Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Wine Whines

Well, apparently my little rants have attracted the attention of a Wine supporter. I will now address his remarks made in the comments section of my last post.
Sorry to say did you value the cost of the Platinum list. If you had you would know that its more than the total worth of code weavers.
Okay, I can accept that. CodeWeavers does look like a small company (although browsing their website, I could not find any information about their total worth). However, are they worth more than the total worth of CodeWeavers + Red Hat + Novell + Canonical + International Business Machines + Sun Microsystems (who would probably be interested in Windows compatibility for Solaris) + Apple (ditto)? If only the major Linux distributions became serious about Windows compatibility, they could probably scrounge up a lot of that list and more. However, they may not be interested for reasons listed below. I do not know if Codeweavers has tried to do this, but maybe CodeWeavers should approach the major software studios (game companies, CAD companies, etc.), and ask for copies of their software to test against Wine releases. Loki achieved some success with this, and they were asking for source code, which is a hell of a lot more high profile than an install disc. The software companies would benefit from a few extra sales, and CodeWeavers would benefit from more use of their software. The only problem is that CodeWeavers would need to be on call for support.
Standard Release binary has been on attempted a few times. Issue is distribution fragmentation.
Well, at least we agree on something.
Hopefully after LSB 4.0 is released we will be able to release a single binaries for most needed versions. Ie the set that gives you most application coverage.
Sure you will . . . I think my predecessor has covered this issue in sufficient detail before.
I hope you were aware that you could run more than 1 version of wine on system.
I am well aware that you can jury rig your system to install as many versions of a piece of software as your heart desires. I also am well aware that it COMPLETELY SUCKS!
Platinum ratings are per wine version. So yes a few mouths old test was still valid.
However, that version apparently worked and my version definitely does not. If 'releases' are tested, then why was my version different than the version tested? What was wrong with keeping that version? I do not care if this was a direct port of the latest Wine source code or a custom Ubuntu version. Either way, it proves a major point Linux Hater made about the current OSS ecosystem.
Besides Wine is only a Beta status application.
What? Didn't Wine just have a 1.0 release a few months back? If Wine is still a "Beta status application", then maybe you should educate the distributions, so they will stop carrying it and instead carry the stable codebase whatever it is called. Oh, wait! It is called Crossover *, isn't it?
Yes wine gets applications working in most cases before crossover it also hits the regressions first using wine you have to accept that.
Wait, so Wine is basically an open beta for the proprietary Crossover. So, basically, if I want a program that runs Windows applications on Linux and does not break with each release, I have to pay $40+tax every 12 months and not be able to see the source code (not that I really want to, but still)? Wow! Go open source!

