Greg / Mark,
First of all, thanks for the info. And, yes, I think you are correct. I may need to clarify who/where I am.
As far as me being a "Microsoft developer," I am a senior-level developer with about 21 years of experience. I've helped some of the Microsoft teams in development of different pieces here and there, but I do not work for Microsoft any longer. My largest contribution was playing a part in the development of the backup utilities (aka "Backup Exec" by Seagate/Arcada Software).
Where I am at the moment is a crossroads. I own a company focused on rapid development on a Microsoft platform (essentially, we build components to simplify complex tasks for developers working on a M$ system). Unfortunately, I'm getting pretty sick of the OS and M$ as a whole. Their systems are becoming increasingly bloated and complex, yet the benefit they provide hasn't changed much in many years. Unfortunately, again, Microsoft technologies pay the bills.
So, in short, I would like to be able to create a development environment that would allow me to produce applications on a Linux platform using the skills that I already have (or with as little of a learning curve as possible) while still being able to maintain and develop code geared towards a Microsoft platform. Additionally, I would really like to NOT spend a butt load of money purchasing additional software for my new Linux box since most of my decisions will be based out of pure ignorance. Not that I want something for nothing, but I would like to be able to make knowledgeable decisions before I do invest any real money.
Enter the Wine project...
My ultimate goal is to scrap my Windows XP Pro laptop and install Red Hat v8.0 using Wine for those things that I might need to run from a Windows world. I have recently posted a few questions in various newsgroups asking for input from Linux web developers regarding their preferred development environment (languages, editors, databases, web servers, daemons, any worthwhile tools, etc.). To be completely honest, I knew I was pushing when I asked for the Visual Studio IDE to run with Wine, however, that just goes to show how serious I am to scrap my dependency on the M$ products as a whole. And, even if it DID work, I would still need a clean Win32 OS running somewhere to be able to compile and package any applications.
Which brings me to my next question...
I have been able to successfully install and run some basic Windows specific applications (Trillian, WinZip, etc.), but I've run into some strange issues when trying to install things like IE (any version) or Office 2000. (It would be great to get my Windows copy of VMWare to install and run.) And, all of the threads that I have found where people have asked for a list of successful applications and/or installation processes have been danced around and seem to always go unanswered. So, I guess I will ask it here...
Is there a list of applications that people have successfully installed and how they did it?
Anyway, that's enough babbling for now. Sorry for being so long-winded. I just figure, the more info, the better... on both of our parts.
Any info, advice, ramblings, frustrations, or humorous remarks are welcome. Thanx, in advance.
R/S Fred
-----Original Message----- From: Greg Turner [mailto:gmturner007@ameritech.net] Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 2:11 PM To: Fredrick P. Lackey Cc: Mark Hannessen; wine-devel@winehq.com Subject: Re: Wine with .NET?
On Sunday 17 November 2002 12:21 pm, Mark Hannessen wrote:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am a Microsoft developer and currently pushing the capabilities of
the .NET Framework. On that same note, I am considering moving my laptop to some version of Linux (either Solaris v8.0 or Red
Sorry to be pedantic, but Solaris is not Linux. They both belong to the
same branch of the Unix family tree (SVR4), but they are distant cousins, at best (sufficiently distant to have children together :) )
Wine supports both platforms, if I understand the current state of affairs correctly. You will probably need gcc to make wine work on Solaris -- I doubt Sun cc is going to cut it (I could be wrong).
Hat). I assumed that I would need to use VMWare or some equivalent to continue using Visual Studio .NET. Can anyone give me some advice?
I'm glad to hear that you prefer wine to VMWare: this is the correct order of preference :) Unfortunately, VMWare may be your best bet at this time, if you plan to achieve productivity on VS.NET under linux anytime soon (see below).
Many thanx, Fred Lackey Orlando, Florida
have you already tryd wine to run visual studio .NET ? in theory it is possible but i don't think anyone has ever tryd. ( and
it will likely not work yet, feel free to send patches )
I would not expect much .NET stuff to work on wine. We do not have an MSIL interpreter, and our loader doesn't support the new .NET executable conventions (whatever they are -- I don't know, but I am told that there are some). We also lack any implementation of the CLR, and I'm not sure we even have IE6 working yet (?).
Assuming, as many are, that .NET will actually catch on, wine will probably start to worry about this stuff sooner or later. But, so far, we seem to have our hands full just trying to catch up with the Windows "DNA" platform.
Of course, as Mark suggests, if you want to help enhance wine to provide
.NET support, you may. I just took a peek at their site: the Mono libraries are LGPL-licensed, and the Mono class libraries are MIT/X11-licensed, so from a licensing perspective, utilizing Mono to achieve .NET Framework capabilities under wine seems quite viable.
.exe's you build under VC++.NET as native executables will probably work
under wine (I have seen examples of this).
if you want to port visual studio .NET to linux using wine you should use winemaker.
Somehow, I am inclined to presume that there is a misunderstanding between yourself and Mark regarding what you mean by "Microsoft developer"?