Wine On Android Starts Allowing Windows Binaries On Android/ARM 140
An anonymous reader writes "Wine on Android is happening slowly but surely ... Wine is now in a state to be able to run your favorite Windows (x86) game on your Android-powered ARM device, assuming the game is Windows Solitaire. Wine has been making progress on Android to allow simple applications to run on Wine, but they have run into some challenges, as noted in the annual talk at FOSDEM."
STOP REDIRECTING DAMMIT (Score:5, Interesting)
Dammit, Dice, I thought you said you heard us. I don't want to use beta, stop redirecting me there PLEASE. I didn't want to do the stupid boycott thing, but when I came into work this morning and found myself on Beta... well, I think I'll just leave.
Better than protest! (Score:2, Informative)
The interesting thing about this is that when using Beta, the default view is to show everything. So, if you are using Beta, these trollish anti-beta things are perfectly visible, while if you are on Classic they just get filtered out with the rest of the trolls. So, if you really like Classic and hate Beta, the best thing you can do is try to post an anti-beta, pro-classic threat to leave the site as first post instead of Frosty Piss or whatever. That way, if any advertisers to who Dice is trying to mark
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Isn't it strange, that every anti-beta post is now modded -1, even when the majority of the users is against beta?
And off-topic is wrong, anti-beta is on-topic, because this is a slashdot article, and it will be displayed in the beta website, if slashdot decides to abandon the classic one.
Majority? (Score:2)
Squeaky wheels and all that.
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Being against beta doesn't mean I approve of this constant railing against it. You're doing more damage to Slashdot than beta ever could, rendering it pretty much unreadable.
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As with most revolutionaties you make worse what you claim you wish to make better.
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Isn't it strange, that every anti-beta post is now modded -1, even when the majority of the users is against beta?
And off-topic is wrong, anti-beta is on-topic, because this is a slashdot article, and it will be displayed in the beta website, if slashdot decides to abandon the classic one.
I don't think it's strange at all. Most users don't like the beta, but they also don't like each and every discussion about anything on Slashdot being hijacked by the anti-betas. So your average user might see an actual story, think "wonder what other people think about it?" and scroll to the comments.. oh, it's the same anti-beta stuff as the day before, and the day before that. After awhile, you get sick of it.
You see, single-issue crusaders are inherently annoying to the average person; the people who th
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The point is: Slashdot should stop the beta, the users will stop spamming. Sometimes you have to protest until something changes.
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Whats a good slashdot alternative? Maybe someone here ought to set up a site realslashdot.org running the classic interface and then we will move over there.
Capt Keen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Capt Keen (Score:5, Insightful)
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After 24 years, poor Billy Blaze deserves a promotion by now!
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Re: Capt Keen (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like it's not the case, and USB floppy drives work out of the box (though you need a powered hub): https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons [classicdosgames.com], in a Java applet
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look up Commander Genius
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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Video of talk is available: (Score:5, Informative)
http://video.fosdem.org/2014/AW1120/Sunday/Wine_on_Android.webm
ARM executables? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, It works! (TM) [winehq.org]
Running win8 ARM PEs also works. [winehq.org]
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Windows RT ships with most of the Windows utilities ported to ARM, as well as Office and .NET.
Who cares?
For every crappy half-arsed app on RT, there's a thousand better naive Android apps.
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For every crappy half-arsed app on RT, there's a thousand better naive Android apps.
Good luck finding them.
Re:ARM executables? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't you, like, buy an operating system to run apps?
Why would you buy a Windows tablet if you're just going to run Android apps?
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1) Ability to plug in an SD card for expandable storage.
2) Reasonable expectation that I'll get OS updates.
The first reason excludes all Apple tablets as well as many Android tablets. The second excludes most Android devices. Sure you may get updat
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Well, in any case, with Wine i can finally play Dungeon Keeper on Android, right?
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However, DOSBox runs fine on Android. Just sayin'
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An android compatibility layer didn't do Blackberry much good.
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N900 (Score:5, Interesting)
increasingly inaccurate acronyms (Score:4, Funny)
So now WINE *is* an emulator? Thats a tough acronym to sell, recursive or otherwise. I guess really the QEMU package is the emulator, but still.
