[Wine] Re: Wine for the End-user?

[dank]

searbe at googlemail.com wrote:
> I've been watching Wine for about a year (well, checking back and
> reading updates) and progress all seems to be looking really good.

Indeed!

> I'd love to be able to use Linux, but firstly my applications won't run on
> it

Which applications?

> and secondly the whole operating system seems a little overwhelming
> to me - especially with having to type in text commands every now and
> then to do complete commands that are a few clicks away in Windows
> (simply installing FireFox proved mission impossible for me). I guess I
> should invest in a Linux book to get me started!

Oh, maybe.  Which version of Linux are you using?  If it's not Ubuntu,
maybe you should give that a try.  There's a lot less commandline
fiddling
needed with modern Linuxes like Ubuntu than there used to be.

> Anyway back to the point, Wine seems to be getting towards a 1.0
> release... I was wondering if that means 100% (or at least a high
> percentage) compatibility with applications?

I think for 1.0 the main goals are "installers should all just work"
and
"quite a few games should work well".  I think it's unrealistic to
expect 100% or even a high percentage of apps to really run well with
1.0.
Most likely the top dozen or so apps will run really well,
maybe 25% of apps will run well enough to use, 50% will run but be
quite annoying,
and 25% won't run at all.
Those numbers should improve as Wine ages.

> Which brings me to another question, is Wine an end-user application?
> Could someone like myself (inexperienced linux user, who could do with
> reading a good tutorial or two) use it to run applications easily? Or
> is this more likely to be found in a third-party Wine distribution at
> some point?

Good question.  I suspect that for now, Codeweavers Wine is the right
way
to go for most end users (or maybe Cedega's wine for games) who need
things to be polished.  But there's no reason not to try plain old Wine
first;
it might work ok for you.
- Dan