documentation/introduction.sgml

   1   <chapter id="introduction">
   2     <title>Introduction</title>
   3
   4     <sect1 id="overview">
   5       <title>Overview / About</title>
   6
   7       <sect2>
   8       <title>Purpose of this document and intended audience</title>
   9       <para>
  10         This document, called the Wine User Guide, is supposed to
  11         be both an easy installation guide and an extensive reference guide.
  12         Thus while it completely explains how to install and configure Wine,
  13         it also tries to document all configuration features and support areas
  14         of the Wine environment as a whole.
  15       </para>
  16       <para>
  17         It tries to target both the new Wine user (aka "bloody newbie"),
  18         by offering a step by step approach, and the experienced Wine
  19         user or expert, by offering the reference material mentioned
  20         above.
  21       </para>
  22       <para>
  23         The whole document has been extensively rewritten (in other
  24         words: the document then deserved to be called a document :-) by
  25         &name-andreas-mohr; <email>&email-andreas-mohr;</email> in
  26         March 2003.
  27       </para>
  28       </sect2>
  29
  30       <sect2>
  31         <title>Burning questions and comments</title>
  32         <para>
  33           If during reading this document there is something you
  34           can't figure out, or think could be explained better, or
  35           that should have been included, please immediately mail to
  36           either the &name-web-admin; <email>&email-web-admin;</email> or
  37           the &name-wine-devel; <email>&email-wine-devel;</email>, or
  38           post a bug report to
  39           <ulink url="http://bugs.winehq.com/">Wine's Bugzilla</ulink> to
  40           let us know how this document can be improved.  Remember, Open
  41           Source is "free as in free speech, not as in free beer": it can
  42           only work in the case of very active involvement of its users!
  43         </para>
  44         <para>
  45           <emphasis>
  46           Note that I can't say that I'm too impressed with the amount
  47           of feedback about this Guide that we have received so far
  48           since I added this paragraph many months ago...
  49           </emphasis>
  50         </para>
  51       </sect2>
  52
  53       <sect2>
  54         <title>Content overview / Steps to take</title>
  55         <para>
  56           This section will try to give you a complete overview of
  57           how to go all the way to a fully working Wine installation
  58           by following this Guide.
  59           We <emphasis>strongly recommend</emphasis> following every
  60           single relevant step of this Guide, since you might miss important
  61           information otherwise.
  62         </para>
  63         <para>
  64           First, we start by explaining what Wine is and mentioning
  65           everything else that's useful to know about it (that's
  66           covered in this very chapter that you're reading a part of right now).
  67         </para>
  68         <para>
  69           In order to be able to use Wine, you need to obtain a copy of
  70           its files first. That's the purpose of the next chapter, <link
  71           linkend="getting-wine">Getting Wine</link>: it tries to show
  72           you how Wine can be installed on your particular system
  73           (i.e. which installation methods are available in your case),
  74           and then it explains the various methods: either getting Wine
  75           via a binary package file suited for your particular system,
  76           or getting it via a Wine <glossterm>source code</glossterm>
  77           archive file, or getting the most current Wine development
  78           source code via <glossterm>CVS</glossterm>.
  79         </para>
  80         <para>
  81           Once you got your copy of Wine, you might need to follow the
  82           next chapter <link linkend="compiling">Compiling</link> if you
  83           decided to get Wine source code.
  84           Otherwise, the next chapter <link
  85           linkend="installing">Installing Wine</link> will explain the
  86           methods to use to install the Wine binary files to some location
  87           on your system.
  88         </para>
  89         <para>
  90           Once Wine is installed on your system, the next chapter <link
  91           linkend="config-wine-main">Configuring Wine</link> will
  92           focus on the available configuration methods for Wine to set up
  93           a proper Wine/Windows environment with all its requirements:
  94           there are either graphical (e.g. WineSetupTk) or text mode
  95           (wineinstall) configuration helper applications available that will
  96           fully configure the Wine environment for you.
  97           And for those people who dislike a fully automated
  98           installation (maybe because they really want to know what they're
  99           doing), we'll describe how to manually set up a complete Wine
 100           environment configuration.
