Why do people even bother using Wine?

General Linux Question
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21

Actually, Linux is just as insecure or actually even more insecure than Windows.
The difference is, that it doesn’t make economic sense to make most of the malicious software work also on Linux or even only on Linux. That’s why there is such a little threat of exploitation when using Linux, compared to Windows.

However, if Linux would become nearly as popular as an end-user operating system as Windows, then it would be absolutely destroyed by all the malicious software being released for it.
Even worse, it would hit most consumers the hardest, because they’ve always been told the myth, that there is no malicious software for Linux, because Linux is so great and so secure and it’s the best in the world and so on. :rofl:

Please, stop the myth. Linux is at least as insecure as Windows. The only thing that saves Linux’ ass from being torn apart by malicious software waves is because it’s so damn unpopular among end-users. It shines bright in the server world, but it’s pretty much dead in the end-user market. Even macOS is more popular…

22

“Is using a VM easier than using Wine?”

If you have a retail version of a still supported version of Windows, then it should be fairly easy to set that up in a VM (as long as it isn’t already installed elsewhere). If you have OEM version, possibly purchased from eBay or the like, you should be OK as long as it is genuine and the license key has not already been registered (I speak from experience here having purchased an OEM copy of Windows 10 which I found had previously been registered, so could not be ‘activated’). If you want to install a no longer supported version, you will be unable to activate it over the phone if the activation step fails.

Assuming you have a valid copy of Windows, the installation process is pretty much the same as a normal installation (after you’ve gone through the initial steps in VirtualBox/KVM/VMWare to create the empty VM).

A VM requires you to set aside some memory which it will have exclusive use of while the machine is running. So, if you have 64Gb of memory, and allocate 16Gb to a Windows guest, your host will effectively have 48Gb left while the VM is running (it would be returned to the host when the VM was shut down). This would be fine, but clearly things could be a bit tighter on a computer with less memory to start with.

The VM doesn’t gain access to the full range of hardware features on the host. This is most relevant for graphics cards - the VM will have its own emulated card which will not support all of the features of a new GPU. This means that some software, games in particular, may not run very well in the VM.

Most (non-game) software will run perfectly well in the VM, and my experience has been that I have fewer problems getting things to work in a VM than in Wine.

Wine, however, does not require you to have a valid copy of Windows (which is a major advantage).

It is somewhat fiddly to configure, and I would recommend installing Play on Linux as an easier way to make use of Wine. Aside from a reasonably intuitive interface, PoL also makes it easier to manage different versions of Wine (useful if you want to install programs designed for very old versions of Windows - 3.1, 9x - as support for these OSs is not guaranteed in the newer versions of Wine).

To summarise, if you want to have a perfect experience running Windows applications, then they need to run in a Windows host, and dual-booting would be the solution. For software other than games, a VM is a good way to go, but you will need to have a valid Windows license (otherwise you won’t be able to activate the software). Wine avoids the license issue, but it is far from perfect, and some software won’t run (but it is improving).

1 Like
23

OK, its a kludge, and it might fail on some packages.
So long term we really do have to modify 50000+ packages to work directly with Wayland. I may not live to see it.

And are we going to end up with something like the 32bit/64bit mess we currently have in Debian’s package system?

K is the kludge that you say
You require to avoid some delay,
But that interim fix
forms a habit that sticks,
And you’ll find that it’s in there to stay.

24

If we would have to do that, yes. But if every package has at least one more or less dedicated maintainer, it’s totally doable.

Why call it a mess?

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25

Well, the library situation … lib, lib32, lib64, is quite a complication
And the multiarch package … I have to think, do I need it
When I put in third party stuff, like drivers, where do I put them especially if they include extra libraries?
And every .iso file… I have to think… is it 64 bit?

Life was a lot simpler before all this.

26

I think, it’s born out of a necessity. Same with IPv4. Or the “we will never need more than a couple of kilobytes RAM on computers” expression.

Times evolve, better systems get born, but the older ones do not immediately disappear. Hence, IPv4 support is still a thing and we still have 32-bit libraries.

Though, the library situation is even less bothersome, as it’s just natural to have builds for many different architectures. So, having another build for 64-bit is just one more in the big list, we already had to begin with. So, not much changed fundamentally.

Indeed, it was simpler and shittier. Life gets more complex and we have more to do, but that’s good.

I see it the other way around:
Life was always extremely boring and now it finally gets some spice. We finally get something to do.

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27

Yes, we tend to forget how limited computer use was in the past.

