Phoenicis PlayOnLinux 5.0 - Alpha 2 has been released

Hi everyone!

We wish a happy and successful year! For this first day of 2019, we are glad to release the second alpha version of Phoenicis PlayOnLinux 5.

A new wine builder

We have rewritten from scratch our winebuild platform. To make it short, it is more reliable, more transparent, easier to setup and cross-platform compatible. Any project that needs to use wine could now potentially use it and take advantage of the 1828 different builds. (We admit that some of them are outdated, though).

The winebuild project is open source, uses containers. You can install it on your machine in no time if you want to build wine by yourself.

Support of new wine distributions

Speaking about wine builds, we now support 4 wine distributions:

• Upstream wine builds are vanilla and unmodified wine ⁽¹⁾
• Staging wine builds are the wine builds patched by wine-staging
• Dos support wine builds contains wine and dosbox. (See the next feature)
• CX contains a wine version patched by codeweavers

We plan to support proton in the next weeks.
All these wine build can be compiled directly through https://github.com/PhoenicisOrg/phoenicis-winebuild/.

(1) Except the very old versions that have a specific suffix is their names, like 1.5.3-heap_allocation_v2-avoid_deadlock, but we are going to move them anyway.

DOS Support

Winebuild now provides dos_support distribution. The way these wine binaries works is very simple: Wine launch script has been modified to detect if the given .exe is Win32 or a DOS executable. If it is a DOS executable, it will set-up a dosbox configuration that will behave consistenly with wine:

• mount drive_c as C: on dosbox
• if a autoexec.bat file exists inside the prefix, it will run it
• support of custom DOS configuration per prefix
• ...

The script framework has also been modified so that you can tweak some dosbox settings directly from a script. Here is an exemple of "advanced" script

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

wine.run(wine.prefixDirectory() + "/drive_c/The Elder Scroll 1: Arena/Arena106.exe"); // Arena106.exe is a w32 fine, wine will run wine.dosbox()     .memSize(64)     .renderAspect(true)     .cpuCycles("max 95% limit 33000")     .renderFrameSkip(1); wine.run(wine.prefixDirectory() + "/drive_c/The Elder Scroll 1: Arena/ARENA.BAT"); // ARENA.BAT is obviously a MS-DOS file, dosbox will run

GoG support

We've added a way to add a web browser view directly inside script wizards. Thanks to this feature, scripts can now authenticate to any website.
Phoenicis can automatically download and install GoG games from your account, as POLv4 used to do during the past years.

A complete demonstration video of gog.com support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fopp-x9Fz3g&feature=youtu.be
Also, we have made a script pattern for all GoG games: it has drastically simplified them from POLv4. The script are so much easier that we believe that they will be a lot more maintained.

POLv5 script

POLv4 script

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 include(["engines", "wine", "quick_script", "gog_script"]); var installerImplementation = {     run: function () {         new GogScript()             .name("Teenagent")             .editor("")             .applicationHomepage("")             .author("Quentin PÂRIS")             .gogSetupFileName("teenagent/en1installer0")             .category("Games")             .wineVersion(LATEST_DOS_SUPPORT_VERSION)             .wineDistribution("dos_support")             .executable("TEENAGNT.EXE")             .go();     } };

We are planning to add tons of GoG games in the library so stay tuned!

Installation of verbs directly inside a container

You can now install verbs directly from a wine container.

Standalone packages

• We are now providing standalone packages that can work on any distribution without the need to install JDK runtime. These packages also remove all the feature that we don't need from the JDK. In the future, there will be probably two sorts of packages, but we want to make things easier for you for now.
• We now provide macOS packages
• We also support flatpak

I'd like to thank once again all the developers that helped us during the past weeks, plata, madoar, and also all those of you that contributed by reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, or tested phoenicis-winebuild.

Our next goals is to focus on prefix management (change of wine version inside a prefix, add debugging tools, etc...) and performance optimization.

If you have any suggestion or encounter any bug, we encourage you to come in our Github page: https://github.com/PhoenicisOrg/. This version is still at alpha-stage, so please be indulgent.
I also take the opportunity of this news to also announce you that PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac 4.3.4 has been released. They have been updated to support the new winebuild system, and the different windows of the application have been made resizable. It should fix the HDPI issues some of you were encoutering. We continue to maintain these versions until you are 100% satisfied with POLv5

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Phoenicis PlayOnLinux 5.0 - Alpha 2 released

Hi everyone!

We wish a happy and successful year! For this first day of 2019, we are glad to release the second alpha version of Phoenicis PlayOnLinux 5.

A new wine builder

We have rewritten from scratch our winebuild platform. To make it short, it is more reliable, more transparent, easier to setup and cross-platform compatible. Any project that needs to use wine could now potentially use it and take advantage of the 1828 different builds. (We admit that some of them are outdated, though).

The winebuild project is open source, uses containers. You can install it on your machine in no time if you want to build wine by yourself.

Support of new wine distributions

Speaking about wine builds, we now support 4 wine distributions: 

• Upstream wine builds are vanilla and unmodified wine ⁽¹⁾
• Staging wine builds are the wine builds patched by wine-staging
• Dos support wine builds contains wine and dosbox. (See the next feature)
• CX contains a wine version patched by codeweavers

We plan to support proton in the next weeks.