Seriously, this presents a major problem for Linux distros running Windows apps out of the box. If distros include Wine, they will want to advertise their ability to run *insert popular Windows application with Wine Platinum rating* out of the box, but they will not want to include an application that is known to break things with each release. However, all of the community distros will not want to include the stable version, CrossOver, because then they will have to charge $40+ for each download of their distro. Therefore, the distros have very little incentive to work on integrating support for Windows applications, and until this problem is solved, Wine users will still face all these problems.
Backward compatibility one is simple incompetents with Linux. Notice that the application was marked as working on debian 2.2. That can be chroot installed inside current distrobutions. Yes almost 100 percent backwards compatibility is doable. The dynamically linked versions of that turn out to be simpler to be got working. Chroot + a few updated .so files.
Wow, you mean I have to install an entire operating environment (I assume I do not need a new kernel) to run one application? Is there a command or included script to easily do this, because I remember chroots being a royal pain in the ass?
Guess what your so call windows working install did the same thing invisible as soon as it detected the old application.
It installed Windows 95 while I wasn't looking?
Fair test and lack of incompetence next time.
Okay, my idea of a' fair test' is "boot to operating system desktop; download binary from internet; make sure binary is not corrupted; make binary executable (Linux Only); run binary." I performed this test on Windows XP SP2 x86 and Ubuntu 8.04 AMD64.* This is what I, and most of the rest of the world, consider a 'fair' test. Linux Hater already covered this behavior.
There is a reason why this is not automatic in Linux world. Bringing back old applications is a security risk.
Bringing back old applications is also necessary if you want to be taken seriously by enterprises. There are a lot of small, medium and large businesses that have substantial investments in old pieces of software. Many individuals also have substantial investments in old pieces of software. My grandfather still swears he has found no better piece of software for making fliers/cards/etc. than Micrografix Windows Draw. Frequently breaking backwards compatibility may work when you are play in your own little sandbox (like Apple or Freetards), but if you pull that stunt in the big leagues, you will fall flat on your face. If you do not trust an old version of Wine, you should setup the software to run in one of your handy-dandy chroots.
Source code not building you will find is gcc version yes you must use the right version of gcc for the source code. Same thing happens if you bring old MSVC code onto new MSVC at times.
Actually, what appeared to happen, is that I ran into the libpng issue he mentioned. However, his patch did not work. He was not clear what to patch. I tried it on the whole archive, and it did not seem to do anything, and I did not care enough to try to figure out what was wrong.
Should I keep on ripping.
I assume this was a question. Go right ahead; blow as much hot air as you want.
have you ever seen devices before the art people go to it.
Yes, I am sure the rough prototype of any device (even the iPhone) is not much to look at; however, after the initial device is created, the art department likely goes into high gear and releases something decent looking in short order. Three years after the Tuxphone project began, the device still looks like ass. Yes, I know the developers have halted development, thereby illustrating another problem with OSS projects. Also, if a cellphone development team even remotely follows the Standard Software Development method, it would request marketing research on visuals, ask the art department for advice, and incorporated the results into the initial requirements document. Therefore, some visuals aspects may be present from day one.
Sorry to say Tuxphone was neater than a lot of new devices.
How so? From this presentation (PowerPoint), I get the impression that it was a mismash of OTS parts. What is so amazing about that? Any committed ECE could create a rough design for a cellphone from OTS parts in a weekend.
Ubuntu is slowing down more than any other distribution even ones with same amount of features. There are a few causes.
*John Stewart gesture* Go on . . .
One is there maintainers not skilled enough with building things.
Many Linux distros have encountered this problem. It is endemic to source-based distribution.
Other is a few stupid selections. Pulseaudio is about the worse Lets make every sound going out the machine cost CPU time and lets make it cost more CPU each version. That is basically Pulseaudio remove pulse it can give backup like 15% of your cpu under load compared to dmix. Yet for some reason Ubuntu does not ship with a option to simply drop back to dmix if you don't need pulseaudio's features.
Yes, everyone and their dog knows that PulseAudio is shit. Therefore, the LSB included it in the standard. Ah, the smell of progress!
Really you should not be protecting ubuntu. You are meant to hate Linux if you cannot say in char this log will sux.
Who the fuck is protecting Ubuntu? I said, "Ubuntu is getting bloated. Too bad the bloat is not making it more usable." How is that protecting Ubuntu? Also, for the record, let me clarify my position. In this blog, I will mostly hate on thing related to Linux. However, like LH, I will sometimes venture out into the wilder world and hate on things that have the copylefted luser stench.
That has been enough to effect Microsofts bottom line from them being forced to ship XP heavily discounted.
Last I heard, they were selling Windows cheap in developing countries to compete with pirated copies of Windows.
Funny enough Ubuntu is just waking up to what Redhat and Novell has known. Redhat developer at one time produced a list what was required. So far that list is not completed yet.
What the fuck are you talking about? It seemed like a complete nonsequitur to your last post. Please clarify.

* Okay, so I had (slightly) different architectures, but that should not make much of a difference when running 32-bit binaries.

3 comments:

oiaohm said...

Call to companies for support yes code weavers has all ready done what you have said. There is basically nothing more they can do from the software compatibility side themselves. You can only do so much without third party interest.

Loki is different they bought the right to produce. Same issue lack of funds particularly when wine goal is not to have you rebuy your applications. If you have a good idea that we have not tried to get them it will be put forward and attempted. This is just the current stat of affairs at codeweavers and the wine project we are out of ideas and we have tried the ideas you have suggested. Had small gains with like google but not enough broad coverage.

Issue is nothing more than resources. You may list a long list of companies. Few companies do help out. But we also have a citadel approaches as well undermining wine work. Ubuntu for one started there own wiki to support so called support wine. Major issue instructions wrong sent users in the IRC without checking appdb or other places first. 2 locations for documentations also equaled ubuntu version of instructions ended up out of date a lot.

That is one of many examples. Simple issue we are sick of it. There is not enough resources to go round on wine in the first place then have distrobutions fragmenting it even more and running there own record keeping that does not endup mainline. Or worse users going to ubuntu forums and giving invalid instructions only to come to winehq support and we have to fix it.

There are distributions that are pure evil to projects like wine. Ubuntu is one of them. Better for them to provide nothing than fragment the user base we need for testing so appdb stays up to date.

You forgot what I told you don't dig up history you need to go and read LSB 4.0 Linux Haters two old comments about it are invalid when compared to what is in LSB 4.0. Embedded own dynamic linker so no dependence at on what the distribution provides other than kernel that has been standard for ages.

Pulseaudio is blocked from the Linux Standard Base including. Alsa layour compatibility is as far as Pulseaudio consideration is going until at least Pulseaudio gets its stability sorted out. Sorry you have picked on one of the people who just happens to work in the multimedia section of LSB the vote landed that way. Only reason Pulseaudio even gets a look in at the ALSA layour is the Promise LSB gives to application makers using LSB tools. That is what you call barely considered. So far to the case that if Pulseaudio improves to the point that you don't hit pulseaudio bugs using ALSA there will be no references at all in the LSB documentation to pulseaudio. gstreamer and other more stable non trouble making systems will get into the LSB mainline first.

This is the problem with commenting on something that you are not in the front lines your information is way out of date.

Ok 1.0 release is stable for a particular list of applications. Exactly the same as crossover games and crossover. They are basically particular points taken from the Wine development tree.

