Bringing Wine into Main

[Scott Ritchie]

Douglass Clem wrote:
> I just noticed the discussion that was started about putting Wine into
> main, so I figured I'd jump in with my two cents.
> 
> I agree that there would be some great advantages to having Wine
> officially supported, and that it would be great to make Wine usage
> easier for new users. However, I'm not so sure that having it installed
> by default would be the best approach. As Mr. Ritchie states, 10% of
> Ubuntu users have Wine installed. I myself have it installed on one of
> my systems. However, I'd not want it installed on any of my other systems.
> 
> Perhaps the method we use for Flash installation would work well for
> Wine. When a new user visits a website that utilizes Flash, they are
> notified that they need new software to run the content, and are offered
> to automatically have it installed. Perhaps when the new user clicks on
> the .EXE file, they could be notified with a window that explains the
> differences between software installation on Windows and Ubuntu,
> introduces them to Wine, and gives them the option to automatically
> install Wine and use it to run the .EXE they clicked. In addition,
> perhaps it would be possible to integrate a feature that pulls info
> about that Windows program from WineHQ.org, and tells them the
> probability of the program working well. I'm not sure if this last bit
> would be possible or not, but it would be a nice addition.

This is indeed what I had in mind - we have no reason to add Wine to the
system until the user attempts to open an exe (or msi). In that way it's
much like the codec prompts.

Wine can't be installed by default for several reasons.  The most
obvious is it won't fit on the CD - on amd64 Wine requires a few hundred
megabytes of 32 bit libraries to be installed.  More interestingly is
that a good chunk of users don't need it at all - 10% is a lot, but not
100.  Wine in its current form presents some clutter to the user
interface if it's not used, such as the entire Applications->Wine submenu.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie