Google and CodeWeavers are working together to bring Google's popular Windows Picasa photo editing and sharing program to Linux. The program is now in a limited beta test. If this program is successful, other Google applications will be following it to the Linux desktop, sources say. The Linux Picasa implementation includes the full feature set of the Windows Picasa 2.x software. It is not, strictly speaking, a port of Picasa to Linux. Instead, Linux Picasa combines Windows Picasa code and Wine technology to run Windows Picasa on Linux. This, however, will be transparent to Linux users, when they download, install, and run the free program on their systems.
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Member since:2006-01-19
>> Still it is not very userfriendly because the
>> application will still behaviour "strangely"
>> (read: different) in the world of Gnome, KDE, or
>> others.
Just like it behaves differently than 'normal' Windows programs. But that doesn't matter, because Picasa is more userfriendly than your average Linux (GNOME, KDE, etc) and Windows program (ie. even a dumb user can use it without much hassle).
There's userfriendly, and there's userfriendly. Many people think they know the difference.
And please stop this whining, kids. You are all complaining about things you're getting for free. What's wrong with you people? Spoiled?
Member since:2006-01-16
You got me wrong, I was talking about the general usage of wine for native linux builds. I never ran this particular program.
In general, it is not a userfriendly idea to have a GUI completely apart the "common" GUI in the particular environment the user works with and should be used to.
It's just a shame to see everybody here talking about "x86 only", "I want it native" etc. without really knowing how this is done. A little read on wine's Website would help a lot 
Member since:2005-11-14
Just like it behaves differently than 'normal' Windows programs. But that doesn't matter, because Picasa is more userfriendly than your average Linux (GNOME, KDE, etc) and Windows program (ie. even a dumb user can use it without much hassle)
You mean, Digikam is a superior above average Linux program ?
Many programs are actually as cool as Digikam on Linux.
There's userfriendly, and there's userfriendly. Many people think they know the difference
And some just look at their computer illiterate family, and are amazed at how Linux is user-friendly.
And please stop this whining, kids. You are all complaining about things you're getting for free. What's wrong with you people? Spoiled?
You must be new in computing.
People like me have already been beaten by old proprietary apps that won't work anymore some years after launch, which are no more supported, or that require all kind of old compatibility binaries to run.
This creates a mess nobody wants to live with.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2006-01-16
You should notice that there is something called winelib which gives you the opportunity to write/compile native code. It's just like if Wine would be a toolkit (alike QT or WxWidgets) and the program is abstracted of underlying layers and only use toolkit functions. This goes beyond drawn Widgets deep into primitives.
Yet, it is still a native program, perhaps with statically linked winelib, but could also be linked dynamically, like any other used toolkit libs.
This should result in a much more clean, stable and efficient run than issueing wine with an executable file!
Still it is not very userfriendly because the application will still behaviour "strangely" (read: different) in the world of Gnome, KDE, or others.