Re:increasingly inaccurate acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
Wine Is Now Emulation
Not so tough -.o
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The irony is the acronym originally meant WINdows Emulator, so now it does again, huh.
Actually it's QEmu that does the emulation part to get x86 applications running on arm. See the schema at 30:00 in the Wine on Android video [belnet.be] (with sound as soon as the FOSDEM guys get to it).
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The point is Wine can't perform the emulation that is needed for x86 code to run on an ARM CPU. For that you actually need and emulator.
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Yes. This is exactly what evanh just said. Wine doesn't translate instruction-sets, it just makes available the Windows ABI. Therefore, if you want to run Linux+Wine on anything but x86/x86-64, you'll need hardware-emulation, which Wine itself doesn't provide.
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So now WINE *is* an emulator? Thats a tough acronym to sell, recursive or otherwise. I guess really the QEMU package is the emulator, but still.
As the TP post was complaining about how we handle the acronym based on the mistaken premise that there was a "not" in there which originally there was not. I was only pointing out that plenty linux distros support different architecture which is equally not supported.
End of
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Wine has no other target than x86, it's purpose is for Windoze ABI compatibility.
Windoze Server did have a tiny market on other architectures but I don't think anyone is seriously trying to get Wine to run such programs. Certainly not on an ARM.
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Windows software is made up to large amounts of closed source x86 Binaries using the Windows API and related Libraries. Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) provides the Windows API by forwarding calls to the native API (Kernel/X11/etc.), Windows programs run native as they would on Windows as long as the underlying processor is x86 conform - which until recently was the only supported platform. Having windows x86 programs run on ARM means that they now also have to emulate the CPU and since x86 was not made to a
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and since x86 was not made to act as an abstraction layer (vs. Java bytecode, CLR instructions and python opcodes) this is costly and slow.
Actually, x86 already *is* an abstraction layer - a lousy one, admittedly, but still, most current CPUs have to perform all sorts of moderately complex computation to massage the x86 stream into something that can be executed quickly. So QEMU and the like are massaging it into something else. There's little technical reason for the ARM version of WINE to be slow, beyond the actual computational performance of a single ARM core.
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Running wine with qemu is nothing new - ppc linux users were doing that a decade ago.
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how pathetic is it... (Score:4, Interesting)
that it takes the linux open source community to port windows programs to smart phones.
We've been asking for this from MS for EVER. MS keeps worrying about how to win the smartphone war...
They're morons. They'd win instantly if they allowed windows apps to run on the windows phones. Yes yes... there are problems. None of them are impossible to solve. Do it or pay someone to do it.
LOL Your freakin' kidding I hope! (Score:1)
you obviously have never used WinPh 6.5 or earlier incarnations of windows phones. There is a reason why desktop apps suck on smart phones and I think microsoft is finally starting to understand the reason. There is also one hell of a good reason why mac os10 is different from their touch os IOS. Microsoft is just starting to understand the difference and is why we will see a re-release of seven to replace the fiasco which is 8.
Kudos for the wine guys proving that you can guild turds though and run ms crap
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I would like to know more about how you hook a moose up to your cell phone.
If it involves hot grits and Sarah Palin then I would like photos.
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I didn't say the interface would be pretty.
But if it was understood that windows apps worked on phones as well as desktops the program coders would release software with multiple interfaces. A touch interface is VERY easy to add to a program. You just redo some menus with big idiot buttons.
The trick is getting it to run at all. Not the interface.
Re:how pathetic is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
We've been asking for this from MS for EVER
They just can't win can they?
Everyone: We want the same apps on our phone and tablet as on our desktop!
MS: Ok, with Windows 8 we'll created a unified UI and Dev experience so the same app can be released on all 3 platforms! Neat huh?
Everyone: We don't want our PC to be like a phone, we hate Windows 8!
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They could listen... Doing exactly the opposite of what people ask is not winning.
Home owner: I want my house the same red color as my car.
Painter (who apparently used to work for MS): Ok, I've painted your car white, so now your house has the exact same color as your car.
Home owner: I don't want my car to look like my house, I hate white.
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We heard you liked Metro so we put Metro on you PC so you use your mouse to make touch screen gestures.
