Wine Ported to OpenBSD

(marc.info)

209 points | by iamnothere 2 hours ago

20 comments

  • t-3 57 minutes ago
    https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=179241414029592

    > I doubt much will be merged upstream. Many updates we have can technically run on other OSes (%gs stubs won't be built on Linux because %gs is correctly set, SIGUSR1 will work but less optimally, etc). However I picked an approach where everything that is done for OpenBSD is just marked as OpenBSD only. I did that purely to simplify my life while I was working on it and clearly mark the changes.

    > When I was talking to Wine maintainers a month ago, they were hesitant to accept even patching Wine so it compiles for OpenBSD, mostly because it's another OS they will have to support and keep operational, while the %gs stub fix is something they definitely cannot take upstream. They are very hesitant to take anything that is changing the "emulated" application code.

    • iamnothere 11 minutes ago
      Yes, unfortunately OpenBSD maintainers will have to keep this running for now. NetBSD is apparently in a similar situation. Perhaps their efforts can be pooled at some point if the patches don’t diverge too much.
  • haunter 1 hour ago
    • Maken 3 minutes ago
      I'm really surprised VKD3D works out of the box. So many abstraction layers stacked on top of each other feel like a jenga tower on the brink of falling.
  • RunSet 1 hour ago
    Especially welcome news now that OpenBSD is shaping up to be a refuge from slopcode.

    https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=177411620801633&w=2

    • greyw 1 hour ago
      OpenBSD will probably fall even further behind
      • freedomben 46 minutes ago
        Yep, drivers are one of if not the biggest blocker in my experience, and that's an area AI can help immensely
        • segmondy 23 minutes ago
          Then vibe up the ones you need for yourself.
          • Angostura 19 minutes ago
            ‘Click to write and install driver’
      • Krssst 4 minutes ago
        There are already OSes that include LLM code (such as Linux). It's fine to have a few that don't.
      • vdombr 38 minutes ago
        Yeah, they won't have a chance to rewrite cp and mv in Rust.
        • greyw 32 minutes ago
          I mean OpenBSD's utils cant even match GNU's coreutils so I think they have bigger problems
          • ninjin 30 minutes ago
            "Can't even match GNU's coreutils"? Care to elaborate? Last time I checked OpenBSD is pretty much in line with Posix and there are plenty of us that consider many of the GNU extensions to be anti-features.
            • greyw 26 minutes ago
              Thats exactly what I mean. I dont care about Posix or the whining about "anti-features". The BSD stuff is a clear subset that doesnt get the job done.

              Posix is more an art form documenting the far gone past rather than a practical tool

              • ninjin 19 minutes ago
                "[Doesn't] get the job done"? Well, it gets my job done. You are welcome to use whatever you subjectively prefer (I use GNU's date(1) for a few scripts, but would prefer the English date grammar parsing as a tool of its own), but if you are unable to talk about anything in concrete terms there is not point in trying to discuss in good faith and I will just roll my eyes and move on.
          • Quitschquat 11 minutes ago
            I think that's a cultural thing in *BSD.
      • noosphr 36 minutes ago
        If you don't break the law you do indeed fall further behind people who do.

        Nothing in that post is against using an LLM. It's all about copyright:

        >Since every file in OpenBSD has been continually verified to ensure correct Copyright, and we've even deleted code which has incorrect Copyright, the chances of us accepting such new code with such a suspicious Copyright situation is zero.

        Once the current bubble pops we're going to see a lot of litigation over copyright enfringement by LLMs. Currently no one wants to rock the boat because everyone hopes to make a trillion dollars from AI, Oracle included. Once they see they can't the knives are going to come out and I wouldn't want to be Linux at that point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America

        • greyw 27 minutes ago
          Copyright will adapt.

          Also my personal opinion about copyright _in the FOSS domain_ is that I simply dont care. Copyleft as the GNU folks like to call it is just using the copyright laws to achieves certain free software objectives. If that doesnt work anymore there will be another fix

          • noosphr 19 minutes ago
            Copyright adaptation literally means billion dollar lawsuits, because copyright only adapts after court decisions.

            The BSD licences are not copyleft, or indeed part of the GNU copyright regime.

      • shevy-java 11 minutes ago
        Well, they were always slow. But they made a stand against AI slop, which is great. Look at how AI slop infiltrated the ruby core team. You even get slop-spammed down when you try to interact with e. g. Hiroshi Shibata, who suddenly has ... perfect english language skills. A few years ago his command over the english language was rather weak (which is fine by the way, I much prefer broken english from a real human than AI slop spam text as filter acting in between humans).
    • smlacy 1 hour ago
      Wow, I honestly didn't think HN would succumb to the AI := Slop perspective.
      • ranger_danger 33 minutes ago
        Although Theo seems to imply AI code is not welcome, this commit says Claude was used: https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/9c2b8e445a0bdfafdd6148...
        • ninjin 26 minutes ago
          Plenty of issues that have been patched recently found using such tools as well. OpenBSD's policy remains largely the same as always: You need to understand the patch you propose and they need to be maintainable. The link elsewhere in this thread is mainly discussing large patches where it is unclear if the LLM drew too heavily on code elsewhere.
      • lionkor 56 minutes ago
        I think it's the complete saturation of the platform with members who make it feel like HN is a platform for people to boast about how many tokens they burnt to rewrite something that already worked fine.

