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Xref: sserve comp.emulators.announce:76 comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine:1014 comp.os.386bsd.announce:604 comp.os.linux.answers:53 comp.windows.x.i386unix:15501 comp.answers:9294 news.answers:35487 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!news.ysu.edu!neoucom.edu!eff!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!news.alpha.net!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.primenet.com!usenet From: pdg@primenet.com (Dave Gardner) Newsgroups: comp.emulators.announce,comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine,comp.os.386bsd.announce,comp.os.linux.answers,comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: WINE (WINdows Emulator) Frequently Asked Questions Supersedes: <pdgD2BLCq.2EE@netcom.com> Followup-To: comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine Date: 21 Feb 1995 18:23:33 GMT Organization: Primenet Lines: 687 Sender: pdg@primenet.com (Dave Gardner) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU,linux-answers@news.ornl.gov Expires: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <3idb35$anj@news.primenet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: usr1.primenet.com Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) about Wine, the WINdows Emulator project. This should be read by anyone wishing to know more about the development of this programming project, which will allow users to run MS Windows binary programs under certain Unixes and Unix clones. Archive-name: windows-emulation/wine-faq Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 31 Jan 1994 09:00:00 PDT Version: 2.8 Wine Frequently Asked Questions February/March 1995 Special Note: Sorry to be out so late with this posting of the FAQ, but I had a spot of trouble getting a few message header changes approved by the folks at MIT, and without securing that approval, my posting would have been automatically cancelled. This is the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the Wine development project. It contains both general and technical information about Wine: project status, what it is and what it does, how to obtain and configure and run it, and more. Please read this FAQ carefully before you post questions about Wine to Usenet to see if your question is already answered here first. NOTE: If you are reading this FAQ and it is March 31, 1995 or later, this document is out of date. Please get a new one from sources outlined below. The following answers have changed since the last issue of this FAQ: 4.1 -- (minor change to thepoint.com's directory name) Please note that since Wine is still alpha code, it may or may not work to varying degrees on your system. Neither the Wine developers nor the Wine FAQ author/maintainer can be held responsible for any damage that may be caused to your computer hardware or software by your obtaining, installing, configuring, operating and/or removing Wine. Also please note that it is virtually impossible at this time to compile a comprehensive list of MS Windows programs that run under Wine. A program that runs under the current release of Wine probably won't under the next, and things break and get fixed over and over constantly. As development proceeds and programs don't break so easily, I'll be able to include such a list in this FAQ. Till then, please consult the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine for week-to-week reports by Wine users and testers. This FAQ will be posted monthly to these newsgroups: comp.answers comp.emulators.announce comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine comp.os.386bsd.announce comp.os.linux.answers comp.windows.x.i386unix news.answers It is also available by anonymous ftp from: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/Wine/Wine.FAQ rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-newsgroup/comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine/ WINE_(WINdows_Emulator)_Frequently_Asked_Questions aris.com:/pub/linux/ALPHA/Wine/Wine.FAQ sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/ALPHA/wine/Wine.FAQ ftp.netcom.com:/pub/an/andrew/Wine/Wine.FAQ and quite likely most of the other sites around the globe that mirror the Wine distribution from the Wine project's main distribution site, tsx-11.mit.edu. This FAQ is also available on the World Wide Web (WWW), reachable with any web browser such as Mosaic or Netscape, or the ASCII browser lynx, at the following URL: http://www.primenet.com/~pdg/wine-faq.html If you have any technical questions about Wine, please post these have any suggestions for corrections, changes, expansion or further clarification of this FAQ, please send them to the Wine FAQ author and maintainer listed in question 7.2. Here is a list of the topics covered in this issue of the Wine FAQ: Section 1 Overview 1.1 What is Wine, and what is it supposed to do? 1.2 What does the word Wine stand for? 1.3 What is the current version of Wine? 1.4 When will Wine be ready for general distribution? Section 2 -- Program Compatibility 2.1 Which MS Windows programs does wine currently run? 2.2 Which MS Windows programs do you expect wine never to be able to run at all, and for what reason(s)? 