Architecture
Wine implements the Windows API entirely in user space, rather than as a kernel module. Services normally provided by the kernel in Windows are provided by a daemon known as the wineserver, whose task is to implement basic Windows functionality, as well as integration with the X Window System, and translation of signals into native Windows exceptions.
Although Wine implements some aspects of the Windows kernel, it is not possible to use native Windows drivers with it, due to Wine's underlying architecture. This prevents certain applications from working, such as some copy-protected titles.
Wine is primarily developed for Linux, but the Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Solaris ports are currently (as of January 2009) well maintained. Wine is also available for OpenBSD and NetBSD, through OpenBSD Ports and NetBSD pkgsrc, respectively. Since October 2010, Wine also works on the ARM platform when used as Winelib (which lets developers compile Windows code on Linux using Wine as a library). Some versions of Wine's DLLs are available for Microsoft Windows, but Wine does not fully compile or run on Windows yet.
Read more about this topic: Wine (software)
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider, and should be wise in season and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)