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Wine Operating Systems Software BSD

WineX (And Warcraft3) On FreeBSD 143

Posted by timothy from the crossing-boundaries dept.
Dan writes "Kenneth Culver has implemented the Linux ftruncate64, truncate64, and mmap2 syscalls in the linuxulator on his computer, (mostly cut 'n pasted the mmap2 from regular mmap with a couple of changes) and with these changes it is possible to run the Linux version of WineX (the one you have to pay for) to run Warcraft 3 on FreeBSD." If WineX is interesting to you, this earlier article on playing Windows games with WineX (under Linux) may be worth a read.
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WineX (And Warcraft3) On FreeBSD More

WineX (And Warcraft3) On FreeBSD

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  • WineX (Score:5, Funny)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:01AM (#4779272) Journal
    I'd love to try this, but I don't have a *nix system.

    Will there be a port to Windows any time soon?

  • Where is the WineO port though? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:10AM (#4779287)
    I'm just waiting for the WineO port so I can sit on my park bench and game all evening.

    *hic*

  • Performance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jorleif ( 447241 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:11AM (#4779290)
    Anyone actually tried this?

    What is the performance like when BSD is emulating linux which is emulating windows?

    • Re:Performance (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:22AM (#4779314)
      The FreeBSD Linux emulator isn't really an emulator as such: it substitutes a different syscall table for the FreeBSD one and runs the ELF binary as if it were Linux. Sometimes it's slower than Linux, sometimes it's faster. Performance should be much the same as Linux.

    • Re:Performance (Score:4, Informative)

      by dubstop ( 136484 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:22AM (#4779315)
      I don't think that BSD actually emulates Linux. My understanding is that BSD exposes a Linux ABI. I suppose that there might be a little bit of manipulation behind the scenes when a Linux function is called, to adapt it to an underlying BSD call, but not to the extent that it would be called emulation.

      If this is the case, there shouldn't be too much of a performance hit.

      I could be wrong though, OSX is more my sort of thing.

      • Re:Performance (Score:4, Informative)

        by MouseR ( 3264 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @10:31AM (#4779623) Homepage
        My understanding is that BSD exposes a Linux ABI. I suppose that there might be a little bit of manipulation behind the scenes when a Linux function is called, to adapt it to an underlying BSD call, but not to the extent that it would be called emulation.

        [...]

        I could be wrong though, OSX is more my sort of thing.

        Mac OS X does just that when you launch a CFM-based Carbon App.

        CFM ("Code Fragment Manager") is the old ABI of Mac OS. When the Finder launches a CFM-based application, withint the native Mach-O -based Mac OS X ABI environment, it actually launches another application called "LaunchCFMApp" and passes your app as a parameter.

        LaunchCFMApp does exactly what this Linux ABI thingy does on FreeBSD: it loads the "foreign" application's ABI, creates a vector map in memory and connects all function calls from the "foreign" ABI to the "native" entry points.

        This is not emulation, but rather, dynamic re-linking.

    • Re:Performance (Score:3, Informative)

      by burts_here ( 529713 )
      What is the performance like when BSD is emulating linux which is emulating windows?

      Wine Is Not an Emulator.

      and quit wining.

    • Re:Performance (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jimmy_B ( 129296 ) <<gro.hmodnarmij> <ta> <mij>> on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:47AM (#4779361) Homepage
      What is the performance like when BSD is emulating linux which is emulating windows?
      No emulation is occuring; WineX implements the Windows API, and this article says someone implemented some Linux API calls on BSD. It doesn't involve any translation of machine code, which is the slow part of emulation; theoretically, it should run at the same speed as the Windows version, if the device drivers are of equal quality.

    • Re:Performance (Score:3, Informative)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      For one thing it's not emulation, just a compatibility layer that intercepts and converts syscalls.

      I've experienced absolutely no noticable speed drop when running Linux apps under FreeBSD/OpenBSD (not that I run a great deal of programs that way).