2.3 Will MS Windows programs typically run faster or slower under Unix and Wine than they do under MS-DOS and MS Windows? Will certain kinds of programs run slower or faster? 2.4 Are there any advantages or disadvantages to running MS Windows applications under wine that I should be aware of? 2.5 Will Wine support MS Windows networked applications that use WINSOCK.DLL? 2.6 I'm a software developer who wants to use Unix to develop programs rather than MS-DOS, but I need to write MS-DOS and MS Windows programs as well. Will I be able to run my favorite MS-DOS and/or MS Windows compilers under Wine? Section 3 Hardware/Software Considerations 3.1 Under what hardware platform(s) and operating system(s) will Wine run? 3.2 What minimum CPU must I have on my computer to be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications smoothly? 3.3 How much disk space will the Wine source code and binaries take on my hard drive? 3.4 How much RAM do I need to have on my Unix system to be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications smoothly? 3.5 I have a Doublespaced or Stackered MS-DOS partition. Can Wine run MS Windows binaries located in such a partition? 3.6 Do I need to have a MS-DOS partition on my system to use Wine? Does MS Windows need to be loaded into that partition in order to run MS Windows programs under Wine? 3.7 If Wine completely replaces MS Windows, will it duplicate all of the functions of MS Windows? 3.8 Will I be able to install MS Windows applications in any Unix filesystem? 3.9 Will Wine run only under X, or can it run in character mode? 3.10 Will Wine run under any X window manager? 3.11 What happens when Windows '95 is released? Will 32-bit Windows applications run under Wine? Section 4 How to Find, Install, Configure and Run Wine 4.1 Where can I get Wine? 4.2 If I do not have an Internet account, how can I get Wine? 4.3 How do I install Wine on my hard drive? 4.4 How do I compile the Wine distribution source code? 4.5 How do I configure Wine to run on my system? 4.6 How do I run an MS Windows program under Wine? 4.7 I have installed and configured Wine, but Wine cannot find MS Windows on my drive. Where did I go wrong? 4.8 I think I've found a bug. How do I report this bug to the Wine programming team? 4.9 I was able to get various MS Windows programs to run, but their menus do not work. What is wrong? 4.10 I have run various MS Windows programs but since the program menus do not work, how can I exit these programs? 4.11 How do I remove Wine from my computer? Section 5 How To Get Help 5.1 Is there a Usenet newsgroup for Wine? 5.2 Is there a gopher site set up for Wine? 5.3 Is there a WWW site set up for Wine information? 5.4 Is there a mailing list for Wine? Section 6 How You Can Help 6.1 How can I help contribute to the Wine project, and in what way(s)? 6.2 I want to help beta test Wine. How can I do this? 6.3 I have written some code that I would like to submit to the Wine project. How do I go about doing this? Section 7 Who is Responsible for Wine 7.1 Who is responsible for writing and maintaining the Wine source code? 7.2 Who is responsible for writing and maintaining the Wine FAQ? 7.3 Who are the folks and organizations who have contributed money or equipment to the Wine project? And now, the answers to the questions: Section 1 Overview 1.1 What is Wine, and what is it supposed to do? Wine is both a program loader and an emulation library that will allow Unix users to run MS Windows applications on an x86 hardware platform running under some Unixes. The program loader will load and execute an MS Windows application binary, while the emulation library will take calls to MS Windows functions and translate these into calls to Unix/X, so that equivalent functionality is achieved. MS Windows binaries will run directly; there will be no need for machine level emulation of program instructions. Sun has reported better performance with their version of WABI than is actually achieved under MS Windows, so theoretically the same result is possible under Wine. 1.2 What does the word Wine stand for? The word Wine stands for