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Sirius Cybernetics == Microsoft? That would have been some foresight

You're right, Mr. Adams would indeed have to have had lots of foresight to see how Big and how Ugly Micro$soft would become.

As it turns out, Douglas Adams did have that much foresight; see his anti-MS rants here, here, here, and... oh, shit, just Google for "Douglas Adams + Miscrosoft" and you'll see :-)

(Disclaimer: I love everything about Douglas Adams, and work for a company famous for opposing Microsoft.)

Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html

vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .

There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.

Ironically enough, we already have exactly this situation with respect to KDE and GNOME, except that the relationships are reversed. KDE and GNOME are both under GPL; however, Qt is only avaiable for Win32 (native) under a proprietary, commercial license; the GPL applies only to the X11 version of Qt. Meanwhile, GTK+ for Win32 is available under the GPL. A theoretical port of KDE to Windows (using Qt) is not possible at this point, but a theoretical port of GNOME to Windows (using GTK+) might be, depending on the quality of the port.

However, Qt is still able to grab more mindshare than GTK+ or wxWindows for Windows development, despite the fact that it's not free. This is because Qt has a reputation as superior (easier-to-use, more goodies) toolkit for Linux development than the C++ port of GTK+, and because Trolltech is pushing Qt for educational use.

Meanwhile, wxWindows (which is LGPL except that you can distribute derived works any way you like) has almost no mindshare (relatively speaking), even though it's an equivalent toolkit to Qt and is more portable than GTK or Qt.

End result: developers are more likely to sell their employers on Qt for Windows than on wxWindows or GTK+, even though it's a commercial package. Corolary: Trolltech makes some (IMO) well-deserved money.

ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

It's already happening. You just have the parties reversed.

Qt/Windows and Free are inherently incompatible. Since the only version of Qt/Windows is non-Free, it can't be used to build Free software on Windows. In this case, Qt is a non-Free, third-party library. TrollTech leaves the cop out that you can use Qt/Free with X11 libraries and an X server for Windows. Why this is absurd is left as an exercise to the reader.

GTK+, on the other hand, is licensed under the LGPL. And that means all platforms, including proprietary ones, such as Windows, BeOS, and Mac OS X.

That killer app you speak of will get here, but as a Gnome app, not KDE.

We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead

You mean GTK+ on Win32 like offered here which is linked from the GTK+ webpage?

Wow, Gimp for windows, imagine that.

http://www.bitchx.org/download.php3

Wow, IRC for Windows, imagine that.
--

Wouldn't it be cool to include ALL OS's? Not just the *NIX's (getting one package manager to correctly handle both BSD and Linux is a complicated task as it is), but Mac, Windows, etc?

I don't know whether you'd ever get all the *NIXes to adopt one package format (heck, not even all of the *NIXes that use the Linux kernel use the same package format, so far; is it even possible to generate an RPM that works, for a given instruction-set architecture, on all distributions that use RPM?).

It's probably even more unlikely that you'd get Windows, or MacOS Classic (MacOS X might be considered "one of the *NIXes", although it may be different enough from other *NIX-flavored OSes that it'd be even less likely that it'd adopt some standard package format).

If they could get something that would reliably install stuff under Win2K (InstallShield really doesn't cover it),

It might be possible to have tools such as Easy Software Product's Package Manager (as mentioned in another posting; ESP are the folks who do CUPS) work with various non-*NIX packaging tools, as well as handling the various *NIX package formats it now handles (debs, RPMs, SVR4 packages, IRIX packages of some sort, HP-UX packages of some sort, source tarballs).

Some tools for packaging on Windows include MindVision's Installer VISE (available for Windows and MacOS), for which "qualifying shareware and freeware developers" can get a free license (it's what the GTK+ and GIMP for Windows uses), and Nullsoft's "SuperPimp" Install System, which is also free. (I've not used either of them, so I can't say how good or bad they are.)

and do compiling for makefiles (I don't even know if there is something to do makefiles in Windows anyway),

Well, there's a tool called nmake, which comes as part of a package called "Visual C++" from some company up in Redmond, Washington that has done some software for Windows; its makefiles aren't exactly like those for the various *NIXes (but those aren't all the same, either - you have System V make, Sun's make which is a superset of SV make, GNU make, Berkeley make, etc.).

It's not clear that it's a package manager's job to deal with the differences between the "make"s on various platforms.

But this is pretty cool for platform with no X, or for ports (say BeOS, or Mac OS X).

For ports, "this", in the sense of GTK+-fb, isn't relevant; what's relevant is that ports can be done, to a large extent, by changing the GDK layer, rather than by changing stuff all over GTK+.

I think the Win32 port, which antedates the frame buffer port, was also done largely at the GDK layer.

There are people working on a BeOS version of GTK+ - there's a GTK+ for BeOS page on the GTK+ Web site, and somebody's been sending patches to the gtk-devel mailing list.

Personally I think the native GTK+ port to win32 is cooler than the CYGWIN one. You don't need an X server. Granted GNOME would be a huge task to port since you don't have the POSIXness. Check out the Gimp and GTK+ ported to Win32.

One problem with this is that GNOME for Windows requires an X server presence on the Windows machine. Because of this, the port, while still pretty cool, loses some technical merit. Using an X server means that they had all the standard X libraries available on UNIX systems; they didn't need to port any low level Xlib stuff to Windows.

Because of this, I find that the Windows port of Gimp has more technical merit; it does not require an X server - it is a full-fledged port of the GTK library to the Windows platform.