 101         </para>
 102         <para>
 103           Once the configuration of the Wine environment is done, the
 104           next chapter <link linkend="running">Running Wine</link>
 105           will show you how to run Windows programs with Wine and
 106           how to satisfy the more specific requirements of certain
 107           Windows programs.
 108         </para>
 109         <para>
 110           In case you run into trouble, the chapter <link
 111           linkend="bugs">Troubleshooting / Reporting bugs</link>
 112           will list and explain some common troubleshooting and debugging
 113           methods.
 114         </para>
 115       </sect2>
 116
 117     </sect1>
 118
 119     <sect1 id="what-is-wine">
 120       <title>What is Wine?</title>
 121
 122       <para>
 123         <literallayout>
 124           Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
 125           Modified by &name-dustin-navea; <email>&email-dustin-navea;</email>
 126         </literallayout>
 127       </para>
 128
 129       <sect2>
 130         <title>Windows and Linux</title>
 131         <!-- general description of wine, what does it do? -->
 132         <para>
 133           Many people have faced the frustration of owning software that
 134           won't run on their computer.  With the recent popularity of
 135           <ulink url="http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html">
 136           Linux</ulink>, this is happening more and more often because
 137           of differing operating systems.  Your Windows software won't
 138           run on Linux, and your Linux software won't run in Windows.
 139         </para>
 140         <para>
 141           A common solution to this problem is to install both operating
 142           systems on the same computer, as a <quote>dual boot</quote>
 143           system.  If you want to write a document in MS Word, you can
 144           boot up in Windows; if you want to run GnuCash, the GNOME
 145           financial application, you can shut down your Windows session
 146           and reboot into Linux.  The problem with this is that you
 147           can't do both at the same time.  Each time you switch back and
 148           forth between MS Word and GnuCash, you have to reboot again.
 149           This can get tiresome quickly.
 150         </para>
 151         <para>
 152           Life would be so much easier if you could run all your
 153           applications on the same system, regardless of whether they
 154           are written for Windows or for Linux.  On Windows, this isn't
 155           really possible, yet.
 156           <footnote>
 157             <para>
 158               Technically, if you have two networked computers, one
 159               running Windows and the other running Linux, and if you
 160               have some sort of X server software running on the Windows
 161               system, you can export Linux applications onto the Windows
 162               system. A free X server is available at
 163               <ulink url="http://xfree86.cygwin.com/">http://xfree86.cygwin.com/</ulink>.
 164               However, this doesn't solve the problem if you only own
 165               one computer system.
 166             </para>
 167           </footnote>
 168           However, Wine makes it possible to run native Windows
 169           applications alongside native Linux applications on any Unix-like
 170           system.  You can share desktop space between MS Word and GnuCash,
 171           overlapping their windows, iconizing them, and even running them
 172           from the same launcher.
 173         </para>
 174       </sect2>
 175
 176       <sect2>
 177         <title>What is Wine, and how can it help me?</title>
 178         <!-- emulator vs. Winelib -->
 179         <para>
 180           Wine is a UNIX implementation of the win32 Windows libraries,
 181           written from scratch by hundreds of volunteer developers and
 182           released under an Open Source license (think of it as a
 183           Windows compatibility layer for Linux and other similar
 184           operating systems).  Anyone can download
 185           and read through the source code, and fix bugs that arise.
 186           The Wine community is full of richly talented programmers
 187           who have spent thousands of hours of personal time on
 188           improving Wine so that it works well with the win32
 189           <glossterm>Application Programming Interface</glossterm>
 190           (API), and keeps pace with new developments from Microsoft.
