5 ms·

I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Over the years I've encountered a lot of skepticism about Wine, with so

by YokoZar 13y ago

I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Over the years I've encountered a lot of skepticism about Wine, with some people even wondering if we'd be better off without it existing. I've never been convinced. I hear an incredible number of stories about people who wanted to use Ubuntu, but couldn't because of one Windows app. Increasingly, I hear the inverse -- people who are happily using Ubuntu now because Wine works well enough. Data is hard to come by, but my best estimates put Wine's install base at something on the order of 10-25% of Ubuntu users. That means millions of users of my packages. Most are running games. Some use it for some sort of critical business function like a legacy app. I've contracted with a good number of companies who use Wine for critical business purposes. Wine is quickly becoming the porting tool of choice for making Mac and Linux versions of Windows software -- often times the game will work without modification, and when it doesn't these days it is dramatically cheaper to improve Wine than to rewrite applications. I do understand some of the skepticism though. A single bug can render an application completely unusable, so from a user's perspective it's very hard to tell whether Wine is 99% done or 5% done. But in the future, you won't even know you're using Wine -- it'll silently be powering your steam games.

BlackDeath3 13y ago
>But in the future, you won't even know you're using Wine -- it'll silently be powering your steam games. Do you mean it'll be powering Windows-native Steam games, or that Wine is somehow related to the Linux version of Steam?
- dippyskoodlez 13y ago
  I think he's referring to developers making a quick port using Wine as a wrapper similar to Cider. Cider sucks, though.
  - YokoZar 13y ago
    Yes, this is what I meant. Cider does suck, because Cider is based on a proprietary fork of a 7 year old branch of the Wine code and couldn't keep pace with the open source version. There's a reason Transgaming abandoned Cedega as a consumer product, and it's been that free Wine has been vastly superior for a while. Codeweavers has already moved into the porting space using their expertise around free Wine, and perhaps not surprisingly Transgaming has begun to pivot into completely different areas.
- ttctciyf 13y ago
  Trying (and failing) to get my own mp3s playing consistently on the radio in the mac appstore version of GTA SA, I had occasion to peek in the installed directory structure. I was pretty surprised to see a familiar-looking wine style layout there. I didn't really look into it, so I don't know what the exact situation is, but looks like the future might have already happened in that case.
hammerandtongs 13y ago
Awesome work btw, thanks! Seems like Wine will actually be even more relevant if increasing Steambox support allows more people to ditch windows (I still have a windows gaming only box). Thoughts on integration? Wine can run steam but I wonder how far this could be taken in having a clean dual installation of native and wine based.
- YokoZar 13y ago
  I would really like it if Wine steam and Linux steam played better together. At the moment you have to log out of Linux steam, open Wine steam, and then launch a Windows game. It would be much more straightforward to just have the Linux steam be aware of the Wine install of the Windows game. One solution is to just port all the old apps with Wine wrappers so that Windows steam isn't needed. Another solution is to just have both steams open together (Valve has promised multiple simultaneous login support in the near future, as it's a requirement of home streaming). Another option would be to have full-on support for detecting Wine within Linux steam and offering to run your windows games using community-derived Wine settings (akin to playonlinux or winetricks). That would be kind of radical, but I don't think they'd be gutsy enough to go that route. Yet another option would be to simply endorse porting with Wine and tell developers how easy it is and how much money they could make by porting the back catalog. Last time I asked Valve didn't want to endorse a particular porting technology, but perhaps they'd change their minds if one was good enough and it meant developers would be more willing to port games with it.
Sammi 13y ago
Thanks for your great effort. I've used Wine quite a bit, and have benefited so much from it that I bought CrossOver, just to support it. I've been a fan on Wine since I tried it, but I think this article on OS/2 from Arstechnica argues very well, on a historical basis, for why Wine unfortunately won't be helping getting people to use Linux on a large scale. http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-sy... "OS/2 ran Windows apps really well out of the box, so they could just write a Windows app and both platforms would be able to run that app. On the other hand, writing a native OS/2 application was a lot of work for Windows developers." "The second lesson of OS/2—to not be too compatible out of the box with rival operating systems—is a lesson that today’s phone and tablet makers should take seriously. Blackberry once touted that you could easily run Android apps on its BB10 operating system, but that ended up not helping the company at all. Alternative phone operating system vendors should think very carefully before building in Android app compatibility, lest they suffer the same fate as OS/2."
- YokoZar 13y ago
  I've heard this claim a lot. The reason I think it's hogwash is that, application compatibility being equal, people would actually prefer to run Linux over Windows. That absolutely wasn't the case with OS2 and Blackberry. Linux is free. OS/2 was strictly more expensive than Windows, and required you to buy a copy of Windows to run the Windows apps. Like it or not, Linux was effectively second to the party. We faced a chicken and egg problem, and had no first-mover advantage. We simply weren't strong enough to cajole users into defaulting with us because we could hold all their favorite apps hostage if they didn't. We had no apps, legacy or otherwise. We tried to get people to want to migrate badly enough by excelling in other areas (like being free). But our biggest problem was that they couldn't come even when they wanted to: 80% never heard of us, 80% of those left had hardware issues, 80% of those who remained had an application with no native equivalent. 20% of 20% of 20% is 0.8%, which incidentally is the exact market share we had. But we're solving those issues now. People are becoming more aware of the viability of the platform. Distributions with commercial backing and their hardware partners have been solving the hardware issues. But there's still that application barrier for migration. Wine is a huge part of the solution to that.
sown 13y ago
> I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Thank you. I can play skyrim on my linux machine, now. :)
timClicks 13y ago
You can increment that story counter by 1. Without your packaging efforts, I wouldn't be able to use Linux as my primary desktop at work.
stuaxo 13y ago
Awesome :) I wish wine could do a bit on the visual integration side - enabling themes makes it quite slow, maybe you could have a word with Mr Shuttleworth and get him to bundle and ubuntu wine theme, and fund the last bit of work to get themes rendering quickly.
- YokoZar 13y ago
  Including a proper wine theme (and matching it to the system themes) is something that's been on my todo list for the greater part of 5 years now. Hah.
macco 13y ago
Love your work. Maybe you should tell this story to mr. Shuttleworth. And ask him why ubuntu phone doesn't support android apps.
- YokoZar 13y ago
  As a member of Ubuntu's Community Council governance board, I have weekly conversations with Mark.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Many thanks! +40 or so machines run LTSpice (and other apps) via WINE in my lab. A good portion of my students install and run Linux on their personal computers, then using WINE for Windows application support.

