Some people are so slow...
aGorm
Only terrain shows up
Moderator: Moderators
http://www.winehq.org said:
I keep quoting their HQ, so emmanuel, why don't you take a look there (http://www.winehq.org)?Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.
Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available.
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
[K.B.] Napalm Cobra wrote:...
Wine Is Not an Emulator. ...
Theoreticaly, WINE is not an emulator as it's name says. But in most practical senses, you can think of it as an emulator.emmanuel wrote:what is wine so ?
Well, this information is wrong.SinbadEV wrote:Uhm... no... WINE is basically redirects api calls from an exe in linux to a full windows install on the same machine... thereby running the program with windows...
You can think of WINE as a translator. Similar to an Emulator.
What WINE does, if i know correctly, is, whenever the application that is beeing run by WINE requests access to something (like access to a file or to a function in DirectX), the WINE translates it into a comand suitable to run on Linux. This process is faster than Emulation and that is why they stress so much that they are not doing emulation.
So, to clear doubts, you only need the WINE instalation and you will be able to run Windows executables (i've installed the Microsoft Office on Linux once
). Many Linux distributions now install by default WINE. (i remember Mandriva, the former Mandrake)As you know, DirectX is a Windows only thing. And that is the source of most problems of WINE. Sometimes, calls to DirectX functions are not correctly interpreted. This is a problem mostly for games.
As alternatives, you have Cedega(i think this is the name). It is basicaly a comercial ($) version of WINE with much work puted in into making games work properly.
With the quality of many Linux distributions (and they're price
), if any of you are still using Win98 (or lower, doh...), Linux is well worth at least checking out. If we can start a war here about which is better, Linuxes or WinXP, no one will tell you that Win98 is better than today's Linuxes!