Intel ChromeBooks Can Now Run Wine and Steam (codeweavers.com) 45
"With Google Play and Android app support hitting Chromebooks, it's now possible to run Windows applications/games on Chromebooks via CrossOver For Android," reports Phoronix. Slashdot reader grungy writes: The first Intel ChromeBooks have access to the Play Store now, and the Android version of Wine apparently runs on them... Pictures show the Steam client running, and a clip of a D3D game. Of course, the Play Store is only available on the ChromeOS developer channel so far, but that should change later this year.
CrossOver for Android also hasn't been officially released, but Thursday CodeWeavers' president blogged excitedly that "we are staring at a Leprechaun riding on the back of a Unicorn while taking a picture of a UFO. We are running CrossOver through Android on a ChromeBook running a Windows based game launched from the Steam client. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE...EVER!!!"
CrossOver for Android also hasn't been officially released, but Thursday CodeWeavers' president blogged excitedly that "we are staring at a Leprechaun riding on the back of a Unicorn while taking a picture of a UFO. We are running CrossOver through Android on a ChromeBook running a Windows based game launched from the Steam client. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE...EVER!!!"
Optimistic view of Wine (Score:2, Informative)
It can barely run any games or applications, except those used in screenshots..
Re:Optimistic view of Wine (Score:5, Funny)
Crossover for Android doesn't even exist yet, so the entire story is bullshit.
You'd almost swear that the the author of TFA had access to a pre-release copy of it; as if the guy worked for codeweavers or something....
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WINE lets you run foobar2000 on Linux and OS X without a problem.
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That's not totally fair. It's not great for newer applications, but it does a good job of the older stuff. Heck, even modern Windows has trouble with some of the ancient Office versions, whereas Wine works pretty well. I agree that it is unreasonable to expect Wine to run current games and software. But if you have an old XP laptop and you are considering buying a Chromebook to replace it, this could help tremendously with your upgrade as you would still be able to access all of your old documents.
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I don't see how games are the issue on Android devices. There are plenty of games available - and as Android becomes more and more dominant, there will only be more. Hell, even MS Office is available native on Android devices.
But where WINE shines is in allowing you to run that odd Windows app that isn't available on MacOS or Linux. I use the 'wineskins' WINE wrapper to provide a version of a WIN32 app I wrote at work for mac users. This app is no longer in heavy development, and my company would never
They never learn (Score:4, Funny)
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!
Rube (Score:2)
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Re:Exciting, but dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people have been using Chromebooks wrong. When you go out and buy a $500 laptop or tablet, you don't really expect it to run games or applications that require intensive graphics processing or physics computing. But for some reason, when it comes to $200 Chromebooks, people expect them to do everything a $3k gaming rig can do. I mean, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, and it's been like this since their launch.
I'm happy with my slightly customized $200 Chromebook that has a good keyboard and touchpad, 6.5h battery life and it's very light and durable. I'm using it right.
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Because Apple products cost more.
Cost more + do less = fail.
Chromebooks usually cost less.
Cost less + do less = de rigueur
Re:Exciting, but dumb... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, people don't always understand the finer points of fields in which they're not educated. Most people aren't educated enough in the field of computing to know the difference between x86 and ARM, or Windows, OSX, Linux, and Chrome OS. Hell, I've met people who think iOS and Android are the same OS and don't understand why apps bought on their iPhone don't appear in their Play store purchases; after all, they used the same email address for both.
When that's who you're selling to, you can expect any and all limitations of your platform to be viewed as flaws, mistakes you made, that you must fix in order for your platform to not be complete crap in the eyes of the consumer.
I'm not saying it is right, just that it is.
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To be fair, Google doesn't exactly emphasize the difference [google.com] between Intel and ARM chromebooks. CPUs aren't even listed in the specs!
That said, I do expect that my Chromebook (ASUS C200MA-DS02, Intel Celeron N830, 4GB RAM) can do everything my wife's Windows laptop (ASUS X200CA-DH21T, Intel Pentium 2117U, 4GB RAM) can do (except run Windows apps natively, obviously).
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I wanted a Chromebook especially because most of them have an ARM processor, which usually translates to a longer battery life and they also tend to be a lot cheaper than low-end x86 laptops. I've tried running Linux on my Chromebook, too, but I found out that for the things I use it for, I don't really even need a full-fledged Linux distro to do them!
