Run Windows Applications on Linux (or Mac) with WINE

There are thousands and thousands of applications available for Linux, and even more being developed as you read this. As much as I love Linux and Open Source, sometimes you happen to love a Windows application so much that you wonder if only this was available on Linux I would completely switch. It has happened to me in the past when I would switch over into Windows to play Counter Strike and Half Life and some people also wanted Photoshop on Linux because the GIMP requires some adjusting to on the interface.

Games are an important mention here because although the Linux games are catching up and going 3D and stuff, one would have to admit that there are a larger number of games for Windows that keep us going back to the Windows World.

Well if you wish for the same, your wish has been granted. There is a solution for all these situations and it has been around for sometime now. Its – WINE. Chances are that if you are into Linux you might have heard of it. WINE is another of those recursive acronyms which stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator (Amazing how they come up with recursive names, GNU and PHP are other examples)
 
So what is it? Do I drink it?

Nah, you won’t like to drink anything with such a name! Formally stated “WINE is an open source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs.”

In English this means that you can run Windows applications i.e. exe’s on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and yes Mac OS X too!
In fact the most popular use of WINE is to run Windows games on Linux!
Sweeeet! But do I require Windows as well?

Not at all, WINE is a completely free alternative of the Windows API and has “no Microsoft code” whatsoever.
 
How do I run my Windows programs?

This is the fun part! First and foremost you need to have WINE on your system. Get it here. Or else if you are using Ubuntu (or apt based distro) like me then fire up the terminal and type the following:

    sudo apt-get install wine

This will set up WINE on your system. That’s pretty much it, as from now on, you just have to follow the steps you will take to install the application/game in Windows. Yes that’s it, Its that simple. No hassles, nothing. I had an old version (8) of Photoshop so let me show you some screens, so you believe me:
Step1: Install

Step 2: Run

Step 3: Work on  pic!!

Can I run all Windows applications?

Well not really, there are thousand of applications (10,349 to be precise) whose status and compatibility to run with WINE can be viewed at the WINE AppDB. It categorizes applications into Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Garbage ratings, with the applications rated as Platinum being the most compatible and problem-free and applications rated Garbage being.. um.. well.. Garbage! (in regards to WINE compatibility of course).

However, there is no reason to be disheartened because many popular applications are featured in the Platinum, Gold and Silver lists. You may not want to go below this rating. If on the other hand an application you are looking for is not in the database then you can of course try it on your own, and let the world know how it went!

Here are some of the more popular applications that run smoothly with WINE:

    Photoshop CS2, other versions too but not CS3 – Platinum and Gold
    Half Life 2 – Platinum Counter Strike
    ACDSee – Platinum
    Command and Conquer – Gold
    Microsoft Office 2003 – Silver
    Call of Duty – Gold
    ….. many many more

What about performance?

WINE doesn’t slow down your computer, the application performance will be same as with Windows (no more, no less). In fact it’s actually better than using virtualization which has two operating systems running side by side and thus more resource hungry. Refer to “Debunking WINE myths” for more on these and similar questions.

All in all if you cannot give up running a Windows app or you want to play Windows games inside Linux then definately give WINE a try. It’s worth

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Invention Of Calculators

For more than 300 years Blaise Pascal was credited with inventing the mechanical calculator. But in 1957 a German historian proved that Wilhelm Schickard had beaten Pascal to it by 18 years, with his invention of a so-called "calculator clock" in 1624.

In the 17th century John Napier (Scotland) had paved the way for the invention of mechanical calculating machines with his proposal that multiplication and division could be calculated as a series of additions and subtractions. Then, for more that three centuries, historians believed that Blaise Pascal (France) had invented the calculator in 1642, but this was disproved in the mid-20th century when historian Franz Hammer (Germany) discovered papers proving that in 1624, fully 18 years before Pascal, Wilhelm Schickard (Germany) had inventer something called a "calculator clock".
Schickard's machine not only predated Pascal's, it was also far more sophisticated and was capable of performing all four arithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Having discovered Schickard's papers in 1935, Hammer published them in 1957 and Schickard was finally acknowledged as the inventor of the mechanical calculator.

The first commercially successful calculator was invented in 1820 by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (France), but the evolution of calculators as we know them came when Jack Kilby (USA), inventor of the microchip, began developing miniature electronic calculators as a means of exploiting the microchip. In 1967 Kilby, together with Jerry Merryman and James van Tassel (both USA) of Texas Instruments (TI), produced the first hand-held electronic calculator and three years later TI and Canon Inc. (Japan) launched the first commercial electronic pocket calculator, the Pocketronic.

Some historians cite the Sinclair Executive, invented in 1972 by Clive Sinclair (England), as the first pocket calculator, but that depends on the size of one's pocket. The Sinclair Executive was 9.5.. thick and 140mm long and used LED's (light-emitting diodes) to display its results, while the Pocketronic, which had a terminal paper print-out for results, was large enough to stretch the definition as well as the fabric of a pocket.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison

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200 Million Android Devices Activated Worldwide

Recently a Tech News giant updated Android as Fastest developing and
spreading Operating System. It is no wonder that this Open source
software led by search engine giant Google Inc. had made a prominent
place in the tablet an mobiles industry with it's portability and
Unique features.
Google's Android operating system is pretty much everywhere you go in
the smartphone and tablet world with a large number of devices from
many different manufacturers. During Google's press event (where it
revealed its Google Music service), the company announced that the
number of Android-based device has jumped up considerably in just a
few months. In May Google said that "just" 100 million Android devices
had been activated worldwide. Today that number has doubled with over
200 million Android devices now officially activated.
These numbers compare very well with Apple's iOS devices. In October,
Apple said it sold a total of 250 million iOS products since the
launch of the first iPhone in 2007. Anyway you look at it the iOS and
Android mobile operating systems are the two dominant forces in the
smartphone industry. It also means that app developers have two huge
audiences for their creations.

Since Android activation has doubled in just six months, one wonders

how many will be activated in the next six month time period,
especially since Samsung is about to release the first Android 4.0
smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus. Meantime Apple is still having issues
with keeping iPhone 4S units in stock. Barring a massive economic
disaster (which isn't out of the question) we could see the iOS and
Android audience expand even faster in the next year. And however,

Microsoft is going to launch Microsoft Windows 8 Beta PC and Mobile
Versions. In late monsoon or beginning of winter. Just got to see Who
takes over whom!

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Why Android Will Always Be Laggier Than Ios?

Google’s Android platform is frequently singled out for having a significantly laggier and less responsive interface than other platforms. As TiPb points out, recent Google Inc. intern Andrew Munn has shed some light on the reason why.



As it turns out, iOS and Windows Phone both treat graphics and interface as a higher processing priority than Android, which treats graphics and interface as a normal priority. The end result is a laggier, bogged-down experience, especially when running other background tasks.

Android UI will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints Which I discussed at the beginning:

UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
UI rendering has normal priority
Another significant factor is that Android doesn’t do nearly as efficient a job of cleaning up unused memory as iOS and Windows Phone, with previously run apps and content hogging up much of a device’s available memory.

Performance of Java and other runtimes also contributes, as Apple’s built-in engine does a much better job of reducing workload on the processor, and has far more refined interfaces for these runtimes.

Munn’s comments also point to hardware choices (such as low-bandwidth NVidia Tegra 2 chips) and other factors as sources for the lag.

While some of these issues can be easily fixed, that’s not true of all of the concerns. Thus, Android is likely doomed to be laggier and less responsive than iOS and other platforms for some time into the future.
 Maybe Android Developers make some efforts to fix this laggier response.

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