Activars

After 15 years’ development of Wine, we’ve been through many test and beta versions. Finally, a stable Wine is available to all the users.

Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows application programming interface (API) on top of X, OpenGL and Unix that allows Windows applications to run on other operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS, without the need to run Windows as well.

Of course, open source is free for any users. So they can be build and compiled on your operating system. I used previous Wine beta build on a Linux(Ubuntu 6.*), I had a few troubles:

• Fonts was an issue, MS holds the license for all the Windows fonts. If we want to display the same font as windows shows, we have to copy them from a windows pc to the font folder in Wine file structure.
• Performance. If you run a basic application should encounter no problem, the one trouble is playing games that requires better graphics. You would expect the performance of the graphic card was reduced. (I played Need for Speed, it was pretty slow while on Windows I can set to higher resolution).
• Security. Wine seems to use some crucial .dll(s) in its file structure, you might get some virus that lives on windows, but this should not affect your linux or mac operating system.

My experience was that commercial version(Crossover, developed by CodeWeavers) was decent, however it still had font issue.  I was able to run lower versions MS Offic* (i.e. 97, 2000). I encountered a few software crash problem, but the office recover feature worked. (Be careful when you use wine for important tasks, the suggestion is to save your work frequently.) They offered easy setup, however, it lacks of flexibilities comparing to wine.

Well, don’t like Wine? but still want to run windows apps on linux or mac? You may try virtual machines. the most well knwon distributor is Vmware as they ship several versions of Vmwares on varies type of operating system. If you are linux users, they ship the Vmware for free( suppose what we call it open source culture). Vmware Fusion provides free 30 trials. It’s better than Parallel Desktop, a virtual machine solution for Mac, because the new version offers DirectX 9.0(or higher) support.

If you have time and tried things out, I would like to hear about your experience..

在Windows XP和Windows 2000的年代里面，有很多不同的版本产生，目的是为了不同的用户定制。这样是不是让微软的产品更加碎片化，没有整体的感觉？ 而官方回答“单一的版本没有办法满足市场需求”， 这样就好像微软于自己的产品在竞争，每个版本有不同的价钱，不同的功能用途。

Windows XP
• Windows XP Home （家庭版），Windows XP Professional （专业版）， Windows XP Embedded ，Windows XP Media Center Edition （媒体中心版）， Windows XP Tablet PC Edition ， Windows XP 64-Bit

Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2003 Standard， Windows Server 2003 Enterprise， Windows Server 2003 Datacenter， Windows Server 2003 Web， Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 64-Bit， Windows Server 2003 Datacenter 64-Bit， Windows Small Business Server 2003*

Windows CE
• Windows CE .Net， Pocket PC，Pocket PC Phone Edition，Smartphone，Windows CE for Smart Displays， Media2Go**

就不用算Vista的那些版本了，这些已经让客户头痛到底选择哪个好？ 然而很多硬件公司有不同的思考方式，他们不做不同型号的品牌机，而是让客户自己选择不同的配制，满足自己的需求。这样可以扩大客户的选择自由性。MS的市场规划发而局限了选择范围。

相反，苹果的过去几年推出单一的5个MacOS 版本，从2000年到至今推出过Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)，10.1 (Puma) ， 10.2 (Jaguar)， 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard)。简单的5个版本可以满足用户的需求。当我们说user centre的时候，无论是开发人员还是市场人员，目标都是一致的，用户不需要专业技术知识的需求就可以完成一些复杂的任务。当然这里提到的是给一般用户的，专业开发用户会有自己的选择。