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28

I agree with you. I been dual booting for the past 3 years.
Just the other day I wanted to pull of pics from am Android phone to the PC. After spending a couple hours reading and trying different thing on Linux, I thought why not try Windows.
On Windows, not having to install anything, I had the pics transferred to the PC in under 5 minutes. Linux is great, but Windows still does some things better.

29

Bluetooth works for me for phone to Linux pc transfers

30

@nevj , thanks for the info. I don’t believe my old desktop has bluetooth.

31

You can get a bluetooth dongle. Just plug it into a usb port.

32

So my grandkids can play RoBlox

33

In 2009, a friend bought a popular implementation of the popular game Scrabble for her Windows PC and she plays it regularly. A couple of years ago Microsoft made this and other “old” applications incompatible with their new OS. By that time my friend had reached an age where she could no longer adapt to the implementations of the game currently on offer.

We bought an inexpensive notebook (Lenovo) and replaced its Windows with Linux Mint. Getting Wine to run our game turned out to be an exercise for geeks rather than pensioners, so we switched to Ubuntu GamePack which worked fine.
Recently, I found during a re-install that GamePack has become more commercially directed enterprise and more difficult to set up for our sort of requirement.

The main point to be made is that it is unacceptable for providers of computers, OS and software to consider that anything more than a decade old ought to be scrapped. In practice this attitude can lead people to lose even their family photographs. Many people need time to learn the technology and we all reach a point where we are unable to adapt to changes that, often enough, are introduced for the sake of change.

Reading through this thread, another point I’ve made before is that it is unacceptable that those who control the way PCs boot are allowed to make it difficult to install any OS other than Windows.

Finally, before buying a Lenovo as we did, it would be as well to check that it can run Linux without a lot of hassle. Not so long ago that company was positively promoting Linux, but that is no longer the case.

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34

@crl
And that is why I keep a copy of either XP or W7 tucked away in small install
in a niche in one of my drives. It is my PC, I just blend a little new with the old.

35

Another solution is to make a bootable USB drive of the old OS, complete with all your user files.

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36

I had a couple of Windows software packages that I missed when I switched to Ubuntu. Wine seemed to be the solution.

But I had difficulty installing it, and I had even more difficulty when I tried to add Bottles to it. And I just could not get it to run any of my Windows software.

So, after spending hours on it and adding dozens or perhaps hundreds of files to my system, I gave up on it.

Only after that did I find a much easier solution: Dual Booting. I started from scratch, put Windows 10 on my computer, and then put on a fresh install of Ubuntu.

Now I use Ubuntu as my main OS and only use Windows offline to run my old software.And I can now run that old software without any hitches or headaches.

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37

I do basically the same thing, only recently I decided I used Windows so infrequently I offloaded it onto a bootable USB drive.
Another good solution for infrequently used Windows is a spare old computer.

Regards and welcome
Neville

38

@4dand14
I don’t think many people have a licence for their old OS that can be transferred to a different machine. For most of us the licence is OEM, and presumably registered somewhere in the BIOS.

Our association is often given boxes of old CDs/DVDs people are reluctant to throw out and that can be useful, but so far I have never found a retail CD for XP, V*sta or W7. I guess only a very small percentage of personal and business installations were distributed like that and don’t know how difficult it is to register a new installation, especially if you don’t want to go online.

Perhaps Microsoft and Apple could be persuaded to mitigate the ephemeral nature of software, data and methods of using them by offering free perennial versions of their old OS with restrictions that would make everyday use inconvenient. I guess it should be technically possible to design appropriate restricted licencing facilities in an industry-standard manner into virtual machine software.

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39

Good point. I was forgetting that. I can only use a copy on a usb drive in the machine it was registered for.
I think, for cases where I have the CD , Microsoft will allow up to 5 installs on different computers.

40

@nevj
One retail license per machine, but that is the least of worries, when trying
to install Windows unsupported OS’s. All update channels have been blocked for XP, Vista, and W7, about the only thing that can be found are SP,s for XP, Vista, and W7. I needed .Net3.5 and SP3 for XP, for Nvidia, when I reinstalled XP on this machine. Finding a browser to work on XP, is a nightmare, and no one supports IE8, not even Microsoft.
The best solution, that is getting next to impossible, is just find an old XP machine, whether laptop or desktop, and use for old gaming. One could dual boot with LInux, but my experience with Linux on the old 32bit machine has been far from perfect.
You guessed it, the best Linux I have found, has been Gentoo, which in itself, can be tedious in itself.