      In fact, the catch-phrase always being touted is that some Linux apps actually run faster under BSD than they do on Linux. I thought everyone had heard that, but I guess not.

      Feel free to ask a die-hard Linux elitist to try and explain that some time. :-)

  • Is this legal? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 )
    I don't think it's wrong... but according to the law, is this legal? I have no idea myself, anyone?

    • Re:Is this legal? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by seann ( 307009 )
      what is this a press conference?
      Of course it's legal, why would it not be?
      They are providing a Free interface for a Free enviroment on FreeBSD, so people can Buy a product from the company and use it.

      If that's not free, I don't know what is.
    • who should really pay much attention if it's legal or not? home users? (this software doesn't seem to attract much business domain). if the software works , then it's got an advantage on 90% of the software out there that is legal. me, i'll use whatever works before i wory about weather it satisfies the 200$/hr. lawyer's conclusion.
      • True, from a practical standpoint...

        But the main reason for asking was due to the fact that I was curious how WineX (which is not open source I've understood) and it's license relates in a situation like this...

        However, some seem to think I'm a troll, so I'll shut up now ;)
    • It's absolutely legal. Wine and WineX are clean room implementations and as such protected by law. The only problems that might arise are patent-related, but as there's practically nothing in Windows at the API level that hasn't been done before I doubt there is much risk of that.

  • "bsd is dead" blah blah (Score:5, Funny)

    by mackstann ( 586043 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:34AM (#4779338) Homepage
    i can picture all of the AC's scurrying to open up ~/text/bsd-is-dead.html to begin pasting away.

  • Xgames (Score:5, Interesting)

    by katalyst ( 618126 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:42AM (#4779349) Homepage
    Games seem to be a major factor when it comes to choosing an OS (or even a console). Thanks to apps like Wine and orgs like Loki, we'll have em all someday on the *nix systems. Things are looking up. I got hold of The Return to Castle Wolfenstien beta for linux before I could get a Windows version. And if you're targetting Linux , why not the rest of the *nix distros. It's all moving in the right direction. How about a KILLER game for the *nix platform which can NOT be run on windows........
    • "How about a KILLER game for the *nix platform which can NOT be run on windows........"

      couldn't one just chance the licence: "this source may naver be compiled for running on win32 compatible platforms".

      • Re:Xgames (Score:1)

        by eht ( 8912 )
        yeah, people will switch over to linux in droves with your example

        or it'll prove to the people you think are morons that you're elitist assholes and shouldn't be allowed to choose a toaster much less an operating system

      • Re:Xgames (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Joe Tie. ( 567096 )
        I've noticed this problem as well. It's almost a given at this point that the best *nix software will eventually be ported to windows. A friend of mine made a good point when he came over and pointed out that almost all the programs I had open were available for windows, in addition to all the windows software. It's the OS2 problem all over again.

        It becomes even more of a problem because if you're a windows developer who dosn't release source and states that you'll never port outside windows very few people will have a problem. But if you're not developing for windows and you either don't release the source, or you forbid windows ports...well, you've seen what happens already in this small thread.

        We're planning instead on making the non windows versions of our game just a little bit better. The unregistered windows versions would have a couple less levels, an occasional "please register" nag screen on startup, and a release date a couple months later than the registered windows version and the *nix releases.

        The hope is that it'd be too much trouble for too little to even bother compiling the *nix version for windows, and there's even a small chance some of the windows users might shell out a few bucks instead of warezing it.

        I veiw it more as giving the thing out for free to people of a like mind than crippling the windows version. We'll probaly still get labled elitist bastereds for it, but it's the best way I could think of to support diversity in OS use and not screw over the windows users.
    • Didn't Loki [lokigames.com] close in January?

      That indicates the direction *nix gaming is taking/has taken.

      Loki Games Closing? [slashdot.org]
      Last Word on Loki [slashdot.org]
      More slashdot Loki stuff. [slashdot.org]

      I welcome killer *nix games too.

