This is the second release candidate for the so much awaited Wine 1.0. The distribution used in this review is Debian Lenny with all the updates to date. Wine was installed from source using the recommended wineinstall script inside the source's tools directory, after all the dependencies were satisfied using 'apt-get build-dep wine'. The compilation went smooth and without any problems. Wine was compiled with all the dependencies.
Compiling Wine using the recommended wineinstall script (click to enlarge)
Winecfg 'About' dialogue (click to enlarge)
World of WarCraft
I took advantage of the official free trial from the WoW Europe website in order to test it, since I don't own an account for WoW. As soon as the installation started, Wine prompted me to download the Gecko HTML engine. I accepted and it automatically downloaded and installed it. The license agreement fonts were not displayed correctly, but that probably was because I didn't copy the necessary font files into windows/Fonts.
Installing World of WarCraft Trial
The installation went straight, and I could start the game and join a realm in a blink of an eye.
One of the 3 EULAs you'll have to agree (click to enlarge)
In-game screenshots (click to enlarge)
Switching resolution from the in-game options menu crashed WoW with the following error:
But it works perfectly if you change the resolution from the configuration file, ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft Trial/WTF/Config.wtf:
Back into the game and the resolution is now 1280x1024 instead of 1024x768, and no more crashes occurred.
Overall, World of WarCraft works very well with Wine 1.0 RC2. It runs decently, with no major problems. A minimum effort for the configuration via the Config.wtf file and you're ready to play it undisturbed. Not to mention the availability of many guides on the entire internet on how to configure and make it work your way.
DC++ 0.705
Why test DC++ for Windows with Wine at this point? Well, for me at least, the Linux port of DC++, LinuxDC++ (using GTK) is slow as hell. So I decided to take the Windows version for a spin and see how it behaves under Wine.
Installing DC++ (click to enlarge)
Hashing (click to enlarge)
The good news is that it works; the bad news is that it presents no advantage over its Linux port: fonts are way too small, it's as slow as the Linux port, and a crash occurred when I opened the Help Contents. But if you really need it, you can decently use it only to search, download and share files, which is its purpose after all.
DC++ successfully running (click to enlarge)
Searching and downloading works fine (click to enlarge)
mIRC 6.31
Frankly, I don't see the point of using mIRC in Linux when there are several powerful native IRC clients out there like XChat, KVirc or Irssi. But for a user who just switched from Windows and is used to mIRC, and also has scripts which only work with it, using this for a while may be a must-have and it makes sense. So, I tested the latest mIRC version to see how it performs.
Installation completed (click to enlarge)
Connected to the OFTC network, channel #debian (click to enlarge)
mIRC options (click to enlarge)
It's slower than on Windows. The Scripts Editor crashes, so I don't recommend this version for use with Wine. If you have some big mIRC scripts which you cannot rewrite as XChat plugins/scripts or a trivia bot which you don't want to rewrite in C as a standalone IRC robot, then use an older mIRC version.
Community and Development
Wine is actively developed, with a new version constantly being released every two weeks. Documentation is also abundant, and you can find on the official website many guides to troubleshoot the configuration of different applications/games on Wine together with a full database containing a list of what works or does not work. Currently in code freeze (only bug fixes, no new features are currently introduced in Wine), the 1.0 release is due to be out in several weeks, and a new release candidate (RC3) will be out on May 30, 2008.
Conclusion
Wine has come such a long way that I can only be enchanted about this project. Each new version fixes more bugs and includes more and more features; the number of supported applications and games increases with each new release. And with some configuration, most of the applications will work. A great project, from which the Linux community can only benefit.
3 comments:
I've had more success with StrongDC in Wine. It's fast and reasonably works well. Just make sure you use the latest version.
Well maybe I'll try it when Wine 1.0 will be out. I'm currently thinking of ideas (applications, what to review) for the 1.0 version.
The script editor has supposedly
had problems for a while; see
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5787
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