You are missing something coded into wine is the means to run more than 1 version of wine side by side. Yet package managers of distrobutions do not support this. Wine recommendation always has been run critical applications with a version of wine it is marked as working with.

Call it a design issue in distrobutions. Wine used as per developers of wine instructions works quite well. Problem distrobutions deployment systems are not compatible with the recommendations.

Issue that chroot is a pain in the ass is the issue. Linux kernel ABI has been stable for over 15 years. So yes current day kernel works no issues with most applications only major exception are firewall configuring applications. The issue what you are failing to notice is Windows XP compatibility layor what is basically automatic form of chroot. Linux distrobutions have not made this process painless. Reason if it was painless why would you get locked into them. Call it the citadel strikes again.

Groups like openvz.org did make it painless to install other distrobutions if you had a custom kernel that supported containers. It is more neglect that means to do it.

Basically Linux is setup to discourage using of old applications so people do look at the new ones before jumping threw the hoops to get the old ones working. Simple fact if you are prepared to jump thew hoops of Linux chooting you do have more backwards compatibility than what XP and Vista provides. I give that interface sux to hell. Out of all of them deb based distrobutions are the simplest to setup chroot environments even including a command based program to help. cdebootstrap yep particularly for setting up chroots. Never had a nice little graphical tool made for it. But tools exist to do it.

MS bottom line is getting hit by the simple fact netbooks are basically outselling most other things and they only get a max of 30 USD a machine for it compared to there old of at least 100 USD. In countries where MS can take people to court for illegal copies of windows. In location were MS cannot do that there is basically nothing they can do. Even worse for MS they don't have the full netbook market alone.

Ubuntu maintainers hold the winehq record for the most numbers of broken wine builds in a row. This is not bad performing ones but simply ones that don't run at all.

You think source distrobutions are bad. Compare to Ubuntu's quality control you would have a better chance with the source based distrobutions. Only thing worse is Fedora from Redhat ok that is Redhat testing ground what is a minefield with almost anything traped.

Issue with Ubuntu maintainers is a lot of them backport patches without the skills or resources to quality check what they did. Side effects include sections of code running at half the speed they should.

Redhat has higher quality controls than Ubuntu. Only reason why they get away with doing the stunt so often. Same with Debian. Both use a active development version with a fairly large user base to bug squash. Ubuntu lacks this. Result is predictable more errors sneak threw. If you don't have the resources or the skill don't backport stuff you only hurt users.

Funny part more usable is Ubuntu argument for Including Pulseaudio leading to slower speeds. Pulseaudio provides per application volume controls to match Vistas per application volume controls. I of course call what ubuntu does with these slow down things mistreating users.

Then to top it off backporting patches is pushed as a way of avoiding possible future bugs in the new released packages from the developers of that part. Many times you want to grab a base ball bat and kill some of these distribution maintainers. Try the god darn new version if it has a regression then back port patches. Don't just backport stuff as status normal.

Pays to know who talking about. Usable means that you line would have just got laugh at from the Ubuntu developers. Ruining users enjoyment of ubuntu would have been a better line.

I do embeded work from time to time so I have seen first few generation prototypes. Tuxphone started the idea of a open source phone off openmoto like is final form. This is normal good business you get prototype work people see it you call it 1 name when you put good quality case on it you change the name so people don't link up bad past image.

The list to sell Linux on Desktop include.

A true unified central server control for business use.
A true unified theme system for all commonly used toolkits.
Unified configuration system.
Means to effectively install third party binaries.

It was good being at a conference to hear the list. Please note the list was made in 1996. Yes it has reduced a lot since there it started off at over 200 items. We are under 20 of them left with most of them clear able in the next 12 months. Simple issue you think current Linux's have issues. They numbers of issues have dropped every year most of them are in background with a desktop user does not see.

First project to start clearing the list is the freedesktop.org project second project is the Linux Standard Base. In the last 3 years another 4 project have jumped up taking out different sections.

I can rip linux apart perfectly when I wish. Because I know exactly where to stick the knife in. As I know that its going to get a lot harder over the next 12 months. Lot of the soft points to stick a knife in will disappear.

thepld said...

Citadel approaches? What the hell are you talking about?

"Issue is nothing more than resources. You may list a long list of companies. Few companies do help out."

What, so the joint efforts of IBM, Novell, and Red Hat still isn't enough? And yet Novell is vilified! (See: Mono controversy; the entire patent validation controversy)

Guess how many companies are helping out with Apple and Microsoft? One. And that is themselves. With all the supposed volunteer cooperation of OSS, you'd think they wouldn't need much outside assistance.

"There are distributions that are pure evil to projects like wine. Ubuntu is one of them. Better for them to provide nothing than fragment the user base we need for testing so appdb stays up to date."

Yet another 'Not our fault!' post.

"Lot of the soft points to stick a knife in will disappear."

Lusers have been saying that for years. It hasn't materialized.

Deciphering your posts is like trying to understand Middle English prose.

Anonymous said...

We Hate Linux, and you should too.

the title says it all. wow. you think people would have better things to do in life than hate. too bad you're wasting your energies on this. your blog will do nothing to sway linux users or people that will be using linux. get a life. really.