      Loki made cool games. Who else does? (not rhetorical)

    • Re:Xgames (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rew190 ( 138940 )
      Microsoft will find ways to break Wine support.

      They won't simply let nix develop game support without any resistance.
      • That is a big problem actually. For microsoft to break wine, they have to break a great deal of Windows backwards compatibility.

        If they do it in small steps, then the wine developers should be able to keep up with the changes. If they do a great deal of changing all at once, they may drive customers away from Windows.

        It's not as simple as them flipping a switch and killing all of Wine's progress. They need to hurt themselves to harm wine.
      • User will find ways to break Windows monopoly.

        Of course MS will resist it. But people will not upgrade and upgrade forever, or else everybody would have WinXP by now.

        I think that wine only has to run well the Win9x apps to be a enourmous success. With DirectX is a big plus. It would be enough for a lot of practical purposes. The greatest and latest, well, let's see if people really need that.
    • Linux will most likely never make it for games. I think you will see big games to come to linux now and then just because these companies have money/time to burn. Honestly, why would any company want to spend 1/2 or 1/3 of it's development process on a market that is so tiny. You have to justify how many linux DESKTOP users are out there compared to apple/'doze. Sure there's lots of linux users, but hoe many DESKTOP users. It's a battle that can't be won until linux/unix on the desktop reaches apple's desktop share or more. I used to run Quake3arena on Freebsd back when it first came out. It was too much of a pain to justify using that os ever again for games.
      • Though I doubt Linux will ever overtake the Windows Desktop in the corporate world, when Palladium and Intel DRM crap prevents consumers from maintaining habitual use of their home systems, Linux has a good chance of grabbing a good deal of the home consumer market. People are creatures of habit and are going to be very pissed off...

        When people start to become upset, and realize they can do most things in *nixes, game developers might actually think they can make a profit designing for the *nix platforms.

        Slightly OffTopic:

        It's a possibility, albeit just a tad far fetched...

        I am by no means a programmer, though I am a class or two away from a CIS degree and a former NT4 network admin pre-SP3.

        I have installed various versions of RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Gentoo, and Debian. Though it is now possible (and easier than Windows, in some cases...) to INSTALL linux, it still, imo, takes a little too much manipulation in some instances, to find and install suitable Windows-replacement utilities and learn to use them...

        That being said, for the millions of people who need only to surf the web, use email, use an office suite, and manage your finances, Linux + KDE + Konqueror or Mozilla + OpenOffice + GNUCash = your free, fully capable alternative to supporting the monopoly that is Microsoft (or stealing their software) and I strongly urge you all to give it a shot - you might be pleasantly suprised.

  • This is not a dupe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Old Wolf ( 56093 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:46AM (#4779359)
    Note - this is not a dupe

    I feel that this is informative, due to the extremely high dupe story rate on slashdot in the last few days.

  • Linuxulator? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:57AM (#4779382) Journal
    What's a "linuxulator"?? Hmm.. Sounds kinda like my nick.

    Anyway, can't they just call it an "emulator"? Or is an emulator running under Windows a "winulator"? *sigh*

    Sorry if I'm picky, but it's just adds unecessary confusion. Or *is* actually a "linuxulator" something different than an emulator running under Linux, so there's actually a reason for this word?
    • LINE Is Not an Emmulator or LINux Emmulator.

    • Re:Linuxulator? (Score:2, Informative)

      by putte_xvi ( 575336 )
      I think "linuxlator" refers to the Linux compatibility in FreeBSD. So, yes, it is something different than an emulator running under Linux. It's not an emulator, and not running under Linux.
      • Oops, sorry, I seem to had got it all backwards. heh

        Don't know why I babbled about Linux when this is a FreeBSD topic. :-) I guess it was because they played Warcraft through Windows through WineX through Linux through FreeBSD. :-P

        Aagh... I should've kept quiet instead of making my poor brain hurt.
    • Actually emu [ozramp.net.au] is australian bird, which has nothing to do with computers. Emulator is just super-duper version of this bird with armors, guns and all other gadgets you might think of.
      It's like Terminator, it sounds big and bad. What if it was called "Termin"? It's simply not leet enough...
    • Jugalator? Did you go to BC High? There was a thing called Jugs that you received when you got detention. There was one guy doing this and we called him the Jugalator!