 191         </para>
 192         <para>
 193           Wine can run Windows applications in two discrete ways: as
 194           pre-compiled Windows binaries (your average off-the-shelf
 195           program package e.g. available on CD), or as natively compiled
 196           <ulink url="http://www.xfree86.org/#whatis">X11 (X-Window
 197           System)</ulink> applications (via the part of Wine that's called
 198           Winelib). If you're interested in compiling the source code of a
 199           Windows program you wrote, then please refer to the
 200           Winelib User's Guide instead, which explains this particular topic.
 201           This Wine Users Guide however will focus on running standard
 202           Windows applications using Wine.
 203         </para>
 204
 205         <!-- the development model -->
 206         <para>
 207         </para>
 208       </sect2>
 209
 210       <sect2 id="wine-capabilities">
 211         <title>Wine capabilities</title>
 212
 213         <para>
 214           Now that we're done with the boring introductory babble,
 215           let us tell you what Wine is able to do/support:
 216         </para>
 217         <para>
 218           <itemizedlist>
 219             <listitem>
 220               <para>
 221                 Support for running Win32 (Win 95/98, NT/2000/XP), Win16 (Win 3.1) and DOS programs
 222               </para>
 223             </listitem>
 224             <listitem>
 225               <para>
 226                 Optional use of external vendor
 227                 <glossterm>DLLs</glossterm> (e.g. original
 228                 Windows DLLs)
 229               </para>
 230             </listitem>
 231             <listitem>
 232               <para>
 233                 X11-based graphics display (remote display to any X
 234                 terminal possible), text mode console
 235               </para>
 236             </listitem>
 237             <listitem>
 238               <para>
 239                 Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
 240               </para>
 241             </listitem>
 242             <listitem>
 243               <para>
 244                 Pretty advanced DirectX support for games
 245               </para>
 246             </listitem>
 247             <listitem>
 248               <para>
 249                 Good support for sound, alternative input devices
 250               </para>
 251             </listitem>
 252             <listitem>
 253               <para>
 254                 Printing: PostScript interface driver (psdrv) to
 255                 standard Unix PostScript print services
 256               </para>
 257             </listitem>
 258             <listitem>
 259               <para>
 260                 Modems, serial devices are supported
 261               </para>
 262             </listitem>
 263             <listitem>
 264               <para>
 265                 Winsock TCP/IP networking
 266               </para>
 267             </listitem>
 268             <listitem>
 269               <para>
 270                 ASPI interface (SCSI) support for scanners, CD writers,
 271                 ...
 272               </para>
 273             </listitem>
 274             <listitem>
 275               <para>
 276                 Unicode support, relatively advanced language support
 277               </para>
 278             </listitem>
 279             <listitem>
 280               <para>
 281                 Wine debugger and configurable trace logging messages
 282               </para>
 283             </listitem>
 284           </itemizedlist>
 285         </para>
 286       </sect2>
 287     </sect1>
 288
 289 <!-- *** Not really useful as is, but may be able to recycle this elsewhere...
 290     <sect1 id="getting-started">
 291       <title>Getting started</title>
 292
 293       <para>
 294         Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
 295       </para>
 296
 297       <para>
 298         Wine can be pretty intimidating at first.  The Wine
 299         distribution consists of over four thousand files and almost a
 300         million lines of source code
 301         <footnote>
 302           <para>Crudely calculated from running <command>find . | wc
 303               -l</command> and <command>cat `find . -name "*.c"` | wc
 304               -l</command>, respectively, from a fresh CVS checkout.</para>
 305         </footnote>,
 306         and is probably one of the steepest learning curves in the
 307         open source world.  This chapter will give you a crash course
 308         in the important topics you need to know to get started with
 309         running Wine applications.
 310       </para>
 311     </sect1>
 312 -->
 313
 314     <sect1 id="other-wines">
 315       <title>Other, often "Enhanced" Wine offerings</title>
 316
 317       <para>
 318         There are a number of offerings that are derived from the standard Wine
 319         codebase in some way or another.
 320       </para>
 321       <para>
 322         Some of these are commercial products from companies that actively contribute to Wine.
 323       </para>
 324       <para>
 325         These products often try to stand out or distinguish themselves
 326         from Wine, e.g. by offering greater compatibility or much easier
 327         and flexible configuration than your average standard Wine
 328         release. As such it is often a good idea to shell out some bucks
 329         for the commercial versions, especially since these companies
 330         contribute a lot of code to Wine, and plus, I'm sure they'll be happy about your support...
