Hi.
Our company requires the use of an old version of FIREBIRD (windows firebird). The problem is that often problems occur while using wine.
For example, some of them are:
- A proprietary software that communicates through firebird with a unified database folder often freezes, and when I try to restart it, it doesn't restart without a reboot of the machine (Debian latest stable version).
- Sometimes it takes very long periods of time to open the software.

What are the best freeware or opensource alternatives to wine? Are any of them really better than wine or wine is still the best free option out there?

Thank you

Why not use a VM? Something like virtualbox, vmware, xen, and your own version of m$ windows.

the non free version (from winehq.org) jumps through the hoops better than the OSS one. If there's a company needing this, they can surely invest.

The need to use one single and small software doesn't justify the installation of an entire virtual machine. That's just justified for those who need to use at least a few different softwares from windows. That's not my case. I would hugely slow down the machine for that.

Often you'll find that some versions of Wine work and some don't. I have a program that works on 6 versions and fails on 7; on another 2, whether it works depends on the distro! The answer, unfortunately, may be just to experiment, but have you tried asking here?
http://forum.winehq.org/

Hi. I didn't ask there because I am here asking for alternatives for wine.

It's not of my interest right now to debug any problem/conflict that wine may have with the software that I use and/or the system installed in my machine.

I just want to know the opinion about those who use linux for a long time and also for a long time have been experiencing the use of windows software inside linux. I know that there is a payed software out there that is better than wine, but I am looking for opensource and/or freeware solutions that might be better than wine. I don't want to have to google it and give it a try to every windows emulator that the market has to offer. I would like to count with the experience of the community to recommend me a solid alternative.

A virtual machine is your other option. WINE is non-trivial, and therefore unique.

Wine is as good as it gets for free & Open Source. If you want better, it'll cost you.

IMO, I'd do the VM solution if it absolutely HAD to work, run Windows in a VM and your only cost is the Windows license.

That has already been suggested above in a previous post.

Wine isn't unique in the sense of running windows software inside linux. There are others.
I can mention: PLAYONLINUX and CROSSOVER, for example

Has anyone ever tried any emulator other than wine to run windows software inside linux?
That's what this post is about. Crossover I know people say it's excellent, but it's not free.

Sorry, but this whole post seems pretty rude for someone who came her asking for advice/opinions.

• "It's not of my interest right now to debug any problem..."
• "I don't want to have to google it..."

Yet when it was suggested to bring up a VM, you immediately shut it down, and complain?

Personally, I'd use the (FREE) virtualbox manager, spend the 30 minutes it would take to install a Windows system, and be done. It's *NOT* going to slow your machine down to a huge crawl to run that every now and then. And if this is something you have to run all day, every day, that brings up further suggestions/questions:

• Your company is using an old version of Windows Firebird. Why??? Because not only should you stop using old software whenever possible, but also because Firebird is available for Linux, natively. This totally eliminates the need for Windows to be involved at all. Even the VERY old 1.x versions of Firebird run on Linux. Connectivity to a database server via client (either 'fat' client or ODBC/socket) doesn't care what the server OS is, so there's zero client migration needed.
• If this is for a business, then they need to spend money if they want things to work right. Either purchase a non-FOSS emulator that does what you want, or just buy a Windows workstation, and run whatever you need on it, if you're so worried about speed.
• Why use Firebird AT ALL? MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL are all readily available, stable, and tested on pretty much every version of Linux. Migrate your database and move forward.

And if you're using very old Firebird, you're probably using similarly old software...time to upgrade it ALL. Putting junk together to keep obsolete software in use doesn't do you any favors. Take advantage of the working system you have now, and do a STABLE, orderly migration to new stuff. Eventually you ***WILL HAVE TO***.

1 members found this post helpful.

Playonlinux and Crossover are both just extensions to...wine.

3 members found this post helpful.

This is why you aren't getting a huge list of alternatives to wine, because there aren't any to list. The experience of the community is telling you an alternative way to do things - because we have all already been down the 'alternative to wine' path and it doesn't lead anywhere.

