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.  Unfortunately, most decent win32 X servers are
  44               commercial products, many of which cost quite a lot.
  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           <ulink url="http://wine.codeweavers.com/docs/winelib-user/">
  94             The Winelib Users Guide</ulink> will cover Winelib
  95             applications.
  96         </para>
  97
  98         <!-- the development model -->
  99         <para>
 100         </para>
 101       </sect2>
 102     </sect1>
 103
 104 <!-- *** Not really useful as is, but may be able to recycle this elsewhere...
 105     <sect1 id="getting-started">
 106       <title>Getting started</title>
 107
 108       <para>
 109         Written by &name-john-sheets; <email>&email-john-sheets;</email>
 110       </para>
 111
 112       <para>
 113         Wine can be pretty intimidating at first.  The Wine
 114         distribution consists of over two thousand files and half a
 115         million lines of source code
 116         <footnote>
 117           <para>Crudely calculated from running <command>find . | wc
 118               -l</command> and <command>cat `find . -name "*.c"` | wc
 119               -l</command>, respectively, from a fresh CVS checkout.</para>
 120         </footnote>,
 121         and is probably one of the steepest learning curves in the
 122         open source world.  This chapter will give you a crash course
 123         in the important topics you need to know to get started with
 124         running Wine applications.
 125       </para>
 126     </sect1>
 127 -->
 128
 129     <sect1 id="wine-stats">
 130       <title>Wine Requirements and Features</title>
 131
 132       <para>
 133         Written by &name-andreas-mohr; <email>&email-andreas-mohr;</email>
 134       </para>
 135
 136       <sect2 id="system-requirements">
 137         <title>System requirements</title>
 138         <para>
 139           In order to run Wine, you need the following:
 140         </para>
 141         <para>
 142           <itemizedlist>
 143             <listitem>
 144               <para>
 145                 a computer ;-) Wine: only PCs >= i386 are supported at
 146                 the moment.  Winelib: other platforms might be
 147                 supported, but can be tricky.
 148               </para>
 149             </listitem>
 150             <listitem>
 151               <para>
 152                 a UNIX-like operating system such as Linux, *BSD,
 153                 Solaris x86
 154               </para>
 155             </listitem>
 156             <listitem>
 157               <para>
 158                 >= 16MB of RAM.  Everything below is pretty much
 159                 unusable.  >= 64 MB is needed for a "good" execution.
 160               </para>
 161             </listitem>
 162             <listitem>
 163               <para>
 164                 an X11 window system (XFree86 etc.).  Wine is prepared
 165                 for other graphics display drivers, but writing
 166                 support is not too easy.  The text console display
 167                 driver is nearly usable.
 168               </para>
 169             </listitem>
 170           </itemizedlist>
 171         </para>
 172       </sect2>
 173
 174       <sect2 id="wine-capabilities">
 175         <title>Wine capabilities</title>
 176
 177         <para>
 178           Now that you hopefully managed to fulfill the requirements
 179           mentioned above, we tell you what Wine is able to do/support:
 180         </para>
 181         <para>
 182           <itemizedlist>
 183             <listitem>
 184               <para>
 185                 Support for executing DOS, Win 3.x and Win9x/NT/Win2000
 186                 programs (most of Win32's controls are supported)
 187               </para>
 188             </listitem>
 189             <listitem>
 190               <para>
 191                 Optional use of external vendor DLLs (e.g. original
 192                 Windows DLLs)
 193               </para>
 194             </listitem>
 195             <listitem>
 196               <para>
 197                 X11-based graphics display (remote display to any X
 198                 terminal possible), text mode console
 199               </para>
 200             </listitem>
 201             <listitem>
 202               <para>
 203                 Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
 204               </para>
 205             </listitem>
 206             <listitem>
 207               <para>
 208                 Pretty advanced DirectX support for games
 209               </para>
 210             </listitem>
 211             <listitem>
 212               <para>
 213                 Good support for sound, alternative input devices
 214               </para>
 215             </listitem>
 216             <listitem>
 217               <para>
 218                 Printing: supports native Win16 printer drivers,
 219                 Internal PostScript driver
 220               </para>
 221             </listitem>
 222             <listitem>
 223               <para>
 224                 Modems, serial devices are supported
 225               </para>
 226             </listitem>
 227             <listitem>
 228               <para>
 229                 Winsock TCP/IP networking
 230               </para>
 231             </listitem>
 232             <listitem>
 233               <para>
 234                 ASPI interface (SCSI) support for scanners, CD writers,
 235                 ...
 236               </para>
 237             </listitem>
 238             <listitem>
 239               <para>
 240                 Unicode support, relatively advanced language support
 241               </para>
 242             </listitem>
 243             <listitem>
 244               <para>
 245                 Wine debugger and configurable trace logging messages
 246               </para>
 247             </listitem>
 248           </itemizedlist>
 249         </para>
 250       </sect2>
 251     </sect1>
 252   </chapter>
 253
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