My Chromebook is from circa 2013 and it still runs like new and even the heavier websites render smoothly nowadays. If I went to buy a cheap x86 laptop, it'd
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I got an x86 Chromebook (with 4GB RAM, no less!) for $120 on Prime Day ($180 - $40 sale price - $30 discount for using my Amazon Visa + ~$10 tax). If I could have gotten an ARM Chromebook instead for $60 or less I wish I'd known it!
Fun for those that enjoy that sort of thing (Score:2)
I knew someone that made a game of seeing how many mods they could load on Dragon Age before the game died.
Steam on a Chromebook? Old News. (Score:4, Interesting)
I had Steam (both wine version and Linux version) working on my Asus C710 Chromebook a couple of years ago. The system itself lacked enough power to do any big gaming, but FTL worked well enough.
Last year I played quite a bit of Skyrim, streaming it from a Windows desktop elsewhere in the house.
Crouton is good stuff. https://github.com/dnschneid/c... [github.com]
Yawn. (Score:4, Interesting)
The first thing I did when I got a Chromebook (that I had never asked for) was to install Linux (specifically, GalliumOS [galliumos.org]). Not surprisingly, Wine runs just fine on top of that, along with the older Windows games that I still play. Minecraft also ran surprisingly well on it, between 20 and 35 fps fullscreen (1366x768), though of course Wine is not required for this. I even used it as my Minecraft server for a while (and might again) because it is silent. I did not attempt to run the server and the client simultaneously. That would be asking a bit much.
Unfortunately, Bay Trail has some serious shortcomings that have made me realize this machine will never be what I actually need out of a daily driver laptop, and the eMMC (and lack of M.2 or SATA) doesn't help. That's why I've posted it for sale, the intent being to buy a C720P with 4GB of RAM and an M.2 slot instead. I already know that can easily be converted into a triple-booting Ubuntu/OS X/Windows machine that performs reasonably well, because I know the guy in charge of the C720P Hackintosh project. :)
If running Wine on a Chromebook is Invisible Pink Unicorn territory, I've got a whole herd of them grazing on carpet in my living room. (What, you didn't know Invisible Pink Unicorns are all rug munchers?)
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Real progress would, in fact, be not having to compile for dozens of different architectures.
Such as describing a way, in a standardised language, of being able to do anything, no matter the underlying hardware. Remember those days? When languages did that for you?
Real progress would be an architecture where the source code is the program, and "first run" is actually a compile-and-cache-bytecode kind of operation. And if you move that same compiled binary to another system: a) it has the source code in i
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And for the GUI? :)
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Real progress would, in fact, be not having to compile for dozens of different architectures. Such as describing a way, in a standardised language, of being able to do anything, no matter the underlying hardware. Remember those days? When languages did that for you?
Not really, no.
No more reinventing the fucking wheel for every platform, no more having to compile multiple versions and formats (...), the best performance you can get for that particular architecture
Hardware has different capabilities. Platforms have different capabilities. Abstractions and layers of indirection trade performance and simplicity for interoperability and reuse, you will never write code that is "perfect" on all metrics. So you want your application to output sound, great. So tell me how would you write code that runs on everything from a Sound Blaster from the 90s to bitstreaming over HDMI and any and all future formats yet to come? Does the OS have some kind of configurat
Hardware's too weak to matter (Score:2)
Why worry about gaming on a Chromebook? The hardware, especially the GPU, is too weak to care. Unless you want to play a clicker game or something...
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It should be fast enough for indie platformer games with 8-bit style sprite graphics, not to mention all the Japanese visual novels that are being translated and brought to Steam via Sekai Project.
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It's more than enough for Tetris, Zork, tuxracer, Soitaire,, many modest chess programs, and many other graphically lightweight games. It's even enough CPU for the original Doom and Quake games, which are still good fun. And it's more than enough power and graphics for a "point-of-sale" system on lightweight, obsolete, and therefore inexpensive low end hardware. The machines even have decent enough screen size and battery life for a field console for use in a data center visit, or for handing one off to so
Not for anything infected with Denuvo. (Score:2)
Since those expect traditional Windows PC's, don't expect to run much.