nukem996 writes "While the official port of Doom 3 to Linux is still not complete and we still do not know when it is going to be out, other then 'in a few days after the Windows release', Linux users can finally play Doom 3 on Linux with the help of Wine." Elsewhere, an anonymous reader points to a post on the GideonTech forums explaining multi-monitor Doom 3 play, with the caveat: "Doing this with only 2 monitors completely sucks. You want atleast 3, or 5.. or any odd number of monitors (so your center of playing field isn't split between two monitors)." Finally, toasted_calamari explains: "We have written a guide to optimizing Doom 3 for DirectX 8 systems, particularly older ATI Radeon cards. This guide should assist owners of older hardware in running Doom 3 more effectively without upgrading."

JimLynch writes "In my last DIY column, I discussed what it was like to build my first system. As time went by, unfortunately, my DIY system wasn't all wine and roses. This column tells the story of how I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions. It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere."

cuppm writes "ReactOS has just released version 0.2.3 of their free WinNT/2k clone! 'New LiveCD image, improved and more stable kernel and win32k kernel graphics subsystem, lots of networking foundation work, improved setup and better bundled explorer, command shell and drivers. Also included is newly ported user DLL code from WINE.' Download it here. It works pretty well in VMware and is progressing quickly."

Kelly McNeill writes "osViews/osOpinion received the following letter from SpecOpS Labs. This letter is in response to the WINE HQ Weekly Newsletter, Issue 222 dated May 14, 2004, entitled "PROJECT DAVID USES CODEWEAVERS CROSSOVER OFFICE". Their objective in writing this letter is to clear up some of the issues raised on the statements contained in the aforementioned Newsletter, which they believe might misrepresent their efforts to expand the availability of Windows applications on Linux."

SonomaSteve writes "Wine Spectator Magazine is reporting on a new computer accessory that could have you smelling fine Burgundy wine over the web. The prototype, called Olfacom, is being developed by France Telecom and showcased by the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB.) The technology uses 'essential oils' stored in several tanks inside the peripheral to generate aromas like hay, flowers and fruit. Will Olfacom be more successful than DigiScents? The French say, 'Mais, oui!'"

Alex_Ionescu writes "WineHQ brings us the scoop on the latest developments in ReactOS, as well as on Steven Edward's excellent job on porting Wine to MingGW and linking the two platforms together. This is an interesting insight into the WINE and ReactOS project, and a must-read for anyone interested into the future of Windows-replacement projects like these."

SilentBob4 writes "Today, a review of CrossOver Office 3 (written by Preston St. Pierre) as well as an interview with the founder of CodeWeavers Inc., Jeremy White (written by Adam Doxtater) have been published for mass consumption. It looks like CrossOver Office/Wine has come a long way since the dark ages of Linux science. Congratulations to the developers on both teams on a job well done. The interview with Jeremy is better than any I have seen recently."

Ursus Maximus writes "'Sailing' is a gentle and easily readable re-introduction to Greek civilization and culture, with numerous parallels and lessons drawn to our own times by the astute author. Cahill has a real knack for this sort of thing, as he has amply demonstrated in three previous volumes in his "Hinges of History" series. I was introduced to his work in his first volume in the series, 'How the Irish Saved Civilization,' and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Cahill aims to give us a well rounded glimpse into the way the ancient Greeks lived, saw the world, and in fact into the whole of Greek experience. He does this in an idiosyncratic way that will please neither academics nor purists, but which does allow one to taste and smell the Greeks' cultural milieu, and not just to cogitate about it. But cogitate you will, as Cahill gives enough food for thought as post modern man is likely to be able to bear." Read on for the rest of Ursus Maximus' review.

This almost turned into a "State of the Wine Project" discussion, but that's where your highest-moderated questions led, and Jeremy responded with his usual wit, wisdom, and candor.