        It polarizes people to either join the "the LLM is my god" crowd or the "if AI touches the repo, it's all slop" crowd.

        The careful balance is rarely discussed, probably because that's the part that still takes work.

        • kingcauchy 49 minutes ago
          It really depends on the post anymore. Have had a lot of really thoughtful discussions about the nuance that came out of HN convos. Seems like most businesses and people are still just trying to figure out.
        • runeb 34 minutes ago
          I would hope that lazy polarization found some resistance on this particular forum
    • hias 36 minutes ago
      how do you think they made this wine port lol?
  • ataraxia937 33 minutes ago
    I find it amusing and appropriate that the surname of the author of that message is Frohwein. "Happy wine" in German.
  • simonw 19 minutes ago
    OpenBSD apparently still uses CVS. I found this GitHub mirror of their ports repo which has the new wine port: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/emulators/wine

    That has a static import from 13 hours ago. Anyone know if this wine port has its own repository somewhere else tracking the history of the development effort?

    • ninjin 2 minutes ago
      "Still uses CVS", I mean, CVS worked twenty years ago and it still works today for all the platforms OpenBSD supports. If you prefer something else, that is all right, but here is emulators/wine on CVSWeb:

      https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/ports/emulators/wine

    • iamnothere 6 minutes ago
      They mirror to GitHub regularly, but development still happens in CVS. They are building “got” as a potential replacement that allows git-driven development while following OpenBSD’s idiosyncratic approach: https://gameoftrees.org/goals.html

      My guess is they based this on the similar NetBSD port but I don’t know where the repo is.

      Edit: sibling commenter found it

    • Maken 8 minutes ago
      In their official CVS they link to this repo: https://github.com/NethIafin/wine/tree/openbsd-master
  • philipallstar 59 minutes ago
    Missed opportunity to call it Port.
    • kingcauchy 51 minutes ago
      Probable being reserved for the OpenBrandSherryDaquiri rebranding.
  • brynet 58 minutes ago
    I OK'd this port. I apologize in advance.
  • BlackRabbit1 1 hour ago
    Finally I can run Zonealarm on OBSD
  • CodeCompost 1 hour ago
    That is awesome. I take it I can't run this with nVidia.
  • shevy-java 12 minutes ago
    Now the BSDs are not so popular compared to Linux, but I think this is great news as more eyes help here. Let's have EVERYTHING from windows portable towards linux. (I struggled with the 32-bit versus 64-bit stuff; this should also be a prime goal for wine to make this a trivial super-easy to solve thing for linux in general. Back then when I ran into this issue, it was not trivial to solve.)
  • j45 40 minutes ago
    I remember reading once how far away something like this way to work - for all the time that BSD has kept servers and networks safer than other options, it's nice to see things like WINE making it there as well.

    Its hard to not think of the possibility that BSD might offer new or different advantages to keeping legacy windows applications safe until there is a willingness to adopt or develop alternatives.

  • Bluescreenbuddy 1 hour ago
    Good lord this is awesome
  • ericfrederich 1 hour ago
    My first thought was this must have something to do with the development momentum around the PS5 but that apparently runs FreeBSD not OpenBSD.
  • raverbashing 37 minutes ago
    I wonder what's the state of 3D/OpenGL support on OpenBSD or if the games run into too many problems here
  • throwaway27448 1 hour ago
    Out of curiosity, how much work/what sorts of openbsd-specific details must be addressed to get such a port working?
    • coldpie 53 minutes ago
      You can download the attachment and take a look at the patches. Wine already supports FreeBSD and macOS, so it's not tooooo crazy hard to add another BSD/Unix to the pile. Looks like there's a few Unix APIs that have drifted, so the patches add some #if OpenBSD style stuff to avoid using some symbols that don't exist on OpenBSD. The gs register stuff is by far the most complex bit. IIRC that register is used for thread-local storage on Windows, but for other purposes on other OS's, so handling access from win32 binaries to the gs register is a big problem when porting to a new OS.

      On the whole it looks well written to me, especially with how complex & low-level these areas of Wine are. Good work to the author. I'd encourage them to try upstreaming it if they're interested. Some of it looks a little hacky, which upstream will object to, but maybe they could get some help cleaning it up, which will avoid having to maintain a diff and result in an even better port.

      Edit: Oh, looks like they already talked with upstream https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=179241414029592 It's not a huge diff to maintain, so maybe that is the better route. Great work either way.

  • imagetic 45 minutes ago
    Yes. More of this.
  • saurilabs 54 minutes ago
    This is awessome!
  • ndbe 1 hour ago
    Insane work!

    There's even the remaster of The Witcher running! If I had money I would simply gift to those guys.

  • hahahoo 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • rskeens 1 hour ago
    [dead]