  • Dogma (Score:3, Funny)

    by khakipuce ( 625944 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @08:59AM (#4779387) Homepage Journal
    If I buy a big electric motor and a fan and connect it to the grid, I can use it to drive my wind turbine continuously to produce light to power the solar panels on my roof to produce electricity for my house.

    I have many tools in my toolbox, this saves me having to drive nails with a screwdriver.

  • pay-for-winex vs winex cvs (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whats the diffrence between the winex you pay for and the one found in the winex cvs ?

    • Re:pay-for-winex vs winex cvs (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1) its harder to install
      2) the pay version has some properitry extensions.
    • The version you pay for is arlready compiled packages.. .deb .rpm etc.. where as on the cvs server you just get the source code... I atempted compiling the source and well lets just say it was not a fun atempt.. if anybody wants to try to compile it you gotta use gmake but most of the headers in the code are not going to use since it's based upon linux.. the only success reports i've read is from the rpm (ie. by rpm -i --ignoreos --root /compat/linux --dbpath /var/lib/rpm package) some other tweaks you gotta do also... and something not nobody decided to make not of is that since BSD does not support block devices (at least i dont think it does) your going to need the no-cd crack.. i spent about 2 days working on this finally got wine and winex to play nicely w/ each other.. then i installed wc3.. then time to play wc3 and test it out.. but i guess i had an older rpm laying around because i got a big phat error message saying that wc3 required directX 8.1

  • Wine compatibility problems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Woogiemonger ( 628172 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:18AM (#4779426)
    I've only tried wine with various installations of Redhat Linux .. various versions of wine too, including WineX. This was a year ago, and maybe things have changed since, but I remember wine being a joke of a technology. I could not get it working right with absolutely anything. The funniest was, as luck would have it, with a Blizzard product, Starcraft, which apparently was one of the easier applications to get working. Well, I managed to get everything working except the mouse. It's hard to play Starcraft without a mouse. There was something fatally wrong with each and every software I used, no matter how simple, except for Windows solitaire. Maybe getting that working was just a delusion. Admittedly, my hardware was not completely standard, but with absolutely nothing working right, it's ridiculous. I do remember one thing though. Wine was pleasantly fast. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite fit the bill.

    • Re:Wine compatibility problems (Score:5, Informative)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:37AM (#4779476)
      Check out some screenshots I took last week of Wine on RedHat 8 [theshell.com] - these are not faked, Wine runs all those apps (not always perfectly though).

      There are more here [theshell.com]

      I use Wine almost every day to run IE6 with the Adobe SVG Plugin and it works great. How do I do this? Simply, I got a copy of Crossover (a commercial distro of Wine) and pointed it at a build from Wine CVS.

      Wine isn't yet easy enough to setup for most people, so Codeweavers do it for you. Think of them as the Redhat of Wine. It is possible to do anything you can do in CrossOver with WineHQ wine, but it's a lot harder. Wine is scheduled to get "ease of use" some time around 0.9 and 1.0 which are happening probably sometime mid to late next year.

    • Tried Wine 2.2.1 under Mandrake 9.0 yesterday, mostly in order to get mIRC running ;) lots of errors first time it ran, and a couple of font issues to work out, but if even a complete linuxn00b like me can figure it out, anyone can.

    • Re:Wine compatibility problems (Score:4, Informative)

      by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @10:58AM (#4779732) Homepage
      I've followed Wine for a couple years, and it just started to become practical for a wide variety of programs in the last 6-9 months. Before that, a few programs worked well enough for normal use.

      Over the last year, I've bought Codeweavers Crossover (both Plugin and Office) and a subscription to Transgaming's effort. Take a look at the programs listed in the main Wine tree [codeweavers.com] and at Transgaming's site [transgaming.com].

