I've been lurking on this mailing list for several months now as a new user to Linux and to Wine. I agree completely with what Leo is saying. Windows users in general will all have their favourite software they want to run, be that a game or a specific application they cannot do without. Linux may well have a viable alternative, but some people just like to use what they already know and not waste time learning some new program to do the same thing. So we turn to Wine. I have to say I have had mixed results, largely I admit due to not spending enough time digging into the root causes and various other problems I have has with Linux in general. For example the video editing program I use TMPEG Encoder worked first time in Wine with no messing about, largely I suspect because the programmers wrote it to be self contained. The same is true of Hunter. However Paintshop Pro 7 did not want to play, and to be honest I haven't had time to really look into why. Having said that, to address the original point, Windows users will not move to Linux unless they are presented with a simple alternative to Windows. They will not "simply compile X Y or Z" for two reasons: 1. They will not know how, and regrettably there are those in the Linux community who assume knowledge and are unwilling to help other than "say "RTFM". There are also those I am happy to say such as this list who WILL help and all credit and thanks to those of you who offer solutions to us poor ignorant Linux newbies :) 2. If dependencies are not satisfied TELL THE USER which ones they are, so they have a fighting chance of resolving the problem. Not all Linux installs are that kind. Dependencies not being satisfied smacks of "You need Internet Explorer 5 to install this program", only it is a much worse situation because at least with this message you are told One Program which will fix the problem. Far preferable to Linux telling you to find half a dozen obscure packages and not having the kindness to tell you where to look. Dependencies are the one thing preventing wholesale moves to Linux. I recently installed a new Nvidia Geforce FX5600 and Nvidia were good enough to provide ONE program to run and idiot proof instructions (just as well, they're dealing with ME here ;)). That was painless. However, getting a reliable software DVD player is a nightmare due to dependencies. Unless ex-Windows users are presented with "all in one" installers like the Nvidia one there will be no wholesale move to Linux. We are used to "doubleclick Setup.exe" and it does its' stuff. I have been using computers 20 years, 8 of them in Windows, so I am prepared to do a bit more than the average user. But that's me, and the average button pushing user will look at a dependency demand and reinstall Windows. All it needs is for an installer to include the necessary files *should they be needed*, or even if the package is on a website, at least include links to the pages for all the dependencies if they are not in the package. Anyway I think I've wandered off topic here, so apologies if I have and I'll get off my soapbox :) Kind regards, Julian -----Original Message----- From: wine-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wine-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Ivan Leo Murray-Smith Sent: 22 May 2004 15:46 To: jorishuizer Cc: wine-users Subject: Re: Why isn't everyone compiling wine > I'm not running > gentoo - but wine isn't a stable product yet and I think you should grip > every stability there where you could get it - shouldn't the winehq site > *recommend* custom compiling? It's all automated so everyone should be > able to do this... I doubt you'll get any extra stability compiling from source, as long so your using the correct binary for your system. Back when everybody compiled, a considerable percentage of the support requests where caused by people compiling without some optional headers, for example the cups headers aren't usually installed, so lots of people said wine didn't print, and we had to tell them to install the cups headers. Wine has a lot of optional libs, cups, ICU, openGL, ssh, artsd, alsa and so on, it's quite a long list, and the fact that now most people use binaries that have support for all these libs saves a lot of time. Also, compiling wine, actually compiling anything, isn't user friendly. Imagine a winxp user that installs linux, then wants to try wine, spends hours getting all the minimal dependencies installed (gcc, make &friends), then he can't print nor play 3d games, and we tell him to go to http://bla and get header X, and then to http://blabla and get header Y, then he gets the wrong version, and starts asking what a header is, and so on. The next day that user will throw his linux CDs away with the remains of the launch. Wine needs usability, wine can now create the .wine directory itself, so, if you want to run an app that works on wine, you just install the RPM in a few seconds (Compiling can take various hours on a old PC), click on the app, and it just works. This means that more users can use wine, without being computer geeks, and that also means more feedback, and consequentially more motivation for developers (If a developer is trying to get a game working, he'll feel more motivated if he knows dozens of people are waiting for that game to work on wine). Also, if something goes wrong when building, it will take lots of learning, and lots of time to fix, if the user is new to these sort of things. And the user may not care about debugging wine, in most cases he want it to install and run quickly and easily. So, for all these reasons, the users that don't want to waste time and want to just try wine and see if/how it works, binaries are the best option. And anybody wanting to do something more advanced (Debugging, cvs regression testing and so on) will build from source, possibly downloading from CVS. Ivan. _______________________________________________ wine-users mailing list wine-users@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-users --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.687 / Virus Database: 448 - Release Date: 16/05/2004 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.687 / Virus Database: 448 - Release Date: 16/05/2004 _______________________________________________ wine-users mailing list wine-users@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-users
