Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Wine
As I mentioned previously, Ubuntu doesn’t always have an application that fits my needs. Sometimes what I really need is a Windows application but I don’t want to have to boot back in to Windows to get it. The surefire solution to this kind of dilemma is to set up a Windows installation in a virtual machine (Parallels, VMWare, or VirtualBox), but virtual machines are slow to boot, and consume fair amounts of both disk space and RAM. As it turns out, there’s a better solution: Wine.
“Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems.” Unlike a virtual machine, Wine doesn’t install or run a complete copy of Windows in the background, rather it’s an implementation of the Win32 API designed to sit on top of *nix operating systems. The compatibility isn’t nearly as good as a virtual machine, but the trade-offs of lower resource usage and faster loading times are worth it. If I can use Wine rather than a virtual machine, then that’s the way I want to go.
I should note that Wine is anything but new (it’s some 16 years old now) and it’s pretty common too. Fully supported versions of it are sold as a product focusing on business applications (Crossover) and there’s quite a number of not-quite-native Mac games that are really Windows games with a Wine-based wrapper (Cider). But it’s definitely new to me. And I should note (having learned this the hard way) that Wine is not an emulator – the Ubuntu community really hates having it called that.
I originally intended to use Wine for 3 things:
- iTunes, so that I could sync my iPhone
- Games, in order to avoid the primary reason I dual boot
- Microsoft Office
iTunes was a long-shot in the first place, and it should not come as a surprise that it didn’t work. I had to settle on dual booting whenever I needed to sync (a virtual machine would have also worked, but I didn’t want to have to deal with two sync databases).
Gaming was a crap-shoot. I’m actually not going to spend too much time talking about this because we’re going to go much more in depth on this in our next piece, but I’ll mention it quickly to discuss usability. The two games I had a particular interest in were Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, and Team Fortress 2.
The performance on both games was below that on Windows. In the case of Team Fortress 2 running it with DirectX 9 graphics (Shader Model 2/3) was unbearably slow, and with DirectX 8.1 graphics it’s unbearably ugly (this being a product of TF2 simply looking a great deal worse without DX9 functionality). Technically I could play TF2, but it was going to be rougher than I could settle for.
As for Supreme Commander, the speed issue can be particularly problematic. The game is a CPU-eating monster, and it takes nearly everything it can get for its intricate simulations and AI routines. The loss here is that for whatever reason when bogged down the simulation speed was noticeably slower than under Windows, which while not technically unplayable can make a game so slow that it’s not practical to finish it. The other issue was minor graphical corruption with the icons; this was not a game breaker, but it was another sign to go back to Windows.
Now to the credit of the Wine development community, there are a number of games that apparently work well under Wine according to their application database, however the games I wanted on the hardware I had were not functioning as well as I’d like. Wine wasn’t going to meet my gaming needs. When we do Part 2 of our Ubuntu series and take a look at 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, we’ll take a more concentrated look at gaming inside and outside of Wine.
Finally, we have the success story in my use of Wine, Microsoft Office. As I stated previously when discussing OpenOffice, in spite of its abilities I missed Microsoft Office’s Ribbon UI. As Wine supports Word and Excel well enough to meet my needs, I was able to install those applications and use them as I would regularly use them under Windows. Their behavior under Wine isn’t perfect, as Wine’s application database will attest to, but the problems are not something that I encountered on a day-to-day basis. The biggest difference is that Wine + Ubuntu doesn’t have the same fine level of font anti-aliasing that Vista does, which makes it look slightly different. Meanwhile Outlook wasn’t as well behaved, but I already had Evolution which covered my needs in the first place.
Along with Microsoft Office, I also threw a few other assorted applications at Wine, which it handled without an issue. This includes some .Net 2.0 applications, which after installing the .Net framework in to Wine worked, and was not something I was seriously expecting. Although I wasn’t able to use Wine for everything I needed, it had a lot to do with keeping me in Ubuntu more often.
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Telkwa - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Nobody's going to agree with the entire article. I'm just glad to see Anandtech paying some attention, and would welcome any articles, tests, reviews, etc.It's embarrassing to visit the "Linux" tab and see the latest article was posted in July of 2005...