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I kind of get where my anonymous sibling poster said that they went the wrong way, when really they should have just let the desktop apps run on a regular tablet, and not try to get tab
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I'm not asking to have my PC get gimped to the interface of a tablet.
I'm asking to have access to my legacy desktop applications on my phone.
MS never did that.
MS's lock is Windows. That is their draw. That is why people come back.
Who gives a shit about some new OS that isn't compatible with anything? That's fucking stupid. That's more useless then PalmOS.
Give me access to windows on my phone. It can be slow. Make it windows 95 for all I care. Ideally we'd like per application emulation since who wants to ac
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Out of interest, what legacy apps are you so desperate to run on your phone? Up until a few years ago it wouldn't have even been feasible to run an x86 emulator fast enough to emulate anything newer than Win95, and even now I can't imagine what you'd want to run on a slow CPU emulator that there aren't already plenty of good native alternatives for. Well, maybe on an Intel based Android phone it might work ok.
On the other hand I can already access my full PC remotely on my phone via Vnc...
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Corporate database software for one.
There are literally tens of thousands of very sophisticated programs that worked under windows 95. Business applications.
Many of them have been replaced with newer versions mostly because their interfaces look dated now. As to functionality they were often as good as modern applications or in some cases superior.
There is an incredible depth of content in legacy software. Packages that were refined over decades by industry specific professionals.
Re:how pathetic is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone: We want to be able to run the programmes that we use on our desktops on our phones too!
MS: OK, with Windows 8 we'll turn your desktop into a MASSIVE PHONE. All your favourite desktop programmes will have to be extensively rewritten so that they can run halfway gracefully on your new MASSIVE PHONE desktop, and will be able to run on your actual phone or tablet too (as long as you buy the software twice, seeing as we're not implementing an ARM/x86 emulation layer at all). Neat, huh?
Everyone: [despair]
Make sense?
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Uhhhh.
"We want our mobile device to be able to do what a PC does"
Not equal to
"We want the usable interface on a PC to be bogged down with cumbersome mobile cruft that works like s*** on a large or non-touchscreen"
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They don't run on windows phones because they weren't designed for windows phones (eg multitouch, softkeyboards) This is the exact same reason OS X is not on a smartphone, and Ubuntu/Debian/Mandrake/CentOS/Flavor-of-the-month Linux isn't on a smart phone. A smart phone requires a completely different interface design.
iOS succeeds because it doesn't require anything but your fingers. No damned stylus, bluetooth gadgets or other accessories required. I can't say the same of Windows 8 itself. Try running any g
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> iOS succeeds because it doesn't require anything but your fingers. No damned stylus,
My ex-ifan loves the stylus on her Android tablet. It eliminates a lot of the crudeness of the usual tablet interface.
Pushing something crippled and calling it superior just because it looks trendy and fashionable doesn't make it so.
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Well said.
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The performance of x86->ARM translation isn't good enough for a commercial product. It'd be fine for running Office 97 but if you tried to run modern office your phone would asplode. What's holding this back is intel can't make x86 processors in the ARM power envelope.
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Also no ARM processor shipping has the horsepower to do a good job at emulating even a low end x86. I think even a really good JIT engine running on the fastest ARM you can get is going to be slower at running x86 code than even the slowest x86.
Back when Dec was trying to get people to buy Alphas they wrote a really clever piece of software called FX!32. It would take an x86 binary and initially run it slowly via instruction by instruction emulation. However while doing that it would profile the application
Whoops! (Score:1)
I'm an addict. I forgot I was supposed to be boycotting. I was going to read and not comment.
I manage not to be addicted to anything else, and I've tried this and that now and again. But Slashdot is a motherfucker.
In conclusion, Fuck Beta.
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That's just goal post moving.
If the phone's CPU could emulate a desktop environment of 15 years ago that would be just fine. Most of the increased CPU power for modern applications is just fluff anyway. Anyone want to pretend that applications from 15 years ago weren't capable of the same complexity and sophistication as today? They were much more efficient and less pretty. That's about the only relevant difference. Yes, there are always new features in the new product. But most of them are either never use
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OK, I'll bite, and finish out this conversation before leaving for the week.
