LiquidPC writes "ONLamp.com has a detailed new article on setting up and using Windows Applications in WINE, one of the many FreeBSD ports you could have alot of fun with. It also suggests going to WineHQ to find out which programs will work in wine, and which ones will not, so you dont have to waste all your time testing."

illusion_2K writes "Another monumental step forward for Linux - the SirCam virus now works on Linux via WINE. ("With a few ommissions")" Allright I had to post it. Thats damn funny. We can emulate worms if we want to!

mjh asks: "I've been running Debian GNU/Linux on my company supplied laptop for 3 months now. I got permission from my manager to run it on the network, but I did not go through the somewhat rigorous process of getting the software certified. I have legitimate business reasons for using it on the corporate network (which is why my manager approved it). I even managed to get Lotus Notes to run under wine so I never had to boot into Winders at all (unless someone sent me a PPT doc). I was pretty happy...until I brought the entire network down." Anyone else running Linux on a Token Ring network who would care to talk about their own experiences?

securitas writes: "ZDNet has posted a comparative review of 5 Windows-on-Linux emulators from VMware (2), NeTraverse, WinToNet and Wine." The results encountered varied quite a bit -- none of the products are perfect, but it looks like they hit a particularly disappointing time with Wine.

Last week you asked Bradley Kuhn, VP of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) questions about working with RMS, his views on software freedom, and much more. He's answered at length below, on everything from becoming a saint to the "web app loophole," perl, and the next iteration of the GPL.

brunes69 notes that you can read the news that konqueror is supporting ActiveX. I saw it being done at at LinuxTag (as well as wine running The Sims!) so its coming. This ought to do a lot to give Linux users compatibility on sites the force shockwave or other obnoxious activex plug-ins.

Swordfish is the second stupid movie in recent months -- Antitrust was the other -- to exploit the hacker myth/legend and wrap a mindless crash-bang action film around it. The first minutes of this film are promising, a neat riff on the nature of movies and their endings. But after that, there isn't an auto smash-up or explosion that this movie doesn't love. Maybe producers think it's hip to write goofy and unrealistic hacker characters into silly films, that they will make this tired form contemporary in some way. But if there's much more of this, the term "hacker" will become as distorted a word as the media has tried to make it. SPOILAGE WARNING: Plot is discussed, no ending.

James Hills writes: "Recently there has been much discussion about what is better for the future of Linux, to continue the process of native ports or embrace WineX so you can run all the Windows games you want on your favorite OS. Unfortunately, this debate also has tremendous repercussions for the future of companies such as Loki, Tribsoft and Hyperion. Read more for how the heads of Transgaming, TuxGames, Loki, Tribsoft, and Hyperion see the issue."

Warrior-GS writes "Transgaming is working on a process that allows Linux users to play Windows games. According to their CEO, Gavriel State: "Essentially, TransGaming's work allows gamers to take off-the-shelf Windows games and run them directly under Linux. It won't run every game out there at first, but 100% compatibility is our long-term goal. To accomplish this, we have been working on a new Linux implementation of the DirectX multimedia APIs. Our work is closely tied with the Wine project -- an Open Source effort to implement the Microsoft Windows APIs on Linux -- in essence, a Windows compatibility layer. Wine is not an emulator in the traditional sense -- it doesn't emulate a CPU or any other hardware -- it loads and executes Windows programs directly on your Linux hardware without the need for any Microsoft code to be installed at all." The whole interview can be found at GameSpy."

In some ways, the Net Revolution, like most others, is a sad and strange story to be told: one of almost unbelievable and rapid change, excitement, opportunity and disappointment. It's also a story of a great backlash, growing doubts, and broken promises. Technologically, the network has proved to be one of the fastest growing phenomena in the history of invention. But politically and socially, few of the early hopes for it have materialized, and the counterattack is underway. Is the Net Revolution out of touch with human beings? Second of a series. (Read more).

The famous jim writes: "The March issue of The FreeBSD 'zine is now available. This month's topics include WINE, doscmd, FreeBSD vs Linux, The FreeBSD Browser, and BSD and Science. As always, feedback is welcome. Enjoy!"

bethorphil asks: "I'm a web developer at a company that concentrates on Coldfusion and Javascript for our applications. I've managed to subvert my workstation to the point where I'm using Linux 80% of the time, yet I'm still stuck with windows for certain aspects of development which are too time consuming without a nice IDE. I need FTP and RDS support integrated into the editor, and it would be nice if javascript debugging were available too. I haven't had much luck running ColdFusion Studio or Dreamweaver through WINE, and VMWare is too expensive. Several of my coworkers have expressed an interest in this too, so I'm pretty sure that a week after I find the right setup, the whole development team will blow away their windows partitions and join the rebel forces... :-) Does anyone have any suggestions?"

What started as something that looked simple -- a "double" interview with Michael Hart of the huge and venerable Project Gutenberg and Jimmy Wales of the brand-new Nupedia open content encyclopedia project -- turned into a series of interesting dissertations on the nature of copyright and online publishing, among other things. You may want to bookmark the page below and return to it a few times to grasp all that both gentlemen (especially Michael Hart) had to say.

kossico asks: "For any Mac users that have needed to run Windows(tm) applications, Virtual PC has probably helped them a lot. Does anyone know of any free/opensource projects that attempt this on Mac a la Wine? If not, who wants to start one?"

Vesuri writes "TransGaming Technologies has released a patch for Wine which makes it possible to run Direct3D applications under Wine. I ran 3DMark2000 and I was impressed - it really DOES work like they promised. It's not perfect but it's a really good start!"

chromatic writes: "Looks like a company called TransGaming Technologies has been improving DirectX support in Wine. They plan to use a modified Street Performer Protocol to make money, and will eventually relicense their patches under the Wine license. Maybe I'll finally be able to run Thief!" And maybe one day Xbill will run on Windows.

Hmmm... seems quite a few people (judging from email I've gotten) have figured out that this week's interview guest, Clinton Ebadi, is the 'unknown_lamer' who frequents irc.openprojects.net, not that this was a great secret or anything. Anyway, Clinton has a pretty good sense of humor about himself and this whole thing, and I think it shows through clearly in his answers (below) to your questions.

geek asks: "With all the buzz around Darwin running XFree86, is there any hope of porting WINE to OS X? This could be a major factor for some people to move over to the platform. Since OS X has some FreeBSD roots my guess is it wouldn't be terribly hard to get WINE working under it. Now that Apple has an OS with UNIX in the floor boards the possibilities seem endless."

Capt. Mondo writes: "Just found this press release on NEC's Web site featuring a wine glass with a diameter of 2,750 nanometers. Normally this sort of thing would make me think it's some silly holiday-themed publicity stunt for nanotech -- like the world's smallest ad placed on a bee for guinnessworldrecords.com -- but the fact that NEC is claiming to have a new process for creating nano-sized objects in 3D (with the "glass" being the result) makes this a bit more interesting. Apparently the new process uses an ion beam with a diameter of 10nm, a gas containing the base material for construction and good ol' CAD. "

Thanks to Jeremy White of Codeweavers for sending over some of the previews of Wine 1.0. I had a chance to see this during ALS, and was very impressed by what they are doing. 1.0 has Gnome/KDE integration, as well as new (better) config program, and some new launcher features. As well as doing this, they've also WineHQ, for all the Wine news that you can drink.