Last Updated on March 12, 2021
Wine
Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems including Linux.
Wine is an incredibly complicated piece of software. For quite a few years, Wine could just about run only very simple apps like the Windows calculator. But it’s seen slow but steady development over the years, and it can run fairly complex Windows software.
The project maintains lists of software that have ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ compatibility many of which are games. I didn’t test any games under Wine, as the AK41’s integrated graphics combined with Wine’s compatibility layer is not going to be very rewarding. Neither did I test any open source programs which run under Linux natively.
Instead, I tested a dozen or so useful freeware Windows utilities most of which aren’t available for Linux. Each application is installed in the usual way under Windows. Menu entries are automatically added to Manjaro’s desktop.
The image to the left shows HeidiSQL in action. HeidiSQL is a free, popular and reliable client for MariaDB, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases. This software lets you browse and edit data, create and edit tables, views, procedures, triggers and scheduled events.
The program runs pretty good under Wine although there are a few sticking points such as the poor appearance of fonts. If you’ve got TrueType fonts in Windows, you should be able copy the .ttf files into c:\window\fonts. But this made no difference on my system. That’s something to investigate further.
On the AK41 most actions performed fine, although things like exporting a large database took significantly longer than they do under Windows 10. But overall the program is perfectly functional using the AK41.
Next I tested Notepad++. This is a free and open source feature-packed text editor that supports a wide range of programming languages. It supports syntax highlighting and folding, synchronized edits and views, and much more.
Of course, Linux is inundated with excellent open source text editors. But if Notepad++ ticks all your boxes, why change? Notepad++ works well on the AWOW AK41. No complaints there.
Foxit Reader is a powerful PDF reader. This program is available natively for Linux. I wanted to test how the program functions on the AK41 natively under Linux compared with running it under Wine. In part, this is because the native Linux program has a longstanding issue (going back 2 years) where the user interface uses fixed-width fonts. That bug has never been resolved.
The version you get running under Wine has more features, it’s better developed and supported, and doesn’t suffer from the fixed-width font issue. Navigating large PDFs with the Windows version using Wine on the AK41 is very good, and its stable. Start up time is fairly slow, but that’s not much of a problem. If your a fan of Foxit Reader in Windows, running it under Wine on the AWOW AK41 is a viable proposition. Of course, Linux has some really good PDF viewers, summarized here.
Here’s Q-Dir running under Wine on the AK41. Q-Dir is a competent file manager with a 4 pane view. It works well under Wine.
Everything wasn’t plain sailing under Wine. There’s lots of programs that aren’t compatible with Wine.
I wouldn’t use Wine for gaming, multimedia, video editing, and more. It really comes down to what Windows programs you can’t live without, and whether Wine will run them well on the AK41. Ultimately, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Virtualization
Page 2 – Dual Booting
Page 3 – Wine
Page 4 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| AWOW AK41 Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Week 11 | Video consoles: SNES emulation |
| Week 10 | Running TeamViewer with AWOW AK41 as the host |
| Week 9 | Astronomy on the AK41 including Celestia, Stellarium, Skychart, and more |
| Week 8 | Recording video with OBS Studio |
| Week 7 | Home computer emulators: FS-UAE, ZEsaurUX, Hatari, Clock Signal |
| Week 6 | Web browsing with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi |
| Week 5 | Gaming: SuperTuxKart, AwesomeNauts, Retrocycles, Robocraft, DOTA 2, and more |
| Week 4 | Run multiple operating systems on the AK41 |
| Week 3 | Video and audio playback looking at hardware acceleration |
| Week 2 | Benchmarking the AK41 with 3 other low power machines |
| Week 1 | Introduction to the series including wiping Windows and installing Manjaro |
This blog is written on the AWOW AK41 Mini PC.
have you test a little bit overclocking? are there a few percent possible?
There’s lots of options in the BIOS but ones I tried to reduce the fan speed didn’t seem to make any difference.