You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
I installed picasa trough aur today! And I noticed that it's depends on wine.
Google probably has the manpower(and the knowledge) to convert picasa so it runs native on linux. In the wine wiki it's explained that this is done because it's easier. Is this true?
Do you think we're going to see more of this as wine get's better and better? For example will winamp convert to linux trough wine rather then going open source or just convert winamp native to linux themselves?
In my opinion the best alternative(for me(us?)) is to go open source( da-aa). An argument that could persuade them to think the same is that they wouldn't need to do the convert job themselves.
If this is a growing trend at all, is this good for linux/gnu? In my opinion it's not. what do you think?
Offline
I really don't see it as a bad thing, at least it runs on Linux, and wine is a fine project. Nothing beats native, but if they want to use wine then they are welcome, if the only possibilities is wine or nothing, I'd take wine.
Last edited by kensai (2008-08-15 22:08:54)
Offline
Google Earth for Linux is using WINE internally. I don't think that they're making much effort to build native code.
Offline
I hate using WINE, so I only run applications natively.
Arch - It's something refreshing
Offline
Google Earth for Linux is using WINE internally.
Seriously? I did not know that.
Any source to back up this statement?
Offline
Offline
Thank you
Offline
I really like how they are improving on WINE, we have to be realistic, until vendors start taking Linux as serious as they should, we have to rely on WINE getting better and better.
Many Linux users think Google should build native versions for their software, instead of using Wine, but if Wine becomes powerful enough to run (almost) any Windows software everyone will gain: more people will adopt Linux because they can use their favorite applications and companies will have a wider audience for their software.
And I agree with that statement.
Last edited by kensai (2008-08-16 16:41:50)
Offline
google is imho contradiction in itself.
on one side they are trying to convey coders and open source projects and on the other side they sell/release closed source software with dependencies towards wine (windows API)
Offline
I really like how they are improving on WINE, we have to be realistic, until vendors start taking Linux as serious as they should, we have to rely on WINE getting better and better.
Google Operating System blog wrote:Many Linux users think Google should build native versions for their software, instead of using Wine, but if Wine becomes powerful enough to run (almost) any Windows software everyone will gain: more people will adopt Linux because they can use their favorite applications and companies will have a wider audience for their software.
And I agree with that statement.
I really don't. Doing this is making a Windows clone, don't you see? This statement is wrong on, at least, two levels. First, people shouldn't embrace linux for being able to run all their favorite *win* apps. Do we use arch only because we have an option to run, say, flashget or aimp? No, we use it for multitude of other reasons! And secondly, how will companies have wider audience for their software? It's the same audience on a different platform (as the original idea suggests).
Just my two bits.
Sorry for the offtopic
Offline
We have to be realistic, most of the people moving from windows will want support for some of their windows applications. You know, I don't use windows at all, I don't have any installations of windows, and I'm at university still. Once I had to run a custom cisco router configuration application that only ran on Windows, I said to myself, oh what I'm going to do now, it was from a Internet class and I was supposed to do it that same night. I fired the application hoping wine will run it, and boom, It ran, WINE flawlessly ran the application and I could do my homework from a Linux box running WINE. So all in all WINE is a fine application and I hope Google keeps contributing to it as they are doing.
Offline
We have to be realistic, most of the people moving from windows will want support for some of their windows applications. You know, I don't use windows at all, I don't have any installations of windows, and I'm at university still. Once I had to run a custom cisco router configuration application that only ran on Windows, I said to myself, oh what I'm going to do now, it was from a Internet class and I was supposed to do it that same night. I fired the application hoping wine will run it, and boom, It ran, WINE flawlessly ran the application and I could do my homework from a Linux box running WINE. So all in all WINE is a fine application and I hope Google keeps contributing to it as they are doing.
"Some", yes, but let's not stretch it to "all". My point is, not to allow people to use their favorite apps via wine, just the ones they need . Very soon, it would turn into win-apps-on-linux thing
I hope Google encourages other big companies to write native apps in the future, instead
Offline
I really don't. Doing this is making a Windows clone, don't you see? This statement is wrong on, at least, two levels. First, people shouldn't embrace linux for being able to run all their favorite *win* apps. Do we use arch only because we have an option to run, say, flashget or aimp? No, we use it for multitude of other reasons! And secondly, how will companies have wider audience for their software? It's the same audience on a different platform (as the original idea suggests).
Just my two bits.
Sorry for the offtopic
You know I feel like I need to step in here, it doesn't matter if linux becomes a window clone because linux can damn well be anything, the freedom of choice. I know it is nice to be completely native of any software but if people want to run win apps on there linux machine, that's their own business, not yours. There is no such thing as to what's right or what's wrong, there is only mere subjective opinion.
Offline
Of course, I too believe in freedom of choice. I'm just saying that the wine-way will swerve the Linux development off the road it is on now. We didn't get here by indulging Windows users and we shouldn't start now (Ubuntu did and see what happened). Wine should be considered as a necessary evil, merely something to hold on, until we get appropriate native supstitute.
Offline
Ok what I'm saying is there is a difference between using wine and developing upon it. So how you would know? Now I'm just guessing but maybe this "wine-way" might be benefitial to Linux development, maybe not they way you think it but maybe some other way, you never know, but I agree it shouldn't be the only way. Saying wine should be considered evil, is completely irrelevant and doesn't mean anything and yes we did get here by indulging Window users to Linux(Ubuntu specifically) because that is how people come to learn the GNU/Linux OS itself and move on to others such as Arch.
Offline
I'm afraid I have to stand by Hide on this one. WINE should be perceived as a temporary workaround rather than a long-term solution to anything (I will never fully understand the sanity of a windows API existing on linux, but that's not the point now, wine does have some uses). But I don't like this trend at all.
To me it diminishes the technical merit of linux. It also only makes it possible for developers to be more lazy which is never a good thing. 16 gigs of RAM and 8 core processors anyone ?
Last edited by moljac024 (2008-08-17 10:52:37)
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...
Offline
I was surprised after installing Picasa on Linux too.
Perhaps it is a viable temporary solution, but they really should rewrite it to use native Linux API.
Right now it looks ugly and hackish.
Offline
Another bad thing about this is that picasa installs its own wine installation. If I decides to install google earth aswell, I would be stuck with two wine installations.
I really don't like this at all. Suggestions on a similar app?
Offline
there several (open source!) photo managing apps in the repos. digikam, showimg (kde), f-spot (gnome) and several unindependent gtk apps ristretto, gqview ...
but the automatically picture upload feature in picasa is nice, but the rest sucks
Offline
For Google, porting Picasa to native linux code would be too much trouble for too little gain. However, I'm glad they used wine to make a linux compatible version of their program, and I hope more companies use wine to port their own programs to linux too. All a company needs to do is make a few patches to the wine source, and fix their version of wine to use native gtk/QT/whatever widgets and it will run on linux, seemlessly and flawlessly. As they commit their changes to wine back to the wine source, it gets more and more compatible, and more companies will realize that they can boost their potential market for very little development time. As a result, more and more users will switch to linux after seeing how their program is finally compatible with linux. If linux gets popular enough, companies with new projects will just use portable code, defeating the need to integrate wine in their software. It's a winning situation in everyway, in the short and long run.
Offline
Pages: 1