Comment by fnordfnordfnord
13 years ago
I should have been more specific. How would you introduce WINE to freshmen, not CS students who might need to study WINE in detail, but well, here's a specific case, college freshmen who are expected to install WINE and then install and use software such as LTSpice, DipTrace, etc.? Or, more generally, how to explain it to neophytes who are expected to become moderately sophisticated computer users who might need to use WINE, but will probably never be software devs.
Something like:
WINE is a translator that allows Windows programs (those that have an .exe extension) to talk to other Operating Systems.
or perhaps:
Many people need wine if you want them to work. A windows program on Linux is no exception.
> WINE is a translator that allows Windows programs (those that have an .exe extension) to talk to other Operating Systems.
I'm sure the aforementioned freshmen would like a no-bullshit explanation for why "emulator" hurts the WINE people's feelings but "translator" does not. It's always been a mystery to me.
> no-bullshit explanation
Hah! Not really possible, especially considering that the project used to be called windows emulator:
I'd say they've changed the meaning so they can reinforce that it's not just another virtual machine ( and that it's faster than one).
Which is true, it doesn't emulate another hardware architecture's calls, just the kernel and OS magic needed.
In that regard, think of say a console game or arcade game emulator on a computer- that will have to emulate the whole architecture of said game system as well as the game.
Contrast that to a game program for the the x86 architecture, but not for windows- you could run it natively on windows providing you change everything the game asks for that's part of the Gamesystem380 system into something windows understands, and vice versa.