wine users - Apr 2008 - The single major remaining Wine complaint everyone makes...

So Wine's main problem right off the bat, the big elephant in the room
nobody really talks much about, is that its *apperance and performance in 2D
apps is abysmal. It's odd, because 3D apps (after a small framerate drop)
perform just fine. Maybe there's some technical explanation as to why 2D
applications feel so sluggish by comparison, but that's not what I'm
here to discuss.

I think the main reason as to why it bothers me so much that wine *looks
horrible and performs badly in anything from Notepad to Office is that if this
particular problem was fixed (e.g. had a *much* higher priority on the fixit
list than catching up to Adobe's or Microsoft's latest app), Linux would
be a signficantly better sell on the desktop. As it stands, Windows applications
running in any Linux distro look like shoddy second class citizens. Imagine if
someone picked up a Linux PC, installed their MS Office student edition, or
Flash, or iTunes or whatever, and they couldn't tell that it *wasn't* a
native Linux app. That bridges the gap in a major way: at that point Linux stops
being seen as a seperate operating system. Actually, at that point, to most
people using Linux for the first time, it'd be seen as some magical PC that
doesn't need drivers for new hardware.

This is yet another one of those situations where I really wish I was capable of
programming, because this would be at the top of my open source contribution
list.

* Non-antialiased fonts, buttons/widgets can't be customized and still have
the strict appearance of their Windows 3.1 brethren. No, changing colors
isn't enough. It hasn't been for about six years now.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 2:22 AM, MukiEX <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> So Wine's main problem right off the bat, the big elephant
> in the room nobody really talks much about, is that its
> *apperance and performance in 2D apps is abysmal.
> It's odd, because 3D apps (after a small framerate drop) perform just
fine.
When engineering a complex system, it often makes sense to
worry about correctness first, then performance.  Optimizing
something that's broken is a waste of effort.  And worrying about
cosmetic problems before things are usable is kind of like putting
lipstick on a pig.

But I agree that Wine is far enough along that it makes sense
to fix performance and cosmetic problems, and although perhaps
you can't tell, some have already been fixed.
I expect we'll see more such improvements after the 1.0 release.
- Dan

As I would say over here "I wish I had your problems..."


Personally as long as the buttons are working it's not at that stage
important to me that then are looking like Windows or a KDE or Gnome them.

Like my clients who are interested in the outpout of my work and not how I am
doing it (or should they).

Take a "not platinum" application, sometimes getting it to install
properly and show all buttons if a journey. If you click the wrong button,
everything crash and you loose all your work. I am happy that I can use Office
2003 and I take into account that the tool bar is so tiny. You can't expect
a purely Microsoft product be like Linux. If you are expecting it, this would be
you are being stuck on the superficial layer.

Users should understand and accept that Linux is not Windows and this stopping
seeing Wine as a Windows in Linux. It's just a compatibility layer enabling
you to get Windows out of your mind (without having to reboot or use Windows in
a virtual PC) and there is nothing less worthy when seeing a button looking like
Windows.
The thing less worthy is that the developers didn't take the effort to
compile it for Linux and they won't make it until there is such a demand.

In a way, Wine is a tool to maybe increase the demand to put the pressure on the
vendors to compile it natively on the first place.

Let's take Trados for instance. It will be very much an headache in the
couple of months to get everything right. It's a .NET application, running
VBA, C++ and using Internet Explorer (aside for connection issues only the
programmers know why).

Now there is a nice tool developed by the Mono team for softwares compiled using
visual studio.
Making it Linux or Mac native would probably mean amongst other to compile it
using the compiling utility of Mono instead of Visual Studio, to replace
Internet Explorer with Gecko and to rewrite all macros to run with Open Office
instead of Word, deliver it with JRE for Linux/Mac + use the natives C++
libraries of Linux/Mac.

Will the vendor do it until there is a return of investment for it? Let alone
maybe that they are not experienced in writing for so many open source
applications.

Then it will run native and stop being ugly. Even if all buttons were resizable,
you will never be able to hide from an experienced user that it was made for
Windows (at the latest when it crash and it ask you if you want to send an error
message to microsoft).

I am a huge fan of Wine and have started contributing to it over the past year.
With every new release it seems that more and more things work and that is a
remarkable achievement. The fact that *any* (as in at least one) Windows
application works at all on Linux is amazing.

