Wine on x64 bit Ubuntu 6.06 (was Re: [nzlug] Wine on Ubuntu?)

[Cliff Pratt]

Robin Sheat wrote:
> On Friday 05 January 2007 21:12, Cliff Pratt wrote:
>> Can anyone confirm that it is there in the x64 version of Ubuntu 6.06?
> Short answer: it's not.
> 
> Wine runs 32-bit windows binaries, and mixing 64 and 32 bit is horrible. Part 
> of 'Wine Is Not an Emulator' is that it isn't emulating an environment for 
> the binaries to run as such, instead it's just providing a set of libraries 
> that provides something that looks like a Win32 API. As such, it doesn't 
> avoid the 64->32 bit library issues that exist.
> 
> However, apparently it can be done (just based on what I've seen in the Ubuntu 
> forums). My guess is it involves a 32-bit chroot, which is something I'd like 
> to avoid.
> 
> That said, I don't know the details and I haven't even read up on it to try. 
> There's only one program I'd like to get running in Wine (a game I used to 
> enjoy years ago: Afterlife), but it's not a pressing concern of mine, so I 
> haven't tried.
> 
I can't see that running 32bit exes on a 64 bit system is a problem. The 
command set for x64 includes the command set for x86. However, I think 
I'll pass on it at the moment (though I may try it under VMWare in a 
32bit Linux client! <grin>).

There is a page called 'wine64' which appears to be a fairly advanced 
project to get Wine to handle x64 Windows apps:

http://wiki.winehq.org/Wine64

Cheers,

Cliff