All these wine build can be compiled directly through https://github.com/PhoenicisOrg/phoenicis-winebuild/.

 

(1) Except the very old versions that have a specific suffix is their names, like 1.5.3-heap_allocation_v2-avoid_deadlock, but we are going to move them anyway.

DOS Support

Winebuild now provides dos_support distribution. The way these wine binaries works is very simple: Wine launch script has been modified to detect if the given .exe is Win32 or a DOS executable. If it is a DOS executable, it will set-up a dosbox configuration that will behave consistenly with wine:

• mount drive_c as C: on dosbox
• if a autoexec.bat file exists inside the prefix, it will run it
• support of custom DOS configuration per prefix
• ...

The script framework has also been modified so that you can tweak some dosbox settings directly from a script. Here is an exemple of "advanced" script

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

wine.run(wine.prefixDirectory() + "/drive_c/The Elder Scroll 1: Arena/Arena106.exe"); // Arena106.exe is a w32 fine, wine will run   wine.dosbox()     .memSize(64)     .renderAspect(true)     .cpuCycles("max 95% limit 33000")     .renderFrameSkip(1);   wine.run(wine.prefixDirectory() + "/drive_c/The Elder Scroll 1: Arena/ARENA.BAT"); // ARENA.BAT is obviously a MS-DOS file, dosbox will run

 

GoG support

We've added a way to add a web browser view directly inside script wizards. Thanks to this feature, scripts can now authenticate to any website.

Phoenicis can automatically download and install GoG games from your account, as POLv4 used to do during the past years.

 

A complete demonstration video of gog.com support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fopp-x9Fz3g&feature=youtu.be

Also, we have made a script pattern for all GoG games: it has drastically simplified them from POLv4. The script are so much easier that we believe that they will be a lot more maintained.

POLv5 script

POLv4 script

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 include(["engines", "wine", "quick_script", "gog_script"]);   var installerImplementation = {     run: function () {         new GogScript()             .name("Teenagent")             .editor("")             .applicationHomepage("")             .author("Quentin PÂRIS")             .gogSetupFileName("teenagent/en1installer0")             .category("Games")             .wineVersion(LATEST_DOS_SUPPORT_VERSION)             .wineDistribution("dos_support")             .executable("TEENAGNT.EXE")             .go();     } };

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 [ -z "$PLAYONLINUX" ] && exit 0 source "$PLAYONLINUX/lib/sources"    GOGID="teenagent" PREFIX="Teenagent_gog" WORKING_WINE_VERSION="1.6.2-scummvm_support"    TITLE="GOG.com - Teenagent" SHORTCUT_NAME="Teenagent"    POL_GetSetupImages "http://files.playonlinux.com/resources/setups/$PREFIX/top.jpg" "http://files.playonlinux.com/resources/setups/$PREFIX/left.jpg" "$TITLE"    POL_SetupWindow_Init POL_SetupWindow_SetID 1214 POL_Debug_Init    POL_SetupWindow_presentation "$TITLE" "Metropolis Software" "http://www.gog.com/gamecard/$GOGID" "Pierre Etchemaite" "$PREFIX"    POL_Call POL_GoG_setup "$GOGID" "e5e3a8cd9bbbcec5a956d1f41281b4af"    POL_Wine_SelectPrefix "$PREFIX" POL_Wine_PrefixCreate "$WORKING_WINE_VERSION"    POL_Call POL_GoG_install    POL_SetupWindow_VMS "1"    cat <<_EOFCFG_ > "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/GOG Games/Teenagent/teenagent.polcfg" [teenagent] platform=pc gameid=teenagent description=Teen Agent (DOS/English) language=en guioptions=sndNoSpeech lang_English _EOFCFG_    POL_Shortcut "teenagent.polcfg" "$SHORTCUT_NAME" "$SHORTCUT_NAME.png" "" "Game;AdventureGame;"    POL_SetupWindow_Close    exit 0

 

We are planning to add tons of GoG games in the library so stay tuned!

Installation of verbs directly inside a container

You can now install verbs directly from a wine container.

Standalone packages

• We are now providing standalone packages that can work on any distribution without the need to install JDK runtime. These packages also remove all the feature that we don't need from the JDK. In the future, there will be probably two sorts of packages, but we want to make things easier for you for now.
• We now provide macOS packages
• We also support flatpak

 

 

I'd like to thank once again all the developers that helped us during the past weeks, plata, madoar, and also all those of you that contributed by reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, or tested phoenicis-winebuild.

Our next goals is to focus on prefix management (change of wine version inside a prefix, add debugging tools, etc...) and performance optimization.

If you have any suggestion or encounter any bug, we encourage you to come in our Github page: https://github.com/PhoenicisOrg/. This version is still at alpha-stage, so please be indulgent.

