documentation/introduction.sgml

   1   <chapter id="introduction">
   2     <title>Introduction</title>
   3
   4     <sect1 id="what-is-wine">
   5       <title>What is Wine?</title>
   6
   7       <para>
   8         <literallayout>
   9           Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
  10           Modified by <ulink url="mailto:&email-dustin-navea;">&name-dustin-navea;</ulink>
  11         </literallayout>
  12       </para>
  13
  14       <sect2>
  15         <title>Windows and Linux</title>
  16         <!-- general description of wine, what does it do? -->
  17         <para>
  18           Many people have faced the frustration of owning software that
  19           won't run on their computer.  With the recent popularity of
  20           <ulink url="http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html">
  21           Linux</ulink>, this is happening more and more often because
  22           of differing operating systems.  Your Windows software won't
  23           run on Linux, and your Linux software won't run in Windows.
  24         </para>
  25         <para>
  26           A common solution to this problem is to install both operating
  27           systems on the same computer, as a <quote>dual boot</quote>
  28           system.  If you want to write a document in MS Word, you can
  29           boot up in Windows; if you want to run the GnuCash, the GNOME
  30           financial application, you can shut down your Windows session
  31           and reboot into Linux.  The problem with this is that you
  32           can't do both at the same time.  Each time you switch back and
  33           forth between MS Word and GnuCash, you have to reboot again.
  34           This can get tiresome quickly.
  35         </para>
  36         <para>
  37           Life would be so much easier if you could run all your
  38           applications on the same system, regardless of whether they
  39           are written for Windows or for Linux.  On Windows, this isn't
  40           really possible, yet.
  41           <footnote>
  42             <para>
  43               Technically, if you have two networked computers, one
  44               running Windows and the other running Linux, and if you
  45               have some sort of X server software running on the Windows
  46               system, you can export Linux applications onto the Windows
  47               system. A free X server is available at
  48               <ulink url="http://xfree86.cygwin.com/">http://xfree86.cygwin.com/</ulink>.
  49               However, this doesn't solve the problem if you only own
  50               one computer system.
  51             </para>
  52           </footnote>
  53           However, Wine makes it possible to run native Windows
  54           applications alongside native Linux applications on any Unix-like
  55           system.  You can share desktop space between MS Word and GnuCash,
  56           overlapping their windows, iconizing them, and even running them
  57           from the same launcher.
  58         </para>
  59       </sect2>
  60
  61       <sect2>
  62         <title>Emulation versus Native Linking</title>
  63         <!-- emulator vs. Winelib -->
  64         <para>
  65           Wine is a UNIX implementation of the win32 libraries,
  66           written from scratch by hundreds of volunteer developers and
  67           released under an open source license.  Anyone can download
  68           and read through the source code, and fix bugs that arise.
  69           The Wine community is full of richly talented programmers
  70           who have spent thousands of hours of personal time on
  71           improving Wine so that it works well with the win32
  72           <firstterm>Applications Programming Interface</firstterm>
  73           (API), and keeps pace with new developments from Microsoft.
  74         </para>
  75         <para>
  76           Wine can run applications in two discrete ways: as
  77           pre-compiled Windows binaries, or as natively compiled
  78           <ulink url="http://www.xfree86.org/#whatis">X11 (X-Window
  79           System)</ulink> applications.  The former method uses
  80           emulation to connect a Windows application to the Wine
  81           libraries.  You can run your Windows application directly
  82           with the emulator, by installing through Wine or by simply
  83           copying the Windows executables onto your Linux system.
  84         </para>
  85         <para>
  86           The other way to run Windows applications with Wine requires
  87           that you have the source code for the application.  Instead
  88           of compiling it with native Windows compilers, you can
  89           compile it with a native Linux compiler --
  90           <command>gcc</command> for example -- and link in the Wine
  91           Libraries as you would with any other native UNIX
  92           application.  These natively linked applications are
  93           referred to as Winelib applications.
  94         </para>
  95         <para>
  96           The Wine Users Guide will focus on running precompiled
  97           Windows applications using the Wine emulator.
  98             The Winelib Users Guide will cover Winelib
  99             applications.
 100         </para>
 101
 102         <!-- the development model -->
 103         <para>
 104         </para>
 105       </sect2>
 106       <sect2>
 107         <title>Burning questions and comments</title>
 108         <para>
 109           If during reading this document there is something you
 110           can't figure out, or think could be explained better, or
 111           that should have been included, please immediately mail to
 112           either the &name-web-admin; <email>&email-web-admin;</email> or
 113           the &name-wine-devel; <email>&email-wine-devel;</email>, or
 114           post a bug report to
 115           <ulink url="http://bugs.winehq.com/">Wine's Bugzilla</ulink> to
 116           let us know how this document can be improved.  Remember, Open
 117           Source is "free as in free speech, not as in free beer": it can
 118           only work in the case of very active involvement of its users !
