On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 04:32:02PM +0200, Holly Bostick wrote:
find that it doesn't necessarily "feel strange" or at least as strange as I might have imagined. What mostly feels strange is the complications of getting the program started in the first place (having to cd to the application folder to run wine <program_name> from a terminal, or having to write a little start script in order to make a panel shortcut to it).
You might look into the kernel's miscellaneous binary format support. On my Debian system, with binfmt-support package installed, I can directly execute a PE executable (WINE is invoked automatically by the kernel).
Yes, I've just installed that for the first time during my recent kernel upgrade. Haven't really tested it out, though.
However, I think that the presence of this ability is not necessarily a strong counter-argument since 1) it requires the user to either be quite familiar with their system, or know such a person, in order to set it up in the first place, and 2) is not necessarily useful if you have more than one Wine variant (or version) on the system (haven't checked this out either, but I expect problems).
It is not necessarily unreasonable for a home, multi-user computer to "need", let us say, Crossover Office (or regular Wine) for Dad's work, and Cedega (or regular Wine, possibly a different version) for the kids' games.
What binary is going to be invoked when the user double-clicks, if different applications need to be run with different versions/types of Wine?
OK, I'll grant you that if a user knows how to install multiple versions of Wine on a system without conflict, they probably won't care about this double-clicking business in the first place, and I'll also grant that Wine is not CX is not Cedega-- but... we're talking about often inexperienced people who are likely relying on Windows programs as a crutch to avoid the "confusingness" of Linux in the first place (the issue in question is easing migration woes, after all).
Such a user, when informed that CX is good for apps, and Cedega is good for games, might well install both, which is possible to do without problems, afaik (as they install in different places, and the wine or cx binaries and the cedega binaries do not have the same name).
So what's going to happen with the file associations on which the double-click strategy relies? Games are not distinguished from MSOffice in terms of being some other mime-type than "DOS/Windows executable".
Is CX going to try to open FarCry? Or is Cedega going to try to open Photoshop?
I really don't know (not having tried this), but I wonder, and suspect that it would bite me in the butt if I did try.
So while I do appreciate this functionality, I'm not sure it's flexible enough to cover the vast range of strange things that former Windows users might do (given that they're under the general impression that they can just click once and accomplish anything, no matter how complex or technically difficult-- through no fault of their own, I might add; they've just been sold a bill of goods, no pun intended).
Holly