The goalposts move. I'm not moving them. The users move them. The users will expect recent applications to work and bitch if they don't. We've seen this time and again.
You can complain that the goalposts are moving, but we call that progress. You can complain about it, but you can't ignore it.
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The ability to run most programs that work in windows is not diminished by the inability to run the latest high performance demanding program that many computers will have a hard time delivering smoothly.
In short, not being able to outright match the modern desktop blow for blow is not a reason to never attempt to build cross compatibility into the phone's OS.
Come now.
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Their problem with running Windows app on a Phone and Tablet.
1. Most of these apps were designed to run on a PC, Mouse, Keyboard, Large Screen. Having used RDP and Citrix apps on tablets, let me tell you these PC apps are just hard to use.
2. Performance. This is less of an issue, especially with older stuff. However these programs could take up a little more resources then expected and use up battery power.
3. Security. Backwards compatibility on a locked device like a phone, is a massive disaster waiting
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1. I'm aware, but that's a minor issue when put against the outright inability to run the software on such platforms. People will put up with that sort of thing if the know you're working on it.
2. Performance is only reasonable to the extent that the software is useable. No one will expect the same speed. It just needs to be reasonable. Furthermore, some applications will be understood to not be good ideas on the platform. For example, using a modern version of photoshop, opening a 16 gig photo file, and th
MS needs an Android-based OS (Score:2)
I think that very clearly the strategy for MS is to start selling Android-based tablets and phones with some kind of wine-like compatibility layer that allows running Office and other windows apps on tablets and phones, without trying to square the circle and forcing windows in an environment that it wasn't designed for.
In the longer run they can transition the same Android based OS (call it windows 10 or something) to home laptops and eventually in the office, before anyone else does (e.g. google, apple, a
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I don't see how you think wine is MS's idea at all... they don't appear involved.
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It depends on Intel's latest efforts with the Silvermont SoC - if they can get 10-15 hours battery life...
Phones might remain ARM-only but a $300 x86-64 device that can undercut the Surface Pro 2 with both Android and Windows is the future (MS stupid locked-down UEFI pending...)
Forget wine, sketchy compatibility and using qemu to emulate x86 on ARM - the next-gen Atoms include virtualization extensions. Either dual-boot or just port Virtualbox, accessing the physical disk on the other partition and you're d
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NB: It's a chicken and egg re: Android on x86 (the native-code on ARM argument). However, Intel has been murmuring about running kitkat on x86-64, so it's up to them to promote the platform and convince app-developers to port any ARM-specific native code for an alt architecture.
I do wish them success if they dump any PowerVR nastiness they had in previous Atoms in favour of their own Linux-friendly GPU arch. (Hopefully pressuring Mali, Tegra and Adreno to officially support open drivers)
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You're reading a retarded headline and acting like suddenly you can play quake on your phone
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
MAME-WINE multi-layer emulation (Score:2)
How long until I can run MAME through WINE on my Android device. This way I can emulate an older game system while emulating Windows. If the game system I'm emulating is old enough, the resulting processing slowdown of the double emulation might add to the realism of the game system emulation!
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There's already a build of MAME for android called MAME4Droid on the play store.
0.139u1: (for dual core devices)
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
0.37b5: ( for lower-powered devices)
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Get Wine working on x86 first (Score:2)
I think Wine ought to focus on making sure 99.9% of WIndows apps run on x86 before it starts thinking about other platforms. As it stands now, Wine's support for applications is so spotty that it falls far short of allowing it to be a Windows replacement, and this really must be the goal of wine.
Maybe we can get a version of this for WinRT? (Score:1)
I mean, I've always fantasized about being able to run Windows applications on Windows!
Pinball (Score:1)
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I think there's a problem with this. What you describe is similar to a BB84 quantum key distribution scheme. But I think you're missing a quantum no-cloning mechanism here.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
In BB84 photon polarization is used to
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You sirDrama queen.
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Updates are being applied...
Please do not close your Slashdot.
(spinning pearls animation)
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Show me a vector drawing program as:
- elegant
- efficient
- productive
- intuitive
as FreeHand and I'd be willing to say no --- until then, I have to have Windows or Mac OS X 10.6.8 or NeXT/OPENstep running either FreeHand or Altsys Virtuoso.