Sugared Wine

Jeremy White jwhite at winehq.org
Sat Oct 11 09:30:22 CDT 2008


Hi Markus,

> Judging by the photoshopped image you put an an Windows-like desktop  
> designed for adults into a desktop designed for childs. Now, if you'd  
> at least hide the original (sugar) desktop you'd re-gain precious  
> screen space and wouldn't have to explain the childs when to use  
> which of both desktops.

The photoshopped image is actually not how it works; the actual
implementation does run in the whole screen.

> For me, I've always considered the strength of Wine to provide a  
> seamless integration into the original operating system / desktop and  
> _not_ to come with it's own taskbar / launch system. For the Windows- 
> like experience, I'd always prefer an hardware emulator.

Actually, it's interesting, because I have long been of the exact same opinion.

I had my mind changed by a somewhat startling event.

But first, let me digress.  I sustain that there are two kinds of
understanding:  intellectual, and emotional.  The example I always
use is that when my wife and I went to buy luggage years ago, she
reported that her friends told her it sucked to have black luggage,
because everyone has black luggage.  I agreed, so we looked for red
or green, but they were out.  All they had was black.  So I said,
what the heck, how bad can it be?  And we bought black.

So I intellectually understood the problem.

But it didn't really *smack* me in the face until, tired and grumpy
after traveling, I had to stand hyper vigilant in the baggage
claim area, watching 5 separate people pick up my suitcase and
put it down again.

After that, I *emotionally* understood the problem.  I got it
in my gut.

So, undigressing.  I was discussing all of this with John Gilmore,
a very smart man.  He and I were talking about Wine, and why Wine
was not of more use to the OLPC community.

Hashing through this, I suggested the mock up that is posted as
a screen shot on the Sugared Wine Wiki.

John immediately lit up.  He exclaimed:  "Why hasn't Wine had
this all along!?!?!"

Okay, I talked him down, and he did come to understand why
a dedicated desktop was a stupid idea for a normal Linux user.

But the key point was that he immediately and *emotionally* was
grabbed by the value of Wine.

And I've tried this on a bunch of people since.  And it works
exactly the same way.  That one picture gets people more in their
gut than any other explanation of Wine I've ever used.

I hate it - it's the exact same image that competitors like Parallels
and VMWare use.  And Wine is fundamentally different from and better
than PC emulation technology.  But the bottom line is that we're human, and
our brains work in funny ways.

And the goal of the Sugared Wine project is to show people considering
Sugar instead of a Windows XP based system that Wine is a viable
option to consider.  So getting them in the gut is a really
important part of the project.

Once we've hooked them, then we can help work with them to package
whatever application they need to run as a proper XO activity bundle.

Cheers,

Jeremy



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