I also take the opportunity of this news to also announce you that PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac 4.3.4 has been released. They have been updated to support the new winebuild system, and the different windows of the application have been made resizable. It should fix the HDPI issues some of you were encoutering. We continue to maintain these versions until you are 100% satisfied with POLv5

Download packages:

• Linux standalone .tar.gz: http://repository.playonlinux.com/PlayOnLinux/5.0-alpha-2/Phoenicis_5.0-alpha-2-amd64.tar.gz
• Linux standalone .deb: http://repository.playonlinux.com/PlayOnLinux/5.0-alpha-2/Phoenicis_5.0-alpha-2-amd64.deb
• macOS .dmg: http://repository.playonlinux.com/PlayOnMac/PlayOnMac_5.0-alpha-2.dmg

 

Stay tuned, the best is yet to come!

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PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac version 5 now has DosBox support working

The upcoming version 5 of PlayonLinux and PlayonMac now has DosBox support completed. Progress at last!

https://github.com/PlayOnLinux

 Here is a Video of PlayOnMac version 5

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The WineHQ Wine development release 1.9.16 is now available for Linux and Mac

The #WineHQ Wine development release 1.9.16 is now available for #Linux and #Mac

What's new in this release:

• Better 64-bit binary compatibility on macOS.
• Performance improvements in JavaScript.
• More progress towards the Direct3D command stream.
• More shader instructions in Direct3D.
• Performance improvements in GDI.
• Various bug fixes.

The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

Bugs fixed in 1.9.16 (total 43):

  19051  Myst V installer will not run.
  19546  Grafit text labels not displayed properly
  21985  Devil May Cry 3: Black screen when playing game, but special effects are seen
  23041  Darkness Within 2 demo: crashes on startup without native d3dx9_40
  24645  PDF Factory 3.x/4.x installer fails to install printer drivers (winspool.SetPrinterW lacks support for level 8, global default printer settings)
  26360  Time Warner Cable Connection Manager 1.03.0012.0 does not install
  28932  Screamer Radio, language selection works incorrectly
  29598  eRacer demo: no text displayed
  32491  dbghelp doesn't support DW_FORM_flag_present
  33398  Word / Excel 2010: crash when clicked (2nd or 3rd times) on a link
  33457  An integer overflow @line 268 of dsa.c ?
  33594  Cool Record Edit: crash during startup
  33939  Ballistic game: no animation when ball is lost
  34243  YGOPro Percy exits after a single duel/replay
  36828  Multiple DirectX11 games need D3D11CreateDevice implementation with D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_x support (Sniper Elite 3)
  37338  Multiple games and applications using Boost.Interprocess need 'NtQuerySection' implementation (file-backed shared memory)(RobloxPlayer, Tera Online)
  37903  Winzip 6: Unable to install. Controls are missing.
  37919  Spellforce 2 needs d3dx9_36.dll.D3DXCreateTextureShader
  38310  Trackbar control (msctls_trackbar32) does not send WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC as it does in Windows
  39501  King Arthur II demo crashes with unimplemented function d3dx10_43.dll.D3DXCpuOptimizations
  39502  King Arthur II demo crashes with unimplemented function d3dx10_43.dll.D3DX10CreateTextureFromMemory
  39744  No sound with winepulse.drv in multiple applications when PulseAudio fails to allocate full buffer
  39919  Purple / Pink reflections in Mass Effect 3
  40520  Gauntlet and WoW (d3d11 renderer) need FrontCounterClockwise
  40734  Unreal Tournament 3 doesn't quit properly when Pulseaudio is used
  40735  Midnight Mysteries: The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy (Steam) needs a more fleshed out msscript.ocx to get past the initial 'OLE Error 80004002'
  40757  GOG Galaxy crashes with unimplemented function api-ms-win-crt-stdio-l1-1-0.dll.__stdio_common_vsnwprintf_s
  40758  GOG Galaxy crashes with unimplemented function api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll._get_wide_winmain_command_line
  40815  comctl32: Leftmost position of trackbar not selectable with mouse, slider initial position wrong
  40875  ITHVNR does not work in wine
  40882  Nvidia GT 740M is not correctly recognized
  40905  Multiple applications need api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll._get_narrow_winmain_command_line (PCSX2 1.4.0, Battle.Net Launcher)
  40920  Into The Stars (UE4 game) crashes while loading with SwapChain->GetFullscreenState error
  40987  Wine hangs indefinitely on start with "[__NSArrayM insertObject:atIndex:]: index 6 beyond bounds [0 .. 4]".
  40999  Epic Games Launcher needs ws2_32.InetNtopW
  41009  PCSX2 1.4.0 needs api-ms-win-crt-stdio-l1-1-0.dll.__stdio_common_vswprintf_p
  41010  TVS_TRACKSELECT uses wrong hittest region
  41015  comctl32/treeview: Alt-Up/Down keyboard shortcuts don't work
  41033  Unimplemented function api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll.set_terminate need by Battle.net
  41037  Unimplemented function vcruntime140.dll.__std_type_info_name is needed by Battle.net
  41040  VariantChangeTypeEx lead to error when casting IUnknown(nil) -> IDispatch
  41044  Age of Mythology: Extended Edition needs api-ms-win-crt-stdio-l1-1-0.dll.__stdio_common_vswprintf_s
  41051  GOG Galaxy crashes with unimplemented function vcruntime140.dll.__std_type_info_destroy_list

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PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac 4.2.10 have been released

PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac 4.2.10 are now released. Here is the changelog:

• Wine 1.8 staging is now the default wine version on OSX. The build process has been improved thanks to wine-staging team so that the compiler supports ms_hook_prologue, allowing function hotpatching. This should improve the compatibility of some applications like Steam.
• Some wine staging instructions have been added so that they are fully supported by the scripts.
• The wineprefix tab in the configuration panel has been improved.