 119         </para>
 120       </sect2>
 121     </sect1>
 122
 123 <!-- *** Not really useful as is, but may be able to recycle this elsewhere...
 124     <sect1 id="getting-started">
 125       <title>Getting started</title>
 126
 127       <para>
 128         Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
 129       </para>
 130
 131       <para>
 132         Wine can be pretty intimidating at first.  The Wine
 133         distribution consists of over two thousand files and half a
 134         million lines of source code
 135         <footnote>
 136           <para>Crudely calculated from running <command>find . | wc
 137               -l</command> and <command>cat `find . -name "*.c"` | wc
 138               -l</command>, respectively, from a fresh CVS checkout.</para>
 139         </footnote>,
 140         and is probably one of the steepest learning curves in the
 141         open source world.  This chapter will give you a crash course
 142         in the important topics you need to know to get started with
 143         running Wine applications.
 144       </para>
 145     </sect1>
 146 -->
 147
 148     <sect1 id="wine-stats">
 149       <title>Wine Requirements and Features</title>
 150
 151       <para>
 152         <literallayout>
 153           Written by &name-andreas-mohr; <email>&email-andreas-mohr;</email>
 154           Modified by <ulink url="mailto:&email-dustin-navea;">&name-dustin-navea;</ulink>
 155         </literallayout>
 156       </para>
 157
 158       <sect2 id="system-requirements">
 159         <title>System requirements</title>
 160         <para>
 161           In order to run Wine, you need the following:
 162         </para>
 163         <para>
 164           <itemizedlist>
 165             <listitem>
 166               <para>
 167                 <literallayout>A computer ;-)</literallayout>
 168                 <literallayout>  Wine: only PCs >= i386 are supported at the moment.</literallayout>
 169                 <literallayout>  Winelib: selected other platforms are supported, but can be tricky.</literallayout>
 170               </para>
 171             </listitem>
 172             <listitem>
 173               <para>
 174                 A UNIX-like operating system such as Linux, *BSD,
 175                 Solaris x86, ReactOS, Cygwin
 176               </para>
 177             </listitem>
 178             <listitem>
 179               <para>
 180                 >= 32MB of RAM.  Everything below is pretty much
 181                 unusable.  >= 96 MB is needed for "good" execution.
 182               </para>
 183             </listitem>
 184             <listitem>
 185               <para>
 186                 An X11 window system (XFree86 etc.).  Wine is prepared
 187                 for other graphics display drivers, but writing
 188                 support is not too easy.  The text console display
 189                 driver (ttydrv) is nearly usable.
 190               </para>
 191             </listitem>
 192           </itemizedlist>
 193         </para>
 194       </sect2>
 195
 196       <sect2 id="wine-capabilities">
 197         <title>Wine capabilities</title>
 198
 199         <para>
 200           Now that you hopefully managed to fulfill the requirements
 201           mentioned above, we tell you what Wine is able to do/support:
 202         </para>
 203         <para>
 204           <itemizedlist>
 205             <listitem>
 206               <para>
 207                 Support for executing DOS, Win 3.x and Win9x/NT/Win2000/XP
 208                 programs (most of Win32's controls are supported)
 209               </para>
 210             </listitem>
 211             <listitem>
 212               <para>
 213                 Optional use of external vendor DLLs (e.g. original
 214                 Windows DLLs)
 215               </para>
 216             </listitem>
 217             <listitem>
 218               <para>
 219                 X11-based graphics display (remote display to any X
 220                 terminal possible), text mode console
 221               </para>
 222             </listitem>
 223             <listitem>
 224               <para>
 225                 Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
 226               </para>
 227             </listitem>
 228             <listitem>
 229               <para>
 230                 32 bit graphical coordinates for CAD applications,
 231                 pretty advanced DirectX support for games
 232               </para>
 233             </listitem>
 234             <listitem>
 235               <para>
 236                 Good support for sound, alternative input devices
 237               </para>
 238             </listitem>
 239             <listitem>
 240               <para>
 241                 Printing through internal PostScript driver
 242               </para>
 243             </listitem>
 244             <listitem>
 245               <para>
 246                 Modems, serial devices are supported
 247               </para>
 248             </listitem>
 249             <listitem>
 250               <para>
 251                 Winsock TCP/IP networking
 252               </para>
 253             </listitem>
 254             <listitem>
 255               <para>
 256                 ASPI interface (SCSI) support for scanners, CD writers,
 257                 ...
 258               </para>
 259             </listitem>
 260             <listitem>
 261               <para>
 262                 Unicode support, relatively advanced language support
 263               </para>
 264             </listitem>
 265             <listitem>
 266               <para>
 267                 Wine debugger and configurable trace logging messages
 268               </para>
 269             </listitem>
 270           </itemizedlist>
 271         </para>
 272       </sect2>
 273     </sect1>
 274   </chapter>
 275
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