WINE for PowerPC?

[Zsolt Rizsanyi]

On Sunday 03 November 2002 02:26, 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.

There is bochs (bochs.org) which is a true hardware emulator of x86 machines. 
It runs on many architectures (AFAIK it runs on PPC). It has stable releases 
and it is open source.
The only drawback is that it is really slow, because all x86 instructions have 
to be emulated. The installation of windows 9x takes some hours.

> > I've got visions of Windows exes running on Linux for PPC or a running
> > Windows applications on a Mac... I know WINE is far from being done
> > even for Linux x86, but I'd appreciate everyones' knowledge on his
> > question.
>
> It really wouldnt be possible, at least not any time within I would say the
> next 20 years.  This has been debated before, and probably will be again ;)
> but believe me, if it were possible to translate x86 codes into mac or PPC
> ones relatively easily, (i.e. like it is to translate windows routines into
> linux ones) then it probably would have been dont already.  Now they are

You could try to merge wine with bochs, and you would get a windows emulator 
on PPC. But it would be really slow, so there is no use for it.
If there will be use (like if the hardware will be fast enough, and 
architecture other than x86 will be more common) the merge will occur pretty 
quickly...

Regards
Zsolt