WineHQ Downloads page needs a disclaimer

Rosanne DiMesio dimesio at earthlink.net
Tue Nov 4 08:52:56 CST 2014


A good example of why: https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36964#c15

Our Downloads page doesn't directly say that the binary packages listed are officially endorsed, but it does give that impression: only a few distros are listed, the very top of the page says "Supported Wine" in big letters, and while the 3rd Party Tools section explicitly says those aren't supported, the Binary Downloads section gives no such warning. Users who assume that the packages listed on that page have the "WineHQ seal of approval" aren't being unreasonable.

This isn't just an issue with the Fedora packges. The Ubuntu packages with winepulse and changes to dsound have long been a problem (plus https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34299), and the CentOS/RHEL 7 packages are 64 bit only. I have stickies on the forum about all these things, but not everyone comes through the forum. 

The Downloads page needs to make it much clearer to users that the distro packages listed are not "official" WineHQ packages. The wording could be something like "Binary packages are built and maintained by the distros, and may contain patches that are not supported here. The links below are provided solely as a convenience to users and do not represent an endorsement." 

(Posting here because that's what I've been told to do for such issues.)










-- 
Rosanne DiMesio <dimesio at earthlink.net>



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