Running Windows Software on ARM Devices with Wine | Hacker News Reader

Running Windows Software on ARM Devices with Wine

gist.github.com

77 pointsmivanchev39 comments

Using Wine on ARM computer to run Windows program, it even requires you to to custom build kernel, compile Windows program to ARM target, all for.. for a Text Editor? Really?

Come to think of it, When I converted myself to Windows user to GNU/Linux user, I studied a lot about Wine. All knowledge was unnecessary for I find GNU/Linux and its ecosystem is much better than Windows.

Notepad++ here is obviously a substitute for any "normal" Win32 application. If you can run np++, you can run many/most Windows applications, obviously discounting stuff that generally doesn't play well with Wine even on x86.

Ironically, programs that one is likely to really miss in Unixes are probably closed-source. (I'm still mourning the absence of Totalcmd and Foobar2000.)

Try deadbeef, it doesn't make real playlists (once changed they can't revert) but it's a carbon copy from another windows to linux convert. The UI editor is also substantially better. I just made an account to post this comment, so PM me for more details. It's all open source!

If it doesn't support FB2K's input plugins, then it's just dead beef to me.

Input plugins? It has lots of identical plugins. Give it a try. deadbeef.sourceforge.net/plugins.html

Just learn Emacs.

Other tools are not always an option. For example, I used CrossOver(Wine) to run WinMerge which had a plugin to support our company's workflow. Wine allowed me to stick with Linux without any time wasted.

Over the years, I've tried several native Linux alternatives. All of them would require a huge time investment to replaced the missing features.

Would it be possible to change the company's workflow to be less reliant on a single program's features?

Sorry to be so late, I love rich GUIs and clickable elements :)

That seems like an awfully convoluted way to get a text editor for Linux.

Apart from being a decent demonstration, editors are deeply personal. Some carpenters might not have a favorite hammer, but others do…

There's a reason why you find emulations of most editors in history remade for "modern" systems, no matter whether that legacy system is TOPS, VM/CMS, Plan 9 or Windows.

Yes, this is the truth, thank you for saying it! I do feel phyiscal pain when having to edit something without my favorite editor =)

Wine is at least a valid way to get sweet sweet video games for Linux like KOTOR, Half-Life 2, IL-2 Sturmovik and Call of Duty (examples from my low-end Intel graphics 4000 laptop).

(HL2 has run natively on Linux for many years just FYI.)

Imagine being able to play these games on ARM without emulation? This is also one of my goals, but as stated in the article, the effort to port them without source code is substantial.

Isn't it possible to do a static translation of the machine code to ARM, and run native?

Quite possible. In the article I mention that a Lithuanian hacker by the name of notaz statically recompiled StarCraft, Diablo 1 & 2. But it's a huge effort, of course. Even better would be to (partially) decompile to, say, C for better performance.

It should be possible to automate translation of the machine code? I've disassembled pure binary with a tool before. How much more work to re-emit ARM? Especially with modern executable formats including debug info, identification of code and data segments etc. which was problematic with pure binary

I'm not an expert on the topic, but the way from a x86/x64 disassembly to an ARM binary is very long. The identification of segments is not 100% accurate, manual corrections will be required, addresses have to updated etc. I'd say fully automatic translation is not really feasible, but I expect to be contradicted :)

I mean, this is "valid" if this is the software the author wants to run, I'm just surprised anyone would go to this kind of trouble to run Notepad++, which is something like my fifth-favorite text editor.

It was very frustrating at times, I cannot lie... It's my favorite editor though, so I just HAD to do it. Now I have to compile all of the plugins I use.

Sure. I’m still amazed by the effort they put down.

Thank you very much!

Don't think there's anything in the world that compares to Notepad++.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but just in case, there are dozens of editors that are way better than notepad++. Feature rich ones like Sublime Text, or VS Code, or simple ones like xed / gedit.

Sublime and VS Code are both huge in size and work rather slowly on older machines, despite being nothing else but text editors. I do support OP's statement - Notepad++ is the best text editor available(on windows).

Yep, I'm surprised how quickly we phase out perfectly healthy machines, just because the software quality keeps getting lower and lower. It's not good for the climate, among other things. I appreciate how zealous the Notepad++ developers are about performance and efficiency.

VS Code has terrible performance. Are you the one who's being sarcastic?

lol?(Windows user perspective) Unless you run it on 10 year old hardware yes, terrible performance. Notepad is better. But if you have at least an ssd and 4gb of ram, I don't see any issues.

This is exactly why I prefer Notepad++, it's resource efficient, it doesn't matter where you run it on. Even on the Raspberry Pi the performance is quite decent.

4 year old MacBook running Windows 10. VS Code opens in a second and is smooth as silk.

I love it.

I do genuinely like Notepad++ but it’s hardly unique. If anything, I’d argue that it exists in a heavily saturated market.

I used it for a long time but eventually I realized that it's only killer feature was the file tree on the left which most editors have anyway.

The search across all open documents is very good.

I'm a big fan of Notepad++. I wish the UDL interface was a little more flexible, but at least I don't have to learn a new language to create one like I would with the otherwise similar Notepadqq.

There is. Far Manager :)

Gedit and Kate are both pretty great.

There's no other! An efficient, feature rich, usable product.

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