I’m talking about the Linux Wine which is an ‘ Open Source implementation of the Windows API running on Linux or Unix’.  Wine lets you run Windows applications on Linux or Unix.

Recently on a ‘Security Now’ podcast I listened to, Steve Gibson said that, having found the exact same bugs in Wine that also exist in Windows, that Wine was bug for bug 100% compatible with Windows. In other words every single problem issue that exists in Windows has been coded the same in Wine.

This has got to be nonsense. Why would anybody deliberately replicate errors if you can get your code to run a bit better than the original. I know that there may be a case for replicating some known errors where they are so well known that other applications run around them so that their application runs correctly. In this case it would be necessary for Wine to do the same.

If the Wine developers deliberately coded every single bug that they know exists in Windows then those guys would be the worlds experts on Windows and would know every single bug or defect that exists in it. And if they knew that then somehow all of these known issues would have surfaced amongst us, the great unwashed. And I’m not sure that has happened.

So if the Wine guys have not coded all of the Windows issues then how come Wine is 100% Windows compatible? Is somebody nicking code?

Quote of the day

‘Courage is being scare to death - but saddling up anyway’ John Wayne (1972-1979)