one of two things: WINdows Emulator, or Wine Is Not an Emulator. Both are right. Use whichever one you like best. 1.3 What is the current version of Wine? A new version of Wine will be distributed almost every week, usually on a Saturday or Sunday. You will be able to keep up on all the latest releases by reading the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. When downloading Wine from your ftp site of choice (see question 4.1 for some of these choices), you can make sure you are getting the latest version by watching the version numbers in the distribution filename. For instance, the distribution released on June 20, 1994 was called Wine-940620.tar.gz. Weekly patches are also available. If you are current to the previous version, you can download and apply just the current patch file rather than the entire new distribution. The patch filenames follow the same conventions as the weekly distribution, so watch those version numbers! 1.4 When will Wine be ready for general distribution? Because Wine is being developed solely by volunteers, it is difficult to predict when it will be ready for general distribution. Between 90-98% of the functions used by MS Windows applets, and 80-90% of the functions used by major programs, have been at least partially implemented at this time. However, the remaining 10% will likely take another 90% of the time, not including debugging. Section 2 Program Compatibility 2.1 Which MS Windows programs does wine currently run? A number of public domain and shareware games programs found on the ftp site cica.indiana.edu can run under Wine, to varying degrees of success. Since Wine is still under development, programs may break and new programs may begin to run from week to week, so it is virtually impossible to publish a complete and accurate list in a monthly document like this FAQ. To the best of my knowledge at the time of this writing, no one is currently compiling a comprehensive list of commercial MS Windows applications known to run under Wine. However, some of the aplets distributed with MS Windows, such as WINMINE.EXE, SOL.EXE and others, do run to a certain degree. Keep an eye on the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine for weekly changes. 2.2 Which MS Windows programs do you expect Wine never to be able to run at all, and for what reason(s)? Any MS Windows program that requires a special enhanced mode device driver (VxD) that cannot be rewritten specifically for Wine, will not run under Wine. 2.3 Will MS Windows programs typically run faster or slower under Unix and Wine than they do under MS-DOS and MS Windows? Will certain kinds of programs run slower or faster? Programs should typically run at about the same speed under Wine as they do under MS Windows. 2.4 Are there any advantages or disadvantages to running MS Windows applications under wine that I should be aware of? As with OS/2, you will be running 16-bit MS Windows applications in a 32-bit operating system using emulation techniques, so you will have similar advantages and disadvantages. There will be crash protection. That is, each MS Windows application running under Wine will be running in its own X window and its own portion of reserved memory, so that if one MS Windows application crashes, it will not crash the other MS Windows or Unix applications that you may have running at the same time. Also, MS Windows programs should run at about the same speed under Wine as they do under MS Windows. When Wine is finished, you will be able to run your favorite MS Windows applications in a Unix environment. However, be aware that any application written for a 16-bit operating system will run much less efficiently than its 32-bit cousin, so if you find a 32-bit application that fits your needs, you will be much better off switching. 2.5 Will Wine support MS Windows networked applications that use WINSOCK.DLL? Yes, Wine will support such applications. You will be able to run MS Windows applications such as Netscape, Mosaic and Cello, although there are 32-bit Unix versions of the first two now. 2.6 I'm a software developer who wants to use Unix to develop programs rather than MS-DOS, but I need to write MS-DOS and MS Windows programs as well. Will I be able to run my favorite MS-DOS and/or MS Windows compilers under Wine? DOSEMU, the MS-DOS emulator for Linux, is currently not able to run either the Microsoft C/C++ or Borland C/C++ compilers because it lacks DPMI (MS-DOS protected mode interface) support. Wine is not an MS-DOS emulator, so it cannot run these compilers either. Wine is not currently able to run any MS Windows debuggers, and may not be able to for some time. Wine is being