2 members found this post helpful.

TB0ne, I'll start thanking you for your reply. Your message was really interesting and it gave me really good ideas. Thank you.
I'll try to comment everything you said.
You said I'm rude because I shut down the suggestion to try to debug the problems I am experiencing with wine. That's a valid suggestion, I agree with you, but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish with this post. You may understand it as rude, but I just don't want my post to take a direction that was not intended for it to take, leaving the main reason why I created the post to be casted aside. I am pretty sure you are a reasonable person and you will understand that there is logic in what I am writing here.
I have also shut down the suggestion to use a virtual machine. Again, it's a very reasonable suggestion, but if I were to take that road, I wouldn't bother to create this post. I know how to use and install a virtual machine, and for me it's not a good solution to run linux and windows inside it just for the sake of one piece of software, even if it's an important one. Most of our machines are old and to run two operating systems together is not an option to us. Simple as that. I do not wish to be interpreted as rude, but that's just a road we don't want to take.
No virtual machine and no wine debug tries. Not rude, pragmatic, and objective. Sorry if anyone feels offended by that.

You also said that there is a firebird version for Linux. That is really worth a try and I confess I have never used it before inside linux, but I may try to do it now after your suggestion. The only problems are:
1) Even in windows, newer versions of firebird are incompatible with the software we use, so the same thing will probably happen in linux.
2) Yes, our software is old, it should be upgraded, that's what is the best solution in the theoretical world, but in real life there is no newer version for the software we use, it's not upgradable, and we are not going to spend money implementing a new system and a mygration program for all our data, we will not pay for new trainings, and so one. We are not in condition to assume that kind of investment now, and that's how real life is, and that's why I'm trying to find an alternative solution here.

You also talk about alternatives for firebird. The software we use is firebird dependent and we don't have anyone capable of implementing it to work differently with anything but firebird. If I knew how to do that this post wouldn't exist.

Anyway, I'll take a closer look in your suggestion of using firebird natively in linux, but I think that will not work because I'll have our software inside wine trying to access remote that through firebird that isn't installed in the wine environment. Anyway, I'll try to find a way to make that work. Maybe, running only our software with wine things might get more stable, but again, newer versions of firebird were not compatible with our private software.

Edited:
Of course you understand the meaning of this sentence in the context. It's not about being lazy and expecting others to do my searches. What I tried to say is that it's very time consuming to test and try every alternative out there, since it's not just about installing and configuring it, but it would need a trial period of tests, etc. to know if any other alternative software in the market is better than wine or not. In that sense, I requested the help of the community that has been testing all these alternatives since wine and crossover, and later others first appeared in the market promising to allow people to run their windows software inside linux. Anyone reading my sentence with good will, will know that that was the meaning behind it.

Are you sure? As far as I know, an opensource software, even if you make big changes in it, it can never become a proprietary software like Crossover is.
The license of every opensource software says that. You may change it as you see fit, but you can never charge for it.
There is no exception as far as I know and Crossover is a payed software.

Sorry, but I disagree. I have just mentioned two alternatives, so there are alternatives to mention.
As I said in my other reply, I think Timothy Miller is wrong when he says Crossover is just an extension of wine. Opensource software can't be modified and then become proprietary software and charge you if you want to use it. So, I believe crossover is not an extension of wine.
About Playonlinux, I have no idea and no reason to find out if that's true or not. Even if it were an extension, it's a valid alternative that might have a more stable behavior. If anyone has ever tried it, feel free to comment about Playonlinux.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm very sure that both playonlinux and crossover are based on wine. Codeweavers (Crossover) contributes more than 50% of the code in wine. Also, as far as being able to use open source code for proprietary software, it depends on the license. Apache license can indeed use open source code without giving back. I do not off the top of my head know what license wine uses, however. But the part of the Crossover that's open source IS given back, that's wine. The proprietary bits aren't part of the wine code, it's extensions to it that make it work better.

WineTricks is an attempt to basically bring the same functionality advances that PlayonLinux has to the core wine software.