      If you want to roll your own, most of the code is available in some form from both branches, though the commercial distributions are more polished. If I were to deploy Wine over a large number of machines, I would probably go back to building my own just to cut costs.

  • Cool: This is what open source is about (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paul Bristow ( 118584 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:20AM (#4779432) Homepage
    I do not run *BSD, as I know Linux and am comfortable with at after some 9 years of use. However, it is a great testament to the power of the open source concept that this is possible at all. I am tremendously impressed with the BSD guys for achieving this.

    Remember, it is a Good Thing tm to have a computing infrastructure made of diverse systems. So the more code that can be run on Linux , *BSD, Hurd, OSX and others the better.

    Today, Wine is probably no less compatible with a random version of windows than any other random version of windows.

  • wineX from cvs(for free) (Score:5, Informative)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:53AM (#4779519) Homepage Journal
    http://frankscorner.org/wine/modules.php?op=modloa d&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=6 8&page=1 [frankscorner.org]
    title says it all;
    "If you don't want to spend 5 bucks on WineX, you can always try compile it yourself, but the CVS version of WineX is a little different from the commercial version:
    * no support for Installshield installers
    * no copy protection code

    To install WineX from CVS you must have CVS installed on your computer."
    • Well, I actually compiled it on FreeBSD, but due to some linux-isms that I didn't bother porting properly and just wanted to see if it would compile (or better yet run anything). The version I managed to compile on FreeBSD wouldn't run anything, so that's why I went ahead and plunked down my $5 per month and got wc3 working on FreeBSD :-)
    • It will not run warcraft3 or lots of other games, because as you posted there is no copy protection code. Cough up the few bucks it takes it is worth it.
      • cd cracks exist though, the cd protections don't like all cdrom drives even, i dunno what the copy protection code does though(really). it could just as well be simulation(crack, circumvention device) like in some of the virtual cdrom drive progs for win*.

        well, yeah, one could say that the cracks are evil and yadda yadda warez kiddies yadda yadda, but there is good purpose in them too..

  • pay? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jacek Poplawski ( 223457 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @09:57AM (#4779523)
    to run the Linux version of WineX (the one you have to pay for) to run Warcraft 3

    Pay for what? Isn't Warcraft 3 working ok free WineX version? You are allowed to use WineX from CVS without any paying.
    • Warcraft 3 uses SecuROM protection. This is one of the additional quirks that the pay-only verion will handle.

      Of course, you can run it with the CVS version if you replace the main game executable with one that isn't infected with SecuROM..

  • Whats the matter with all of you Trolls... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, it seems that it hurts so bad, when someone (the trolls) discovers something really revolutionary (Linux), wear the uniform of the partizan (the tux t-shirt), convince themselves that they differ from the crowd (MS users) and then find out that a long time ago, another revolution (FreeBSD) took place that shaked the World (IT) so baddly that even today every one uses the Manifesta (TCP/IP stack, VM, etc...) of this very first revolution. I am afraid spreading false propaganda: 1) Doesnt make you a partizan 2) Doesnt affect the real revolution Linux is not bad. The trolls that try to make themselves feel superior by using it, now thats really bad. Hmmm, why do you sound like a 50 yrs old IT manager that tries not to lose his job... For the moment see
    Longest Uptimes [netcraft.com]
    Most requested [netcraft.com]

  • wineX is nothing more than a novelty for games (Score:3, Funny)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Friday November 29, 2002 @01:20PM (#4780233) Homepage Journal
    Running your windows games using winex is like trying to swim laps wearing a 3 peice suit.

    WineX is not a replacement for native ports.
    • WineX is not a replacement for native ports.

      To Windows game developers and to the majority of Linux gamers who would otherwise dual boot to Windows it is a viable option. The market for native ports is only those very few gamers who would never dual boot or emulate, i.e. the new sales. People who dual boot or emulate are already customers, they buy the Win32 version. There is no economic incentive to sell them a Linux version, i.e. replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale.
      • You make it sound impossible to port games to other o/s's...

