Re: [Sheflug] Re: TopPage info for Sheffield Linux User Group

[Craig Andrews <nospam [at] fishbot.free-online.co.uk>]

> 
> Paul Sims wrote: 
> > Just looked at  the page below - this needs an aparrently app-optimised
> > wine to run (downloadable from the same page), so it's not **really** for
> > Linux, just wine-compat windows code :(
> 
> Not necessarily. Wine does two things: emulates a running Windows system,
> and provides a compatibility layer for native Linux programs to access
> Windows API functions. 

Yes, Windows API (eeeeurgh!)

> 
> > It's becoming depressingly regular that these major s/w announcements
> > conceal this sort of "porting" so we all end up running the same dodgy
> > windows code under quasi-emulation.
> 
> I don't see why the linux code would be less dodgy than the windows code
> by the same programmers?
> 

Well lets see... The windows code is designed for the Windows API, and not
for Linux. Also, its a windows executable. Wine may not be an emulator,
but its damned close enough!

Native Linux code using GTK+, QT, Motif etc etc  for the GUI would a) be
able to take advantage of Linux specific stuff (X is nice once you get to
know it, security is always good etc.) instead, you get the dodgy bug
ridden world of M$. On top of that, it's not even running on its own
platform! What ever happened to ELF, glibc, etc etc etc...

What I'm trying to say is that the code by the programmers may or may not
be dodgy, but the use of another OS' API on top of another, using a bugged
class library (I assume MFC was used?) and that is --definitely-- not a
good thing!

This is especially so when rather than writing a proper program for the
operating system being targeted, they use VC++'s AppWizard to churn
something out in a day or so and expect that we won't mind emulating the
other platform to run it!

Aside from all this, the code will be bulky (1.6M just to open it? Sounds
like a Java VM), and very slow. MS Paint using wine takes about 2 mins to
open on my K6-2/500, due to all the wine stuff. Also, file permissions are
a pain, as is printing, and the widgets used (does anyone elses copy of
wine use Win16 widgets (sorry, controls) ?) and just about everything
else. In short, don't do it. Especially with a decent, free (if you
GPL) cross platform library like QT.

Craig

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