[IAEP] Sugared Wine project begins

[Jim Gettys]

There are certainly some good Windows educational games: e.g. Amazing
Contraptions, zoombinis, and the like.  But my son is now 10 1/2, so
he's beginning to move on to other things.

A worthwhile thing to do by someone motivated might be to contact the
publishers of some of the older classic educational games and see if
SimCity sorts of deals can be worked out, or at least free binary use,
for some of these.  But I personally wouldn't know how to start on such
an project.
                         - Jim


On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 09:01 -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> To: "John Gilmore" <gnu at toad.com>
> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 08:42:43 -0400
> Subject: Re: Sugared Wine project begins
> I'm including the Education list in a hope we can get some feedback as
> to what class of MS-Windows programs are a high-priority. I cannot
> imagine Word would be high on the list, but there are undoubtedly many
> applications people are looking for...
> 
> -walter
> 
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:52 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> > X86-based Linux systems have been able to run some applications
> > written for MS-Windows for many years, due to the efforts of the Wine
> > project (http://winehq.org).  Wine is a GNU LGPL licensed implementation
> > of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.  It does not use any Microsoft
> > code.  Many popular free or proprietary programs run well under it;
> > see the Applications Database at http://appdb.winehq.org/.  Wine just
> > had its 1.0 release in 2008; after 15 years of continuous development,
> > it's getting pretty complete.  Retail and corporate sale of commercial
> > versions of Wine have supported two small companies (CodeWeavers and
> > TransGaming) for many years.
> >
> > Wine already runs on the OLPC ("yum install wine"), but it's clunky
> > because Sugar doesn't integrate well with it.  So CodeWeavers and I,
> > with the assistance of the Public Software Fund, have started the
> > Sugared Wine project to improve that integration.  See:
> >
> >  http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine
> >
> > Wine normally lets the X window manager manage its windows.  That
> > doesn't work well with Sugar, so CodeWeavers is improving Wine's
> > existing alternative "full-screen" mode, in which Wine manages all the
> > sub-windows that the applications create.  This improvement also
> > involves implementing the "Smart" menu that sits in the lower left
> > corner for starting Windows applications, and the taskbar that lets
> > the user manage multiple running Windows applications.
> >
> > The project will also package Wine as a .xo with all the usual Sugar
> > goop.  (Possible future work might include the capability to bundle up
> > a single Windows application with Wine and goop to produce a .xo that
> > would directly run that app.)  We expect to be testing the port to
> > Sugar using the Windows binary of Firefox 3.0, a pretty demanding
> > application that also happens to be free.  All of the work will be
> > released under the GNU LGPL.
> >
> > For many purposes, like running MS-Office, the results of the project
> > should compare favorably with dual-booting Windows and Linux.  The
> > Windows programs can merely run under Linux.
> >
> > The work is just starting, so it's a good time for early feedback on
> > the technical goals and tactics of the project.  Will the result
> > proposed at http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine be useful to OLPC's
> > customers?  What changes would make it more useful?  What other
> > programs should we be testing in the XO Wine?  Would you like to be an
> > early tester for the project?
> >
> > (Those who do not want to run Windows apps should keep their flames at
> > home.  Nobody will force you to run either Wine or Windows apps.  Some
> > good people need, or choose, to run apps coded for the Windows API.
> > We may deplore it.  But peaceful coexistence, plus superior technology
> > and licensing on the GNU/Linux side, are our best path to compete with
> > it for mindshare and market share.  Most of the improvements being
> > made here will be useful in other portable and embedded systems,
> > making Microsoft OS's even less competitive in that market than they
> > already are.)
> >
> >        John Gilmore
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Devel at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> >
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-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child