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         Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
   9       </para>
  10
  11       <sect2>
  12         <title>Windows and Linux</title>
  13         <!-- general description of wine, what does it do? -->
  14         <para>
  15           Many people have faced the frustration of owning software that
  16           won't run on their computer.  With the recent popularity of
  17           Linux, this is happening more and more often because of
  18           differing operating systems.  Your Windows software won't run
  19           on Linux, and your Linux software won't run in Windows.
  20         </para>
  21         <para>
  22           A common solution to this problem is to install both operating
  23           systems on the same computer, as a <quote>dual boot</quote>
  24           system.  If you want to write a document in MS Word, you can
  25           boot up in Windows; if you want to run the GnuCash, the GNOME
  26           financial application, you can shut down your Windows session
  27           and reboot into Linux.  The problem with this is that you
  28           can't do both at the same time.  Each time you switch back and
  29           forth between MS Word and GnuCash, you have to reboot again.
  30           This can get tiresome quickly.
  31         </para>
  32         <para>
  33           Life would be so much easier if you could run all your
  34           applications on the same system, regardless of whether they
  35           are written for Windows or for Linux.  On Windows, this isn't
  36           really possible.
  37           <footnote>
  38             <para>
  39               Technically, if you have two networked computers, one
  40               running Windows and the other running Linux, and if you
  41               have some sort of X server software running on the Windows
  42               system, you can export Linux applications onto the Windows
  43               system. A free X server is available at
  44               <ulink url="http://xfree86.cygwin.com/">http://xfree86.cygwin.com/</ulink>.
  45               However, this doesn't solve the problem if you only own
  46               one computer system.
  47             </para>
  48           </footnote>
  49           However, Wine makes it possible to run native Windows
  50           applications alongside native Linux applications on a Linux
  51           (or Solaris) system.  You can share desktop space between MS
  52           Word and GnuCash, overlapping their windows, iconizing them,
  53           and even running them from the same launcher.
  54         </para>
  55       </sect2>
  56
  57       <sect2>
  58         <title>Emulation versus Native Linking</title>
  59         <!-- emulator vs. Winelib -->
  60         <para>
  61           Wine is a UNIX implementation of the win32 libraries,
  62           written from scratch by hundreds of volunteer developers and
  63           released under an open source license.  Anyone can download
  64           and read through the source code, and fix bugs that arise.
  65           The Wine community is full of richly talented programmers
  66           who have spent thousands of hours of personal time on
  67           improving Wine so that it works well with the win32
  68           <firstterm>Applications Programming Interface</firstterm>
  69           (API), and keeps pace with new developments from Microsoft.
  70         </para>
  71         <para>
  72           Wine can run applications in two discrete ways: as
  73           pre-compiled Windows binaries, or as natively compiled X11
  74           (X Window System) applications.  The former method uses
  75           emulation to connect a Windows application to the Wine
  76           libraries.  You can run your Windows application directly
  77           with the emulator, by installing through Wine or by simply
  78           copying the Windows executables onto your Linux system.
  79         </para>
  80         <para>
  81           The other way to run Windows applications with Wine requires
  82           that you have the source code for the application.  Instead
  83           of compiling it with native Windows compilers, you can
  84           compile it with a native Linux compiler --
  85           <command>gcc</command> for example -- and link in the Wine
  86           Libraries as you would with any other native UNIX
  87           application.  These natively linked applications are
  88           referred to as Winelib applications.
  89         </para>
  90         <para>
  91           The Wine Users Guide will focus on running precompiled
  92           Windows applications using the Wine emulator.
  93             The Winelib Users Guide will cover Winelib
  94             applications.
  95         </para>
  96
  97         <!-- the development model -->
  98         <para>
  99         </para>
 100       </sect2>
 101     </sect1>
 102
 103 <!-- *** Not really useful as is, but may be able to recycle this elsewhere...