        The quake3 engine runs on all platforms, Crystal space is a nice open source 3d engine. Allegro is a great cross platform sound platform. Hell open GL is completely cross platform.

        Unfortunatly commercial companies are still inclined to use their own in house API's because they smoke crack. On my dreamcast during the opening title screens I see nothing but "mpeg 2 softdec by" ect.

        Well maybe they don't have a problem giving the authors props, which leaves only 1 logical conclusion for me. It is an issue of documentaion and support for whatever api/driver/code they are using. Sure open source is great but who you gonna call when it breaks?
        • You make it sound impossible to port games to other o/s's...

          No, some OS's do provide a financial incentive. MacOS for example. Unline Linux the Win32 version can not be used, they can't dual boot to Windows, they can't effectively emulate (they have to emualte the CPU instructions, not merely the OS API calls). If Linux users could not run Win32 programs then it might make sense to port, but they largely can and do so they are already customers. Look at OS/2 2.0, excellent Windows support was a double edged sword and greatly reduced the incentive to write native apps.

          The quake3 engine runs on all platforms

          IIRC in a Game Developer Magazine article Brian Hook of Id stated that the Linux ports don't make business sense, that Id does them because they think it is cool to do so. Secondly, game sales are not Id's sole source of income. There is also licensing the engine. Their games are in part demos of their engine. This also helps justifies things that don't make business sense.

          Unfortunatly commercial companies are still inclined to use their own in house API's because they smoke crack

          Various Mac ports prove this theory wrong.

          Sure open source is great but who you gonna call when it breaks

          This is the other major hurdle. How do you QA and support an OS that has a numerous parallel versions, can be patched daily, and is alterable by the end user? It is a QA nightmare and creates a huge overhead.

          Linux is a great OS, but that does not mean it is well suited for all things.
  • while i know everyone will be hurriedly trying to run things like warcraft 3 and rtcw, i'm curious..has anyone had good luck running high-level audio apps on winex or regular old wine?

    i had tried getting native instruments reaktor up on my freebsd box awhile back, and while it *did* install and startup, i couldn't get sound, and performance was pretty lagged.

    if anything, the lack of software like reaktor and cubase, not to mention the many vst/dx plugins, is what keeps that little voice in my head that says, "y'know, you really should just switch back to windows, since those programs are what you use the most." it really sucks to be torn when the operating system you love doesn't run the apps you require. i think a lot of you can empathize, as often times, "clone" open-source versions just don't measure up. let's face it: gliv, audacity, etc. just don't hold a candle to stuff like spark xl and cubase sx.

    we're at a strange turning point, i suppose. on one hand, more companies are slowly starting to support us (nvidia, etc.), but methinks it's going to be a long while before companies like steinberg and adobe jump on our train.
  • So... where are the bits? I wanna run this. Did these changes get put into -CURRENT (yay, I gotta MFC), or does Kenneth keep them on his web page, or does he seriously want us all to email him, or what? I'm not entirely sure why I'm doing this. I have Warcraft 3 running fine on WineX under the Linuxulator, with a stock -STABLE box. Well, I say fine... there's a lot of sluggishness in the mouse, but I don't see fixing syscalls being a help for that.
  • It's supposed to be a linux system call? I've never heard of it, even a google search on "mmap2 manpage" only returns a few results, all in japanese.
    I use mmap in my programs, I would be curious to know of other options. Why is there no manpage?! Is it an internal system call only used by glibc to wrap the normal mmap call [but wouldn't it then be prepended by an '_' or something], or what?

    • Re:No manpage for mmap2 (Score:2, Informative)

      by ntp ( 611354 )
      You must be using an outdated man-pages package. I'm running slackware-current and the manpage is there.

      The function mmap2 operates in exactly the same way as mmap(2), except that the final argument specifies the offset into the file in units of the system page size (instead of bytes).

      It just allows mmapping of > 2^32 bytes.

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