Wine 1.1.34 Released

The Wine development release 1.1.34 is now available.
What's new in this release:

• Many fixes for crypto certificates support.
• A lot of MSHTML improvements.
• Various fixes to support the Left 4 Dead 2 DRM.
• A number of OLE marshalling fixes.
• More Listview improvements.
• 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 1.1.34:

835 Add support for the new PDB format
3048 CSpy/Up-Down: Multiple Inconsistencies/Major Work needed
3154 Matchad 5 remains in memory on exit
4543 Free & Clear (fc.exe) crashes after unhandled exception (page fault)
4770 BlackBerry Device Manager fails to install under wine
5061 Copying from Windows Firefox in Wine and pasting to Linux OpenOffice pastes metadata as data
5726 MotionBased agent main screen doesn't render all elements
6159 DeviceLock installer crashes in NdrSendReceive()
7142 Wanted: OpenAL support
8302 Transparent backgrounds of text-labels in Ragnarok Online
8407 MPLab 7.60 hangs at splash screen
9464 err:ole:marshal_object object doesn't expose interface {00000001-0000-0000-c000-000000000046}
9527 Silent Hill 4 Does not start
9990 Google Pack installer aborts with dialog "Invalid command line -install -extra ..."
10342 Add support for SubPixel font rendering
11090 menu items are redrawn incorrectly on mouse over - jedi knight dark forces II
11495 Need For Speed: Pro Street crashes during start
12419 eISLP crashes in ole on exit
12632 Publisher 2003 crashes when saving a file
12736 d3d:sampler GL_INVALID_ENUM from glActiveTextureARB @ state.c
12852 Alibre Design: installer fails
12881 whizlabs software does't work
12910 Alcohol 120% refuses to install
13011 Mail.ru_err_ole32.dll
13195 GLXMakeCurrent error with BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) in SolidWorks
13234 Quicktime 7.4.5, window decoration problems
13963 menubuilder does not escape certain characters
14228 Strip off double quotes from path before trying to load COM servers (Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0/Device Emulator Manager)
14407 wineserver should support Solaris event completion framework (event ports)
14455 Greedy Torrent Does not function without Virtual Desktop Enabled
14517 winscp crashes on exit after connecting
14684 Might and Magic 7: crash at startup
14692 Microsoft Money 2007: Crashes on Program startup
14863 Crash in SCAPS SAM
15046 Graphics Corruption in Star Trek Legacy
15189 Google Chrome can't dock tabs
15251 SQLNotes 0.9.23.6 installer fails to register DLL
15271 Europa Universalis III In Nomine - Crashes at start-up
15448 Font selector is empty in inetcpl.cpl (IMLangFontLink2)
15455 Witcher Enhanced Edition - fails to complete installation at redistributable stage
15605 Baan client Date field is not display correctly.
15805 NetStat live unable to run/install
15885 Phrogram 2.5 requires SHGetImageList implementation
15961 Need for Speed ProStreet: Very slow/low fps when smoke not disabled
16377 AlphaSkins hangs while starting
16490 Falcon 4.0 AF: Clouds visible trough walls
16494 Falcon 4.0 AF: After patching to 1.0.13 game crashes
16589 Unimplemented d3dx9_36.dll functions : .D3DXLoadSurfaceFromFileInMemory, D3DXLoadSurfaceFromFileW, D3DXLoadSurfaceFromMemory
16727 r1gl fails to request wgl features such as multi sampling
16881 CashComm cannot be installed (clicking on Next doesn't do anything)
16955 Dreamfall: TLJ fails to launch.
17099 CallWave: Cannot play recieved calls.
17116 MinGW 5.1.4 won't install
17297 widl should accept unnamed arguments to functions
17367 BizAgi Modeler does not start
17513 Rome total war detects a debugger
17665 Studio Tax fails to install
17921 Just a translation problem
17937 Cygwin compilation fails in rpc_transport.c
17996 inetmib1 test fails when duplicate addresses are in the route table
18009 Tlknow32.exe hangs in startup screen
18250 VDrumLib crashes on startup
18377 NFS 4 Road Challenge: Installer hangs after choosing Setup Type
18378 NFS 4 Road Challenge: Installation of 4.50 patch fails
