16 replies to this topic

[doh123]

I have a Universal Binary (i386, X86_64) build put together for a new wrapper... of course Wine itself is still 32 bit, but... do yall think having everything else 64 bit will be beneficial?  I have tried a few games and such with this and I don't notice any difference in X running 64 or 32 bit... except that the X libraries in the wrapper pull like 44 mb instead of 23 mb ... don't really like that.

I'm also doing 10.6 builds which are overall less problematic not having to worry about 10.5...

Should I just stick with making everything i386 for now?  Should I just forget 10.5?  10.5 usage is quite low and I think most of those are probably PPC users since they cannot upgrade.  10.6+ also runs games much better overall, so I'm not sure why any gamer would want to stick to 10.5.

[hmtinc]

doh123, on 10 April 2012 - 01:55 AM, said:

I have a Universal Binary (i386, X86_64) build put together for a new wrapper... of course Wine itself is still 32 bit, but... do yall think having everything else 64 bit will be beneficial?  I have tried a few games and such with this and I don't notice any difference in X running 64 or 32 bit... except that the X libraries in the wrapper pull like 44 mb instead of 23 mb ... don't really like that.

I'm also doing 10.6 builds which are overall less problematic not having to worry about 10.5...

Should I just stick with making everything i386 for now?  Should I just forget 10.5?  10.5 usage is quite low and I think most of those are probably PPC users since they cannot upgrade.  10.6+ also runs games much better overall, so I'm not sure why any gamer would want to stick to 10.5.

i suggest that its time to drop support for 10.5 . Its a bit outdated and anybody running 10.5 right now probably don't have the hardware ether to run modern day games in wine .
If 10.5 is dropped then i can switch to building infinity on 10.7 .

Also .. looking at the way apple is headed . my question is what happens to wine , when apple drops support for the x86 architecture

[doh123]

hmtinc, on 10 April 2012 - 02:33 AM, said:

Also .. looking at the way apple is headed . my question is what happens to wine , when apple drops support for the x86 architecture

We close up shop here...

[hmtinc]

doh123, on 10 April 2012 - 02:37 AM, said:

We close up shop here...

That would be a sad day indeed

that day is fast approaching

[Tetsu]

If that happens I'm leaving the Mac and perhaps others as well. That's a depressing thought and not something I'm ready to accept as a fact yet. I'll probably go back to windows unless they go wholesale to ARM as well. I'll be damned if I'm going to run any x86 hardware via rosetta style emulation. WINE ports of old games ran better than the same games via rosetta for starters. It's like what.. should we start preparing for a mass exodus to other systems? Do you think everyone would just roll over and take it? I wont. As I have seen someone say in comments elsewhere and I quote: "A move like that would shred any tenuous respect I have left for Apple. It's a move that ONLY inconveniences users and benefits themselves".

On the other hand there's a rumor they may make an x86-ARM hybrid.  Some are saying sites like SemiAccurate are rumor mongering that so for stock price manipulation. http://osxdaily.com/...arm-processors/

Speaking of rumors rumor has it Sony is heading TOWARDS x86 with the Playstation 4... lol


BTW, I've seen reports of people running certain games in WINE in Linux via WoW64. http://appdb.winehq....rsion&iId=19531 That's interesting to me.

[HiPhish]

hmtinc, on 10 April 2012 - 02:33 AM, said:

Also .. looking at the way apple is headed . my question is what happens to wine , when apple drops support for the x86 architecture

Where do people always get these apocalyptic rumours from? It's like when the dropped the "Mac" in Mac OS X and speculations ran wild about OS X coming to PCs as well. Or how Lion would be the last OS X version just because it's called Lion. At this point I'm not even sure if those are real rumours or if they are being spread on purpose.

[syao]

Rumors about Apple products are always amusing, heh... Just like when we saw those iPhone 5 prototypes. On a side note, facts say that the upcoming windows version is gonna be able to run on ARM chips, so maybe some other project will show up if wine won't support ARM (I still prefer the x86 platform though, I hope at no point in time I'll be forced to buy an ARM desktop computer)

Back on topic, I'd say it's about time to drop support for 10.5, since I know how much of a pain it is to compile (and also to write) stuff that works there. 10.8 is gonna be out soon, and supporting more than two old versions is really too much. All Intel Macs are capable of running 10.6 in any case.

[Tetsu]

Just quickly speaking of Windows on ARM. That version is being targetted at low power devices and has no compatibility with x86 software. So it wouldn't help with anything related to here.


But yeah getting back to the subject at hand. I think it's about time to drop 10.5 support too.

[doh123]

no input on 64 bit?  I'm thinking of not doing it since Wine has to be 32 bit anyways... and it wastes over 20mb of space per wrapper... I don't think i want to go 64 bit only, so i386 would be the main choice.

