7 ms·
Out of curiosity: Is there any Windows killer app in 2016 I need WINE for?
by glossyscr 11y ago
Out of curiosity: Is there any Windows killer app in 2016 I need WINE for?
- _vk_ 11y agoGames.
- a_humean 11y agoMuch less so now than in the past now with Valve/Steam's fairly good support for Linux/SteamOS.
- heinrich5991 11y agoBlizzard games don't run on Linux yet. :/
- ekianjo 11y agoActually they run very well in WINE.
- heinrich5991 11y agoWell yes. The thread was about what Windows-only programs we use in Wine. Blizzard games are examples of such, a counterpoint to Valve games which run natively. I do not understand your comment.
- speeder 11y agoI use wine to run windows games on windows... Microsoft broke the Dx8 and below emulation in windows 8, some games just run slow, but some are unplayable ( Arcanum for example render most of the sprites and map solid black without Wine ) Since I am using Wine more and more to game, and new releases work on Linux natively, I am thinking of experimenting not installing Windows at all on my next PC EDIT: To use Wine on Windows you just paste wine DLLs on the game folder. Not all versions of Wine work with all games, you might need to try several, currently the site with the DLLs is this one: http://adolfintel.com/index.php?p=wined3d/index.frag http://adolfintel.com/index.php?p=wined3d/index.frag
- voltagex_ 11y agoHow do you do this? Assassin's Creed I and II are very unstable on Windows 10 - this might be a solution. Hell, even Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory runs better under Wine than it does under Windows 10.
- aidenn0 11y agowhich wine do you use to play arcanum? I tried wine and it was so slow as to be completely unusable, so I got a virtualbox running windows 10, which works fine.
- SwellJoe 11y agoMany Valve/Steam games use Wine libraries to do their thing on Linux/SteamOS ports, so Wine is probably more important and more used now than ever before. The fact that they work so well that most folks don't even realize there's (some of) Wine behind the scenes is testament to how far it has come.
- jgillich 11y agoOnly if you want specific titles, there are a lot of Linux games on Steam these days (117 out of 231 of my games work on Linux).
- bananaoomarang 11y agoThere are a lot, but there still aren’t many big name titles. The ones that have been ported often have a lot of issues too (see BioShock, the Witcher). Also if the game is even slightly old, chances are it works great in WINE and there’s no hope of a Linux port.
- ekianjo 11y agoWitcher 2 runs perfectly now, and not sure what issues you are referring to for Bioshock Infinite. It was a good port.
- _vk_ 11y agoOf _course_ I want specific titles.
- rym_ 11y agoOffice, though it doesn't work with WINE. Other than that not for me. Games for some people I think.
- glossyscr 11y agoFor a long time I would have agreed--Office is Windows' killer app since the Windows version is way better than the other OS versions. But looking deeper it's getting harder and harder to justify Office: For presentations I prefer Keynote. It's not perfect but still better. Spreadsheet I use Google Sheets, inferior to Excel but good enough and live collaborating is unbeaten and this is my number one requirement. Word is the only one where is no substitute for. Google Docs doesn't have paragraph numbering and misses a review mode which is super important when negotiating contracts. So, Word is Office's last lock-in.
- rodelrod 11y agoSometime you just have to collaborate with people that live inside the Microsoft bubble... And Excel is still a pretty hard lock-in for "power users".
- JorgeGT 11y agoThe problem is not the lack of alternatives for personal use (I use LaTeX as a Word alternative), it's collaboration. If you are required to produce Word documents, PowerPoint presentantions, etc., using certain corporate templates, or as part of a standardized workflow, then you really need windows. Also there are other, more specialized programs that require Windows such as SolidWorks, etc.
- AsyncAwait 11y agoI am using SoftMaker Office 2016, (http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-linux http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-linux) on my Linux box and it works great for collaborating on MS Office documents - preserves formatting and everything else without a problem.
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- yoodenvranx 11y agofoobar2000 is still by far the best music player.
- rodelrod 11y agoIn my case: Evernote, Office and SQLyog. Also the Adobe Suite, but if find that to be unusable under wine so I go for a VirtualBox.
- sauere 11y agoPhotoshop. The only reason i am still running OSX is Photoshop.
- jhildings 11y agoand Steam, but that also might be game dependant i guess
- CyberDildonics 11y agoIf you aren't doing painting you should look into Nuke.
- rits 11y agoDo you mind Nuke costs 5x more than Photoshop? Otherwise completely agree.
- autoreleasepool 11y agoI found Pixelmator to be a great alternative, at least for for my non-professional use, on OS X. It's a lot cheaper and you only pay once.
- jdhawk 11y agoI think he wants to get away from OS X and move to Linux
- autoreleasepool 11y agoTrue. Oh well, maybe another reader will find that information useful
- chdir 11y agoHow's the performance, compared to native installation ?
- mrgordon 11y agoYou don't need Wine for that on OS X though
- webreac 11y agoAFAIK wine is still needed for a bunch of old app: I have installed ubuntu on the computer of my old parents. Wine was mandatory to use powerpoint viewer. Personally, I need the windows version of firefox to watch catchup TV (DRM protected using flash).
- rashkov 11y agoDoesn't Firefox support drm across the board now? Chrome as well? If the site complains you can try changing the user agent string to fool it into thinking that you're running on Windows.