 331       </para>
 332       <table><title>Various Wine offerings</title>
 333         <tgroup cols=3 align="left">
 334           <thead>
 335             <row>
 336               <entry>Product</entry>
 337               <entry>Description</entry>
 338               <entry>Distribution form</entry>
 339             </row>
 340           </thead>
 341           <tbody>
 342             <row>
 343               <entry>
 344                 <ulink
 345                 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/rewind">ReWind</ulink>
 346               </entry>
 347               <entry>
 348                 ReWind is a Wine version derived from the old BSD
 349                 licensed Wine tree (it's the "completely free" BSD license fork of the currently LGPL'ed Wine).
 350                 Due to its BSD license it can't incorporate some Wine
 351                 patches that get licensed under the more restrictive
 352                 (or: protective) LGPL license by their authors.
 353               </entry>
 354               <entry>
 355                 Free, Open Source: BSD license
 356               </entry>
 357             </row>
 358             <row>
 359               <entry>
 360                 <ulink
 361                 url="http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office">CodeWeavers CrossOver Office</ulink>
 362               </entry>
 363               <entry>
 364                 CrossOver Office allows you to install your favorite
 365                 Windows productivity applications in Linux, without
 366                 needing a Microsoft Operating System license. CrossOver
 367                 includes an easy to use, single click interface, which
 368                 makes installing a Windows application simple and fast.
 369               </entry>
 370               <entry>
 371                 Commercial
 372               </entry>
 373             </row>
 374             <row>
 375               <entry>
 376                 <ulink
 377                 url="http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxofficeserver">CodeWeavers CrossOver Office Server Edition</ulink>
 378               </entry>
 379               <entry>
 380                 CrossOver Office Server Edition allows you to run your
 381                 favorite Windows productivity applications in a
 382                 distributed thin-client environment under Linux, without
 383                 needing Microsoft Operating System licenses for each
 384                 client machine. CrossOver OfficeServer Edition allows you
 385                 to satisfy the needs of literally hundreds of concurrent
 386                 users, all from a single server.
 387               </entry>
 388               <entry>
 389                 Commercial
 390               </entry>
 391             </row>
 392             <row>
 393               <entry>
 394                 <ulink
 395                 url="http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover">CodeWeavers
 396                 CrossOver Plugin</ulink>
 397               </entry>
 398               <entry>
 399                 CrossOver Plugin lets you use many Windows plugins
 400                 directly from your Linux browser. In particular CrossOver
 401                 fully supports QuickTime, Shockwave Director,
 402                 Windows Media Player 6.4, Word Viewer, Excel Viewer,
 403                 PowerPoint Viewer, and more...
 404               </entry>
 405               <entry>
 406                 Commercial; Demo version available
 407               </entry>
 408             </row>
 409             <row>
 410               <entry>
 411                 <ulink
 412                 url="http://www.codeweavers.com/technology/wine/">CodeWeavers
 413                 Wine preview</ulink>
 414               </entry>
 415               <entry>
 416                 The Wine preview is a usually slightly older Wine release
 417                 that's been tested as extra stable.
 418                 It includes the graphical installer winesetuptk,
 419                 allowing for easy configuration.
 420               </entry>
 421               <entry>
 422                 Free, Open Source: LGPL license
 423               </entry>
 424             </row>
 425             <row>
 426               <entry>
 427                 <ulink url="http://www.transgaming.com">TransGaming Technologies WineX</ulink>
 428               </entry>
 429               <entry>
 430                 WineX is a Wine version derived from the old BSD licensed Wine tree, with currently better support for Direct3D and DirectX software than standard Wine, and with added copy protection support for multiple types of copy protection e.g. used in games.
 431               </entry>
 432               <entry>
 433                 Commercial; <ulink
 434                 url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/winex">free CVS
 435                 download</ulink> of reduced version (no copy protection
 436                 support etc.)
 437               </entry>
 438             </row>
 439           </tbody>
 440         </tgroup>
 441       </table>
 442     </sect1>
 443
 444     <sect1 id="competition">
 445       <title>Alternatives to Wine you might want to consider</title>
 446
 447       <para>
 448         We'll mention some alternatives (or we could also say:
 449         competitors) to Wine here that might come in handy if Wine is
 450         not usable for the program or job you want it to do, since
 451         these alternatives usually provide better Windows compatibility.