Are there any 10.6+ machines besides the original "Core Duo" and "Core Solo" macs that cannot do 64 bit?  Would a 64 bit version work?  It would be a ton of work since the supporting Wine libraries would need to be 32 bit and the supporting X libraries would need to be 64, and some are the same one and would have to be dual... figuring all that out could be a pain, so I'm tempted to just stick with 32 bit for now.

But if Apple does take Macs to ARM, they just become a slightly more powerful iOS device, and I wouldn't use them anymore... would be back to Linux for me I guess.  I don't know if ARM CPUs will ever get powerful enough to compete with x86 compatible chips though... they have really never been focused on performance as the main goal.

Wine does compile on ARM systems though, so Wine may start supporting Windows ARM programs on ARM machines, but I doubt that'll be useful for much.  I suspect the majority of the Windows world will not move to ARM.

[Tetsu]

If there's no benefit to running just the wrapper in 64-bit but not the engine itself then it's probably best to stick to 32-bit for now.

WoW64\WINE64 on the other hand allows one to run 64-bit windows programs in WINE. But yeah even on windows you need dll's for both 32-bit and 64-bit and I read winetricks doesn't yet work with WOW64 WINE. They are mostly testing it right now. But it would be nice to some day run 64-bit games on Mac so far not even the native porting houses do 64-bit games yet. The only 64-bit Mac game I have is the latest eduke32 with modernized opengl renderer.

Most games do seem to still be 32-bit though even on windows. Although the source engine seems to support 64-bit and so does Crytek's games and UE3 engine games. Fake Factory's Cinematic Mod for Half-Life 2 gets a performance boost from it.

[cluthz]

32 bit isn't that limiting for wine as it is for windows.
It seems to me that since the "os" uses a minimal amount of resources in wine compared to win, you don't reach that mem cap that fast.

I dunno if there is other advantages to it?

As for 10.5, i see no reason to keep it around if it's a hassle.
Very few use 10.5 and those who do can probably build it themselves.
MIght keep some stable releases built for 10.5?

[syao]

doh123, on 10 April 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

Are there any 10.6+ machines besides the original "Core Duo" and "Core Solo" macs that cannot do 64 bit?  Would a 64 bit version work?  It would be a ton of work since the supporting Wine libraries would need to be 32 bit and the supporting X libraries would need to be 64, and some are the same one and would have to be dual... figuring all that out could be a pain, so I'm tempted to just stick with 32 bit for now.

No, it's only the Core Solo and Core Duo models (we're obviously not counting the Perntium-M original Apple TV here).  Then they switched to the Core 2 Duo chips, capable of running 64 bit code. (well, the first series of C2Duo were not capable of booting a 64 bit kernel because of EFI limitations, but they were perfectly capable of running 64 bit apps on a 32 bit kernel - my old 2007 white MacBook is one of those). On the Pro line, the very first Xeon Mac Pro were already 64 bit capable.  Hackintoshes are another matter, but I quit using those after Tiger, so I don't know much about what processors support what and what people are using.

For reference, this page lists all processors used by Apple in their computers.  If you click on each processor name, it brings you to a list of computers that use it, and every computer is listed with its specs.  All but CSolo/CDuo are listed as 64 bit capable.

As for having a 64 bit X11, I'm not sure.  Would that bring any performance improvements? (i.e. using less memory overall, since it could potentially use 64 bit libraries that are already loaded in RAM?)  Else there's no point in wasting time and effort there, just make it 32 bit.

[ovvldc]

For 64bit, I don't see a point in wasting space if the only benefit is running >4GB RAM (actually >2GB on Windows because of graphics card limitations). Not so many games need that much space, and they are all designed to still fit in WinXP and 32bit at the moment (except for exclusively DX10+ software, but Wine doesn't run those anyway ATM).

As for 10.5, I recall that any computer with an Intel processor can run 10.6, and the upgrade is €10. If you are serious about your applications, that is a very reasonable investment. So I doubt you would lose lots of people.

[Blinx 007]

i am on 10.7.3 and can't use any CX CXEX wrapper but i doing pretty good

[doh123]

blinxfrost, on 10 April 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

i am on 10.7.3 and can't use any CX CXEX wrapper but i doing pretty good

what does that have to do with anything?

[hmtinc]

doh123, on 11 April 2012 - 02:06 AM, said:

what does that have to do with anything?

This whole thread went off topic

[thanoulas]

My view is that it is time to drop support of 10.5
10.8 is coming out in a few months, and there is no reason to support that many versions of osx, it's only going to be harder in the future and time consuming.
Wine is going to add x64 support at some point, so better be prepared for that as well. All macs support x64 for some time now, even core 2 duo's I think. 40mb overhead is not so bad if it's giving some performance increase (and it should).
What about forking a 64bit version and see if it causes any trouble, and what the gain is? A wider testing would yield better results as to what performance increase there is (if any).