designed to run existing MS Windows applications. Be aware too that a custom MS Windows program specifically written to be compatible with Wine may not work the same as when it is run under MS-DOS and MS Windows. Section 3 Hardware/Software Considerations 3.1 Under what hardware platform(s) and operating system(s) will Wine run? Wine is being developed specifically to run on the Intel x86 class of CPUs under certain Unixes that run on the x86 platform. Unixes currently being tested for Wine compatibility include Linux, NetBSD and FreeBSD. The Wine development team hopes to attract the interest of commercial Unix and Unix clone vendors as well. 3.2 What minimum CPU must I have in my computer to be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications smoothly? Wine is currently being developed specifically for use on Intel x86 CPUs, and needs a minimum 80386 CPU. It is known to also work in the 80486 and Pentium CPUs. Beyond that, the basic test is, if you can run X11 now, you should be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications. As always, the faster your CPU, the better. Having a math coprocessor is unimportant. However, having a graphics accelerated video card supported by X will help greatly. 3.3 How much disk space will the Wine source code and binaries take on my hard drive? It is anticipated that when Wine is completed, you will need approximately 6-8 megabytes of hard drive space to store and compile the source code. 3.4 How much RAM do I need to have on my Unix system to be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications smoothly? If you can run X smoothly on your Unix system now, you should be able to run Wine and MS Windows applications just fine too. A Wine workstation should realistically have at least 8 megabytes of RAM and a 12 megabyte swap partition. More is better, of course. 3.5 I have a Doublespaced or Stackered MS-DOS partition. Can Wine run MS Windows binaries located in such a partition? Only if the operating system supports mounting those types of drives. Currently, NetBSD and FreeBSD do not. However, there is a patch for the Linux kernel that allows read-only access to a Doublespaced DOS partition, and it's available on sunsite.unc.edu as: /pub/Linux/system/Filesystems/thsfs.tgz (12076 bytes) 3.6 Do I need to have a MS-DOS partition on my system to use Wine? Does MS Windows need to be loaded into that partition in order to run MS Windows programs under Wine? You do not need DOS or MS Windows to install, configure and run Wine. However, Wine has to be able to 'see' an MS Windows binary if it is to run it. So, currently, you do need to have a DOS partition with MS Windows installed on your hard drive to use Wine in a practical manner. Your Unix OS must be able to 'see' this partition (check your /etc/fstab file or mount the partition manually) in order for Wine to run MS Windows binaries in your DOS partition. However, when it is finished, Wine will not require that you have a MS-DOS partition on your system at all, meaning that you will not need to have MS Windows installed either. Wine programmers will provide an application setup program to allow you to install your MS Windows programs straight from your distribution diskettes into your Unix filesystem, or from within your Unix filesystem if you ftp an MS Windows program over the Internet. 3.7 If Wine completely replaces MS Windows, will it duplicate all of the functions of MS Windows? Most of them, yes. However, some applications and aplets that come with MS Windows, such as File Manager and Calculator, can be considered by some to be redundant, since 32-bit Unix programs that duplicate these functions already exist. 3.8 Will I be able to install MS Windows applications in any Unix filesystem? Wine is written to be filesystem independent, so MS Windows applications will install and run under any filesystem supported by your brand of Unix. 3.9 Will Wine run only under X, or can it run in character mode? Being a GUI (graphical user interface), MS Windows does not have a character mode, so there will be no character mode for Wine. So yes, you must run Wine under X. 3.10 Will Wine run under any X window manager? Wine is window manager independent, so the X window manager you choose to run has absolutely no bearing on your ability to run MS Windows programs under Wine. Wine uses standard X libraries, so no additional ones are needed. 