---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Walter Bender" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "John Gilmore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 08:42:43 -0400 Subject: Re: Sugared Wine project begins I'm including the Education list in a hope we can get some feedback as to what class of MS-Windows programs are a high-priority. I cannot imagine Word would be high on the list, but there are undoubtedly many applications people are looking for...
-walter On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:52 PM, John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > X86-based Linux systems have been able to run some applications > written for MS-Windows for many years, due to the efforts of the Wine > project (http://winehq.org). Wine is a GNU LGPL licensed implementation > of the Windows API on top of X and Unix. It does not use any Microsoft > code. Many popular free or proprietary programs run well under it; > see the Applications Database at http://appdb.winehq.org/. Wine just > had its 1.0 release in 2008; after 15 years of continuous development, > it's getting pretty complete. Retail and corporate sale of commercial > versions of Wine have supported two small companies (CodeWeavers and > TransGaming) for many years. > > Wine already runs on the OLPC ("yum install wine"), but it's clunky > because Sugar doesn't integrate well with it. So CodeWeavers and I, > with the assistance of the Public Software Fund, have started the > Sugared Wine project to improve that integration. See: > > http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine > > Wine normally lets the X window manager manage its windows. That > doesn't work well with Sugar, so CodeWeavers is improving Wine's > existing alternative "full-screen" mode, in which Wine manages all the > sub-windows that the applications create. This improvement also > involves implementing the "Smart" menu that sits in the lower left > corner for starting Windows applications, and the taskbar that lets > the user manage multiple running Windows applications. > > The project will also package Wine as a .xo with all the usual Sugar > goop. (Possible future work might include the capability to bundle up > a single Windows application with Wine and goop to produce a .xo that > would directly run that app.) We expect to be testing the port to > Sugar using the Windows binary of Firefox 3.0, a pretty demanding > application that also happens to be free. All of the work will be > released under the GNU LGPL. > > For many purposes, like running MS-Office, the results of the project > should compare favorably with dual-booting Windows and Linux. The > Windows programs can merely run under Linux. > > The work is just starting, so it's a good time for early feedback on > the technical goals and tactics of the project. Will the result > proposed at http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine be useful to OLPC's > customers? What changes would make it more useful? What other > programs should we be testing in the XO Wine? Would you like to be an > early tester for the project? > > (Those who do not want to run Windows apps should keep their flames at > home. Nobody will force you to run either Wine or Windows apps. Some > good people need, or choose, to run apps coded for the Windows API. > We may deplore it. But peaceful coexistence, plus superior technology > and licensing on the GNU/Linux side, are our best path to compete with > it for mindshare and market share. Most of the improvements being > made here will be useful in other portable and embedded systems, > making Microsoft OS's even less competitive in that market than they > already are.) > > John Gilmore > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
