Any experience running WINE on Mac OS X?

[chemistry_geek]

Does anyone have experience running WINE on Mac OS X? Today I found, downloaded, and installed WineBottler Combo (Wine included) and successfully ran NotePad++ as an independent "wrapped" application. "Wrapped" means Wine is wrapped around NotePad++ and placed in a container package that Mac OS X recognizes as an application. Double click on the application and Wine launches in X11, click on the C: drive, then Program Files, and double click on Notepad++, and it launches the program. Help function is not available probably because it calls Internet Explorer, which is not available. Printing is not enabled by default (I thought it might tap into Mac OS X PDF printing but it doesn't), a printer must be installed. It appears that enough generic code of the windows operating system is present to allow running Windows Applications. Pretty impressive for free open source software - requires X11 to be installed.

WineBottler can be downloaded here:
http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/

This seems to be a nice program for people who have to run an application on the Windows platform who doesn't want to buy Parallels Desktop plus Windows operating system.

I would like to know any experiences others have had running Wine on Mac OS X. WineBottler Combo is an idiot-proof way to run Windows applications on Mac OS X without the Windows operating system.

 

[MisterMe]

WINE is a clone of a subset of some of Windows frameworks. Those included in the set are usually older. This means that some applications will work. It also means that many others will not. If the Windows application does not run under WINE, then there is precious little that you can do about it. WINE is more of a curiosity than anything else. CrossOver is a commercially enhanced product based on WINE. The extra frameworks do not make it a reliable method for running Windows applications. If you really want to run Windows applications, then you really ought to back your ears get one of the commercial or free virtualization solutions and install Windows on it or use Boot Camp to install and run Windows natively.

 

[kilowatt]

Wine is absolutely AMAZING.

I am running LTSpice (circuit simulator) without any trouble. I have a few other applications that work through wine as well. In each case, I am totally blown away with the utility of this open source effort.

It is also awesome that I don't have to install windows, either into a bootcamp partition or an image for a virtualization. These two options don't have any appeal to me.

The next version of wine for os x will definitely support printing. I believe it was disabled accidentally. I run mine from macports.

--KW