Wine & Windows Software

[Stuugie]

Hi All,

THis is just a basic question about Wine. How many use it on Linux and how many are happy with it? I've seen mixed reviews about Wine on the internets so I thought I would ask the only tech community that matters.

I just installed it because I was going to try and install (and run) Photoshop Elements on my laptop and I need Wine to do that. I also have a program called Fruity Loops that is a Windows based program that I'm hoping will run after Wine is installed but I don't know if it will or not. I know about VMs and the likes but I wanted your impressions about Wine.

[mike_2000_17]

How many use it on Linux

I've never used it. I keep Windows around on a dual-boot. And the only things that I cannot get in Linux are things I wouldn't try to run in Wine, or not worth the effort. Mostly, I use Windows for either computer games (for which I don't mind rebooting), or advanced engineering software that I definitely wouldn't even try to run under Wine. I have not found anything that I so desperately needed and didn't have a good-enough version or equivalent in Linux.

So, that's my two cents.

[Stuugie]

Thanks mike, I totally get what you are saying. For my own arguments sake I have my pc in my basement that is running Windows 7 and I can use that for anything windows related so my laptop doesn't need to be using windows based software but I figured I would see what you all thought. I really appreciate your feedback.

:

[houndhen]

I still go back to Windows to use Quickbooks Pro. I have posed a similar question as yours about running QB in Wine. Never got a reply that made me want to try it. It is just easier to dual boot and use my old XP which runs QB.

[djbobyd]

As you may have already guessed from the answers and the reviews that you've read the experience really varies. I personally use wine very rare and even not at all recently. The reason for me not to do it is that even if I get the program to work fine in wine it is somehow not natural, a bit ugly and there are still some functions that don't react as accurate as in a real windows environment. What I do is try to find similar functionality in a native linux program and use that one. You can find alternatives for everything these days.
Another alternative as mentioned above is starting a Virtual Machine inside linux and use the software on a windwos system running on that VM. There are however several disadvantages for that. You must think of mapping somehow the file systems. You cannot use hardware acceleration, at least not to its full extent. You will have to switch to/from the virtual machine quite often.

At the end, try it and choose for yourself. :)

[Assembly Guy]

I use Wine with a couple of small utilities which were only ever released on Windows. Namely a tone/sound wave generator. Also some PIC programming software and a Z80 assembler.
I do have a Windows XP VM somewhere on this machine just in case, but it's been years since I last used it.

Fair enough houndhen, I find the Linux accounting software like GnuCash lacks core features like inventory management. There are still some pieces of Windows software which won't get drunk enough when you run it on Wine.

[rubberman]

Some software works well with Wine, and a lot doesn't - they are just too wedded to the Windows ecosystem. I only run Linux and use Wine to run some tools as well as a couple of serious applications, such as my favorite UML development tool, Sparx Enterprise Architect (EA). Sparx has done a lot of work to make sure that EA works well on Wine since they don't have the resources to build both Linux and Windows versions, yet they have a LOT of Linux customers.

So, basically your experience may vary! Simple tools - usually no problem. More complex applications - often don't work. Example: I could run Photoshop on Wine up to version 7. All versions after that are fubar... :-(

[elptuxman]

Wine works well for me for small applications, but I run XP on a virtual machine for more robust ones. On the other hand, GIMP provides natively all the photoshop wizardry that I need, so I won't be trying P.Elements anytime soon.

[jojothehobo]

I find that Wine is a useful program for allowing individual independente functioning from Windows for most cases. I can run Office well, Irfan view, PortableApps.com (around 80 useful utilities and pro grams) and a bunch of others.

The issue is that you have to work a little to set up the Windows program to run. If you want to spring for $50. you can get crossover office and that makes installing Windows programs a snap. It is based on Wine, so its capabilities are similar.

Aside from some games and professional/corporate software, which an employer or customer will furnish or enable you to buy, you shouldn't need Windows.

From what I've read around 80% of what is missing in the Linux desktop is MS Office. Libre/Open Office supplies 90% of the functionality and around 80% compatibility along with functionality that Office is missing. It is still a Windows/Office based work environment so for full compatibility I need office. For the limited number of features that don't quite work in Wine/crossover I can use my Windows box (or a library) and get along just fine.

So yes, Wine is a too little featured and used Linux program.

So

[Stuugie]

I like Libre and it functions well enough with Excel and Word but I like to program Excel and miss that with Libre (even though I know I can learn to program it). I find that when I really need Office, I'll use my pc and not my laptop. My pc is running Windows 7 with Office 2010.