 104     <sect1 id="getting-started">
 105       <title>Getting started</title>
 106
 107       <para>
 108         Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
 109       </para>
 110
 111       <para>
 112         Wine can be pretty intimidating at first.  The Wine
 113         distribution consists of over two thousand files and half a
 114         million lines of source code
 115         <footnote>
 116           <para>Crudely calculated from running <command>find . | wc
 117               -l</command> and <command>cat `find . -name "*.c"` | wc
 118               -l</command>, respectively, from a fresh CVS checkout.</para>
 119         </footnote>,
 120         and is probably one of the steepest learning curves in the
 121         open source world.  This chapter will give you a crash course
 122         in the important topics you need to know to get started with
 123         running Wine applications.
 124       </para>
 125     </sect1>
 126 -->
 127
 128     <sect1 id="wine-stats">
 129       <title>Wine Requirements and Features</title>
 130
 131       <para>
 132         Written by &name-andreas-mohr; <email>&email-andreas-mohr;</email>
 133       </para>
 134
 135       <sect2 id="system-requirements">
 136         <title>System requirements</title>
 137         <para>
 138           In order to run Wine, you need the following:
 139         </para>
 140         <para>
 141           <itemizedlist>
 142             <listitem>
 143               <para>
 144                 a computer ;-) Wine: only PCs >= i386 are supported at
 145                 the moment.  Winelib: other platforms might be
 146                 supported, but can be tricky.
 147               </para>
 148             </listitem>
 149             <listitem>
 150               <para>
 151                 a UNIX-like operating system such as Linux, *BSD,
 152                 Solaris x86
 153               </para>
 154             </listitem>
 155             <listitem>
 156               <para>
 157                 >= 16MB of RAM.  Everything below is pretty much
 158                 unusable.  >= 64 MB is needed for a "good" execution.
 159               </para>
 160             </listitem>
 161             <listitem>
 162               <para>
 163                 an X11 window system (XFree86 etc.).  Wine is prepared
 164                 for other graphics display drivers, but writing
 165                 support is not too easy.  The text console display
 166                 driver is nearly usable.
 167               </para>
 168             </listitem>
 169           </itemizedlist>
 170         </para>
 171       </sect2>
 172
 173       <sect2 id="wine-capabilities">
 174         <title>Wine capabilities</title>
 175
 176         <para>
 177           Now that you hopefully managed to fulfill the requirements
 178           mentioned above, we tell you what Wine is able to do/support:
 179         </para>
 180         <para>
 181           <itemizedlist>
 182             <listitem>
 183               <para>
 184                 Support for executing DOS, Win 3.x and Win9x/NT/Win2000
 185                 programs (most of Win32's controls are supported)
 186               </para>
 187             </listitem>
 188             <listitem>
 189               <para>
 190                 Optional use of external vendor DLLs (e.g. original
 191                 Windows DLLs)
 192               </para>
 193             </listitem>
 194             <listitem>
 195               <para>
 196                 X11-based graphics display (remote display to any X
 197                 terminal possible), text mode console
 198               </para>
 199             </listitem>
 200             <listitem>
 201               <para>
 202                 Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
 203               </para>
 204             </listitem>
 205             <listitem>
 206               <para>
 207                 Pretty advanced DirectX support for games
 208               </para>
 209             </listitem>
 210             <listitem>
 211               <para>
 212                 Good support for sound, alternative input devices
 213               </para>
 214             </listitem>
 215             <listitem>
 216               <para>
 217                 Printing: supports native Win16 printer drivers,
 218                 Internal PostScript driver
 219               </para>
 220             </listitem>
 221             <listitem>
 222               <para>
 223                 Modems, serial devices are supported
 224               </para>
 225             </listitem>
 226             <listitem>
 227               <para>
 228                 Winsock TCP/IP networking
 229               </para>
 230             </listitem>
 231             <listitem>
 232               <para>
 233                 ASPI interface (SCSI) support for scanners, CD writers,
 234                 ...
 235               </para>
 236             </listitem>
 237             <listitem>
 238               <para>
 239                 Unicode support, relatively advanced language support
 240               </para>
 241             </listitem>
 242             <listitem>
 243               <para>
 244                 Wine debugger and configurable trace logging messages
 245               </para>
 246             </listitem>
 247           </itemizedlist>
 248         </para>
 249       </sect2>
 250     </sect1>
 251   </chapter>
 252
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