2009/5/23 Justin Dugger <jldugger@xxxxxxxxx>:
I really do think some of the important stuff can be done in Ubuntu
proper. For example, Wine could be added to the default install of
Ubuntu, or it could be set up to install as needed, similar to audio
codecs.
One important part when it comes to Wine is that you often need to
customize things a bit to make something work proper, tools like:
* http://wddb.wine-doors.org/
* http://playonlinux.com/en/
Automate those customizations and provide pretty much one-click
installations of Windows software. Would be a good idea to include and
promote them in Ubuntu.
One problem these tools however have is that they don't provide
automatic copy-protection cracking, which is needed to make a lot of
games work in Linux. Is there any way that issue can be worked around
in a legal manner, like downloading the crack instead of including it
or if that doesn't work, provide just an sha1/md5sum so that the user
can provide the right binary and the installer just check that its the
correct one or something like that?
On a broader scale it would be extremely cool if these tools and their
scripts could be extended to handle mods, patches and all that other
stuff that can get annoying to install in native Windows. If those
installations could be automated in Linux that could certainly be an
area where Linux might end up more comfortable then Windows, as
especially with older games it can get annoying to track all of that
down manually.
