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Posted by ahamez 4/9/2025

Whisky is no longer actively maintained(docs.getwhisky.app)
187 points | 73 comments
wpietri 4/9/2025|
What a great shutdown notice. Clear, frank, thoughtful. And it's nice to see software maintainers respecting their own time.
mooreds 4/9/2025|
> And it's nice to see software maintainers respecting their own time.

In a different context, I was talking to someone who volunteers with an org that I also volunteer with. I shared that I really respected her ability to set boundaries because a pattern I've seen over and over again is this:

if someone capable comes to a non-profit that is relatively immature, they are asked to do more and more and more until they either burn out and bail or set hard boundaries. The non-profits need so much and there are so few who contribute.

It's great to help out, but setting and respecting boundaries is critical for your long term health and enjoyment of the activities you are helping with.

LegitShady 4/9/2025||
In almost every organization I've been in, the reward for good work is more work.
mooreds 4/9/2025|||
> In almost every organization I've been in, the reward for good work is more work.

Yes, but when that happens in a company, there is at least the prospect of a raise and more impact.

As a non-profit volunteer you get props and the good feeling of helping people.

detourdog 4/9/2025|||
I can’t tell if my thinking is dated but here it goes. The young are inclined to want to help and be useful and more work satisfies this need and exposes them to more facets of the jobs being done. Ideally boundaries are developed by the youth or the organization is self aware enough to not exploit the worker.
wpietri 4/9/2025||
And I think it has to be both. I think the organization has to develop a culture where boundary-setting is normalized and encouraged. There are plenty of people who will burn themselves out without thinking twice about it. (I used to be one of them.) An organization that wants to be sustainable needs to a) keep them from doing that, and b) help them learn not to.
LegitShady 4/10/2025||
Exactly. Also depending on what kind of work you do organizations have to be aware of capacity - if there are operational times when I'm going to be handed emergency tasks but I'm already completely inundated with work because I was given the work for doing good work, then we lack the capacity to manage our heavy load times.

It's one thing if you don't work in any area with operational requirements that change over the course of a year but if you do then you need to have reserve capacity for new workloads even if the people involved are good at work.

lenerdenator 4/9/2025||
I really wish that Apple would just pony up cash to developers to get their wares ported to the new Apple Silicon chips.

I can play Fallout 3 and New Vegas on my M2 Pro MBP. I know that makes me a stereotypical Millennial, that I'm playing that and not the Fortmonth or whatever the kids are playing, but to me, the ability to do that really does cement that machine as the do-it-all machine. I can set up my workstation portably by having my MBP and my second screen on my iPad 10", do Python backend development easily, then kick back with Fallout at the end of the day. All with great battery life and cool running temps.

I'd love to have that capability formalized.

Rohansi 4/9/2025||
I'm not sure that would work in the long run. Fallout 3 came out in 2008 and is no longer actively maintained. Even if Apple could convince developers to port to macOS/Apple Silicon the games will, at some point in the future, stop working because most games are not being maintained long after release and Apple is fine with breaking compatibility.
archagon 4/9/2025|||
I feel like the best move for Apple would be to double down on GPTK and just make most Windows games work by default, à la Proton. It's going to be difficult to tempt developers to the platform otherwise: the audience is too limited.
dtech 4/9/2025|||
If this is even really going to be a thing I highly doubt 15+ year old games are going to be the Priority
lenerdenator 4/9/2025|||
Just tell Todd that it needs a re-release like Skyrim.
eghAds 4/9/2025|||
[dead]
pier25 4/9/2025||
> I know that makes me a stereotypical Millennial

Nobody cares about that. Just play whatever you enjoy.

bluecoconut 4/9/2025||
I’ve been using whisky to play Elden ring on my M4 MBP and it’s been great! I love that the Game porting toolkit and wine all work so well. I did have to do some pinning of steam to an older version to keep it working recently. I guess I’ll move over to crossover soon
steelbrain 4/9/2025|
Curious, what's the specs of your laptop and what frame rates were you getting? I've been considering getting rid of my gaming PC since I exclusively play Elden Ring
amarcheschi 4/9/2025||
Partially unrelated, but codeweavers is owned by a trust and those who benefits from it are the employees of codeweavers. A guy working for them had a small conference in our university and it seems like a cool company to work at
xavxav 4/9/2025||
That's unfortunate, I really preferred Whisky to crossover purely for the UX, I would happily pay for a crossover license if i got to keep the whisky app itself, crossover's ui is archaic and ugly in comparison.
ost-ing 4/9/2025||
Anyone who just wants to enjoy an AAA title like Cyberpunk 2077, accepting a small amount of input lag, check out Nvidia Geforce Now. Works really well.
seivan 4/9/2025|
[dead]
throw_m239339 4/9/2025||
I used Bottle in the past and I must say I was quite surprised of the software I managed to run on Linux... For instance, Cinema 4D (up to R24 I think?). The hardest was to install flatpak on Porteus to install bottle...

