[Wine] Re: *How good is Wine?

[DanKegel]

GaryHeart wrote:
> I'm VERY interested in using [wine] as a better-cost alternative for schools where I teach open source & Windows technology. I travel the world, and help set up schools in underprivileged countries where it is very expensive to acquire the Windows desktop.


Cool!


> what is the Fidelity/Accuracy of the API against wine? My concern is, if there is a lot of divergence, then it would seem like a waste of time to teach kids and adults to program on Wine


It's pretty good... for the most commonly used apps, at least. 
We try very hard to match the needed parts of Windows 100% accurately.

Most people do not program on Wine, but some Windows IDEs
do run on Wine anyway.   It's always better to use native Linux apps
if they are available.  What apps exactly do you use in your courses?

Please give Wine a try.  The best thing you can do is give us a list
of the apps you need (after winnowing it to remove apps that have
native Linux equivalents), and start filing bugs against Wine for
any new problems you find running those apps under Wine.