Enjoy!

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Darkstone in Linux with PlayOnLinux

Follow my step by step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Darkstone in Linux with PlayOnLinux .

Note: This guide applies to the GOG version of Darkstone. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.9
Wine: 1.6.2

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"


Look for the Wine Version: 1.6.2
Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right


Click Next

Full Article by BOOMAN Brian Mccracken

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Subscribe to the new Wine Reviews monthly Newsletter

You can now subscribe to our monthly Newsletter and receive special offers and promotions, as well as bulk headlines of the past months post. This way you can easily read only the articles that interest you from Putty for Mac, WineHQ, CodeWeavers, PlayOnLinux, PlayOnMac, WineBottler, WineSkin, WineTricks etc. etc.

Enter your email address

PlayOnLinux Review Playing Windows Games Was Never Easier

PlayOnLinux is a well-known app that allows its users to install and run games and applications that have been released only for the Windows platform, without breaking any laws.

There is no denying that Windows has a large number of applications and games at its disposal and that some of those are actually pretty good. In fact, up until just a couple of years ago, most of the games were only released for Windows systems and occasionally for Mac OS. That has changed somewhat, but not all that much. Quite a few titles are still Windows-only, and people are still looking for old software.

Some of you will say that we already have Wine and that Crossover is doing a great job, and you would be right to some extent. The problem is that Wine is only friendly if the game is working out of the box, which doesn't happen all that often. Also, Crossover is a commercial application, and not everyone will be inclined to buy it, although it's extremely good. Keep in mind that many of the Wine developers are actually working for Codeweavers, the developers of Crossover.

PlayOnLinux is using Wine, and that is not really a secret, but its makers have gone a step further. They have also implemented a GUI that helps users get a much better understanding of what's going on and that makes the entire installation process mostly automated. You still have access to some of the most complex stuff, but it's possible that you won't need to.

Installation

I tested PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf), which technically is not a stable release just yet. I didn't have any problems with the application itself, but Wine decided to put up some resistance. Fortunately, PlayOnLinux is actually smart enough to install and use newer versions of Wine, even if dependencies are broken on the distro.

There is no official PPA for Ubuntu, but the developers do provide a DEB file and it installs just fine. If you want to use a third-party PPA, the guys from Noobslab have one in place. In any case, here is how you install the application by using the DEB file. Download the file, open a terminal where the file is located, and enter the following commands (root will be required):

sudo dpkg -i PlayOnLinux_4.2.9.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

PlayOnLinux also needs Wine, so we'll have to install that as well. As I was saying earlier, I had problems installing Wine 1.7 in Ubuntu 15.10, so I had to settle with Wine 1.6. This is not a major problem since PlayOnLinux can download and use other versions of Wine. Open a terminal and enter these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.7

If you can get 1.7 to work, you can also install the 1.6 version.

Usage

PlayOnLinux is not a difficult-to-use application, and it has something for everyone. If you don't want to do anything complicated, then you just hit the Install button and look there for the application or game that you want. Those are basically profiles, which have been put together by people from the community.

Let's say that you want to play Bioshock. You select the game from the list, and PlayOnLinux will download some packages like Mono or Wine 1.4 (confirmed to work with Bioshock), and you get to a step where you are asked what kind of installation it is - from a file stored locally, from a DVD-ROM, or from Steam. I have that game on Steam, so I'll select that one. I will also have to download some proprietary fonts, but the application will take care of that as well.

I also have to install Steam, since I can't just use the Steam for Linux. The process will take a while because I have to download Bioshock, but as you can see, everything works smoothly. This was the scenario for something that was already available, but I also installed one of my favorite RTS games, the old Blitzkrieg, and that's not listed. The procedure is not much different, and I used my GOG.com copy. It went pretty much the same way, and I didn't have any issue.

It's also worth pointing out that you can also customize the application itself, quite a great deal, and you also access to the Wine installation as well. For example, I usually set Wine to work in a window and not in full screen. If something goes wrong (it happens sometimes), you can lock up your system with no way of shutting the application.

Another cool feature is the PlayOnLinux Vault that lets users save successful installations for later, with compression or without. This way, when you have a new installation of an OS, you just restore that package, and you don't have to do everything from scratch.

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The glass of wine thats worth 350 million dollars

Today while reading the Linux Foundations report titled ( Estimating the Total Development Cost of Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects ) that is located here.

Top-level findings from the report include:

• The total lines of source code present today in Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects are 115,013,302.
   
• The estimated, total amount of effort required to retrace the steps of collaborative development for these projects is 41,192.25 person years.
   
• In other words, it would take 1,356 developers 30 years to recreate the code bases present in Linux Foundation’s current Collaborative Projects listed above. The total economic value of this work is estimated to be over 5 billion dollars.

