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WINE is basically a windows emulator??

Story: Wine Cedega Crossover and PlayonLinuxTotal Replies: 9
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cgagnon

Nov 02, 2009
8:07 PM EST 		Just a nit pick...but what part of ... Wine Is Not an Emulator .... does this person not get.
chalbersma

Nov 02, 2009
8:35 PM EST 		But it acts so much like one.
twickline

Nov 02, 2009
9:42 PM EST 		Hello,

basically?

Cheers, Tom
gus3

Nov 02, 2009
10:24 PM EST 		No, not even basically, if the notion is disowned outright from the very beginning.

WINE emulates nothing. It re-implements the various Windows API's on non-Windows, but still x86, platforms.
dinotrac

Nov 02, 2009
10:30 PM EST 		So, gus -- how, exactly, is that not an emulator?
Steven_Rosenber

Nov 02, 2009
10:38 PM EST 		Semantics.
gus3

Nov 03, 2009
12:02 AM EST 		An emulator reproduces programmatic behavior all the way down to the hardware. For example, Bochs emulates an x86-based PC even when it's running on Power or Sparc. A keystroke results in a pretend INT 1 in Bochs, even if the event was reported from a remote X11 server.

Wine does no such thing. It pretends to be Windows, not an entire PC. When a Windows program runs under Wine, it has its own process space, and the program code runs directly on the x86 CPU, no emulation required.
dinotrac

Nov 03, 2009
7:20 AM EST 		gus3 -

Twist yourself around all you want. The only test that matters is the duck test. If it quacks like duck and walks like a duck, then it is a duck.

From the standpoint of a WIndows application, wine attempts to act like Windows. Quack, waddle and all that. It's not a perfect duck, but a duck it is.

And an emulator, too.

PS: Nobody said that wine is a PC emulator, just a Windows emulator.
Bob_Robertson

Nov 03, 2009
8:50 AM EST 		The original name was WINdows Emulator, WINE.

But then they realized that Microsoft could use their legal team against them, so they changed it to "Not and Emulator" to avoid those kinds of problems.
dinotrac

Nov 03, 2009
9:14 AM EST 		Thanks, Mr. Bob.

Always good to have another coot on hand.

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