 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Gentoo vs Ubuntu
 |
•
•
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 5,051
Reputation: 
Solved Threads: 332
>wine is an emulator.
WINE is a recursive acronym, Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's called this because it doesn't actually emulate an operating system on virtual hardware, instead it creates a reimplementation of the Win32 API so that the programs it runs can perform at native speeds (or close to it).
WINE is a recursive acronym, Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's called this because it doesn't actually emulate an operating system on virtual hardware, instead it creates a reimplementation of the Win32 API so that the programs it runs can perform at native speeds (or close to it).
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
•
•
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 1,419
Reputation:
Solved Threads: 15
wine is still an emulator
Florida Rocks!
•
•
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 5,051
Reputation:
Solved Threads: 332
>wine is still an emulator
I guess in some contexts it could be considered an emulator of sorts, but in reality it's not really one. This is taken directly out of Wikipedia.
Another interesting bit:
Wine doesn't do that per se.
I guess in some contexts it could be considered an emulator of sorts, but in reality it's not really one. This is taken directly out of Wikipedia.
•
•
•
•
Rather than acting as a full emulator, Wine implements a compatibility layer, providing alternative implementations of the DLLs that Windows programs call, and processes to substitute for the Windows NT kernel
•
•
•
•
An emulator duplicates (provide an emulation of) the functions of one system with a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
So what do you call it? A compatibility layer?
"Hey ass, don't hijack my thread. This is serious." -JoshSCH
WINE is an API translator of sorts.
When a program wants to say, 'Open a New Window' instead of calling the real win32 windowopen function WINE translates that into a GNOME or KDE window instead.
That way the code does not need to be recompiled and in fact is run as binary win32 code binaries... so WINE is a Translator I think is the best way to describe WINE.
An emulator is just that... it has to set up memory spaces and run kernel spaces ON TOP of whatever OS is running. This is slow and costly and complex really.
WINE simply translates the SYSTEM CALLS into what Gnome or KDE or Qt or whatever graphics library Linux is using as it's GUI in X Windows. So, there is a small translation time cost but this is not really worth mentioning unless your so nerdy and worrried about absolute speed etc etc.. it is hardly measureable... so it is essential just as fast.
When a program wants to say, 'Open a New Window' instead of calling the real win32 windowopen function WINE translates that into a GNOME or KDE window instead.
That way the code does not need to be recompiled and in fact is run as binary win32 code binaries... so WINE is a Translator I think is the best way to describe WINE.
An emulator is just that... it has to set up memory spaces and run kernel spaces ON TOP of whatever OS is running. This is slow and costly and complex really.
WINE simply translates the SYSTEM CALLS into what Gnome or KDE or Qt or whatever graphics library Linux is using as it's GUI in X Windows. So, there is a small translation time cost but this is not really worth mentioning unless your so nerdy and worrried about absolute speed etc etc.. it is hardly measureable... so it is essential just as fast.
To C or not to C... that is the question.
|
Other Threads in the Getting Started and Choosing a Distro Forum
- Previous Thread: Starting MEPIS in a safe mode
- Next Thread: Need help with Ubuntu!
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
You need to join our community in order to build your list of favorite forums. You can visit the forum index for a listing of all forums.
Related Forum Features
Latest Getting Started and Choosing a Distro Posts
age-related baremetal chrome cio cloudcomputing code commercial computers crystalballsunday desktop developers development distributions distro dsl elderly embedded forums google http://expertcore.org/ innovations jauntyjackalope kernel library linus linux microsoft multi-core netgear newbies openoffice.org operating operatingsystems parallel performance processing redhat routers smp studios system systembuilders systemintegrators terminalservices thecloud thinclients tools ubuntu users virtualization vmware webbased wikis windows xenon
