Wine works with Mac OS X PPC

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 21, 2007, at 15:47, mi demur wrote:

> do you know if Wine works with Mac OS X PPC ?
> it seems good because there is a ticket in 2002.
> if no, there are a solution ?

With "port search wine", I do not see any Wine port in MacPorts. I  
see a portfile has been submitted in

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/11286

and a newer one in

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/11779

However, I expect this will only work on Intel Macs. See to the FAQ  
on the Wine web site:

http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-faq/index#UNDER-WHAT-PLATFORMS- 
WILL-WINE-RUN

"Thus running Windows binaries on other platforms (e.g. Mac OS X on  
PowerPC) using just Wine is *not* possible."

The FAQ also says that support in Intel Macs is somewhat poor at this  
time:

http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-faq/index#WILL-WINE-RUN-ON-MACINTEL

"There are some complicated issues surrounding Wine on Mac OS X.  
Working with low-level features, such as signal handling and system  
registers, are quite different on Mac OS X. Further hampering the  
issue are some bugs within the operating system. Beyond that,  
integration on Mac OS X becomes difficult because it is vastly  
different than a traditional *nix desktop. Menuing and graphics  
drivers are just two areas that require a complete reimplementation  
in order to be functional."

Further questions about Wine should be directed to the Wine mailing  
list.

Since Wine is probably a poor option on Intel Macs and not an option  
at all on PowerPC Macs, you should look at other options for running  
Windows software on a Mac. For PowerPC-based Macs your only option is  
probably Microsoft VirtualPC, which emulates an Intel processor, and  
emulators are slow. If you need to run Windows on a Mac, your best  
option for acceptable speed is to buy an Intel-based Mac and use  
either Apple's free Boot Camp beta or the commercial Parallels  
Desktop. All of these options would require you to buy Windows as well.