That said, there are still things that don't work and a lot of stuff that is
unimplemented. The task gets even harder with every release of Windows when they
add even more functionality.

I am a Windows GUI developer by trade and am an avid keyboard user. If something
does not look right, or work well with the keyboard, I am *well* aware of that.
One of my goals is to improve the look and feel/usability of Wine as a whole,
and is on the radar of other developers as well. Given that, I prefer a system
that *works* and is stable, and will tolerate the odd quirk if it does not
crash.

Wine does not have an army of developers like Windows does, which usually means
that how the UI looks and behaves is not a priority. There are also technical
challenges like optimising the DIB graphics engine, which will improve 2D
performance on games and other apps that do extensive 2D graphics (this is on
the CodeWeavers teams agenda to be fixed).

Another area is the look of the system when you install and use a Windows theme
(such as the Zune theme). This is something that annoys me, but there are
technical issues to get the buttons and other controls themed correctly. I would
also like the window frame themed correctly when Windows draws it.

[/quote]
... on decently supported hardware.
[quote]

That's the problem. The user has to pick the hardware together and hope it
works.

On windows, you can buy computer + keyboard + printer together in a package.
Most people are not using more. Nobody even think about compatibility.

I tried to get my father to Linux, entered the SD card in the computer and card
ruined.

Buying one Linux ... well (in Austria), I'm still waiting that the first
hardware producer sells something with Linux as a set (I won't put it
together myself like now anymore).

Linux will have only a chance when the end user forget what is a driver, because
nobody wants to bother with that. Hardware compatibility is also important. I
have a 4 years old printer with a Linux driver - which is failing to work
because the driver is probably too old and there is no new. At least the Cups
rpm driver is not installing.

Wine is really for people already wanting to take the step - for the rest -
maybe later.

> That said, Microsoft in fact work to the maxim that graphic design and
> interface polish - "fit and finish" - are of *towering*
importance,
> because if it looks slick then users believe it is slick, however
> badly it may actually work. 

That is precisely the reason some of us have switched to Linux.  Take a look at
the reactions to the initial release of KDE4 in the KDE forums if you really
think people want programs that look nice but don't work.

I use my computer to get real work done; I don't give a crap what the
toolbar looks like as long as it's functional.

> If you know KDE4 exists, you're not Microsoft's market.

But I used to be. I was perfectly happy with W2K, and would still be using it if
it were possible to get drivers for new hardware. Microsoft drove me away. Yes,
I am a bit more tech-savvy than most users, but I'm not a geek. IMO, I'm
just in the vanguard of a host of dissatisfied customers.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 4:52 AM, MukiEX <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> So Wine's main problem right off the bat, the big elephant in the room
nobody really talks much about, is that its *apperance and performance in 2D
apps is abysmal. It's odd, because 3D apps (after a small framerate drop)
perform just fine. Maybe there's some technical explanation as to why 2D
applications feel so sluggish by comparison, but that's not what I'm
here to discuss.
>
>  I think the main reason as to why it bothers me so much that wine *looks
horrible and performs badly in anything from Notepad to Office is that if this
particular problem was fixed (e.g. had a *much* higher priority on the fixit
list than catching up to Adobe's or Microsoft's latest app), Linux would
be a signficantly better sell on the desktop. As it stands, Windows applications
running in any Linux distro look like shoddy second class citizens. Imagine if
someone picked up a Linux PC, installed their MS Office student edition, or
Flash, or iTunes or whatever, and they couldn't tell that it *wasn't* a
native Linux app. That bridges the gap in a major way: at that point Linux stops
being seen as a seperate operating system. Actually, at that point, to most
people using Linux for the first time, it'd be seen as some magical PC that
doesn't need drivers for new hardware.
>
>  This is yet another one of those situations where I really wish I was
capable of programming, because this would be at the top of my open source
contribution list.
>
>  * Non-antialiased fonts, buttons/widgets can't be customized and still
have the strict appearance of their Windows 3.1 brethren. No, changing colors
isn't enough. It hasn't been for about six years now.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Well, IMHO, I would love if WINE controls could be "skinned" with more
than .msstyles, maybe trying to use the GTK/QT toolkit to draw the
window controls (specified by a parameter... some crazy windows
programs use a weird way of changing the own window's controls
appearance, such as Garena (previously known as GG Client) or other
games). Then again I guess performance and stability is the main
concern right now.

You can tell WINE to use a Luna .msstyles if you have one though, so
it looks more "at home" :)