WineD3D Optimistic In Their Yet To Be Proven Vulkan Backend, DXVK "Dead End"

[shmerl]

No one's made a laptop I like since around 2011. I'll toss my Thinkpad X201 tablet over my cold, dead body.
And I shouldn't need to have Vulkan support just to play a windows game from 1998. (MS Combat Flight Simulator, Unreal, or a nearly 20 year old version of AutoCAD).

I'm already maintaining a fork of a seven year old version of Dolphin (gamecube emulator) for the sake of playing one or two relatively low-demand gamecube games; Wine works on my laptop just fine as is and I'd be happy to keep a fork of it limping along for a similar duration.

Someone needs to implement it then, since developers wouldn't want to maintain ancient code. And they don't need to, since it's taking resources away from more useful things. Using ancient hardware comes with downsides of it being very limited in what it can run.

[oiaohm]

Someone needs to implement it then, since developers wouldn't want to maintain ancient code. And they don't need to, since it's taking resources away from more useful things. Using ancient hardware comes with downsides of it being very limited in what it can run.

Problem here is from enterprise and infrastructure usage of computers not all computer need todo a lot of things. Maintaining 30+ year code bases for 30+ year old hardware is common in infrastructure. 8-9 years old is young.

Problem here with infrastructure you can have 1 user with a city worth of people depending on it keeping on working. Yes horrible a thinkpad 2011 age could be in use for infrastructure diagnostics.

Codeweavers with the main wine project has to target a long longer timeframes of hardware support due to going after the well paying enterprise/infrastructure markets.

Yes needing to fire up a 20 year old copy of AutoCAD on some I don't care if it broken bit of hardware could be kind of important when doing a bridge inspection because the bridge is 20 years old. Latest/greatest hardware is not what the infrastructure market is known for. Infrastructure market is know for the most obsolete bits of hardware you have ever seen. They seriously work to the model if is not broken don't fix/replace it.

[alcalde]

As a follow-up Henri commented, "The short version is that Wine's own Vulkan D3D backend should make DXVK superfluous in the long term."

Yes, in the same sense that the GNU Herd kernel is going to make the Linux kernel superfluous any day now.

[oooverclocker]

The short version is that Wine's own Vulkan D3D backend should make DXVK superfluous in the long term.

Strong words without any actual results.

Wine is in it's best shape when combined with DXVK.
However, for a long time Wine seemed like every update would break things that worked for one game while it fixes other ones.
I highly doubt that DXVK has to be integrated in the Wine project. It looks to me that both projects are working well without being one and it also worked well so far that one developer led his DXVK project on his own.

I appreciate to read of more progress on DXVK instead of reading about people writing about dead ends. We don't need destruction, but creation.

[smitty3268]

Problem here is from enterprise and infrastructure usage of computers not all computer need todo a lot of things. Maintaining 30+ year code bases for 30+ year old hardware is common in infrastructure. 8-9 years old is young.

Problem here with infrastructure you can have 1 user with a city worth of people depending on it keeping on working. Yes horrible a thinkpad 2011 age could be in use for infrastructure diagnostics.

Codeweavers with the main wine project has to target a long longer timeframes of hardware support due to going after the well paying enterprise/infrastructure markets.

Yes needing to fire up a 20 year old copy of AutoCAD on some I don't care if it broken bit of hardware could be kind of important when doing a bridge inspection because the bridge is 20 years old. Latest/greatest hardware is not what the infrastructure market is known for. Infrastructure market is know for the most obsolete bits of hardware you have ever seen. They seriously work to the model if is not broken don't fix/replace it.

Who uses WINE to do that, though? Seems crazy to me.

We just use a copy of XP running in a VM to handle stuff like that.

I can't imagine any serious use of current WINE for critical apps like that. Surely they have a known good config saved somewhere, so that future WINE or OS updates don't randomly regress one day while no one notices. See: Ubuntu dropping 32-bit support, etc.

[oiaohm]

Who uses WINE to do that, though? Seems crazy to me.

We just use a copy of XP running in a VM to handle stuff like that.

I can't imagine any serious use of current WINE for critical apps like that. Surely they have a known good config saved somewhere, so that future WINE or OS updates don't randomly regress one day while no one notices. See: Ubuntu dropping 32-bit support, etc.

You are aware that wine allows you to install multi version of itself. Windows XP is old and unmaintained with a lot of known security faults. Critical application been crippled because you were running insecure XP in VM does not go down well.

Next starting application in wine in most cases is faster than spinning up a VM. Again critical if time constrained wine/crossover solution wins.

Wine is design that you can install multi versions next to each other. Codeweavers product crossover exploits this so that update problem does not hit you. Yes doing this wine program you are not Codeweavers customers.

Surely they have a known good config saved somewhere, so that future WINE or OS updates don't randomly regress one day while no one notices.
This is not your crossover customers they have paid to make sure that crossover new versions are tested against the software the need to run. Using Wine you have not paid so you have a different set of problems.

Ubuntu dropping 32 bit support this is not a problem if you are talking infrastructure you are talking Debian not Ubuntu.

