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despite the funny backronym, Wine actually IS a WINdows Emulator. Someone apparently told them that it's only called an emulator if it's emulating a CPU archite
by mitxela 1mo ago
despite the funny backronym, Wine actually IS a WINdows Emulator. Someone apparently told them that it's only called an emulator if it's emulating a CPU architecture, but that's not true.
- cdmckay 1mo agoI thought it was an implementation of the Win32 API as a compatibility layer. What is it emulating exactly?
- anthk 1mo agoDoes Windows NT have a Windows 9x API emulator?
- pjmlp 1mo agoWindows NT predates Windows 95 for two years. And yes it did had emulators for Windows 16, and DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_DOS_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_on_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_on_Windows
- fredoralive 1mo agoIf you squint a bit (well, a lot really), Win32S on 3.1 and Windows 95’s Win32 implementation are Windows NT emulators running on top of 16 bit Windows.
- mitxela 1mo agoWindows NT doesn't emulated Windows, it is Windows. Wine is not Windows and emulates Windows.
- MiroslavPokorny 1mo agoIt is windows today, but in the beginning the two were incompatible different products.
- fragmede 1mo agoWine Is Not (an) Emulator
- ekianjo 1mo agoits closer to a translator than an emulator
- mitxela 1mo agoWhat do you think an emulator is?
- MiroslavPokorny 1mo agoA translater is a more accurate description of WINE. WINE literally translates API calls from the client program to the host OS.
- mitxela 1mo agoWhat do you think an emulator is?
- MiroslavPokorny 1mo agoFor me an emulator works to simulate the hardware which is very different from translating API calls. THe result may appear to be same, but the approach is very different.
- mitxela 1mo agoWhy is hardware the only thing that can be emulated?
- rincebrain 1mo agoI think in common usage, people expect an "emulator" to be a more sandboxed translation layer than Wine, for example, provides. e.g. it's probably a security vuln if loading a Game Boy ROM reads arbitrary paths on your local filesystem determined by the ROM's code, not so much with Wine. Someone made a cute demonstration that I think usefully encapsulates this a while ago. [1] [1] - https://gpfault.net/posts/drunk-exe.html https://gpfault.net/posts/drunk-exe.html