I began to think what a project like WineHQ would be worth using their same estimates and cost  variables. So first I need the Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) in Wine and that is 3,512,143 as of yesterday.

Next to make this extremely simple I need the average cost per SLOC and if I divide  $5,663,488,007.63 by 115,013,302 I get $49.24 as the average cost per line of code. Now all I need to do is multiply 3,512,143 by $49.24 and we get  $172,937,921.32

But now your asking yourself why did I title this article the 350 million dollar glass of Wine when in fact the source is only worth 172 million.

Because if you actuality read the report you will see that they have not taken documentation, the projects web sites, marketing, or brand value into account. And I could even go further down the rabbit hole and include  “emotional attachment” or “top of mind.” because everything has a value.

If we now take a look ( The Value of Freedom: Linux Kernel Worth $1.4 Billion ) in this article we get into what a brand is worth, keep in mind brand valuation is only a guessing game, While Apple or Google would have excellent brand values I don't foresee many company's opening their doors tomorrow under the name ENRON.

"I think lawyers would likely evaluate the value of a trademark differently than we did," McPherson said. "I think they would take into account the 'goodwill' of the brand around the world and the economic systems it powers, which is far, far more than the $1.4 billion of the code due to its use, its network, its momentum, etc. That's why the $1.4 billion number is low."

Should third party applications like PlayOnLinux, PlayOnMac, WineBottler, Wine-Staging's patch set etc etc be included. Because they are all open source and are built around the Wine project.

Should we also include the commercial backing from company's like CodeWeavers and the ingenious marketing strategies to further the WineHQ brand.

And lastly developer worth isn't included in any of these other evaluation's, I believe the talent pool around a project is another form of worth because their are only so many guru hackers on this planet and if your project is fortunate like the Wine project and you have between 20 and 50 of the worlds best programmers that in it's self is saying something.

So to get the total valuation of 350 million dollars I essentially doubled the SLOC worth because that is only about half of a given projects net value.

Comments, Flames or thumbs up are always welcome...

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PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac 5 the Current state

Hi everybody,

I'm writing this post to give some news about PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac v5. First of all, the development is rather going well. It takes quite a lot of time because we have to maintain PlayOnLinux 4 and the servers at the same time, and a lot of work remains to be done. This is why it is not possible to give an ETA for the release. However, I can show you what is done so far.

User interface

I guess that this is one of the topic that will concern you the most. A good news is that the application is designed to be totally decoupled from PlayOnLinux core. Basically, it means that we can end up with several interface implementation without changing the core (containing most features)

JavaFX interface

This is the main reference interface. This interface is supported on Linux and on OSX. We are trying to spend time to make it as user friendly as possible to avoid any confusion.
Here are some screenshot of the current version:

Installed applications

Available applications. (We want to replace POL logos by something unique for each program)

Available applications: Description of an installer

This is a script installing a version of wine (1.7.39)

Future configuration window

QT Interface

We are also aware that some of you do not really like the idea of having a non native interface. This is why some effort are put in the implementation of a QT interface. (This development is mostly done by seijikun, a big thank to him).

This interface aims to be as close as possible to PlayOnLinux 4 current interface. The QT interface is not fully implemented at all for the moment, I'm personally putting some effort in implementing the core features, so I do not have a lot of time to help seijkun. But still, here is a screenshot so that you can have an idea.

CLI interface

The CLI interface is not implemented yet at all. We want, on the long run to be able to run PlayOnLinux from the command line.

Integration test mock interface

This interface allows us to run automated test. I'll talk about this in a short paragraph.

Scripting

Introducing templates

The scripts (or installers) are written in Python. Basically, it will give to the scriptors as much liberty as they have in PlayOnLinux 4. However, we are also going to support a new concept: Installers templates. Installers templates are reusable scripts. For example, we will write one script for all Source games.

A more complex example would look like this: 

(Yes some games are natively available on Linux, but it is just for the example ;-))

With this example, the Diablo III script would be "complex", like current scripts, but Half-Life script would look like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6

class HalfLife(WineSteamInstaller):     title = "Half-Life"     prefix = "Prefix"     wineversion = "1.7.34"     steamId = 130     packages = ["package1", "package2"]

The choice of the base template is made by the scriptor.

New tools

We have integrated a Python console inside the application so that scriptors can test PlayOnLinux framework (Sorry for the quality):

Performances

Memory consumption

In terms of memory, PlayOnLinux 5 seems to use a little more memory than PlayOnLinux 4.
It is expected because contrary to PlayOnLinux 4, everything us running in a single multi-threaded process. PlayOnLinux 4 is creating a lot of processes, making memory measurement very hard, and wasting a lot of resources.

Interface performances

We've run some benchmark to compare interface performances. PlayOnLinux 5 is running way faster. In fact, it was impossible to script a smooth progressbar with PlayOnLinux 4 because the wizard was responding too slow. To measure the responsiveness of the interface, we compare the time required to show 1000 messages in a wizard.

And a video highlighting the difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b57JIFCQg54 (PlayOnLinux is the window on the right)

Testing

Automated testing is part of the code quality. With the new application design, we can run automated tests on a daily basis to detect breaks (in script, or in PlayOnLinux itself). So far, we have written three integration tests:

• Download and install a wine version
• File deletion is safe
• Shortcut creation

We also write unit tests for non UI classes.