3.11 What happens when Windows '95 is released? Will 32-bit Windows applications run under Wine? Wine developers do eventually plan on supporting Win32s, but such support is not in the current version of Wine. Section 4 How to Find, Install, Configure and Run Wine 4.1 Where can I get Wine? Wine can now be found on quite a few systems throughout the Internet. Here is an incomplete list of some of the systems and their directories in which to find Wine: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/Wine/development aris.com:/pub/linux/ALPHA/Wine sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/ALPHA/wine ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:/pub/Linux/local/packs ftp.thepoint.com:/linux/alpha/wine ftp.funet.fi:/pub/OS/Linux/ALPHA/Wine ftp.wonderland.org:/Wine ftp.netcom.com:/pub/andrew/Wine unix.hensa.ac.uk:/pub/linux/ALPHA/wine Some of these ftp sites may archive previous versions of Wine as well as the current one. To determine which is the latest one, look at the distribution filename, which will take the form: Wine-[yymmdd].tar.gz Simply replace [yymmdd] in the distribution filename with the numbers for year, month and date respectively. The latest one is the one to get. Note that weekly diff patches are now available, so you don't have to download, install and configure the entire distribution each week if you are current to the previous release. Diff releases follow the same numbering conventions as do the general releases, and take the form: Wine-[yymmdd].diff.gz Note that any mirror of tsx-11 will likely carry the Wine distribution as well, and may not be listed here in this FAQ. If you are mirroring the Wine distribution from the tsx-11 site and wish to be listed here in this FAQ, please send email to the FAQ author/maintainer listed in question 7.2. 4.2 If I do not have an Internet account, how can I get Wine? Sorry, but at this time, you are basically out of luck. Find a friend with an Internet account and have him/her ftp the necessary files for you. If you have an email account on a BBS that can reach the Internet through a gateway, you may be able to use email to get the Wine release sent to you; check with your BBS system operator for details. If you are running a BBS that is not connected to the Internet but does offer the Wine distribution for download, and would like to be listed in this FAQ, please forward such information to the FAQ author/maintainer as listed in question 7.2. 4.3 How do I install Wine on my hard drive? Just un-gzip and un-tar the file, and follow the instructions contained in the README file that will be located in the base Wine directory. 4.4 How do I compile the Wine distribution source code? 4.5 How do I configure Wine to run on my system? All of the directions to perform these two steps are located in the README file that will be located in the base Wine directory after you untar the distribution file. 4.6 -- How do I run an MS Windows program under Wine? Assuming you are running X already, call up a term window. Then, at the shell prompt, type: wine [/path/progname] Another X window will pop up on top of the shell window and the binary should begin to execute. Let's assume that you want to run MS Windows Solitaire. Under MS-DOS, you had installed MS Windows on your C: drive under the subdirectory /WINDOWS. Under Unix, you have mounted the C: drive under /dos/c. To run MS Windows Solitaire, you would type: wine /dos/c/windows/sol.exe 4.7 I have installed and configured Wine, but Wine cannot find MS Windows on my drive. Where did I go wrong? First, make sure you have mounted your MS-DOS partition into your Unix filesystem, either by putting the entry into /etc/fstab, or by manually mounting it. Remember, it must not be located on a Doublespaced or Stackered partition, as neither Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD or Wine cannot currently 'see' files located in such compressed DOS partitions. Next, check your path statements in the 'wine.conf' file. No capital letters may be used in paths, as they are automatically converted to lowercase. 4.8 I think I've found a bug. How do I report this bug to the Wine programming team? Bug reports should be posted to the following newsgroup: comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. 