Wine is not an emulator?

[preacher]

Just bought a laptop from a friend at work for $150. Its an old 400 mhz Sony Vaio with a DVD drive. It had Windows 98SE on it, but I decided quickly to install Linux. I just got Mandrake 9 on it and by the blessing of God, the network card works, the x windows works, the DVD works, the Sound works, and the dual boot works. Before the linux purists jump all over me wondering why Im dual booting, its so I can easily show a comparison between Windows and Linux systems. Also Ive become interested in Wine and heard it was much easier to get working with native dll's. I'd really like to run an old game or two. Anyone use wine? How does it work?

[Doogee]

all i really know about wine is that in changes windows API calls into linux native calls. thats why most ppl dont really call it an emulator as such.

[mobrien_12]

quote:Originally posted by ThePreacher:
Also Ive become interested in Wine and heard it was much easier to get working with native dll's. I'd really like to run an old game or two. Anyone use wine? How does it work?

Wine isn't hard to set up.  I havn't found it particularly useful for things though.  Most programs that I can run with wine reliably already have equivalent or superior linux programs.  

You install it, and tweak a config file, specifying where the native dll's are, for example.

Then you run the windows program with the wine command.

cd "/mnt/windows/Program Files/winamp"
wine winamp.exe

It is fun to play with, though.

[voidmain]

I just downloaded and installed the winex CVS. A single command compiles/installs it. I mounted my StarCraft Windows game CD and did a "wine E:setup" and it ran the windows installer, installed the game and it runs *perfectly*. Quite amazing actually. Oh yeah, the other thing I run under wine is sol.exe.  

There is another thread in Linux/UNIX that mentions installing winex from CVS and installing StarCraft:
http://forum.fuckmicrosoft.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=001208

[ November 19, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Master of Reality]

i think i am kinda behind... i finaly got the apt-get for RPM now i need to get WINEX

[emh]

You can get the latest build of Wine here, as well as more information:

http://www.winehq.com

It is very easy to setup.  Its usefulness depends on what you try to use it with.  I've had no problem at all with games made for Windows 3.1.  I'm still working a bit on getting a few Windows programs working under Wine.  You can also look at this web site for a database of programs that have been tried with Wine:

http://appdb.codeweavers.com

As far as native dll's vs. builtin dll's, it depends on the program you're trying to run.

One suggestion I would make is to install it using a fake windows installation, rather than using the actual Windows partition.  The programs run much faster and better doing that, from what I could tell.