china buying software

[David Gerard]

On 22 January 2011 13:48, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

> At first, I was *amused*, as this seemed like a fun notion. Not much
> didn't run on XP that would run on older NT, for instance, and I
> didn't expect a lot of DOS/Win9x stuff to work if it needed VxDs.
> But actually, I'm finding a fair bit of clean Win32 stuff won't run on
> Win7/64. Office 95 won't install or run correctly, for instance. And
> of course /no/ Win16 or DOS executables run at /all/ on Win/64.
> So I am beginning to see an actual use for this.


Yes. Win16 compilation is presently disabled for the Cygwin build,
that'd need work.

There's also the prospect of the Direct3D 10 libs being used in XP.
The Wine D3D is used in Parallels on the Mac, for example, and
Crossover Games is a successful product - the D3D is of commercial
grade.


> I would have no complaints about typing (or making a shortcut) that said:
> c:\progra~1\wineow\wine c:\progra~1\office95\winword.exe %1
> or something like that - or is the loader issue more complex than that?


I barely understand it myself. What Wine does is supply some libs and
an environment for Win32 binaries to run in a Linux environment - this
is what "it's a compatibility layer, not an emulator" means. To start
these binaries on Windows using Wine rather than the local available
environment ... I'm not sure what that would require. Someone with a
better and more intimate knowledge of the issues than me. It'll be
something someone does for hack value, not because there's any demand.


- d.