Gullible Jones wrote: > So, not content with merely having the idea of a Wine-based Linux distro, I decided to try setting up Wine as a desktop shell on top of Arch Linux, with the help of the alternative Windows shell BBLean. Basically I just installed BBLean in Wine and put > > > Code: > > exec wine "c:\bbLean\blackbox.exe" > > > > in my .xinitrc. > > First impression: It's darn slow. Really darn slow. And crashes a lot. [Laughing] > Well this is definitely a start. However, you do have to have a way to get to the Linux part. Not everyone does or should run Windows exclusive programs. > Nonetheless, it works... and pretty well considering that's not what it's designed for. > > Some things I'm noticing: > > - Lots of "fixme" messages in the console. LOTS. Hundreds of them. Never seen so many. I'm thinking maybe it has to do with Arch Linux compiling everything -O2? Or maybe it's just because nobody ever tried BBLean on Wine before. :? > A lot of the fixme calls are due to the kluges used to get some, if not all, Windows programs working. Returning an 'OK' to a call like 'Are you connected to the Internet' can be the difference between a program working and a program crashing. Some programs actually check to for what kind of connection and Wine will always return "LAN" whether this is true or not. Thus, a good effort might be to actually 'flesh' this out and make the call to Linux for connection type work. Like others here, please keep on working on this. An alterative to the existing Gnome/KDE desktops that runs Windows programs is always welcome. Running the Window API in the Kernel is almost as dangerous as running Windows itself, and can be just as wasteful of resources. James McKenzie
