But I'd really like to know whether people are actually effectively using things like Office with Wine or whether there's some Door Number Three that I'm just not seeing.
It's a music production studio, and one of the features that it offers is to use a VST instrument. A VST instrument is a .dll file which provides a virtual instrument for the user to use in their music project. So here we have this native linux app but it is able to take advantage of .dll plugins using wine.
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35508
Qt file picker, I think. (The sidebar stuff doesn't work either, I suspect for the same reason.) All the code is open source, just needs someone looking at what's happening.
I tried building it with VST support once, not exactly seamless - not sure I ever got it to work.
The effort isn't complete (they didn't re-implement all the corners), but it works well enough.
It suffers from some graphic bugs (mostly in the properties dialog, for objects in PowerPoint for example; usually you can fix it by reloading the dialog), also, TrueType doesn't look perfect. I can't remember having it crash heavily.
I needed MS Office because while Open/LibreOffice is good enough for most things, and is actually more than sufficient if you write your materials from beginning to end in them and never export to proprietary formats (i.e., always keep saving in ODF), the compatibility layer with MS Office is not perfect and is not sufficient for more advanced things (such as the fancy 3D-and-the-like styling options my colleagues insist on using). The imperfections* of the document compatibility layer become a problem when working on the same document with people who use MS Office.
Using a virtual machine would probably work, too... if I had an infinite amount of Windows licenses. I can't use the license from my real-hardware install, as I still need Windows-on-real-hardware for a few things (to do with drivers and device flashing).
Using Office was the main reason why I had to reboot into Windows, and so I couldn't be happier with this setup. My productivity has increased a lot (no need to wait for reboots). Besides Office, I also use Wine to run the emulator of a platform for which I develop software (the emulator is not open source, and are not available for any Unix but OS X, which I don't have access too). So Wine does a really great job for me, doing things that I think can be called "effective usage" (in fact, I don't run any games under Wine).
* MS Office import/export is actually quite good for a FOSS piece of software, and while the "imperfections" are being perfected as new versions are released, Microsoft too keeps releasing new Office versions with more shiny features, so I understand the difficulty on keeping up with the compatibility on closed formats.
As far as Wine "catching up" to the newest stuff Microsoft releases being an ongoing game, the news is a bit better for Wine than for Libre Office. Wine only needs to implement the crazy new APIs Microsoft creates when they're actually being used by applications. At the very least this gives us considerable time leeway -- not having a Direct3D 10 implementation didn't hurt Wine much when every game kept having a Direct3D 9 fallback for a few years.
I would pay for such a packaging (separately from the key). What this gives me, is the latest compatible Microsoft Office in lockstep with a wine release. I would'nt even mind you charging a few bucks for every incremental packaging.
I daresay that this is a large enough pain point and people would'nt mind paying a few bucks. I would also argue that this would substantially improve the sell of Linux to enterprise customers who can have a decently working Excel at a click as opposed to the seriously cumbersome install on Windows.
Some games have a Linux binary as well (and unfortunately no source code), and yet the Wine one will work better. The Linux binary will be like "old-version-of-some-library.so not found" or "could not connect to X server", while Wine acts as a rock-solid stable graphics and gaming API!
The only sad thing is that relevant versions of Internet Explorer don't work in it, that would be very handy for testing something in multiple browsers.
Wow. That alone would get me to switch banks. Then again, the only thing I ever use the website for is to check my balance.
tl;dr Wine is usable for production work, anyone who claims it isn't is simply incorrect.
One Windows-only modding program is Lunar IPS (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/240/), which patches ROM files using a custom patch format for GameBoy Advance games. Another program was Wii Code Manager (which now has a cross-platform replacement in Java), which let you select a subset of cheats from a database in a text file, then compiled those cheats into a GCT file so they could be applied to a game.
I’ve also used Wine to try out very small games, such those created in game jams. I wouldn’t want to play a game permanently like that, because the game saves might be locked into the Wine version and Wine might turn out to be too slow, but Wine is fine for trying out the game to figure out if I want to play it, or playing a simple game that doesn’t save.
Secondly to compile Python projects to .exe files using Pyinstaller. Wouldn't use this for paid projects but for fun side-projects it's great.
Also, certain Office apps work differently between Mac & Windows (in particular, Excel), and OpenOffice/LibreOffice aren't perfect replacements.
Maybe LibreOffice isn't perfect yet, but I believe it will get there.
If you find a reproducible import/export fidelity bug, ideally with a minimal test case, file a bug. They jump on those like attack dogs, and you can be reasonably sure it'll be fixed next version.
Of course, as a heavy Windows user, I want Aero. It just looks wrong to me without it. I also want my Windows to be as fast as it would be if booted natively, and I even occasionally play games inside VMs. To achieve this, VirtualBox translates the DirectX calls in the VM into OpenGL calls on the host. Rather than reinvent the wheel, VirtualBox uses libraries developed by/for WINE.
I also use WINE to run the odd Windows application or game under OSX or Linux. You can look up compatibility ratings of games on the Wine website, and for many it works absolutely perfectly. (For those where it doesn't, I sigh and reboot into Windows)
I think it's a great solution for playing old games or games that were never released for Mac OS in the first place. I used to play League of Legends using Wine until Riot released a native Mac OS X version.
OS X Wine skins for many games can be found at sites like Paul The Tall: http://paulthetall.com
1) Read files saved by thermal imaging camera (no Linux or Mac software available) 2) Extract data from OriginPro worksheet (no viewer for Linux) 3) Run Bloch solver for neutron precession in magnetic fields
powerpoint viewer
Some small programs I have developped on windows years ago