Versions & mass-appeal

[Rick Romero]

On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 00:12, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
 
> Why are we in this position? For reasons I will not go into right
> now, it seems painfully obvious to me that we are suffering from
> a severe case of Bad Public Image (tm). Whenever I talk to people
> not intimately familiar with Wine, about our beloved project, I
> am _always_ treated with the same reaction: a surprised "Really,
> it works? Hmmm, I thought it was only running Freecell...".
> Translation: people consider Wine a huge hack that can run (by
> some strange happenings) some apps, sometimes. It is viewed as
> unreliable, "freak of nature sideshow"; something (maybe) cool
> to talk about, but utterly useless. 
Being a long time troll and admittedly bad problem reporter, my lack of
experience tends to send me down the wrong path, I can tell you what MY
impressions of Wine are.

My first success with Wine was quite a few years ago, running Agent
.99.  At that time, it seemed Win16 programs would have a chance, but
Win32 wouldn't make it.

Since then, I've purchased Crossover products, and been pleasantly
surprised by the applications that run under it.  I was astonished to
see GetRight work 100%, and almost taken aback to see Delta Force (and
it's funky Voxtel engine) running under wine.  (Ok DF3 doesn't QUITE
make it, but DF1 and DF2 are more than I ever expected.  Hmm Maybe
desktop mode would work..)

I would love to convert my desktops to Linux + Wine, but one 'little'
thing keeps nagging at me (even if my apps did work perfectly).  I
haven't seen it uttered in a while, but the phrase, "Wine is ALPHA
software" sticks in my head.

People know what beta software is, and when someone see's "Alpha",
they're not even going to attempt do debug it. Alpha (at least to me)
conjures up such a raw state of affairs, that whatever problem is
occurring, is happening because "Alpha" is seen as horribly broken.

I realize this isn't the case.  I'm also sure that a lot of people DON'T
realize that.  I think CodeWeavers has greatly helped Wine's image by
giving it a version number.  

I wonder if people think CodeWeaver's Wine is THAT much of a different
product than WineHQ's Wine..

Just another perspective, I'll be quiet now :)

Oh, and www.winehq.com seems to be down (can't connect from RoadRunner
or Savvis networks) 

Rick


-- 
--
Rick Romero
IT Manager	
Valeo, Inc.	ph: 262.695.4841
Sussex, WI.	fax: 262.695.4850
Rick at valeoinc.com