[Wine] Re: Wine on non-Unix platforms

[DOSGuy]

SpawnHappyJake wrote:
> One option is to run WINE in Ubuntu for Windows. There is actually a version of Ubuntu that runs in Windows as a Windows application. http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubuntu-runs-ubuntu-inside-windows


Very cool, but too large to bundle with downloads from my site.


SpawnHappyJake wrote:
> Another option is to provide USB stick images that could be applied by Self-Image. I suppose you could let them burn bootable ISOs. (to load Linux with WINE and games)


If I was going to do that, it would have to be a super tiny Linux.


SpawnHappyJake wrote:
> Have you been successful in running operating systems in DOSBox (other than DOS and booter games)?


Heck yeah! I run Windows 3.1 in DOSBox for all of my Win16 games, and it's absolutely flawless. Even WinG and Win32s work great. I haven't found anything that doesn't work perfectly under Windows 3.1 in DOSBox.

I also run Windows 95 in DOSBox for all of my Win9x games. I've only installed DirectX 6.1 so far, but that's been enough for every game I've tried so far. Whereas Windows 95 is virtually unusable under Bochs, Win95 runs at full speed under DOSBox. It's even faster than when I ran Windows 95 on a real computer back in the 90s. Using yhkwong's build, I set 4 MB of VRAM so that I can run Win95 at 1024x768 @ 32-bit color. Beautiful.

DOSBox also runs CP/M-86 almost flawlessly, but it refuses to let me format disks in CP/M format. Otherwise, it's almost as good as the real thing.

No luck with Win98 so far, and a FreeDOS hard drive image I created yesterday won't boot (which is weird, because MS-DOS, DR-DOS and FreeDOS boot floppies work fine), and absolutely no luck booting my ReactOS disk image. Still, it's pretty good for a program that's not supposed to run other operating systems.


SpawnHappyJake wrote:
> Why must you think that no Linux in DOSBox = WINE is not an option?


I'm open to alternatives, but the point of a solution that works in DOSBox is to use jDosbox to make Windows games playable online.


SpawnHappyJake wrote:
> But if you absolutely must have emulation to run an OS, use something like QEMU or Bochs that was intended to be able to run operating systems.


Bochs is a mixed bag. Some OSes won't work for me at all, and those that do are usually too slow to be useable. Still, it runs some older OSes better than Virtual PC and VirtualBox. There are only a few OSes I can stand to run in Bochs. As for QEMU, it was never user-friendly enough for me to get into it. It sounds like a good emulator, so maybe I'll try to set aside some time to learn it someday.

Thanks for the ideas!