4.9 I was able to get various MS Windows programs to run, but their menus do not work. What is wrong? Wine is not complete at this time, so the menus may not work. They will in time as more of the MS Windows API calls are included in Wine. 4.10 I have run various MS Windows programs but since the program menus do not work, how can I exit these programs? Kill the shell window that you called up to run your MS Windows program, and the X window that appeared with the program will be killed too. 4.11 How do I remove Wine from my computer? All you have to do is to type: rm -fR [/path/]Wine* Make sure you specify the exact path when using the powerful 'rm -fR' command. If you are afraid you might delete something important, or might otherwise delete other files within your filesystem, change into each Wine subdirectory singly and delete the files found there manually, one file or directory at a time. Neither the Wine programmers nor the Wine FAQ author/maintainer can be held responsible for your deleting any files in your filesystem. Section 5 How To Get Help 5.1 Is there a Usenet newsgroup for Wine? Yes. It's called comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine, and the newsgroup's charter states that it will consist of announcements and discussion about Wine. The newsgroup serves as a place for developers to discuss Wine, and for minor announcements for the general public. Major announcements will be crossposted to other appropriate groups, such as the newsgroups comp.os.linux.announce, comp.windows.x.announce and comp.emulators.announce. If your Usenet site does not carry this new newsgroup, please urge your sysadmin and/or uplink to add it. 5.2 Is there a gopher site set up for Wine? To the best of my knowledge at the time of this writing, no. If you are installing or maintain a Gopher site pertaining to Wine, please contact the FAQ author/maintainer as noted in question 7.2 for inclusion in the next edition of the Wine FAQ. 5.3 Is there a WWW site set up for Wine information? Here are the URLs for a few sites reachable with your favorite web browser: http://www.primenet.com/~pdg/wine-faq.html http://www.thepoint.com/linux/ALPHA/wine/index.html http://daedalus.dra.hmg.gb/gale/wine/wine.html http://www.ifi.uio.no/~dash/wine/ If you are installing or maintain a WWW page pertaining to Wine, please inform the FAQ author/maintainer as detailed in 7.2 for inclusion in the next edition of the Wine FAQ. 5.4 Is there a mailing list for Wine? There is a seldom-used developers-only mailing list, whose contents are planned to be ported into comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. If you are a Wine developer, or want to become one, you are welcome to join the list. Please leave a message on the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine expressing your interest. Those with a general interest in Wine should participate in the newsgroup. Section 6 How You Can Help 6.1 How can I help contribute to the Wine project, and in what way(s)? You can contribute programming skills, or monetary or equipment donations, to aid the Wine developers in reaching their goal. To find out who, what, where, when and why, please post your desire to contribute to the newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine. 6.2 I want to help beta test Wine. How can I do this? Beta testers are currently not needed, as Wine is still Alpha code at this time. However, anyone is welcome to download the latest version and try it out at any time. 6.3 I have written some code that I would like to submit to the Wine project. How do I go about doing this? Send your weekly code contributions to the mail alias 'wine-new@amscons.com'. You should still verify that your code was included in the subsequent release of Wine, as project managers cannot guarantee that the mail server will not suffer some computer failure that will cause loss of your message and code after it is received. Section 7 Who is Responsible for Wine 7.1 Who is responsible for writing and maintaining the Wine source code? Wine is available thanks to the work of Bob Amstadt, Dag Asheim, Martin Ayotte, Erik Bos, John Brezak, Andrew Bulhak, John Burton, Peter Galbavy, Jeffrey Hsu, Miguel de Icaza, Alexandre Julliard, Scott Laird, Martin von Loewis, Jon Konrath, Peter MacDonald, David Metcalfe, Michael Patra, John Richardson, Johannes Ruscheinski, Yngvi Sigurjonsson, Rick Sladkey, William Smith, Jon Tombs, Carl Williams, Karl Guenter Wuensch, and Eric Youngdale. 7.2 Who is responsible for writing and maintaining the Wine FAQ? The FAQ is being maintained by Dave Gardner <pdg@primenet.com>, who is not connected with the Wine project in any way but as the FAQ author/maintainer. Please do not send technical questions about the Wine project to the FAQ maintainer, but rather post them to the newsgroup. 7.3 Who are the folks and organizations who have contributed money or equipment to the Wine project? People and organizations who have given generous contributions of money and equipment include David L. Harper, Bob Hepple, Mark A. Horton, Kevin P. Lawton, the Syntropy Institute, and James Woulfe. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Gardner | pdg@primenet.com S. Pasadena, CA | http://www.primenet.com/~pdg/dave-h.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------------