- greggyb 11y agoFirefox only supports DRM on Windows. I hadn't thought to use WINE for a Windows install of Firefox on Linux. Chrome's DRM support is cross-platform, but only in Google Chrome, not Chromium, which can complicate the installation depending on your platform/OS.
- jhasse 11y agoHave you tried the hal daemon? I'm running Firefox on Linux and after setting it up, DRM content with Flash works.
- greggyb 11y agoI hadn't seen that before. Looks like it covers the Flash side only based on some quick reading and your comment. Any word on e.g. Netflix support for Firefox on Linux/BSD? Google Chrome bundles the DRM components with the browser, so as long as you can consume the .deb or .rpm package you're good. Firefox recently introduced HTML5 DRM support[0] but it's only on Windows. I know they're looking to support other operating systems, but haven't heard anything. [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/17/firefox-users-can-now-watch-netflix-html5-video-on-windows/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/17/firefox-users-can-n...
- raverbashing 11y agoAlso, having a Windows VM provides (usually) a much better experience (but yeah, you need the Windows license). I'd say games, which benefit from the shorter abstraction and hardware acceleration
- izacus 11y agoDepends on what you do - lately I've been mostly installing it to people's computers to run certain specialized windows-only software, things like Origin for physicists, project management software, internal company software that kind of thing. Running these things is still usually was less hassle than having to maintain a fully blown VM with all the file and clipboard sharing issues that causes to less techy people. If all you do is browse web and use a few portable apps you're fine.
- michh 11y agoI use WINE on a daily basis for 1Password. The browser integration even works with the native Linux version of Chrome, which is a much better user experience than copypasting passwords from the html/js based 1PasswordAnywhere.
- aserafini 11y agoIf you make music and use a DAW, then Reaper is a killer app. To run on Linux it's recommended to use WINE. It's speculation, but I'm pretty sure they'd release a native-Linux version if it didn't work so perfectly well with WINE.
- likeclockwork 11y agoI've been using Bitwig Studio on Linux since it came out in 2014 and enjoying it immensely.
- zeograd 11y agoReaper is praised by a lot, that's true. But I wouldn't call it a killer app when linux has great native DAW like ardour (libre), LMMS (libre), Non (libre), Renoise (proprietary) or Bitwig (proprietary) and probably others.
- amelius 11y agoCross-browser testing of your web code (Explorer)
- glossyscr 11y ago=> Browserstack
- amelius 11y agoThat is a web service, and it costs at least $29 per month.
- emidln 11y agoI use ievms for this: http://xdissent.github.io/ievms/ http://xdissent.github.io/ievms/ It automates installing/snapshotting Microsoft's virtualmachine images for various windows/ie combinations using VirtualBox. Works well on Linux and OSX.
- sehugg 11y agoI do all of my app development in Borland Delphi 2.0. No, just kidding. I just sometimes fantasize about being able to.
- dmm 11y agoAll of my machines run Debian or OpenBSD but two applications I run through wine are "Gameboy Tile Designer" and "Gameboy Map Builder"[0]. They used to develop graphic resources for gameboy development and despite not being developed for 15+ years are still very useful. And they're both written in Delphi. He's released the sources but that doesn't help get native binaries in this case, so wine it is. [0]http://www.devrs.com/gb/hmgd/intro.html http://www.devrs.com/gb/hmgd/intro.html
- throwaway2048 11y agoShould be noted that wine does not run on OpenBSD, just to prevent people making an incorrect assumption about your post.
- PeCaN 11y agohttp://www.getlazarus.org/ http://www.getlazarus.org/ They just had a release recently actually (which made it to HN front page!). It's basically cross-platform open-source Delphi (FreePascal, technically). As someone who works in Embarcadero Delphi and C++Builder for a living, it's quite nice. My dream rapid GUI development environment would be something like it but with D.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- guard-of-terra 11y agoDarkest Dungeon!
- Ace17 11y agoAbleton Live
- aidenn0 11y agoAs a gamer, most of the tools for aiding with GMing role playing games are windows only. Some examples: Shadowrun 3rd edition has an excellent free-as-in-beer character management tool that runs fine under wine. Essentially all of the mapping software; even open-source AutoREALM is windows only (though there is a port to wx in progress). I use the profantasy (proprietary) tools which mostly work under wine, though I had to bypass the copy-protection to get it to work despite being a paying customer :( With SaaS beoming more popular, there are now webapps that cover some of the features above, though to varying degrees of polish.
- vasili111 11y agoSkype windows version (Linux version does not have video calls).
- kh_hk 11y agoThat's not true, Skype 4.3.0.37 does have video calls.
- quadrangle 11y agoYou don't need Skype ever. Just use https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si
- Mikeb85 11y agoUmm, what? Been making video calls on Skype Linux version for years...
- conorgdaly 11y agoToad for MySql (it's db data compare is unrivalled)...but it doesn't work on WINE.
- throwaway60453 11y agoKiller Business use of Wine: when you have a linux farm, and you really need that one Windows accounting/enterprise/billing app, and you don't want to manage/license a Windows Server.
- wosc 11y agoKindle for PC, to funnel ebooks through to calibre (http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/ http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/). Even though I'm sceptical of the monopoly-like situation, Amazon still often has the widest range and lowest prices on ebooks.