Any other programs like Wine?

[thelonegunmen]

I gotta say, wine sucks, sorry, but every time I try to use it for something I get a whole orchastra of errors, are there any other programs like Wine?

[dibl]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

Check the very last FAQ in the link in my signature.

[thelonegunmen]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

Thanks, I'll bookmark that.

[thelonegunmen]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

Oh, also, let's say I have a program that is really big (like Aftereffects CS4), do you believe that the other two virtual machines you listed are capable of handling things like that? Also, what about plugins, will it save the info to a database so I don't have to redo it all over again?

[dibl]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

It looks like Aftereffects is a video editing package.

I can't recommend using any video-intensive Windows package while running Linux. I personally do use PaintShop Pro in a VMware Player Win Xp VM, sometimes, but the fact is the Windows video driver provides the best possible graphics performance for the Windows package. Running it in Linux is bound to produce only second-best results.

There are some excellent video editing packages for Linux, including kdenlive, cinelerra, avidemux, and more I'm sure. You might want to take a look at doing it that way.

[thelonegunmen]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

Got another question, which one of these do I need to download? I don't understand what I need for what, are some of them specifically for graphics, servers, data storage or what? Should I get all of them? I'm just wanting to run my After Effects on here, not really wanting to set up a whole network or anything lol.


Datacenter Products

* VMware vSphere 4
* VMware ESXi
* VMware Server
* VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3)
* VMware vCenter Converter

Desktop Products

* VMware Fusion
* VMware Workstation
* VMware View
* VMware Player
* VMware ACE

I guess if worst comes to worst I could always just partition my HD and install stupid old Vista again, of course I'm afraid Microsoft will try and sabotage me again by sending me some useless "update" that will cause Vista to slow down like it did the last time.

[KeithZG]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

thelonegunmen: Really a bit harsh to say that Wine sucks; they're trying to be compatible with an entire different and closed-source operating system! Even Microsoft themselves can't manage to quite keep compatibility between versions, and the Wine people are trying to add compatibility for Windows applications to an entirely different operating system! Even just attempting that is audacious; personally, especially with older programs, I've actually had quite a lot of success.

My first question to you would be, are you using the version of Wine from the repositories? 'Cause that's the stable version, and although I can kindof understand the reason it's there, the current versions are MUCH improved for more modern programs. Since they're constantly being developed there are regressions from time to time, but many programs that just spit up error messages like crazy in Wine 1.0.1 (the version in the repos) work without a single glitch in version 1.1.33. So if you're using the older version, I'd strongly encourage you to try going:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

and then

sudo apt-get install wine1.2

and then try that out.

Assuming that doesn't work, onto dibl's suggestion (ie. virtualization) which is a good idea. Personally, although I'm sure it's fine if you know what you're doing, I've never managed to get VMWare to work quite right; for my money, VirtualBox is at very least much easier to set up. Also it actually has (as long as your CPU and motherboard is new enough to support it) support for hardware graphics acceleration, which would be a godsend in your case (now, VMWare probably has that too, but I can verify that it's quite easy to set up in VirtualBox, whereas I can't speak for VMWare).

If you choose to try out VirtualBox, first you'll have to add the Karmic repository:

deb [url]http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian[/url] karmic non-free

Then you'll want to import the key:

wget -q [url]http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc[/url] -O- | sudo apt-key add -

and then to actually install it:

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.0

And, as aforementioned, there are tons of good video editing programs for Linux; you might want to try them out! I actually personally prefer some of them myself, but I don't do any professional video editing (which I suppose you probably do) and I tend to hate Adobe's interfaces anyways, so your fuel economy may vary.


dibl: I was about to take issue with your quote over in your FAQ list, saying "no video game written for Windows is going to perform as well on Linux, in any emulator, as it does on Windows with a native Windows video driver", since actually in my experience there are some cases where games running through WINE actually run far better than under Windows . . . but then I remembered that WINE stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator" so yeah . . . you're still entirely right

[dibl]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

dibl: I was about to take issue with your quote over in your FAQ list, saying "no video game written for Windows is going to perform as well on Linux, in any emulator, as it does on Windows with a native Windows video driver", since actually in my experience there are some cases where games running through WINE actually run far better than under Windows . . . but then I remembered that WINE stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator" so yeah . . . you're still entirely right

Heh. Well, I'm still bitter about the weekend I lost trying to make my genealogy database run in Wine, and that was 3 years ago!

But, you are also correct that some apps reportedly just fly beautifully in Wine. Just nothing I need.


@thelonegunmen -- here's a "how to" on VMware Player:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3095339.0

That's the one you want.

[ultrageeky]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

Use PlayOnLinux. It requires Wine but provides a better interface and installation scripts for many of the programs Wine usually fails to install e.g Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer... It's easy to install (has its own repository) and a good guide with a video walk-through of the interface and available software list is at JournalXtra.

Another good point about PlayOnLinux is that it manages multiple versions of Wine on one system so if a Windows package works with a version of Wine other than the installed version then PlayOnLinux will download the required version and keep all other installed versions available for use by other Windows software.

[bailout]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

I am just trying to decide whether to bother trying wine again myself. I have never had much luck with it tbh. The main windows ap I wanted was office 2003. I just about got it running under 9.04 but it was a bit flaky.

Is it still best to run the latest beta from winehq rather than the one in the ubuntu rep? The stable release (1.0.1) is over a year old now.

I did see that there is a qt4 frontend for it now http://q4wine.brezblock.org.ua/about/ I don't know whether this replaces the standard wine config or is in addition to.

[ultrageeky]

Re: Any other programs like Wine?

I am just trying to decide whether to bother trying wine again myself. I have never had much luck with it tbh. The main windows ap I wanted was office 2003. I just about got it running under 9.04 but it was a bit flaky.

Is it still best to run the latest beta from winehq rather than the one in the ubuntu rep? The stable release (1.0.1) is over a year old now.

I did see that there is a qt4 frontend for it now http://q4wine.brezblock.org.ua/about/ I don't know whether this replaces the standard wine config or is in addition to.

Have a look at my post above re PlayOnLinux. It does provide an installation script for MS Office.

No need to download Wine beta because PlayOnLinux will automatically install the version of Wine required for Office. Just ensure that the version of Wine provided by Kubuntu's repos is installed before you install PoL.

Hope that's helped.