18400 The program FlatOut2.exe has encountered serious problem...
18425 DLL_PROCESS_DETACH isn't called if a dll returns FALSE on a DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH call
18451 Program error starting Nortel IP Softphone 2050
18466 Wine does not support genitive forms of month names
18472 Mafia hangs
18473 Mafia game losses sound
18478 Wine (snapshot and stable version) crash when running Nikon's ViewNX application
18772 Missing User32.PrintWindow implementation
18852 3dmark Vantage requires avrt.dll
18902 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (part 1 and 2) crashes
18968 Maize Sampler: GUI is only a white box
19015 quik say: general protection fault
19270 Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard freezes after selecting alsa in winecfg
19413 WinZip 12.1 fails to install
19749 EasyWorship crashes
19906 Visual artifacts in Anno 1701
19907 Thunderbird Portable v. 2.0.0.23 startup crash. [dogfood]
19978 python installer: puts python26.dll in C:\windows\system32, not C:\python26 (appinstall)
19982 SetThreadAffinityMask() seems not to work correctly
20152 Oracle IRM Desktop application fails with "unable to initialize the Oracle IRM engine" when invoking a systray context menu option
20249 Venetica game crash
20495 CryptUnprotectData can't handle zero-length payloads (affects chromium unit_tests)
20504 Left 4 Dead 2 crashes after intro movie
20516 Alt-F10 sent on press of F10 with wineconsole --backend=user
20517 temporary language switch causes permanent change of codepage
20527 wine iexplore crashes with charset=gb2312 (with testcase)
20529 SolidWorks Viewer 2010: unimplemented function KERNEL32.dll.CreateMemoryResourceNotification
20553 Invalid read in LISTVIEW_NCDestroy in chromium unit_tests.exe in TableViewTest.Sort?
20602 thread/cpu affinity not correct with multi core enabled source engine games
20622 chromium's net_unittests.exe hangs in SSLClientSocketTest.Read
20672 GetDC change causes black screen in Seven Kingdoms
20681 Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003 INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR
20686 World of Warcraft screen corruption
20692 Probable benign window title leak
20693 Bogus entries in wine.inf transferred into registry
20696 PAF5 crashes when leaving 'Individual' tab for another tab.
20697 Some applications do not correctly detect administrative privileges
20709 Mordor - the depths of Dejenol installer crashes
20715 ACDSee 3.0 (old version) hanging on exit
20729 Logos4: wine has the ALLUSERS property set
20733 installation of yahoo messenger fails
20734 sfirm demo complains LogonUser contains no value.
20736 Left 4 Dead 2 needs imagehlp/ImageAddCertificate() to complete installation
20737 Mordor - the depths of Dejenol installer crashes
20739 winecfg emits a warning called an error
20745 WinZip 12.1 installer subprocess crashes during installation
20754 QIP Infium does not start
20759 Read buffer overflow in NdrConformantArrayMarshall?
20760 Write buffer overrun in CreateFileMoniker()
20764 Reason 4 application aborts with "unexpected error" dialog after installation
20768 Flight Simulator 98 install: the screen is repainted only when moving the mouse
20772 Wordpad allows opening more than one find dialog
20774 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: broken fonts
20787 Watchtower library 2008 (português): crashes when closing the application
20836 Opening non-exe/dll files causes a segfault
20849 read buffer overflow in CRYPT_RemoveStringFromMultiString() triggered by crypt32/tests/oid.c
20855 Appraise-It 8.3 installer fails to download redistributable packages
20860 Read buffer overflow in INTERNET_SendCallback in wininet... calling strlen on non-nul-terminated buffer?
20861 CoTaskMemAlloc()/SysFreeString() mismatch in DocHost_Release(), caught by valgrind in shdocvw/tests/webbrowser.c
20875 EasyWorship 2009 crashes before UI loads
20883 Faults on Portuguese translation of the Winecfg.exe program

