Desktop platforms Toolkit

A little Wine with your Linux?

Scott Lowe Tech Republic

Published: 07 Oct 2003 13:00 BST

Thinking that maybe Paint Shop Pro 8 is too new and includes some feature that Wine doesn't yet support, I try the CD version of Paint Shop Pro 7 -- but the results are similar. The Wine application support site offers instructions to get PSP7 running. Unfortunately, they're for a specific edition of PSP7. The workarounds to get PSP7 running under Wine basically involve installing it on a Windows machine and then copying the entire installation along with the related registry keys over to the Linux machine. When I try this, the Wine version of Regedit crashes each time I attempt to import the registry keys that PSP7 needs.

Software that does work
The Wine Web site includes a couple of lists of software that works with little or no tweaking. These applications include PuTTY, mIRC, WS-FTP LE, Acrobat Reader 5.05, WinZip, WinAmp, and SnagIt. Although I respect the work that has been done to get Wine where it is, I'm not sure that these Windows applications are all that useful under Linux, since it already has native utilities that will do the same things. It's not like running OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, where differences in functionality could confuse users. I much prefer native utilities, and I think most people would want to use Wine to run Windows applications that don't have an equivalent program on Linux.

What I learned
Would I use Wine in a production environment? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Despite my respect for the project effort, in a production environment where users are pounding away at machines and trying to meet deadlines, the house of cards that is built with Wine alone might create serious support issues for the IT department -- as well as productivity problems for users. Sure, an application might be able to run after some tweaking and creative thinking, but troubleshooting a software problem would be much more difficult due to all of the added factors involved. In addition, to get certain applications running, you need to find DLLs (on older Windows CDs or on Web sites that house them) and copy them to appropriate locations on the Wine machine.

I would rather run CrossOver Office 2 by CodeWeavers (the primary corporate backer of the open source Wine Project), which nicely supports a number of common and useful Windows programs such as Microsoft Office 2000. (It's also been reported that Paint Shop Pro 8 installs flawlessly under CrossOver Office 2.) I don't see programs such as mIRC and WS-FTP LE -- which Wine supports nicely -- being all that useful for businesses.

Wine seems to be a good starting point for users who want to make the break from Windows to Linux and who don't mind experimenting. But companies that want to run Linux desktops and still need to access several Windows applications may be better served by running CrossOver Office.