Answer this eternal question:

Can I use Wine to make the Windows driver for my network card /
graphics card / scanner / etc. work on Unix?
This commit is contained in:
Francois Gouget 2003-08-22 05:22:41 +00:00 committed by Alexandre Julliard
parent 943a3efe68
commit bb699ef90f
1 changed files with 34 additions and 0 deletions

View File

@ -238,6 +238,40 @@
</answer>
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
<question id="Use-Windows-driver-with-Wine">
<para>Can I use Wine to make the Windows driver for my network card /
graphics card / scanner / etc. work on Unix?</para>
</question>
<answer>
<para>
The goal of Wine is to make it possible to run Windows applications
on Unix, not Windows drivers or VxDs.
</para>
<para>
Drivers and Windows applications belong to different worlds.
Applications run in user mode and use the APIs provided by
the kernel and the other user mode dlls. In contrast, drivers
are loaded in the Windows kernel, i.e. in ring 0 instead of ring
3, have to deal with specific memory management issues, and use
instructions not available to regular applications. This means
they would not be able to run in Wine since Wine runs entirely
in user mode. Rather you would have to modify the Linux kernel.
But in addition, drivers use a completely different API from
regular Windows applications. So the work performed on Wine would
not even be of any use for such a project. In other words, making
it possible to use Windows drivers or VxDs on Unix would be a
completely separate project.
</para>
<para>
However, if you want to reuse Windows drivers on a non-Microsoft
operating system we recommend that you have a look at
<ulink url="http://www.reactos.com/">ReactOS</>.
</para>
</answer>
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
<question id="Which-one-of-the-different-Wine-packages">
<para>Which one of the different Wine packages out there is good for me?</para>