[smitty3268]

You are aware that wine allows you to install multi version of itself. Windows XP is old and unmaintained with a lot of known security faults. Critical application been crippled because you were running insecure XP in VM does not go down well.

Next starting application in wine in most cases is faster than spinning up a VM. Again critical if time constrained wine/crossover solution wins.

Wine is design that you can install multi versions next to each other. Codeweavers product crossover exploits this so that update problem does not hit you. Yes doing this wine program you are not Codeweavers customers.

Surely they have a known good config saved somewhere, so that future WINE or OS updates don't randomly regress one day while no one notices.
This is not your crossover customers they have paid to make sure that crossover new versions are tested against the software the need to run. Using Wine you have not paid so you have a different set of problems.

Ubuntu dropping 32 bit support this is not a problem if you are talking infrastructure you are talking Debian not Ubuntu.

Starting AutoCAD isn't something that's time sensitive, and we don't allow that VM to connect to the network, so security doesn't matter.

Anyway, it sounds like maybe you're referring to a very specific instance, where the client controls all these drawings - in my experience, we just run the drawings our clients have, and that can mean all sorts of random AutoCAD plugins, tools, etc. may be required and we'd have no control over that sort of thing. One drawing might work, and another may require some plugin which relies on ActiveX crap that doesn't work past XP SP1, etc. Relying on WINE to always work with all that would make me very nervous, and it would be impossible to test ahead of time by anyone since each new client could have their own custom drawings.

You are aware that wine allows you to install multi version of itself.

Sure, but then they can just keep an old version working and it doesn't really matter if you change more recent versions? That's kind of my point - I'd imagine sticking to a known good version forever, once it was working. Why update?

[oiaohm]

Starting AutoCAD isn't something that's time sensitive, and we don't allow that VM to connect to the network, so security doesn't matter.

Anyway, it sounds like maybe you're referring to a very specific instance, where the client controls all these drawings - in my experience, we just run the drawings our clients have, and that can mean all sorts of random AutoCAD plugins, tools, etc. may be required and we'd have no control over that sort of thing. One drawing might work, and another may require some plugin which relies on ActiveX crap that doesn't work past XP SP1, etc. Relying on WINE to always work with all that would make me very nervous, and it would be impossible to test ahead of time by anyone since each new client could have their own custom drawings.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsforbusiness/end-of-xp-support

Do notice that microsoft mentions something here.
"Businesses that are governed by regulatory obligations such as HIPAA may find that they are no longer able to satisfy compliance requirements. "

HIPAA is medical but there are many other compliance item where having Windows XP even in a virtual machine due to not being able to be updated means you are now in breach. This is fact worse than a document not working because this can have up half a million dollars fine per instance or worse bank account frozen due to possibly suspect transactions due to not being in conformance with the contract on data handling you signed.

Sure, but then they can just keep an old version working and it doesn't really matter if you change more recent versions? That's kind of my point - I'd imagine sticking to a known good version forever, once it was working. Why update?

Reason why you update is to use newer hardware to accelerate processing with and run faster. This is something you don't get by sitting on XP stuck in stone either.

Basically you answer has me asking the horrible question how many times in the company you are working for are you using XP that results that you are not in compliance with some regulation or another that will put you out of business.

Reality here VM for backwards compatibility is a totally stupid thing that leaves you open to being done in by government and financial regulation changes.

[smitty3268]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsforbusiness/end-of-xp-support

Do notice that microsoft mentions something here.
"Businesses that are governed by regulatory obligations such as HIPAA may find that they are no longer able to satisfy compliance requirements. "

HIPAA is medical but there are many other compliance item where having Windows XP even in a virtual machine due to not being able to be updated means you are now in breach. This is fact worse than a document not working because this can have up half a million dollars fine per instance or worse bank account frozen due to possibly suspect transactions due to not being in conformance with the contract on data handling you signed.



Reason why you update is to use newer hardware to accelerate processing with and run faster. This is something you don't get by sitting on XP stuck in stone either.

Basically you answer has me asking the horrible question how many times in the company you are working for are you using XP that results that you are not in compliance with some regulation or another that will put you out of business.

Reality here VM for backwards compatibility is a totally stupid thing that leaves you open to being done in by government and financial regulation changes.

We're a private company in the US, most regulations don't apply. Definitely not HIPAA. And new hardware processing/etc. is provided by VMWare updates - the app itself is 20 years old, it's not getting updated to take advantage of any new capabilities anyway, and speed isn't a problem on modern hardware.

[oiaohm]

We're a private company in the US, most regulations don't apply. Definitely not HIPAA. And new hardware processing/etc. is provided by VMWare updates - the app itself is 20 years old, it's not getting updated to take advantage of any new capabilities anyway, and speed isn't a problem on modern hardware.

Do double check if you have signed any contracts for credit card processing or the like that mandate software quality with total suspension of service as agreed to breach condition. So even as a private company anywhere in the world contract requirements over data storage can kill you using expired operating systems anywhere in your business. You might not have those conditions on your business but there are many who have either government or financial services requirements on there neck making XP in a VM either breach of law or breach of contract both with quite savage effects on business.