Geraldo8022 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
This is based on Ubuntu and I installed it this past weekend. I am having certain issues with it. Yes, it is free. Overall I like it very much and am pleasantly surprised. But, this has shown that Windows 7 will be a comparative bargain to me. I do not have the time to sit in front of the computer and play with Linux; trying to find out why certain videos don't play and why I am having eye strain and clicking on an audio link that doesn't play and a few more. When I go to the Mint forums I am confronted with a Tower of Babel what with all of the acronyms, and told to go to the terminal and type $surun%(8#**#. Ok, now turn your head and cough.I'll keep Linux on this machine to boot up and play with now and then. It beats solitaire for the time being.
VooDooAddict - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
You hit on a good point. People I've setup with dual booting linux distros and windows begin to appreciate what they are paying for with windows. Typical response is "This is cool (Ubuntu) and I can see why some people like it. But I'm going to stick with windows, it's worth the money to me."They appreciate that Linux could work, but see the "value" in paying form something familiar.
VooDooAddict - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I run Vista on my main PC. Vista on all the spare LAN gaming PCs. I have an Ubuntu 9.04 VM and Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my old tablet PC (small and netbook like).Locutus465 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Just out of curiosity what user mode were you having guests run in? Even in vista I don't provide anything greater than standard user. With that guests need my password (which they don't have) to mess my machine up. Going back as far as Windows 2000, as long as you pair Windows with good spyware (spybot, or for XP defender if you choose) and antivirus (I like Avast and AVG both free and have nil footprints) you basically don't have to worry about system security as long as the person is running a standard user account.My my parents system, we went from having to wipe and reinstall windows every time I came home from college, to a rock solid system that absoultly never failed when I performed these steps. I still like the XP/2000 behaviour of simply denying access better than the current UAC implementation. But Vista 64 + UAC (active) seems to be secure enough, particularly when paired with the aformentioned anti-virus software.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
For what it's worth, it's an admin account. I know, I know, I could do Limited User. But that tends to just elicit complaints. XP's Limited User mode is embarrassing compared to how well Vista/Win7 does it.Since it's basically just a web browsing laptop anyhow, it's basically a perfect fit for Ubuntu since I wouldn't need to be concerned with Windows malware period.
leexgx - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
i have to agree even XP in its standered/limited user account mode quite hard for stuff to install but not imposable (Vista and win7 with UAC on and an standered account with the admin account passworded should prevent the system from been messed up)aguilpa1 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
It seems the OS does not like core 2 duos and nvidia 9800GTX graphics, something even OSX was able to handle.samspqr - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
* for me, the best possible way to install applications on any OS, but specially in one that is free (libre) is as follows: you search on the internet for the best program to meet your needs, you find it, you copy some code that identifies it, and paste that in your package manager, which then connects to some database, checks that the program is not malware, looks for the latest version, and proceeds to download and install it, not caring whether it's open source or not; this would beat windows/OSX by a wide margin, and also the current ubuntu system, whose "we don't like this software, on philosophical grounds, so it's going to be a pain in the ass for you to install it" attitude is a bit too problematic* it would be nice if the "auto" option in the installer told you what it's going to do with your hard disk before going on to do it; I never use it, out of fear it might try to do something I don't like
* I missed some comment on that section on how Photoshop CS3 costs a lot of $$$, while GIMP is free
* along these lines, the comparison of total costs in time and money of installing windows/OSX/ubuntu, with all their companion programs, is striking
samspqr - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
and about openoffice:* I didn't check this ltely, but aren't there still problems with VBA compatibility? if I can open my xls/xlsm files but I can't run my macros, it's no good; I have a ton of stuff written in VBA, and I'm definitely not doing all that work again
* the ribbon UI in office 2007 is a royal pain: it's only good for the "It looks like you're writing a letter" users, and you can't get rid of it; there's a lot of people doing real work on excel, and none I talked to likes that ribbon thing, they'd all rather stay with excel 2003