by YokoZar 13y ago

BlackDeath3 13y ago

>But in the future, you won't even know you're using Wine -- it'll silently be powering your steam games. Do you mean it'll be powering Windows-native Steam games, or that Wine is somehow related to the Linux version of Steam?

dippyskoodlez 13y ago
I think he's referring to developers making a quick port using Wine as a wrapper similar to Cider. Cider sucks, though.
- YokoZar 13y ago
  Yes, this is what I meant. Cider does suck, because Cider is based on a proprietary fork of a 7 year old branch of the Wine code and couldn't keep pace with the open source version. There's a reason Transgaming abandoned Cedega as a consumer product, and it's been that free Wine has been vastly superior for a while. Codeweavers has already moved into the porting space using their expertise around free Wine, and perhaps not surprisingly Transgaming has begun to pivot into completely different areas.
ttctciyf 13y ago
Trying (and failing) to get my own mp3s playing consistently on the radio in the mac appstore version of GTA SA, I had occasion to peek in the installed directory structure. I was pretty surprised to see a familiar-looking wine style layout there. I didn't really look into it, so I don't know what the exact situation is, but looks like the future might have already happened in that case.

hammerandtongs 13y ago

Awesome work btw, thanks! Seems like Wine will actually be even more relevant if increasing Steambox support allows more people to ditch windows (I still have a windows gaming only box). Thoughts on integration? Wine can run steam but I wonder how far this could be taken in having a clean dual installation of native and wine based.

