WINE for PowerPC?

[Igor Izyumin]

On Saturday 02 November 2002 07:26 pm, Dustin Navea wrote:
> --- Adam Ernst <adam1234 at athenet.net> wrote:
> > I'm sorry if this is off topic or doesn't belong here. I'm not a
> > developer (at least not in C) so I'll wait a few years while I learn C
> > before I come back and help you guys. But I was wondering...
>
> Ok, I dont want to sound rude, but you should be glad anyone is replying...
> Its not really off-topic as there arent any set topics and it certainly
> doesnt not belong here.
>
> > What are the technical issues with putting WINE on the PowerPC? So
> > someday we could run WINE with native Windows apps on Linux for PPC or
> > even (!) the Macintosh? (Mac OS X is Unix based, so...) Is it feasible
> > to put a x86 emulator in there, so Win32 apps will think they're on a
> > standard x86 processor?
>
> Do you know all of the routines for an x86 processor?  Neither do any of us
> ;).  If we put in x86 emulator in there then we need a hardware emulator
> also so that it translates the codes from x86 hardware codes to mac ones. 
> And the only hardware emulator I know of (even for x86) is vmware and it
> royally sux.

Not really.  It's not THAT difficult to emulate x86 - after all, many 
emulators (like snes9x, snes9x.com) do the same thing with very 
poorly-documented consoles.  In fact, there IS an open-source x86 emulator 
(Bochs, http://bochs.sourceforge.net/).  

The real challenge is making it efficient - the Super Nintendo runs at about 
5MHz but requires a 300MHz processor to emulate it with decent speed.  Unless 
you want your 800MHz Mac to perform like a 486, you will probably want a more 
efficient way to emulate it.  This is a big challenge, and Wine quite frankly 
has bigger fish to fry.

Besides, why would you want to run stuff under wine on the Mac?  Virtual PC is 
much better for most things.  If you really want to go 100% Windows-free, you 
could run Linux inside a Bochs session and run Wine on top of that.  If you 
don't use MacOS on your Mac, just get an x86 PC - it will work better with 
Linux anyway.
-- 
-- Igor