I think that this is all I have to present for the moment. If you have any question, feel free to comment. I will edit the news if I find anything else.

Cheers,

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Как я искал новый “Play On Linux”

 Я хотел бы поблагодарить моего друга Чашка Петри для этого обзора

При переходе с Windows на Linux ОС, пожалуй, у всех возникают трудности с заменой привычных Win- приложений на аналогичные в Linux. Иногда их просто нет. И для решения этих мелких проблем существует Wine, но в силу своей сложности в настройке, голый он не всем подходит. Поэтому в народе используют так называемые надстройки.
Выбор надстроек для Wine небольшой. Среди них PlayOnLinux (POL), CrossOver и Cedega. Cedega я не рассматривал, из-за низкой обновляемости проекта.

Под номером один PlayOnLinux. При использовании POL, у меня возник ряд мелких неудобств, после установки, например, одной из проблемных мест для POL стала крайне неудачно портированная консольная «ролевка» Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, она содержит массу недочетов после установки даже в Windows и не имеет готового скрипта для установки. Установил я ее вручную, но настроить и заставить работать в полноэкранном режиме ее так и не смог.

Номер два - CrossOver. По материалам из Вики:  «…CrossOver создан компанией CodeWeavers на основе исходных кодов свободного аналога - Wine. При этом сам он является коммерческим продуктом. Разработчики CodeWeavers добавляют собственные заплатки, а также графические утилиты конфигурации. Кроме того, компания нанимает нескольких разработчиков Wine, а также возвращает многие свои наработки в свободный проект…»

Процесс установки CrossOver под Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora и других описан на сайте разработчика. Так как у меня Debian 64-бит, загружаем последнюю версию *.deb с сайта https://www.codeweavers.com/ Открываем терминал, добавляем архитектуру i386:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Советовал бы использовать 32-битную ось, в силу ряда проблем с совместимостью. Приводим ось в актуальное состояние:

sudo aptitude update

Разработчик рекомендует устанавливать свой софт  с помощью gdebi на Debian подобных системах:
 
sudo gdebi crossover.deb

Или с помощью dpkg:

sudo dpkg -i crossover.deb

Устанавливаем, запускаем, клацаем Установить приложение Windows и выбираем Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition

Переходим в раздел «Установка через Steam»:

Все файлы хранятся в префиксе, или в бутылке, кому как удобно называть. Там внутри файлы диска C,  реестр, индивидуальные настройки и т.д.  Выбираем уже готовый или создаем новый бутль:

Нажимаем Установить и Устанавливаем дополнительный софт

Устанавливаем.NET 

Устанавливаем Steam

Готово.

Закрываем мастер, запускаем Steam и устанавливаем Dark Souls из Steam

Собственно, вот результат, Dark Souls в полноэкранном режиме

На мой взгляд, CrossOver более прост в управлении и надежен, но менее универсален, чем POL, например, нет возможности  выбирать различные версии Wine после установки, и так как проект коммерческий, вероятно, имеет хорошую техническую поддержку.

Пару слов добавлю о стоимости и о правах. Вы имеете право использовать демо версию бесплатно в течение 14 дней. Стоимость CrossOver Linux в России и Украине $ 20.95, для сравнения: цена в США и странах ЕС немного выше и составляет $59.95.

А если вы используете этот скидочный код ( TOM23 ) вы можете сэкономить дополнительные 20% от $20.95 цене.

Так что выбор за вами. Всем удачи!

 

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GOL Survey Results for May 2015 Do you use Wine to play games on Linux

Many thanks to the 1508 people who took the time to complete this survey! That’s less than the 2362 who took the survey last time, but still over the 1000 mark which I wanted to stay above. Hopefully it will stay around that mark and hopefully we aren’t getting repeat responses and things which might cause issues.

Question 1 - Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?


Question 2 - Did you use Wine to play games last month?
 

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PlayOnLinux 5 : We want your opinion!

Edit: apparently there are some people that do not want to play the game and decided to flood the poll. Fair enough. The poll is now closed. Please comment instead.

Hi everybody!
As some of you have heard about it, we are seriously thinking about the future version of PlayOnLinux (a.k.a. PlayOnLinux 5.  The version 4 has a long history and the code contains stuff that makes it very hard to maintain. We really need to have a more stable version if we want to continue to give you the best. If we continue working on PlayOnLinux v4 we are assuming that:

• PlayOnLinux will no longer have new features
• PlayOnLinux may become completely broken one day

In this piece of news, I'm going to explain the option we prefer, why are we prefering it and also we are going to ask you if you agree or not.

Please read the whole article before complaining, trolling. It is a really important topic! Once you have read everything and you understand the problem, fell free to send comments and to vote. 