YokoZar 13y ago
I would really like it if Wine steam and Linux steam played better together. At the moment you have to log out of Linux steam, open Wine steam, and then launch a Windows game. It would be much more straightforward to just have the Linux steam be aware of the Wine install of the Windows game. One solution is to just port all the old apps with Wine wrappers so that Windows steam isn't needed. Another solution is to just have both steams open together (Valve has promised multiple simultaneous login support in the near future, as it's a requirement of home streaming). Another option would be to have full-on support for detecting Wine within Linux steam and offering to run your windows games using community-derived Wine settings (akin to playonlinux or winetricks). That would be kind of radical, but I don't think they'd be gutsy enough to go that route. Yet another option would be to simply endorse porting with Wine and tell developers how easy it is and how much money they could make by porting the back catalog. Last time I asked Valve didn't want to endorse a particular porting technology, but perhaps they'd change their minds if one was good enough and it meant developers would be more willing to port games with it.

Sammi 13y ago

Thanks for your great effort. I've used Wine quite a bit, and have benefited so much from it that I bought CrossOver, just to support it. I've been a fan on Wine since I tried it, but I think this article on OS/2 from Arstechnica argues very well, on a historical basis, for why Wine unfortunately won't be helping getting people to use Linux on a large scale. http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-sy... "OS/2 ran Windows apps really well out of the box, so they could just write a Windows app and both platforms would be able to run that app. On the other hand, writing a native OS/2 application was a lot of work for Windows developers." "The second lesson of OS/2—to not be too compatible out of the box with rival operating systems—is a lesson that today’s phone and tablet makers should take seriously. Blackberry once touted that you could easily run Android apps on its BB10 operating system, but that ended up not helping the company at all. Alternative phone operating system vendors should think very carefully before building in Android app compatibility, lest they suffer the same fate as OS/2."

YokoZar 13y ago
I've heard this claim a lot. The reason I think it's hogwash is that, application compatibility being equal, people would actually prefer to run Linux over Windows. That absolutely wasn't the case with OS2 and Blackberry. Linux is free. OS/2 was strictly more expensive than Windows, and required you to buy a copy of Windows to run the Windows apps. Like it or not, Linux was effectively second to the party. We faced a chicken and egg problem, and had no first-mover advantage. We simply weren't strong enough to cajole users into defaulting with us because we could hold all their favorite apps hostage if they didn't. We had no apps, legacy or otherwise. We tried to get people to want to migrate badly enough by excelling in other areas (like being free). But our biggest problem was that they couldn't come even when they wanted to: 80% never heard of us, 80% of those left had hardware issues, 80% of those who remained had an application with no native equivalent. 20% of 20% of 20% is 0.8%, which incidentally is the exact market share we had. But we're solving those issues now. People are becoming more aware of the viability of the platform. Distributions with commercial backing and their hardware partners have been solving the hardware issues. But there's still that application barrier for migration. Wine is a huge part of the solution to that.

sown 13y ago

> I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Thank you. I can play skyrim on my linux machine, now. :)

timClicks 13y ago

You can increment that story counter by 1. Without your packaging efforts, I wouldn't be able to use Linux as my primary desktop at work.

stuaxo 13y ago

Awesome :) I wish wine could do a bit on the visual integration side - enabling themes makes it quite slow, maybe you could have a word with Mr Shuttleworth and get him to bundle and ubuntu wine theme, and fund the last bit of work to get themes rendering quickly.

YokoZar 13y ago
Including a proper wine theme (and matching it to the system themes) is something that's been on my todo list for the greater part of 5 years now. Hah.

macco 13y ago

Love your work. Maybe you should tell this story to mr. Shuttleworth. And ask him why ubuntu phone doesn't support android apps.

YokoZar 13y ago
As a member of Ubuntu's Community Council governance board, I have weekly conversations with Mark.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>I've been the Ubuntu developer responsible for Wine's packages for almost a decade now. Many thanks! +40 or so machines run LTSpice (and other apps) via WINE in my lab. A good portion of my students install and run Linux on their personal computers, then using WINE for Windows application support.