Linux and emulating windows

[Guest]

Linux has been around a long time, and so has emulating windows/Microsoft. 

 

Do you think Wine, or PlayOnLinux will become fully integrated to Linux to the point where you can "natively" run windows programs on Linux as if it was windows? 

 

If so, do you why do you think people haven't got linux to do it before? (Presuming it hasn't been seamlessly done before.) 

[Mira Yurizaki]

8 minutes ago, fpo said:

Linux has been around a long time, and so has emulating windows/Microsoft. 

 

Do you think Wine, or PlayOnLinux will become fully integrated to Linux to the point where you can "natively" run windows programs on Linux as if it was windows? 

 

If so, do you why do you think people haven't got linux to do it before? (Presuming it hasn't been seamlessly done before.) 

Part of the problem though is that the GNU/Linux community would very much like you to avoid this situation altogether with apps that can perform the same function. Granted, there may be some apps that will never be ported over but are vital, but these are few and far between.

 

Also it shouldn't be integrated in Linux. It should not be touching the kernel. There's no good reason why an OS emulation layer should be in the kernel.

[Mooshi]

Emulation in general will never fully replace the real deal. In many cases, it's close enough, but not quite there.

 

It's not even major applications that are missing, some niche programs will always be Windows only and not even WINE will get them to work properly. One example is the 2D art program Paint Tool Sai and pen pressure is off in Linux.

 

[Guest]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Part of the problem though is that the GNU/Linux community would very much like you to avoid this situation altogether with apps that can perform the same function. Granted, there may be some apps that will never be ported over but are vital, but these are few and far between.

 

Also it shouldn't be "integrated" in Linux. It should not be touching the kernel. There's no good reason why an OS emulation layer should be in the kernel.

I agree with the alternates being preferable like Libre over Word. 

 

I dont think it should be integrated into the kernel either. I don't know how Linux works necessarily on the deep inner parts but I think that if Windows apps ran from the kernel, Linux computers would get viruses a lot more. 

 

I was thinking more along the lines of Ubuntu or Mint allowing you to double click windows programs like (bad example) audacity from the internet and without configuration, just use it right then and there. 

 

I know Audacity has a Linux version, but I meant that if you downloaded the windows version it could be run on emulated windows no problem.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

If anything, given that Windows 10 is 99% functional without activation, if you really need Windows on Linux, use a virtual machine.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

Emulation in general will never fully replace the real deal. In many cases, it's close enough, but not quite there.

 

It's not even major applications that are missing, some niche programs will always be Windows only and not even WINE will get them to work properly. One example is the 2D art program Paint Tool Sai and pen pressure is off in Linux.

 

Most definitely. Emulation couldn't ever replace the real deal any day of the week. Even playing windows XP games with compatibility on windows 10 feels a bit less authentic. 

 

That's one of the greatest tradgedies of the Wine emulation. I have so many old games I'd love to play, but they're windows 98 and windows XP. In a way my old games are like your niche software-never to be emulated 100% authentically on Linux. (Presuming it even CAN be emulated.) 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If anything, given that Windows 10 is 99% functional without activation, if you really need Windows on Linux, use a virtual machine.

That is a nice concept to consider, however I don't have the technical knowledge to figure out the VM softwares to get windows 10, let alone a Linux OS functioning in a VM. 

 

The idea of virtualizing Windows 10 is a very strong point seeing that if it truly is 99% functional, you should be able to run all windows software on Linux in a windows VM. 

 

I personally think it'd get to people to have to start up oracle VM, or VM ware (or whatever else) every time you turn on the computer waiting for the VM to also then startup. I'm curious if it's possible to do what Dosbox does. 

 

I don't know if Wine starts up a Windows emulator and then opens the program, but (shadow warrior 1, not remastered is free on steam with dosbox pre-configured) I'm curious if Wine, (or another emulator) could startup the emulator then open the program just like Dosbox does. 

 

Side note: Dosbox starts up really quick, so it's not as if you're waiting for the computer to turn on, log in and start all the services, so I'm curious if that can/has been done in such a refined way. 

 

I know wine works somewhat similarly, however I've seen a lot of configuration being required whenever watching a tutorial. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, fpo said:

Side note: Dosbox starts up really quick, so it's not as if you're waiting for the computer to turn on, log in and start all the services, so I'm curious if that can/has been done in such a refined way.

DOSBox is only quick because it's DOS. There's almost nothing to load or preprocess.

