Wine 9.8 Fixes Nearly 20 Year Old Bug For Installing Microsoft Office 97

[GI_Jack]

Why not? Office 97 is still perfectly usable; if you own the software and it still works, why not use it?

Sure. If you don't mind the UI/UX from 1997, and you don't mind not being able to use the new xml format files(docx, xlsx, etc...). With the features of office 97, you might as well use a modern version of libre office. Oh, and it has reasonable support for modern MS Office files, that will work unless you are using advanced formatting.

[oiaohm]

This is exactly why I keep saying that if you want to run Windows software, use Windows.

Office 97 does not install under modern versions of windows without major hell at some point. Some of the background services of Office 97 end up leading to storage issues and other problems with newer versions of Windows. So there are reasons at time to use wine because it the least data losing way.

[Adarion]

This is exactly why I keep saying that if you want to run Windows software, use Windows.
...
There are very few reasons to use an emulator, even that claims it is not.
WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator

Well, technically it actually is not an emulator. It is an API layer. An emulator actually emulates/simulates/tries-to-be-like a real machine. This here, however, is one stage less, it translates all the system calls from W32 calls to Linux. But there is no hardware being simulated.

And there are reasons for people to use WINE. Of course, you may run into troubles, as it is not the native thing, but then, some people simply do not want MS on their systems or support Microsoft's ill behaviour with money by buying licenses. Or there is just this one tool you'd like to run and for that alone it would be a waste to install MS-Windows with 12 GiB or more just to run some 4 MiB sized thingy.

[Adarion]

The outside world is evil. Linux desktop user mentality in a nutshell.

Well, but (sadly) these people were right, so often. Just read the news daily (slashdot, heise/golem/fefe,... ) and you'll see how things in the Windows world explode. Even hospitals, local gouvernments/administration, they all are not safe of shotgun-blast-style ransomware attacks. And in 99% it is not some sophisticated hacking, it is just random blind with covered eyes pellet shot backwards over the shoulder into the internet. And the crackers simply listen where it makes "plink, plonk" and knew it has hit something. And that, again in 99%, is some MS Windows, MSOffice, Outlook, AD,... setup.

So keeping things a bit separate can be very helpful. Besides, MS-Windows is a "1st-class" spyware of its own and also likes to self-sabotage. (Remember W10 update and people could not find their equivalent to /home/user at next boot?)

[access]

With passthru for the GPU and virtio for everything else, they do tend to perform the same.

Yes. And you can keep the VM on in the background running Windows updates while you get work done.

[oiaohm]

Well, technically it actually is not an emulator. It is an API layer. An emulator actually emulates/simulates/tries-to-be-like a real machine. This here, however, is one stage less, it translates all the system calls from W32 calls to Linux. But there is no hardware being simulated.

Emulator does not have to be hardware. You do need to be able to answer what it in fact emulating. Windows is a generic name for many different things. Wine is a Compatibility layer because you cannot answer what it in fact trying to emulate.

Its like WSL1 with Windows being a compatibility layer not a emulator as well. Again WSL1 emulating something Linux but you cannot say what exact Linux kernel it trying to emulate.

Hardware being simulated or not is not a factor. There are some historic Unix emulators on Linux(as in to run particular unix binaries) there were in fact emulators because you could name the exact UNIX platform that was being attempted to be emulated and anything that did not match that was a bug.

The simple test if something is a emulator or not is can you answer exactly what it trying to emulate without using a generic item. If you cannot you are most likely looking at a compatibility layer.

Compatibility layers exist in hardware as well example of this is old CPU VM86 mode. Something about compatibility layers by design are not perfect and are not trying to be perfect. Compatibility layers work on close enough is good enough they always have some issues.

It is really important not to mixing up compatibility layers and emulators.

Adarian if you took wine and made a version that goal was to be exactly Windows XP that would become an emulator because you have a set of functionality to exactly match. This is why hardware simulated does not come into it.

1) Emulator is trying to be something exactly. And that something need to be nameable with a unique name.
2) Compadility layer is trying good enough that the software works well enough not to be something exactly.

Comparability layers is your near enough is good enough solutions as goal. Emulators has perfect target goal. Wine like it or not is not a emulator because it does not have a perfect target goal. Wine only has a near enough is good enough goal.

[pracedru]

I have a hard time understanding why the fix for stdole32.tlb was even bothered with. Is anything else affected by it? What was the motivation for it?

Could it be that other COM related bugs was also fixed?

[avis]

Fighting aside, that logo is rad.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

This is exactly why I keep saying that if you want to run Windows software, use Windows.

If a windows application or game doesn't run with wine, I rather just ignore that application and look for a replacement than changing the operating system.

And if you locked yourself into needing a specific piece of software that is not free software and capable of running on any platform, then that is probably something you should work on fixing.

[schmidtbag]

Complaining at bug fixes now… Some people just can’t be simply grateful.

Where am I complaining in that post? It's a genuine curiosity, because surely, with limited developer resources, they would prioritize trying to fix something people are actually using. Some people just can't help but jump to conclusions.

As always - if it was just some random contributor who got it to work, great - that's what makes open source awesome. If the fix was done in order to get something else more popular to work, or better yet, many programs to work, then that's also great - "collateral" fixes are the best in my opinion. If someone put a bounty on this bug, well, that's odd but so be it. But if this was from a regular maintainer or key developer who was only trying to focus on this 1 sole piece of software, that really begs the question of whether their priorities are straight. Wine needs all the help it can get, so for someone who knows it well yet spends time on fixing an obsoleted program is counterproductive. I shouldn't have to explain that to you.

Why not? Office 97 is still perfectly usable; if you own the software and it still works, why not use it?

Did you bother to think of the answer to your own question? There are objectively better free alternatives nowadays, and there's more than just simply Libre/OpenOffice. You may argue what oiaohm would say, in which case:

Lets say you have Microsoft Office 97 document that not opening in anything newer. You may want to try MS Office 97. This is document archiving problem. Libreoffice is fairly good but there are times it does not work. MS Office current version has dropped lot of legacy office formats MS Office 97 supports.

Yes people have been able to do work around to get MS Office 97 installed when they need it but it been an on going annoyance. MS Office 97 also does not need online activation or phone activation that another problem with archive work where the systems you can be working on can be totally isolated from the internet..

I have a very hard time believing there are any instances where there is a worthwhile document that needs to be preserved in its exact formatting where only Office 97 (so no other version, older or newer) can view it. I get Libre/OpenOffice often mucks with formatting - I've been there, especially when you don't have the proper fonts. But, not only are there more alternatives out there, I also don't recall newer versions of MS Office having such issues. I get that perhaps you don't have access to newer versions of MS Office, or that some of those also won't install via Wine - in that case, you can do a free trial of Office 365 and load the document in your web browser. From there, create a PDF if preserving the document is so important.

Better yet, just use Windows 98 SE if you care that much about preserving such functionality. It's not like the OS is demanding of system resources by today's standards; the average modern Wifi router is practically a supercomputer compared to what the OS was intended to run on. Of course, now that this bug is fixed, Installing 98 SE isn't necessary, but I'm speaking in terms of hindsight, before this bug was patched.


I'm not saying Office 97 shouldn't have been made to work; the whole purpose of Wine is to run Windows applications, so every additional program it can run is important. Like I said, depending on who did this or if other programs were made to work then this is a huge win. However, in the context of getting just this specific program to work, it's odd to me how many people here are trying to justify this priority.