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Wine Operating Systems Software Windows Linux Technology

Wine 4.0 Released With Vulkan Support, Initial Direct3D 12 and Better HiDPI (phoronix.com) 73

Posted by BeauHD from the come-and-get-it dept.
Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: Wine 4.0 is now officially available as the new annual stable release to Wine for running Windows programs and games on Linux and other operating systems. Following seven weekly release candidates, Wine 4.0 was ready to ship today as judged by Wine founder Alexandre Julliard. Wine 4.0 is a big release bringing initial Vulkan graphics API support, Direct3D CSMT is enabled by default, early Direct3D 12 support via VKD3D, continued HiDPI work, various OpenGL improvements, multi-sample D3D texture support, 64-bit improvements, continued Android support, and much more. The release announcement and notes can be read via WineHQ.org. The source can be downloaded here.
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Wine 4.0 Released With Vulkan Support, Initial Direct3D 12 and Better HiDPI More

Wine 4.0 Released With Vulkan Support, Initial Direct3D 12 and Better HiDPI

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  • The real question (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @08:45PM (#58005216) Journal

    The real question is "how well does it actually work" with mainstream Windows programs like Word/Excel, Photoshop, etc.

    I use VirtualBox to run Win7 under Linux Mint, and while some stuff works great, a lot of stuff doesn't.

    For example, I can use MS Word under VirtualBox and most things work fine, but do something like update the Table of Contents and *boom* Word crashes.

    So...is Wine better, or is Crossover a viable solution?

    (I'd happily dump Word/Excel in a heartbeat, but the fact is that some of my clients use Word and they're not gonna change. I need to be able to send them a file that they can use.)

    • Have you actually ever had a problem with Word files saving wrongly in Libre Office? If so, have you tried saving them to an older version Word format?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Some people do use the scripting and add-on features within Office.

        I suspect anybody who does desktop support knows some autistic MBA doofus who has a 40,000 LOC pet spreadsheet that a whole office or business unit runs. Yes, somebody with a proper programming background could make it infinitely better by turning it in to some form of real application, but that would require the guy who wrote it to explain everything he needs it to do, which never happens, which is why everyone needs the 40k LOC spreadsheet

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Have you actually ever had a problem with Word files saving wrongly in Libre Office? If so, have you tried saving them to an older version Word format?

        Some years ago I decided to show a friend that Open Office (back before the Libre Office days) was an alternative to a stolen Microsoft Office. I opened OO Writer, I typed a simple sentence and tried to save it as a Word file. As I pressed OK to save the file Open Office crashed hard on me. I still remember my friend's laughter. That was the last time I suggested Open/Libre Office to anyone.

        And before you suggest I know nothing about Libre Office as of today, my work computer runs Linux and I use Libre Offi

      • Never mind saving wrongly, just opening a .docx in LibreOffice makes it look totally different than if opened in Word. Also, certain documents that on opening crash the whole LibreOffice (that is, including all opened spreadsheets and presentations). Fortunately, document recovery has always worked so I haven't actually lost work in other files.

      • Have you actually ever had a problem with Word files saving wrongly in Libre Office? If so, have you tried saving them to an older version Word format?

        Yes, it screws up a bunch if different stuff, and not consistently.

        Sometimes it's the margins that get all borked, sometimes it's images, tables, etc etc. I never know if it'll look okay when they open it in Word.

    • I'm laughing at my own suggestion but I'm genuinely curious how well it would actually work:

      https://office.live.com/start/... [live.com]

      How well does the online version work?

      • I'm laughing at my own suggestion but I'm genuinely curious how well it would actually work:

        https://office.live.com/start/... [live.com]

        How well does the online version work?

        I have a few friends that use Office 365, and they say it's not bad. Not perfect, but not bad.

        Fun Fact: Office 365 won't pass Microsoft's own tests for compatibility with Word and Excel. It's true, I know a tester that works at MS and he says it's an open secret there.

    • Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @09:37PM (#58005504) Homepage Journal

      For example, I can use MS Word under VirtualBox and most things work fine, but do something like update the Table of Contents and *boom* Word crashes.

      There's probably something wrong with your Word or Windows (or out of memory, etc.). That combination should "just work" - it's really running on Windows on virtualized hardware.

      WINE contains no Windows; it's a reimplementation of the Win32API, etc. Stuff may or may not work depending on completeness and for bug-for-bug compatibility reasons (check their database).

      • WINE contains no Windows; it's a reimplementation of the Win32API, etc.

        This is true in the default config, but Wine also supports dropping in many/most of the actual Windows DLLs if you have them. It’s one common hack to get otherwise-unsupported versions of software to work (especially games).

      • Indeed I have that same combo (Win7 on VirtualBox under Mint 19 Mate) running on a client's 4th or 5th gen iCore laptop and it's been rocksolid since last spring.

      • There's probably something wrong with your Word or Windows (or out of memory, etc.). That combination should "just work" - it's really running on Windows on virtualized hardware.

        Probably true, but I have always found Virtualbox to be unreliable. Either qemu-kvm or vmware is a far superior solution if you expect things to work. vmware might be a bunch of bastards, but vmware is solid and in my experience always has the best virtual graphics device by a wide margin.

    • Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @10:08PM (#58005658) Homepage

      I use VirtualBox to run Win7 under Linux Mint, and while some stuff works great, a lot of stuff doesn't. For example, I can use MS Word under VirtualBox and most things work fine, but do something like update the Table of Contents and *boom* Word crashes.

      Well, first off does it crash on a native Win7 box? If it doesn't I'd try doing a fresh install, in this scenario VirtualBox is running genuine Windows on virtualized hardware. If that didn't work properly it'd be front page news. Quite frankly that setup is almost always less hassle than WINE, the obvious downside is that you need a license for the Win7 box while WINE is a re-implementation so it's just your code running on top of WINE.

      • Well, first off does it crash on a native Win7 box?

        Nope, never. Literally never saw this behavior until I started running it in the VM.

    • It's worth a try. It depends on the application, but in my experience, all the Applications I want to use work well enough.

    • Try it and let us know?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      There's no reason that virtualbox would cause word to crash when updating a TOC, you're running a full version of windows and word just under a hypervisor instead of bare metal hardware... That crash could just as easily happen in a native install.

      • There's no reason that virtualbox would cause word to crash when updating a TOC, you're running a full version of windows and word just under a hypervisor instead of bare metal hardware... That crash could just as easily happen in a native install.

        Except it never, ever did this in a native install under Win7.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          It doesn't happen in a hypervisor on the machines i've seen recently either...
          I've seen random problems occur on windows machines for all manner of reasons, registry corruption, a dll got replaced with an older version etc, wether physical or virtual.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      For example, I can use MS Word under VirtualBox and most things work fine, but do something like update the Table of Contents and *boom* Word crashes.

      First, don't run the latest and greatest Office. I generally stick to a version behind if you can, because you're probably running into a Word bug. The latest and greatest basically have all the bugs in them, while the previous release would have most of their bugs fixed.

      Second, apply all the Office updates from Microsoft. I had a the misfortune of having to r

    • With previous versions, Wine works well with the applications, but they have always been trouble to get setup, often require more additional components to be setup. And needing external "hacks" which are not necessarily legal. To get them to work.

      The advantage of Wine over Virtualization is primary the fact the Application will run will less resources, and you are not running a full OS layer, so a small App lets say the Calc.exe App will not need 4 gigs of ram, and 1 reserved CPU core, and a few gigs of sto

      • The advantage of Wine over Virtualization is primary the fact the Application will run will less resources, and you are not running a full OS layer, so a small App lets say the Calc.exe App will not need 4 gigs of ram, and 1 reserved CPU core, and a few gigs of storage. to hold the OS and the Calc.exe app.

        I understand, but in this instance I'm not concerned with ram or how many cores it uses, I just need it to work and I'm willing to give it all the resources it needs.

    • I use VirtualBox to run Win7 under Linux Mint, and while some stuff works great, a lot of stuff doesn't.

      For example, I can use MS Word under VirtualBox and most things work fine, but do something like update the Table of Contents and *boom* Word crashes.

      That sounds odd; I open all sorts of documents in Word 2010, 2013 and 2016 in VMs (in Win 10) in VirtualBox 6 (previously 5.x) on Manjaro host (previously KDE neon) and have never had any issues at all with Word behaving differently to how it would if it wasn't in a VM.

      • That sounds odd; I open all sorts of documents in Word 2010, 2013 and 2016 in VMs (in Win 10) in VirtualBox 6 (previously 5.x) on Manjaro host (previously KDE neon) and have never had any issues at all with Word behaving differently to how it would if it wasn't in a VM.

        If you would ship me your PC I would not only stop complaining but I'd send you a genuinely nice Thank You card for all your trouble. :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sad_ ( 7868 )

      it's a hit & miss, just like with games.
      some applications run great other don't even start.

      also, all crossover patches should normally find their way into wine after some time.

  • This is awesome (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:08PM (#58005892)

    I'm really excited to see all the work in the Linux world generally on Wayland and GPU and related APIs. The latest versions of wine are actually amazing. One of the issues I've often had was that wine included with most distros is an ancient version many many years old. This gives an impression of the state of the project that is not in line with current reality.

    Current version of wine will actually run almost all of my non-game windows software including office which is awesome. I fully plan on ditching Windows for good once W7 is abandoned. Microsoft's behavior is simply unacceptable.

  • The one piece of Windows software I'd still like to be able to use won't work under WINE because I can't install Java. Will this version support that? From the release notes it doesn't look like it does.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      If it's java, is it really windows software? It might run just fine with the linux version of java...

      Several people have got the windows version of java running on wine, according to the wine site the installer doesnt work but java itself does so you can take an already installed version, copy it across and run it.

      • Several people have got the windows version of java running on wine, according to the wine site the installer doesnt work but java itself does so you can take an already installed version, copy it across and run it.

        ..okay, but that seems to imply having a working Windows installation handy you can copy it from, which creates an chicken-and-egg conundrum. If I have to have a bootable copy of Windows around then there's no point really messing with WINE is there?

    • Can't install Java? I can do that just fine (wine-1.9.11 (Staging), which came with my version of Ubuntu).

      • Fine, I'll bite. I'm on Ubuntu 18.04, and the Windows installer for Java doesn't run, therefore the one Windows program I want to use doesn't work either.
        Here's what I want to run: https://www.powertap.com/produ... [powertap.com]
        If you have One Stupid Trick to get the current version of Java to install under the current version of WINE, then post it.

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