So it is bottle but for Mac? Never heard of it before. I used crossover once on a Macbook 2010 to Run Deus Ex,... anyway these are great projects. I guess booting linux from a USB stick should work on a modern mac too? rather than emulating it.

pasc1878 4/9/2025|
It is a front end to wine the same as bottle.

You can't boot Linux on Modern Apple machines.

Asahi Linux is working on it, they support M1 and M2 machines but not later ones.

moolcool 4/9/2025||
Is there any hope that Proton might eventually work on MacOS?
xyzzy_plugh 4/9/2025||
Apple is free to contribute but short of that I don't see why it would be worth anyone's time to fight such an uphill battle.

Their disposition re Vulkan and Metal tells me all I need to know. Until that tune changes, I don't have any hope.

LorenDB 4/9/2025|||
Probably not unless Apple provides a way to run 32-bit binaries or some really dedicated hacker figures out a way to make it work. Even Valve's own titles have 32-bit macOS versions (e.g. Portal 2) that won't work on modern macOS, so Proton on macOS today would only work with more modern 64-bit games. Not a problem for some people, but Valve really likes to support everything.
soraminazuki 4/9/2025|||
Wine's WoW64 build can run 32 bit Windows binaries. Apple's support for running 32 bit macOS binaries isn't relevant for running 32 bit Windows binaries, as long as Wine itself is 64 bit and calls 64 bit system libraries.

The more pressing concern is the eventual removal of Rosetta 2. It hasn't been announced so far, but it's unlikely that Apple will keep maintaining it forever.

Rhedox 4/9/2025||
One problem for that is that most 32bit games use x87. x87 optionally supports 80 bit floats so Rosetta runs software emulation for x87 math code. That's extremely slow to the point of making even some ancient games unplayable. For example the FMod audio library, which was extremely widespread, uses x87.

Linux x86 emulators work around this by offering an optional reduced precision mode that turns those into either 64 bit or even 32 bit floats. Some even do it by default.

Microsoft also does that with their Prism x86 emulator. They can be somewhat confident in doing that as Microsofts compiler stack has defaulted to configuring the x87 hardware to use 64 bit floats.

Apple should really add that as an option to Rosetta but I doubt that's gonna happen simply because it only impacts 32 bit code.

bzzzt 4/9/2025|||
> Valve really likes to support everything

I believe Valve is still sour from Apple discontinuing 32 bits x86 support and killing a big part of the Steam game catalog with macOS Catalina. It's not impossible to port Portal 2 to later macOS versions, there's a port for the Nintendo Switch so it runs fine on ARM.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4/9/2025|||
If valve thinks they can make money on it. Which hasn’t happened yet. I guess we are all just waiting for The Year of the Mac Gamer Desktop
ASalazarMX 4/9/2025||
Apple is notorious for being capricious, I understand if Valve wouldn't want to risk investing too much effort in that ecosystem.

Besides, the SteamDeck has finally opened the way to cut the OS middleman, why would they work towards that yoke again?

1123581321 4/9/2025||
Steam in a Crossover bottle is a similar experience. It would be neat to have built-in support from Valve.
tobylane 4/9/2025||
> Hell, even Rosetta would likely be more restricted as many of the extensions added in recent months were only added due to pressure from Mac gamers.

What are they?

seivan 4/9/2025|
F16C/AVX2 support amongst other stuff.
crossroadsguy 4/9/2025|
Damn. I missed it. I wanted to play older CS 1.3 and it was not working on latest macOS. I tried Wine but I must have bungled up the setup.

Are there CS 1.3 folks out there who still play this game (and on an Apple silicon Mac)? (I am not really a gamer; that's the only game I ever played and still like to play it from time to time; didn't like CS:Source/GO at all).

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