[Wine] Re: WINE - Ambitious Project

[vitamin]

tpreitzel wrote:
> I'd surely love using Windows' drivers with WINE as I have a few programs which require them.

Depends on what those drivers do. Pseudo drivers (copy protection), "high level" hardware drivers (usb, printer, scanner), or "low level" hardware drivers (network cards, video drivers, specific hardware, etc).

Copy protection drivers depends how nasty they are. Things like root-kits (GameGuard), highly invasive (StarForce) or DRM like which verify "authenticity" of the system (parts of WMP) won't ever work on Wine. Some properly written ones might and do work (older versions of SafeDisk).

Hight level HW drivers (in terms of driver stack) might eventually work as they don't talk directly to the hardware but to the lover level drivers. It's possible to create those lover level "drivers" that talk to the hardware via Linux drivers. Example is experimental support for USB drivers.

Low level HW drivers won't ever work as they talk directly to the hardware which Wine can't do. And emulating this won't by feasible. Besides you'll have better chances getting Linux driver instead.