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Wine 1.3.12 Brings Initial DOSBox Integration

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  • Wine 1.3.12 Brings Initial DOSBox Integration

    Phoronix: Wine 1.3.12 Brings Initial DOSBox Integration

    Wine 1.3.11 wasn't too interesting as the inaugural Wine development release of 2011, but Wine 1.3.12 has been released today and it carries a bit more weight, such as an initial stab at integrating DOSBox...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Can someone explain this DOSBox integration in a little more detail? When would DOS not be supported natively? When running on a non-x86/x64 arch? But don't you run Wine through QEMU in this case?

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    • #3
      Like Windows the file format used on DOS was a .exe (and the same for .NET). This just allows Wine to offload the handling of DOS executables to DOSBox if we encounter a DOS application. We have DOS code in Wine, but it doesn't work so well and especially on 64-bit not all 16-bit DOS applications can work because of the need for VM86.

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      • #4
        Not sure why this is useful. If I wanted to run a DOS program in DOSBox, I would not run it in Wine in the first place, I would run it in DOSBox

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        • #5
          Okay, I thought it might be that but the original explanation sounded different. The funny thing is that running a DOS application in Windows itself rarely works.

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          • #6
            i really wish the wine developers would focus more on directx than on things that can already be accomplished in other software. dosbox does not need to be implemented into wine. i haven't really used wine in about 2 years but from what i noticed, it barely got any better since the last time i used it.

            to me, games are 90% of why anyone would use wine in the first place - linux has a lot of pretty good alternatives to commercial applications but theres nothing you can do about games. the rest of the 10% would be stuff like the adobe products, MS office, itunes, etc (i don't own any of those so its not a biased thing). anyways, that being said, i have a very strong feeling that wine's fake directx is the reason why most gold or less rated games aren't working perfectly. if they can get the official directx (9, 10, and 11) to install flawlessly in wine then i would suspect the average game to have its rating improved (so from garbage to bronze, bronze to silver, silver to gold, gold to platinum).
            imo, performance should come last. i would much rather be able to play a game or run a program without any wine-related glitches and sacrifice a little speed.


            considering that all modern CPUs contain virtualization instruction sets, i feel like if virtualbox can get to installing a real directx before wine, it would be a much better choice for all purposes. sure its a bit more memory consuming but just dumb down the windows setup - if linux is the host, windows doesn't need half of the things it normally offers.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by RealNC View Post
              Not sure why this is useful. If I wanted to run a DOS program in DOSBox, I would not run it in Wine in the first place, I would run it in DOSBox
              Yeah but now you only need Wine for both. I think it's a great move.

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              • #8
                They already focus on Direct 3D. You can play some very demanding games with wine, that would not even start 4 years ago. Of course, you need the right hardware and the nvidia binary, but that's not entirely wine fault.

                And hey, DOS also had some very good games! Wine could really shine as a windows legacy suppression layer in the coming years.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by unimatrix View Post
                  Yeah but now you only need Wine for both. I think it's a great move.
                  How is this a great move? They're two different programs, configured in separate places, working in a different way.

                  Maybe we should integrate Amarok into MPlayer. It's a great move since you then only need MPlayer for both...

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                    How is this a great move? They're two different programs, configured in separate places, working in a different way.

                    Maybe we should integrate Amarok into MPlayer. It's a great move since you then only need MPlayer for both...
                    So on your planet people need to install Windows to run .NET stuff and DOS to run the old DOS executables.

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