 452       </para>
 453
 454       <sect2>
 455         <title>VMWare</title>
 456         <para>
 457           <ulink url="http://www.vmware.com">VMWare</ulink> is a
 458           software package to emulate an additional machine on your PC.
 459           In other words, it establishes a virtual machine that can be
 460           used to run any kind of Intel x86 compatible operating system
 461           in parallel to your currently running operating system.
 462           Thus you could use Linux and at the same time run Windows 98
 463           in a virtual machine on the same screen.
 464         </para>
 465         <para>
 466           Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, there are some drawbacks, of
 467           course... First, VMWare is pretty expensive, and second, you
 468           need a licensed copy of the operating system you want to run.
 469           Third, since VMWare is a virtual machine, it's quite slow.
 470           Wine doesn't have any of these limitations, but unfortunately
 471           this also means that you will not have the relatively good
 472           compatibility of a real original Windows system if you use
 473           Wine.
 474         </para>
 475       </sect2>
 476       <sect2>
 477         <title>Win4Lin</title>
 478         <para>
 479           <ulink url="http://www.win4lin.com">Win4Lin</ulink> by
 480           NeTraverse allows you to run a special version of Win98 in
 481           Linux. Compared to VMWare, this has the advantage that it's
 482           faster, but you still have the license fees.
 483         </para>
 484       </sect2>
 485     </sect1>
 486     <sect1 id="wine-stats">
 487       <title>Basic Wine Requirements</title>
 488
 489       <para>
 490         <literallayout>
 491           Written by &name-andreas-mohr; <email>&email-andreas-mohr;</email>
 492           Modified by &name-dustin-navea; <email>&email-dustin-navea;</email>
 493         </literallayout>
 494       </para>
 495
 496       <para>
 497         This section only mentions the most basic system requirements of
 498         Wine, in order to ease your Wine "purchasing decision" ;-)
 499         For an up-to-date much more detailed list of requirements for
 500         compiling and/or installing Wine,
 501         please read the REQUIREMENTS section of the <ulink
 502         url="http://www.winehq.org/source/README">README</ulink> file,
 503         which is also available in the main directory of a Wine source code tree.
 504       </para>
 505       <para>
 506         In case of a binary Wine package, these Wine requirements will
 507         probably be fulfilled automatically by the package installation
 508         process; if you want to have a look at the detailed requirements
 509         nevertheless (which definitely can't hurt!), then I'd like to
 510         mention that the README file can also frequently be found in the
 511         documentation files directory of a Wine package.
 512       </para>
 513
 514       <sect2 id="system-requirements">
 515         <title>System requirements</title>
 516         <para>
 517           In order to run Wine, you generally need the following:
 518         </para>
 519         <para>
 520           <itemizedlist>
 521             <listitem>
 522               <para>
 523                 A computer ;-)
 524                 <literallayout>  Wine: only PCs >= i386 are supported at the moment.</literallayout>
 525                 <literallayout>  Winelib: selected other platforms are supported, but can be tricky.</literallayout>
 526               </para>
 527             </listitem>
 528             <listitem>
 529               <para>
 530                 A UNIX-like operating system such as Linux, *BSD,
 531                 Solaris x86, ReactOS, Cygwin
 532               </para>
 533             </listitem>
 534             <listitem>
 535               <para>
 536                 >= 32MB of RAM.  Everything below is pretty much
 537                 unusable.  >= 96 MB is needed for "good" execution.
 538               </para>
 539             </listitem>
 540             <listitem>
 541               <para>
 542                 An X11 window system (XFree86 etc.).  Wine is prepared
 543                 for other graphics display drivers, but writing
 544                 support is not too easy.  The text console display
 545                 driver (ttydrv) is nearly usable, so you don't
 546                 necessarily have to install X11 if you don't need it for
 547                 the programs you intend to run (in other words: mainly
 548                 for text mode programs).
 549               </para>
 550             </listitem>
 551           </itemizedlist>
 552         </para>
 553       </sect2>
 554     </sect1>
 555   </chapter>
 556
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