As many of you may have heard, we are seriously thinking about switching from Python to Java. I perfectly understand some concerns and to be honest, I was the first to criticize Java even few months ago.
However there are several reasons that let us think that Java is the right choice for us:

• Portability: We want PlayOnLinux to be accessible on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mac, ... and why not, being prepared to run on ARM/Android devices later.
• Maintenability
  • Java do a lot of things to force developers to do things great
  • Java is statically typed. It is a lot easier to do simple task like refactoring, code-checking, ...
  • I have recently discovered the tools that exists Java to measure the code quality and the technical debt and to be honest, it is just impressive. You may have a look at this end of this news (SonarQube)
• Contributions
  • We've noticed that there were hardly any contribution for PlayOnLinux v4 and we target to make some really infrastructure and guidelines so that everyone contribute. (See "infrastructure" paragraph at the end of this news)

PlayOnLinux is a lot more complex than just a GUI for wine. It is mainly a set of tools allowing you to write very powerful scripts. That is why it is a little more complicated than just a GUI for wine.

Responses to the main concerns

I don't want to install Oracle JDK or any closed program on my computer

We are going to guarantee you that PlayOnLinux v5 is compatible with OpenJDK (GPLv2)

PlayOnLinux will become very slow because Java is very slow

I can ensure you that this is wrong.
Java is a lot faster than Python in general (http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/python.html). Moreover, the v4 branch has a lot of non optimal code. The tests we have already done with Java is showing us than what we have developed so fare behave a lot faster that PlayOnLinux 4. To be honest, there is only one drawback: the JVM takes a little more time to start than the python interpreter.

You should have used QT! That makes more sense.

You may be right, but I'm talking about the language here, not about the graphical interface. So far, we've started to work with OpenJFX:

• It is Open Source
• It is customisable with some CSS
• It supports GPU acceleration
• We could support different skins for PlayOnLinux or imagine a Steam-Like interface. Everything is possible!
• It is portable

Drawbacks

• It may not be fully integrated with your Desktop theme

However, the design of PlayOnLinux v5 perfectly allows to implement several user interface and let users chose the one they want. So it is perfectly possible to implement a QT interface with QTJambi for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Jambi. (But it is not a priority. A command line interface is more important)

Java applications are ugly, not integrated to the system.

You may be talking about Swing. In our case, we are planning to use different interfaces that look a lot better.

Java is insecure, there are so many security patches

The reason for that is that Java also has a "sandbox" mod which is often used to allow browser to execute some Java code without the approval of the user. We do not want to run PlayOnLinux on your web browser, so that's fine if you disable your browser plugin.

Proposal of a new design

A image is better to start. We plan to replace bash script with python scripts.

• Python scripts will be directly run by Java (yes it is possible thanks to Jython!).
• We are going to get a small part of PlayOnLinux v4 code just for backward compatibility (after some cleanup of course)
• A lot of effort are going to be made to ensure the good quality of the code.

So you plan to run Wine inside Bash inside python inside Java :-O.

Of course not, that is where Jython comes. Jython is not using your system python at all! In fact it is a library that compile your python code into Java class on runtime. Basically, it means than it can just run your python script directly on the Java Virtual Machine without depending on Python. In fact, there will be less layer than there are today because the scripts will be able to execute Java codes directly without needing to create any sockets or other stuff like that.

Tasks that have already been done so far

Infrastructure

We have set up two tools:

• Jenkins (http://www.playonlinux.org:8080). This tool will periodically run unit tests to be sure that the code stays in a stable state
• SonarQube (http://www.playonlinux.org:9000). This tool will periodically scan the whole code to measure its quality. It is a really powerful tool that is giving us precious advice.
• GitHub (https://github.com/PlayOnLinux/POL-POM-5/)

Programing

We have developed the following component as a proof of concept. If you agree with us, we are going to continue on that way to be able to propose you the best version of PlayOnLinux in the next few months.

• PlayOnLinux core
  • Dependency injection
  • Unit test
• PlayOnLinux core script management (all keywords are not yet implemented though)
  • PlayOnLinux Python script compatibility
  • PlayOnLinux Legacy (v4) script compatiblity
  • Script exemples
• Install window (with remote downloading)
• Other important stuff
  • GPG Script signature check
  • Complete wine registry parser (it means that you are going to be able to browse the registry with a very few line of script)
  • Wine management: Create a prefix with a progressbar, ...
  • Filesystem management (Copy with progressbar, download with progressbar)

Conclusion

So far, I'm pretty confident that this version can perform a lot better than v4.

• The core we have is a lot faster
• The scripts are smoother
• We have a really clean code (for the moment at least)
• We have a really clean infrastructure
• Some external people have already shown interest in contributing to v5 code (by sending small patches)

However, I want to have your opinion about this choice. Please send the most comment as you can and talk freely. Please provide arguments with your commentary so that we can progress.

Now the time has come to vote!

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PlayOnLinux PlayOnMac 4.2.7 has been released

Hi all, we are proud to announce the 4.2.7 release of PlayOnLinux/PlayOnMac!

