Wine Finally Starting To See Work On Better USB Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wine Finally Starting To See Work On Better USB Support

It looks like better support for Windows programs running under Wine interacting directly with USB devices could finally be on the horizon...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wine-Wineusb-Merged

[GraysonPeddie]

Will this have any effect in ReactOS as well?

[c117152]

Are we pretending this is for 2 fact auth sticks rather than game controllers?

[kenjitamura]

It looks like libusb has been around for quite a while so I'm curious what the impetus was for wine devs to start implementing usb support around it now.

I'm even more curious if the initial support will be good enough to let people do some of the things they've been craving to use WINE for such as configuring mice that still don't have good linux interfaces. And I know the ship has sailed but I wonder if there's anyone still wanting to use ipod's on linux and could now use WINE.

[caligula]

Hm, would this support programmable remote controllers?

[theriddick]

I'll be excited once EAC and BattlEye is supported

[polarathene]

Are we pretending this is for 2 fact auth sticks rather than game controllers?

Would probably be useful for some software that interacts via USB and only has support for Windows(maybe macOS sometimes) but not Linux. An example that comes to mind is some smartphone vendors software that may provide some functionality that isn't available via Linux. I can't recall exact details but pretty sure there was something about the Windows app for Huawei phones that I couldn't utilize without the software.

Another case can be other hardware devices like 3D scanners or ToF cameras, Kinect is one that I think has some form of Linux support, but you wouldn't be able to use some software built around it that is only on Windows I think? While the industry of 3D scanning has plenty of products that I think lack Linux software, even with their high costs for the hardware.

One product I saw recently was USB based for Windows and macOS only, you attach it to the screen and it calibrates the display for colour accuracy automatically or something. Costs a few hundred for the basic model and they have no Linux support or interest to provide such, useful for VFX industry or others where dealing with colour across devices for consumers is important.

Personally, I'd like to see better CUDA support. I had it working once on wine-staging, but last time I tried the proprietary software running via WINE couldn't detect CUDA or the GPU for some reason. Rather not dual-boot or passthrough to VM for it. Still likely a while off before ROCm gets supported as an alternative in such software if at all.

[ServerGarbage]

Would probably be useful for some software that interacts via USB and only has support for Windows(maybe macOS sometimes) but not Linux. An example that comes to mind is some smartphone vendors software that may provide some functionality that isn't available via Linux. I can't recall exact details but pretty sure there was something about the Windows app for Huawei phones that I couldn't utilize without the software.

Another case can be other hardware devices like 3D scanners or ToF cameras, Kinect is one that I think has some form of Linux support, but you wouldn't be able to use some software built around it that is only on Windows I think? While the industry of 3D scanning has plenty of products that I think lack Linux software, even with their high costs for the hardware.

One product I saw recently was USB based for Windows and macOS only, you attach it to the screen and it calibrates the display for colour accuracy automatically or something. Costs a few hundred for the basic model and they have no Linux support or interest to provide such, useful for VFX industry or others where dealing with colour across devices for consumers is important.

Personally, I'd like to see better CUDA support. I had it working once on wine-staging, but last time I tried the proprietary software running via WINE couldn't detect CUDA or the GPU for some reason. Rather not dual-boot or passthrough to VM for it. Still likely a while off before ROCm gets supported as an alternative in such software if at all.

Yeah cuda support would be amazing, but nvidia not being jerks would be great to see also haha

[stiiixy]

GraysonPeddie I always think back to ReactOS and how WINE is almost a Windows replacement coming from the other end of the support spectrum. React from the bottom, WINE from the top.

@everyone I never investigated, but just how much of WINE is implemented within ReactOS? I personally still love the idea of a proper native Windows reimplementation, as Windows 10 gets sadder by the day (I still have to help people with it installed).

[eydee]

Will this have any effect in ReactOS as well?

Probably not, it needs proper native USB drivers for system level USB support. It's an OS, not a compatibility layer after all. Linux already has that of course, and Wine is just hooking into it.