There have been recent reports about programs from Israel, Canada, and The Philippines that let you run Windows software in Linux. Are they really new? Can they succeed? Is this whole effort worth the time and trouble going into it? CodeWeavers CEO and Wine maven Jeremy White ought to know, since he's been working to bring Windows software to Linux users for many years -- with quite a bit of success. We'll forward 10 - 12 of the highest moderated questions posted here to Jeremy, and run his answers as soon as we get them back.

Sun writes "Flexbeta.net received from Specops Labs screenshots "proving" that project David (previously covered here) is a real thing. The demo.... Office 2000 install. This is something both Wine and CrossOver Office know how to do for quite some time. In a discussion on wine-devel some people noticed evidence inside the screenshots that project David is a CrossOver Office ripoff."

ben_ writes "According to this article on inq7.net, a Philippines company called SpecOps has revealed their Project David, a middleware layer that solves the problem Wine has been working at for years and will "enable all major Microsoft Windows applications to run on the free and open source Linux OS". Further (and more sceptical) analysis at Linux Electrons." I'm with Linux Electrons on this; as nice as it sounds, the information about David comes via Press Release which as we all know are founts of dependability *cough*.

mengel asks: "So this last week, I repeated my annual ritual of trashing my scratch partition, making a FAT filesystem on it, booting Microsoft Windows(tm), and installing tax software to do my taxes. I had hoped, with the advent of Xandros, and of Linspire (formerly Lindows), that one of these increasingly important commercial companies would have talked someone like Intuit, or the Tax Cut guys, into developing this years tax software against Wine, so that it would also run on Linux under Wine as well as on MSWindows. So what has to happen before the companies who write Tax Cut and TurboTax will do versions that least run under Wine, much less native Linux versions? What can we do to help make that happen?"

LnxAddct writes "An article on CNet reports that Macromedia will start taking Linux more seriously. It will start this new initiative by making it's suite of tools run easily under WINE, then depending on the response it gets, it will port it's tools natively to Linux! Their Chief Software Architect, Kevin Lynch, stated, 'What we've been investigating is, When will it be time to bring our tools to Linux? I think it might be happening now.' Maybe 2004 will be the year of Linux."

jvm writes "In 2001 TransGaming launched their product WineX with the goal of bringing Windows games to Linux with 100% compatibility and speed by building on the WINE project. In a lengthy, critical post, Curmudgeon Gamer uses those three years of perspective to assess the company, its product, and its role in the Linux gaming world. How is compatibility progressing? What about the source release after 20000 subscribers? And what's up with porting games to MacOS X instead of Linux?"

Gates82 writes "The creative force of George Lucas is at it again. Producing his own wine. "I would love to see them plant another 5 to 10 acres. There must be spots on that ranch to make some really interesting wines."" Wonder if there's any spots on that ranch left that can make a good Star Wars movie?

IamTheRealMike writes "Well, the attendants are back home and the writeups have been written - WineConf 2004 is over, and Brian Vincent of Wine Weekly News fame has written a comprehensive account of the conference. Wine hackers the world over congregated in snow-covered Minneapolis to talk shop and try and locate the magic bullet to make Wine better, faster. Cheers!"

TylerL82 writes "The Darwine Project aims to get WINE up and running through X11 on Mac OS X/Darwin. According to the site, WINE itself compiles rather well, and they'll be using Bochs for the actual x86 emulation. Quite an interesting idea. It's crazy, but it just might work!"

purduephotog writes "Xiaochun Li of The University of Wisconsin-Madison has come up with the ultimate gift for those high-tech wine and cheese connoisseurs: A cheese slicing laser. More detailed information is available at Optics.Org."

caseih writes "A very neat hack uses the real ntfs.sys driver (obtained from your own windows XP partition and used via a wine-like layer (borrowed from ReactOS) to mount an ntfs partion with full read/write access. While not an ideal solution and certainly not free as in speech, this is an ideal stop-gap measure for many people trying out linux. I think that we'll probably see this in Knoppix pretty soon."