Wine-Staging 11.1 Adds Patches for Enabling Recent Photoshop Versions on Linux
80 points
4 hours ago
| 5 comments
| phoronix.com
| HN
andy_xor_andrew
45 minutes ago
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Curious if someone could enlighten me-

How much of these sorts of patches are specifically checking if a certain application is running, and then changing behavior to match what that application expects? And how much of it is simply better emulating the Windows API in general?

I think there are benefits to both approaches, not criticizing either one. I'm just curious if the implementation of a patch like this is "We fixed an inconsistency between Wine and Windows" vs "We're checking if Photoshop is running and using a different locking primitive" or whatever.

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spijdar
42 minutes ago
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I can't speak to this case specifically, but it's worth pointing out that Windows itself applies many patches for specific applications, so it follows that Wine could be obliged to mimic that behavior in cases where the application relies on it.
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Telaneo
41 seconds ago
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superb_dev
28 minutes ago
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Not just Windows, it’s pretty common all over the place. I know for a fact web browsers and GPU driver will do the same
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LexiMax
38 minutes ago
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What is preventing Microsoft from pulling an Oracle and suing Valve, CodeWeavers, or individual Wine maintainers for re-implementing Win32?

This question has been nagging at me for a while. Regardless of how much validity there is to the lawsuit, I imagine that going to trial would be supremely risky, because if you happen across anybody working on Wine that saw something they weren't supposed to, you could sink the whole project.

I cannot imagine Microsoft sitting by and quietly letting their Windows monopoly vanish between their fingers. Selling Windows may not be their primary focus these days, but why give up an advantage like that?

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foresto
8 minutes ago
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The main issues I'm aware of are whether APIs are copyrightable, and if so, whether implementing them qualifies as fair use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

(And, of course, Microsoft would also have to consider whether such a lawsuit would have greater benefits than costs. I would like to think that customer goodwill has more than zero value, for example.)

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tumult
20 minutes ago
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Oracle lost Google v. Oracle.
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olivierestsage
28 minutes ago
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I think there are two reasons this hasn't happened: (1) Wine might be useful to Microsoft at some point for providing backward compatibility in Windows itself; (2) it would be an extremely bad look/PR disaster to go after this project after spending so much time and money positioning yourself as an open source supporter
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sirjaz
24 minutes ago
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Also, to add the current CEO doesn't care about the OS. All he cares about is the stock price, and his AI mistake.
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some-guy
31 minutes ago
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If anything Microsoft will give up their advantage by making Windows 11 a UX dumpster fire. If Windows 11 had an official way to turn off all of the garbage and opt out of their monopolistic PM-brained “features” a lot of us who switched to Linux probably wouldn’t have happened.
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dlahoda
21 minutes ago
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i was using wsl2. and got weird slowness and high cpu. appeared it was their built in antivirus(av). i disabled av, but it autoenabled later and did same. it is possible to secure windows other way without active protection btw.

i used git on wsl2. it got weird issues with git connectivity over wifi. github ticket not solved. one of most popular and essential dev tools is not stably working in wsl2.

many rust crates supported only mac, bsd and linux. nobody cared windows.

so even without ux of recent version, i had to leave.

for my wife is still run windows.

but. she had fully official surface laptop with official office. not 3rd party or pirated things.

and... office became very very slow just typing... it was 3 years ago.

i have run script disabling all things. it good for 3rd year now.

but how they managed to make their laptop new one, with all their things so bad?

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shmerl
28 minutes ago
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It will kill GitHub I suspect. Who will trust them if they can pull the plug on open source projects using the dumb "API is copyrightable" claim? I'd say last time they tried to pull that by backing Oracle in that legal case, they already damaged their reputation enough.
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direwolf20
27 minutes ago
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There's no way. GitHub is already pretty hostile, but the only people who care — like in most hostile platform cases — are the ones who are directly affected.
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shmerl
24 minutes ago
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It's a reputational thing. There is already a trend of exodus from GitHub. This Oracle style garbage will just exacerbate it. Whether they care - who knows, but it can be a reason.

But in general - as a developer you surely don't want to host your projects using someone who thinks APIs are copyrightable.

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999900000999
26 minutes ago
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This stuff will never ever ever work real and reliably enough for Microsoft to care.

Normal people don't want to use Linux. Normal people can't even install an OS. None the less fight kernel regressions for days.

I can even imagine Microsoft coming out with MS Linux one day and contributing to Wine. That's far more likely at this point.

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snailmailman
17 minutes ago
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It does work reliably enough though. A huge portion of games on Linux do so via pretending to be windows via wine/proton. It’s what allows the Steam deck to exist as a product at all.

And Linux on those handheld devices out-performs windows to such a degree that Microsoft has noticed and is trying to make windows perform better on those devices, basically making a gaming mode / handheld mode for their Xbox Ally.

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shmerl
13 minutes ago
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It already works for gaming reliably enough.
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esseph
7 minutes ago
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[delayed]
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diath
1 hour ago
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This is just for the installer so it saves you the "install on Windows and move files to Linux" step however the Adobe suite still runs poorly in WINE.
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doener
1 hour ago
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andrewstuart2
2 hours ago
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I'd be pretty thrilled if I could run Lightroom on Linux. Photoshop is great too but Lightroom is my main app for my biggest hobby and I've had to buy myself a whole MacBookPro just to do it without dual booting Windows, which really raises the mental barrier for me to jump in and edit photos, which makes me want to take them a lot less.

I've tried Darktable and it's pretty impressive software and could probably handle most of my needs. But apparently I'm now that old guy who's been using software X for 20 years and refuses to change his ways because it's not worth it. At least when it comes to Lightroom.

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hxorr
1 hour ago
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You could run in a VM - check out WinBoat which allows individual apos in a containerised Windows install to integrate seamlessly with your linux desktop environment
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