Twenty Bucks Thank You Sir May I Have Another

In my last post, I put $30 towards Heroes of Newerth in August. That left me with $20, and $20 for September, October, November, and now December. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to play any games (aside from some stolen HoN time) and I was looking for a new game. I’m a sucker for zombie movies, and I had paid quite a bit of attention to Left 4 Dead, but had always held off because the game was distributed through Valve’s Steam, a DRM-encumbered platform.

Then, in October, Codeweavers announced they were going to support Left 4 Dead 2 in their next release. I hemmed, I hawed, and I folded, on the rationale that supporting Codeweavers was good enough to qualify this purchase for the Twenty Bucks program. (For those who don’t know, Codeweavers is pretty much the commercial side of Wine, employing most of the key programmers.) I bought CrossOver Games, installed Steam, and bought the combo pack of L4D and L4D2. Then I anxiously awaited the demo and the CrossOver Games release that would support L4D2. When it arrived, the demo ran almost perfectly in regular Wine, after some initial installation issues. I played a bit with my son and was living the good life.

Then came the final release on Nov 17th. The installation was broken again, and when you could get the game to run, it would crash within a few minutes. I spent hours working on the installation, even figuring out that I could keep the crash from being a hard lock by enabling sound emulation in CrossOver Games. Codeweavers released three rapid patches, updating CrossOver games to support changes Valve was making in the game. Many CrossOver users and Wine users were experiencing different crashes, with a variety of fixes that fixed some people and not others. And we weren’t alone – hundreds of Windows users were also reporting the same kinds of crashes and the same kinds of random fixes.

I should have known, of course. I was growing suspicious when I noticed that after Steam verified and replaced files such as the client.dll file, the md5sums didn’t match the previous files or future versions. Clearly, these files were being altered somehow, and a crash would cause them to be messed up and then require a replacement from Steam. Then, in the CrossOver forums, Caron Jensen said this:
Some of the drm protection continues to check during gameplay. Usually CrossOver passes this check, but sometimes it does not. We can reproduce some of the crashes and issues at hand. The best thing you can do is file a support ticket.

 
Now, maybe it’s not the DRM, and Jensen is wrong – perhaps it is an anti-cheat mechanism or some other system. But I think it’s the DRM, because that explains much about how Valve is responding to this problem. I think this is why they are keeping almost entirely mum about the whole crashing issue, and mostly communicating in patch notes – they know if they explain why these crashes are happening there will be significant customer backlash. As long as they can pretend it’s a game problem, they can maintain the illusion that Steam DRM is transparent and prevent a PR fiasco. I’m also pretty sure at this point that they don’t know what the problem is, since there have been two patches to fix it and both simply caused more problems. Valve could probably fix this problem today, right now, by removing the DRM. But they won’t. Because to them, customers are thieves – even after they’ve paid.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

Windows Emulators for Linux

If you are not one of the pack that gravitates toward a PC running one of the flavors of Windows, or a Mac enthusiast, you are likely running a version of Linux.



Suppose you want to run software such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, or a Windows based game on your Linux computer. Is there a way to do this? The answer is most certainly yes. There are two possibilities. You could set up a separate partition, run a Dual Boot System and switch back and forth between your Linux and the Windows system. On the other hand, you could get a Windows Emulator program for Linux.

There are quite a few out there. All you need to do is do a Google search for Windows Emulators for Linux. One word of caution, not all of the emulators available on the internet will work with every Linux build. Some may be made exclusively for Red Hat, while others might only work on a Ubuntu system.

One of these is called; CrossOver Linux, and is designed by Codeweavers. This software will allow you to run productivity software, plug-ins, and games on your Linux. It integrates with Gnome, or a KDE environment. CrossOver will work on any x86 based Linux distribution and will allow you to use Windows plug-ins directly from your Linux browser. You just click on the application as you would if you were on a Windows system. It will also mesh perfectly with many browsers, such as Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, or Opera. You can open Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets within your email client.

There are two versions of CrossOver Linux, Standard, and Professional. Standard is $39.95 and runs all CrossOver supported Windows applications and plug-ins. Professional is $69.95 and includes the above as well as games, and multi-user support, among other things. You can find more information about CrossOver Linux at: CrossOver Linux
WineHQ provides another emulation solution free. Wine is free like many Linux distributions, as volunteers write some of its source code. Wine allows Linux users to keep the stability, and flexibility of a UNIX based system, and still run many of the Windows applications that many computer users have come to depend upon. As Wine is open source software, you may extend it to suit your own needs. Wine may not support all Windows applications however.

Crossover games 8.1.2 Better support for Lord of the Rings Online on Mac

A while ago I wrote a post about running Lord of the Rings Online on the mac platform using Crossover Games. This post was much visited from people that wanted to find out how to play lotro on the mac which shows that the mac crowd cannot be satisfied by the native WoW boredom.

I still do my Orc-bashing using a mac and I am very happy to say that the performance with the new version is even better. Some glitches like the floating names or the sound in videos belong to the past.

The Shire is more beautiful using a Mac...ok who threw that at me?

Putty for Mac

$15.00