Among the visible changes, first a regression fix: "Install non-listed applications" should now be visible all the
time, even while the list of install scripts is being updated:



During installations, a small (i) information icon was already showing up at the bottom of the wizard window for scripts that use POL_SetupWindow_SetID; Clicking on it would lead users to the script page on the web site. For scripts that support the embedded debugger (scripts that use POL_Debug_Init), there will now also be a second icon next to it to open the debugger window to show the installation log:



PlayOnLinux would display important informations at the beginning of the first installation, but not show them again so you don't have to click thru them with each installation. It will now display those informations until you click "Don't remember me" (after actually reading the messages of course!). This feature is also available for your own install scripts, as the new statement POL_SetupWindow_notice:



The Wine versions manager display has been changed to display a small lock (and bold text) for versions currently in use by some virtual drives, so you can more easily remove the versions that are no longer used:



Beside that, this version also contains its share of bugfixes and code cleanups, so here's the full changelog:

* Detect and abort scripts when trying to run 64bit programs with 32bit Wine
* POL_DetectVideoCards: list VGA compatible controllers and 3D controllers (#5012)
* Add support for several other value types than REG_SZ to registry
  updating statements (#5013)
* POL_Wine_SelectPrefix: abort if no prefix name is provided
* Sort install scripts lists case insensitively (iTunes)
* Fix "hash-bang" line in shortcuts so they're actually executable
* Deprecate the usage of $REPERTOIRE in PlayOnLinux own code
* Translate remaining french comments and identifiers in Bash code
* Improve POL_Wine_PrefixDelete to remove ancillary resources (shortcuts, icons,...)
* Wine versions manager: attributes tell apart used versions instead of
  unused versions; Add an extra warning when about to remove a version in use
* Avoid Python detection loops
* Display wx version found
* Fix Settings > Internet menu (#4989, thanks to rupert)
* Workaround for Wine bug #37575 (#5023)
* Improve find_binary function and make it public as POL_System_find_file
* Add support for .lnk, .bat and .cmd files to POL_Shortcut and POL_SetupWindow_shortcut_creator
* Added an icon to open the debugger from the installation wizard when
  POL_Debug_Init has been called (#4948)
* Implement POL_SetupWindow_notice to display important messages, but
  allow the user to acknowledge them once and for all ("Don't remind me") (#2036)
* POL_OpenShell (Configure > Misc > Open a shell) bug fixes
* Add a warning when OpenGL autotests are missing (user support)
* Make sure "Install non-listed application" link is always visible in
  install window
* POL_SetupWindow_cdrom: don't suggest "*" when no CDROM has been found
* Remove use of remaining os.system() calls (less overhead, less quoting nightmare)
* Use os.kill() instead of shell command
* Use of "exec" to avoid some useless extra Bash processes
* polconfigurator interface cleanup (no risk of translation breakage)


Enjoy!

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PlayOnLinux PlayOnMac 4.2.6 and Wiki now available

Hello, Linux and Mac community! We are proud to announce the release of the newest version of PlayOnLinux and PlayOnMac. It can be downloaded here.

Thanks to everyone who submitted bugs and posted in the forums to help make each release better than the last.

The changelog for this 4.2.6 can be found below:

• Use $ POL_TERM more Consistently, allow POL_TERM global configuration override. Beware, the carrier must terminal -T and -e options, so gnome-terminal Does not Qualify (gnome-terminal.wrapper Does though)
• Add a function to compute a hash of a POL_Wine_VersionSignature Wine Package
• Python version string extraction hardening (# 4895)
• POL_System_PartInfo APPROBATION thru mount filesystems point INSTEAD of device (Btrfs subvolumes compatibility)
• Modify bash / document_reader to pass extra arguments Unchanged ( http://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-12519-Pass_arguments_to_PDFXChange_Viewer.html )
• Remove "skipped lines" messages When The debugger gets the focus back
• POL_Shortcut: do not overwrite $ binary logging to Improve
• mainwindow: make boxen alert child of the main window So They can not get lost behind --other windows
• Prevent POL_Download_Resource clobbering $ APP_ANSWER
• Critical error: wget throwing SSL error when Install Components uses wget (bug 5002)

We have also started an official Wiki page that is going to be filled to the brim with Information regarding POL/POM, Wine, scripting, and more. As of now, all current documentation has been moved to the new wiki. It is located here: http://wiki.playonlinux.com
 
Be sure to check back there often, as there will we new info added as often as we can.

Enjoy!

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SimCity4 Deluxe Installer updated with Steam support

The installer for SimCity 4 Deluxe has been updated to use the newest version of Wine, as well as having added Steam support for newer purchasers of this fantastic, old-school game.

Enjoy!




Check it out here.

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Missing font issue in Photoshop CS6 now fixed

An update to the Adobe Photoshop CS6 installer has just come out that fixes the missing fonts on certain systems. If you were experiencing this issue, then you will want to delete your virtual drive for PS, and reinstall using the official installer.

Let us know if there are further issues. Enjoy!



Check it out here.

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PlayOnLinux 2.7 released

We restructured the whole site and this page no longer exists on this location. The page that your looking for has been moved to a different Web address on the new and improved Wine-Reviews.net Site:


Click on the link above to go to the new location. (To maintain accessibility, we have not set up automatic redirection to the new page.) If you have a bookmark to the old page, please change it to the new address above. If you followed a link from another Web site to this page, please let the people responsible for that Web site know the new location above. If you are having trouble finding the information you want, do a search on this article at our new site.

Thanks for your understanding and Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Editors at Wine-Reviews

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