Sugared Wine project begins

[Walter Bender]

I'm including the Education list in a hope we can get some feedback as
to what class of MS-Windows programs are a high-priority. I cannot
imagine Word would be high on the list, but there are undoubtedly many
applications people are looking for...

-walter

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:52 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> X86-based Linux systems have been able to run some applications
> written for MS-Windows for many years, due to the efforts of the Wine
> project (http://winehq.org).  Wine is a GNU LGPL licensed implementation
> of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.  It does not use any Microsoft
> code.  Many popular free or proprietary programs run well under it;
> see the Applications Database at http://appdb.winehq.org/.  Wine just
> had its 1.0 release in 2008; after 15 years of continuous development,
> it's getting pretty complete.  Retail and corporate sale of commercial
> versions of Wine have supported two small companies (CodeWeavers and
> TransGaming) for many years.
>
> Wine already runs on the OLPC ("yum install wine"), but it's clunky
> because Sugar doesn't integrate well with it.  So CodeWeavers and I,
> with the assistance of the Public Software Fund, have started the
> Sugared Wine project to improve that integration.  See:
>
>  http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine
>
> Wine normally lets the X window manager manage its windows.  That
> doesn't work well with Sugar, so CodeWeavers is improving Wine's
> existing alternative "full-screen" mode, in which Wine manages all the
> sub-windows that the applications create.  This improvement also
> involves implementing the "Smart" menu that sits in the lower left
> corner for starting Windows applications, and the taskbar that lets
> the user manage multiple running Windows applications.
>
> The project will also package Wine as a .xo with all the usual Sugar
> goop.  (Possible future work might include the capability to bundle up
> a single Windows application with Wine and goop to produce a .xo that
> would directly run that app.)  We expect to be testing the port to
> Sugar using the Windows binary of Firefox 3.0, a pretty demanding
> application that also happens to be free.  All of the work will be
> released under the GNU LGPL.
>
> For many purposes, like running MS-Office, the results of the project
> should compare favorably with dual-booting Windows and Linux.  The
> Windows programs can merely run under Linux.
>
> The work is just starting, so it's a good time for early feedback on
> the technical goals and tactics of the project.  Will the result
> proposed at http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine be useful to OLPC's
> customers?  What changes would make it more useful?  What other
> programs should we be testing in the XO Wine?  Would you like to be an
> early tester for the project?
>
> (Those who do not want to run Windows apps should keep their flames at
> home.  Nobody will force you to run either Wine or Windows apps.  Some
> good people need, or choose, to run apps coded for the Windows API.
> We may deplore it.  But peaceful coexistence, plus superior technology
> and licensing on the GNU/Linux side, are our best path to compete with
> it for mindshare and market share.  Most of the improvements being
> made here will be useful in other portable and embedded systems,
> making Microsoft OS's even less competitive in that market than they
> already are.)
>
>        John Gilmore
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