Is Wine portable to ARM arch?

James Mckenzie jjmckenzie51 at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 8 12:39:03 CDT 2008


Tomasz Czapiewski <xeros at irc.pl> on Aug 8, 2008 10:05 AM (PNT) wrote about Is Wine portable to ARM arch?
>
>I wonder if someone has done successfull port of Wine for 
>mobile/PDA Linux distributions on hardware with ARM processors.
No.
>Is it possible?
Very likely but you run into the following:
1.  Windows programs are written for the x86 processor.  Is there an x86 emulator for the ARM arch?
2.  Windows programs are mostly written for a minimum of a 640 by 480 pixel display.  I know of very few devices that run at that, or higher, resolution.
3.  Are the ARM processors 'strong' enough to run both a x86 emulator AND Wine AND provide acceptable performance of many Windows programs.
>If no then are there any plans for multiplatform code in Wine?
NO!  Even MacOSX specific code is not allowed
>There are many Linux users of such hardware (like Neo FreeRunner etc.) 
>which would like to use Windows applications on their portable 
>ARM-based devices.
Don't know.  Most functions are provided by other systems.  I know that Windows CE (aka Portable Windows) does exist for some handheld devices.  The key is to get folks to write software for that platform.  My point three above shows why Wine is written, mostly, for x86 devices.  It would be nice to see Wine ported to other platforms.  Technically, this is possible, however would it provide satisfactory performance as well is key to user satisfaction.

James McKenzie




More information about the wine-devel mailing list