Quoting: ShmerlYou didn't really answer the question focusing on the wrong part. So I can simplify it - why the need for explicit negative phrasing "not an emulator"? How sudden it was is not really relevant to the main point.

So it looks like I didn't understand your question, since you used the word "sudden" it looked like you put emphasis on that.

Ok, so the need to explicitly phrasing it as not being an emulator was an early attempt at clearly show that it wasn't an emulator, something that clearly didn't work considering that we still 29 years later are talking about it.

One also needs a bit of history here. There had been prior attempts at running Windows applications, all those where based on emulation and required you to install msdos since they where written for non x86 hardware. Then SUN came up with WABI which could run Windows applications faster on SunOS due to WABI instead of being an emulator being a reimplementation of the Windows DLLs that applications used. This was the inspiration behind Wine, hence why it was first called Wabi internally.

Or to quote one of the two devs at the time (aug 1993)

It should be pointed out that the Windows binary will be
running directly - there will be no need for machine level emulation
of the instructions. Sun has reported better performance with their
version of WABI than is actually achieved under MS-Windows -
theoretically the same result is possible under linux.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: F.UltraI don't see him as an authority on this matter at all, he was simply a nice guy who decided to write a FAQ back in 1995 to help the project.

Then why a sudden need to emphasize "not an emulator" at one point? Today Wine kind of stopped doing it, which is a good thing.

There where never "a sudden need" when it was done two months into development of the project back in 1993 long before Wine could even run a single .exe, didn't you even read the post that you replied to?

edit:

And we have this post to Usenet in Aug 1993 by the lead dev (or should we say one of the two only devs at the time):

It should be pointed out that the Windows binary will be
running directly - there will be no need for machine level emulation
of the instructions. Sun has reported better performance with their
version of WABI than is actually achieved under MS-Windows -
theoretically the same result is possible under linux.

The word to look for here is "running directly".

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.UltraAnd LTT is out with a video on exactly how horrible Windows is on the deck right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNt_ReLwk40 [External Link]

Huh. It references GoL at about the 15 minute mark. Specifically, mentions and briefly shows a screenshot of Ethan Lee's article critiquing Valve's Steam Deck verification process.

I'll bet that was the work of Anthony.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: F.UltraWine "never" called it self an emulator (except in some parts of the old FAQ).

If the FAQ references it, it clearly was meant to be called an emulator.

An old FAQ that was written by P. David Gardner who according to his own words in the FAQ:

who is not otherwise involved in Wine

. I don't see him as an authority on this matter at all, he was simply a nice guy who decided to write a FAQ back in 1995 to help the project.

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And LTT is out with a video on exactly how horrible Windows is on the deck right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNt_ReLwk40 [External Link]

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LTTs WAN Show that is live right now tells that the Windows drivers on the Deck "have issues" which is besides the issues with not all drivers exists yet. Open question is of course if it's really the drivers that are the issue here or Windows itself not liking the Deck architecture. Anyway he said that Windows on the Deck isn't even at the stage where you can make performance measures vs Linux.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: EikeYou've got the whole thread at your disposal to cite all those. Nobody here was defining it this way,

And I'm not talking about people here, but about those who were originally annoyed at Wine calling itself an emulator, causing it to be rebranded as "not an emulator". So not sure what your point is exactly. None of these people are here I presume.

But that never happened, Wine "never" called it self an emulator (except in some parts of the old FAQ). In fact the naming came not as a response to "is this an emulator or not", instead it was triggered by SUN having just released Wabi and suddenly renamed it that from WABI and although they had announced it like this prior they now refused to acknowledge that it stood for "Windows Application Binary Interface", one would imagine that the layers at SUN got cold feet and wanted to put restrictions on their engineers.

So people where joking on Usenet in August of 1993 (the initial release of WINE came in July 1993 which only consisted of a simple loader, hence the project was named the Windows Loader at the time) that the "Linux guys" should call their software "WAW" ("WAW ain't Windows(tm)") to which David C. Niemi (then kernel hacker from Red Hat) famously wrote:

How about "Wine Is Not an Emulator"?

The entire discussion is preserved thanks to Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.misc/c/_g3F2H4ieDc/m/n5FE_ygtpdoJ?pli=1 [External Link]

Official WINE timeline:
 
June 26, 1993 Wine 0.0.2 basic loader by Bob Amstadt and Eric Youngdale
July 1 Wine 0.0.3
July 5 Wine 0.0.4
July 6 Wine+TCL (tcl code by Peter MacDonald)
July 8 Wine 0.1.0 using tcl/tk
July 15 Wine 0.2.0 using Xt/Xlib
July 28 Upload directory renamed from Wabi to Wine
August Naming discussion, “Wine Is Not an Emulator” first suggested by David Niemi

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Quoting: RichardYao

Quoting: disterpIf they're talking about "write a Windows emulator for Linux" then it can't be something like Wine, because Wine is not an emulator, is it?

Wine originally stood for WINdows Emulator and did releases on an emulation newsgroup. The complaint about not being an emulator is to distinguish it from hardware emulation. However, OS emulation is also a form of emulation and the wine developers are unique in refusing to acknowledge that they are doing OS emulation.

Actually the project first got it's name WINE as "Wine Is Not an Emulator” in August 1993 between the release of 0.2.0 and 0.3.0, before this the project was called "the Windows loader" / Wabi.

And no WINE is not a OS emulator, it's a reimplementation of the Windows API. Not really sure how a emulator for a modern OS would look like but perhaps this one from Google is. Perhaps they emulate it down to how e.g the Windows Scheduler works to make games get the 100% Windows experience that WINE can never do.

Quoting: rustybroomhandleIf they DO plan to write it from scratch, I'm betting that Amazon's Proton plans will get to market long before Google.

By the wording of the Google quote I would say that it sounds like they have already built this.

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I guess every one have already seen this but it appears that Google have been busy writing their own Proton/Wine from scratch: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22969081/google-windows-games-stadia-emulator [External Link] hopefully they will release it as open source at some time.

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Quoting: scaineGotta admit, I'm sat here gobsmacked that someone thought Elex was decent enough to warrant a sequel.

That's all I got from reading this. Damn.

p.s. awesome news about the underlying tech that powers Linux gaming....

Apparently ELEX made over 100k sales in Germany alone the first year.

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