 

But I don't think there's a way you can do it for a VM, because the applications are in a virtual disk drive. But you can have VirtualBox go into a "seamless" mode where the guest OS's apps appear in the host OS's environment. And you can just leave the VM up. An OS should use little resources aside from RAM, so leaving the VM on but idle should have very little impact on the system.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

DOSBox is only quick because it's DOS. There's almost nothing to load or preprocess.

 

But I don't think there's a way you can do it for a VM, because the applications are in a virtual disk drive. But you can have VirtualBox go into a "seamless" mode where the guest OS's apps appear in the host OS's environment. And you can just leave the VM up. An OS should use little resources aside from RAM, so leaving the VM on but idle should have very little impact on the system.

Sorry I meant to say, it could also be that it's a super small OS. (Compared to today) 

 

i think that the "seamless" virtual box mode could be the closest thing to what I imagine about Linux "natively" supporting Windows programs. 

[Sniperfox47]

15 minutes ago, fpo said:

Sorry I meant to say, it could also be that it's a super small OS. (Compared to today) 

 

i think that the "seamless" virtual box mode could be the closest thing to what I imagine about Linux "natively" supporting Windows programs. 

I don't know that Wine can get much more seamless than it is. If you install it on Fedora you can double click an .exe or .msi and install your app. When you do it appears in your gnome applications like any other app. With a lot of applications it just works, no config required.

 

As far as components like .net needing hacks to get them to work? That's not going away anytime soon because it's not actually a real Windows environment and Microsoft doesn't want their .net runtime installed in Wine.

 

As far as the dlls not supporting all of the features of the official counterparts and requiring you to manually copy official DLLs to use? That's not going away anytime soon since the official DLLs are restricted under license and the unofficial ones are hacked together with reverse engineering and prayers.

 

As far as apps that hook deep into the OS for stuff like DRM or user control not working? That again isn't going away anytime soon since it's not an actual Windows install.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Snip

That's interesting about how Wine works on fedora. 

 

I Thought .Net became open source sometime recently. You can program unity games with C#, on Linux, and even export to Linux. 

 

Edit:

do you think fedora will ever have Wine installed automatically with future versions so this compatibility is widerspread? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, fpo said:

That's interesting about how Wine works on fedora. 

 

I Thought .Net became open source sometime recently. You can program unity games with C#, on Linux, and even export to Linux. 

.NET has an FOSS implementation called Mono.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

.NET has an FOSS implementation called Mono.

After reading about it Here i get the impression that the only reason .Net windows applications aren't the best they can be on Linux is because Linux users don't like "catch up" and Microsoft to the point where they won't use the open source components of it. 

 

PS

I also made made an edit to my previous post incase it wasn't seen. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

32 minutes ago, fpo said:

Edit:

do you think fedora will ever have Wine installed automatically with future versions so this compatibility is widerspread? 

No. If you're going to migrate to Fedora but run Windows applications, why bother migrating to Fedora?

 

It's kind of like why get a Macbook Pro when the first thing you did was Install Windows on it and that was the only OS you used?

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

No. If you're going to migrate to Fedora but run Windows applications, why bother migrating to Fedora?

 

It's kind of like why get a Macbook Pro when the first thing you did was Install Windows on it and that was the only OS you used?

I guess I understand the reasoning in why Wine probably wouldn't be included in fedora. 

 

 

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, fpo said:

I Thought .Net became open source sometime recently. You can program unity games with C#, on Linux, and even export to Linux. 

Kinda sorta not really? They made part of it open source, and just kind of made a Linux client for Enterprise.

 

Unity games work because 99.99% of the time they don't use anything that isn't in mono, a third party implementation of .net that's existed for quite a long time now. If you want to use full .Net because it requires stuff Mono doesn't support then you need to use wine and some magic hackery to convince it to install.

 

2 hours ago, fpo said:

 Edit:

do you think fedora will ever have Wine installed automatically with future versions so this compatibility is widerspread? 

No for two simple reasons.

 

1) The people who maintain advanced distributions like Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc. are usually members of the FOSS community. The FOSS community has a really strong opinion against any proprietary software even going so far as to be reluctant to support projects like WINE period, much less encourage heavy use of them.

 

2) Distributions like Ubuntu are all about making Linux easy and accessible. Wine is very not simple and accessible just by the nature of how it works. Stuff breaks. It's not really WINE's fault that they have to have a backup reverse engineered mess, but that doesn't change that they're a backyard reverse engineered mess.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Kinda sorta not really? They made part of it open source, and just kind of made a Linux client for Enterprise.

 

Unity games work because 99.99% of the time they don't use anything that isn't in mono, a third party implementation of .net that's existed for quite a long time now. If you want to use full .Net because it requires stuff Mono doesn't support then you need to use wine and some magic hackery to convince it to install.

 

No for two simple reasons.

 

1) The people who maintain advanced distributions like Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc. are usually members of the FOSS community. The FOSS community has a really strong opinion against any proprietary software even going so far as to be reluctant to support projects like WINE period, much less encourage heavy use of them.

 

2) Distributions like Ubuntu are all about making Linux easy and accessible. Wine is very not simple and accessible just by the nature of how it works. Stuff breaks. It's not really WINE's fault that they have to have a backup reverse engineered mess, but that doesn't change that they're a backyard reverse engineered mess.

Oh, yeah I totally agree with the FOSS community ideology, and understand the reluctance for using wine from the association. 

 

As for Unity and the games made with it, it makes a lot of sense for why it works. 

 

Finally for wine, it is a sad mess but it's one of the best things we have for using windows apps on non windows based pcs, so it's quite impressive even with how buggy it is. 

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, fpo said:

Finally for wine, it is a sad mess but it's one of the best things we have for using windows apps on non windows based pcs, so it's quite impressive even with how buggy it is. 

The thing I don't really understand is why general consumers need WINE for anything other than games nowadays (in which case playonlinux is an easier frontend anyways).

 

5 years ago? Sure. But Linux based productivity and entertainment apps for video editing, photo editing, music/sound editing, CAD, and most other applications have gotten a lot better in the past few years, and a lot of the stuff that straight up isn't available like tax software is available as a webapp now anyways due to the proliferation of Mac and ChromeOS.

 

Other than games and my amiibo reader/writer driver, I can't think of a single piece of software I have on Windows that I'd miss if I trashed my VM.

[Dat Guy]

There is exactly no reason not to install Windows if you plan to run Windows applications.

[Guest]

@Sniperfox47 that's the only reason I want Wine to have better support on Linux, and was curious if people thought it'd have better integration. There are so many classic games that will never be ported to Linux for whatever variety of reasons. I only prefer Linux is because it's not legally locked to specific hardware, and it doesn't harvest data. 

 

@Dat Guy as I said above to sniper fox, the main reason I like the idea of wine is for the few classic games that'll never be ported to Linux.

 

Games like the original Dawn of War is too old, and Relic THINKS they'll make hits with their new iterations in the series. SWAT 4 MAY get a port as GOG has it available on their service, however it's really old and may never get a port as it was structured for windows. Finally my strongest point for a game that may never be ported is Fallout New Vegas. It was published by Bethesda, and created Byblos's Obsodian. Bethesda shows no signs of caring to port to anything but windows. Even Fallout 3 isn't supported because it's "old." 

[Dat Guy]

Which would not be an issue if you'd just run Windows. 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Which would not be an issue if you'd just run Windows. 

I understand that. I simply don't like the DRM thing Microsoft is doing. I can live without those games, however gaining the compatibility would be beneficial. In addition, Fallout 3 doesn't even work on Windows 10 without modifications. If wine was better supported to emulate all the different versions of windows, it could potentially run the games better than windows. Yes windows has compatibility mode, however for cases such as Fallout 3, compatibility mode alone does not make the game work. 

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, fpo said:

I understand that. I simply don't like the DRM thing Microsoft is doing. I can live without those games, however gaining the compatibility would be beneficial. In addition, Fallout 3 doesn't even work on Windows 10 without modifications. If wine was better supported to emulate all the different versions of windows, it could potentially run the games better than windows. Yes windows has compatibility mode, however for cases such as Fallout 3, compatibility mode alone does not make the game work. 

A) Other option: Just run the game in a Windows VM. Run it in a Windows 7 VM. Run it in a Windows XP VM.

 

B) with regards to different versions of Windows, that's why WINE's libs have a compatibility mode feature in the config for your prefix. You can have a Windows XP prefix, a Windows 7 prefix and a Windows 10 prefix. You can even, at your discretion, go in and rip the native DLLs from each and use them with your prefix. They don't provide native DLLs because they are under license.

 

 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Snip

I never got a VM working before. I don't know if I have the "special hardware" for virtualization. 

 

Also, don't the windows VMs require license keys? 

I don't want to risk downloading cracked versions of windows from sketchy sites. 

[C2dan88]

8 hours ago, fpo said:

I never got a VM working before. I don't know if I have the "special hardware" for virtualization. 

The only requirement is for your CPU to support the Intel VT-x or AMD-V instruction set which nearly all mid-high range consumer cpus support.