Sugared Wine

[Vincent Povirk]

You just jumped in and said most of the things I was going to say. :(

I would like to mention that my options are limited, as sugar
integration goes. I can theoretically change the environment the
programs run in to fit in better, but I can't change the windows
programs that users will ultimately want to run. They are designed to
run in an environment that has a hierarchical filesystem and a
stack-of-papers window manager, and for a userbase that mostly knows
how to read and expects save/open commands.

Of course, if you're porting an individual program with Wine, you can
do a much better job. I don't think there are any technical problems
that would limit a Windows program's ability to use sugar features and
behave like a regular activity, though the program might need to be
modified to change assumptions about its environment.

Vincent Povirk



On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Jeremy White <jwhite at winehq.org> wrote:
> 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
>