the gaming support of Windows in a handheld.

necubi 4y ago

WineVST lets you use windows audio plugins on linux, which goes a long way towards making Linux a viable DAW platform.

signaru 4y ago

If you're not using the latest distro (e.g. LTS) and don't want to compile programs from scratch, there are cases where it is easier to run the latest version of a program using the Windows version instead of the latest pre-compiled Linux binary due to requiring newer dependencies. Except for OpenGL issues that I haven't figured out yet, I found it easier to run the Windows Octave 7.3 on Ubuntu 22.04 with WINE.

sureglymop 4y ago

I use it for music production. I run Ableton Live through wine. Works pretty well these days.

sprkwd 4y ago
This is good to know. Thank you.

cozzyd 4y ago

Some stuff I've successfully used on WINE (on Linux only...I've never owned a Mac): SRIM/TRIM (http://srim.org/) u-blox u-center (https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/u-center) various other vendor software (e.g. power supply control GUI over serial, etc.)

112233 4y ago

PDF-XChange Viewer, the only program that I know that can passably be used to fill very complex pdf forms with many fields. Too bad crossover on mac keeps on breaking... I'm yet to find another pdf app that can substitute it on mac...

sir_brickalot 4y ago

I tried to use Wine on MacOS for 4 beloved Windows programs I still cant live without 10 years after I moved away from M$: - Foobar2000 (unfortiunatly very CPU heavy with audio problems, some incompatibilities) - Subtitle Edit - Advanced Renamer - Faststone Viewer All fairly ordinary tools but I didnt find suitable alternatives in all these years. Especially FB2K. Hope the Macos version will soon reach feature parity!

spurgu 4y ago
Oh nice, I used to be a passionate Foobar2000 user as well back in the day! Can't say I have a Mac alternative nowadays though, I'm using Navidrome[0] with all my music stored on a cheap VPS, this way I can play the music from wherever (including mobile[1]). And FastStone Image Viewer is also familiar. :) Seems like I've turned lazy (and "cloudy") in recent years, Google Photos is just so convenient. [0] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/ [1] I'm using Subtracks on Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.subtracks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.subtracks
- sir_brickalot 4y ago
  I'm big into archiving. It's almost autistic how perfect I want my media to be named and tagged and bpm'ed and with fitting cover art and so on Foobar with the that wealth of addons helped a lot: - Buttons to search for images with artist and album name - complex renaming patterns - replaygaining - batch editing tags... There is so much I love (ed) about it! Haven't tried navidrome yet but was planning on installing a multiroom soundsystem with navidrom and snapcast. But that just serves a different purpise :-)

flobosg 4y ago

I use it for 1Password 4. It works quite well, including browser integration.

capableweb 4y ago
You don't feel a little bit worried about running such a old version for something as critical as secrets storage?
- flobosg 4y ago
  Not really, but I might migrate to a newer version soon. I am wary of online (non-local) vaults, though.

failsecure 4y ago

I use wine to play Roblox with my kids and I don't have to dual boot windows. Works great on Linux mint and pop os

madduci 4y ago

I use wine to run the MSVC compiler in a Linux container, making it easier to manage in comparison to the windows containers, which require a Windows/Hyper-V capable host. Bonus, the wine+msvc combination is still smaller than using a windows container. Works fine, also for MSI file generation with Wix: https://github.com/madduci/docker-msvc-cpp https://github.com/madduci/docker-msvc-cpp

cobbaut 4y ago

Programs from Lego for Mindstorms NXT, LDD and Studio. Also Chromecacheview.exe, Maperitive and Civ-IV.