Now I'm not a GNOME expert, but aren't most of the graphics aspects of GNOME built on top of GTK? Why not port GNOME to Windows using this available library? This way, an X server will not be required. (Of course, I'm assuming that non-graphical libraries, ORBit, glib, etc, that GNOME uses are easy to port to Windows).

Gtk for windows is available at http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/
It's still a little rough around the edges, but nice to program (a _lot_ nicer than MFC or the raw win32 API).

You may not know that there is a big number of online labels existing, and distributing free mp3s (legal mp3s) on the net.

The existence of those labels makes it easier to find music of your taste:

• monotonik -- Highly acclaimed internet label releasing IDM/experimental materials from all around the world. They were showcasing at the recent Ars Electronica.
• noise -- Noise is releasing all kinds of fine ambient, techno, drum'n'bass, with always a focus on experimentation and quality. (Some jewels were released there by Stereoman (now esem), Saag...)
• theralite -- Since theralite started releasing mp3s their focus got more and more on diversity and quality. Releases are ranging between trip-hop, drum'n'bass and house. (check THERA001 and THERA012 for some very nice trip hop tunes)
• tokyodawn -- a label focusing on triphop and drum'n'bass.
• tokyo2051 -- sub label of tokyodawn, releasing mainly techno materials.
• you also have kahvi collective releasing idm, techno, ambient, milk releasing experimental finnish techno, reaktio...

There are also tons of stuff on mp3.com or vitaminic.

Even laurent garnier's website has some mp3s which were selectionned after a remix competition...

You can get also some infos and more links on the scene news website noerror

The conclusion is that you can find tons of legal mp3s on the net, (I hardly listen to anything but what I get on the net) It's just a bit harder to find and know about the artists and labels around.. but if you're interested, you will find.

> What I'm saying--and I'm a game developer--is that a Voodoo 2 could be pushed about 5x farther than anyone has pushed it, but we're so busy playing catch-up with new cards and bad drivers that there's no incentive.

I'm a game developer too.

And you're partially right, but you're forgetting about fill-rate and transforms. There are only so many triangles the Voodoo can draw per second. The GeForce has raised this number considerably. 15 Million vertices per second (don't have the numbers for the Voodoo 2, but it is considerably less. 3Dfx FAQ lists 80 million pixels/sec, wheresa the GeForce 2 can hit 1 Gig pixels/sec)

What are the short comings of the Voodoo 2?
a) Unfortunately (or fortunatly) us 3D game programmers don't want to be locked into a proprietary API like Glide, we'd rather use OpenGL or even D3D.
b) max textures sizes are only 256x256
c) and only 16-bit. Gotta have 32-bit all in the name of realism ;)
d) 16 megs of texture memory
e) no resolution above 1024x768
f) no full-scene anti-aliasing
Yes, all of these are "non-essential", but customers are wanting all of them.

I agree, that the Voodoo 2 is still a sweet piece of hardware.

> But everyone in the game business knows that you don't need to optimize too much on the PC, because everyone will upgrade.

Again partially correct.

But there are 2 main reasons not to optimize.
a) It's time to ship the dam game (and start making some money off of it.)
b) It's costing a lot of money (programmer's time) just to get another few % increase in speed out of the game.

Of course the main argument to optimize is
a) Lets people with slower computers have an ejoyable experience, which means more people will buy your game since they don't have to upgrade (just yet)

I do agree, it is sad, that we just "pass-the-buck" via "get a faster computer"

Cheers

--
uSA != U.S.

OK, so it would seem that the new SO is going to be built on GTK (see Miguel's comments about Bonobo and such.) I'm really curious: does this mean the end of multi-platform Star Office? I know that there is a GTK port to Windows, and I even found the home page, but it really doesn't say how stable, usable, or up to date it is. Not that I really care too much about the windows port, but it would be really nice to be able to give Windows users SO 6.0 for Windows and say: "This is what GPL software can be, if you give it a chance." So... anyone know enough about GTK for Windows to give an educated guess about the chances of the Windows port surviving?
~luge

GTK and the GIMP were ported to Windows using MSVC++ and later gcc: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/.

Hmm.. platform independencem, ease of poring... QT.. Another nail in the GTK casket.

Perhaps you're not aware, but GTK is platform independent as well. It has already been ported to the Win32 platform. And as long as we're flinging FUD around, I might point out that GTK is also language independent, while Qt is limited to C++.

You can find it at http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/. If haven't played around with it much, but it seems fairly stable.
-Chris Andreasen

the music scene rules:

there's no greetings order

• ageema blues & blacksista http http2
• blacktron http
• brothomStates http
• five musicians http
• kosmic http
• level-d http
• maniacs of noise http
• milk http
• mono211/monotonik. http
• mo'playaz http
• n.o.i.s.e http
• Tokyo Dawn Records http
• sunlikamelo-d http
• theralite http
• vibrants http
• ...

don't forget the very good individuals, they are too many too list... check ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/

get active...

Microsoft could be preparing for some sort of Unix virtual machine to run within the NT kernel, supporting Unix apps,

That's exactly what Interix is (except that at least some of it presumably runs in a user-mode subsystem process rather than in the kernel).

Note, though, that it doesn't "[support] Unix apps" in the sense of running binaries from some flavor of UNIX, as the Interix FAQ notes (see "Can I run any of my UNIX applications with INTERIX?").

And among the OSS community, there would be widespread derision over their apps being used on the NT platform.

I think Microsoft can live with that (and note that some OSS applications, e.g. the GIMP, have been ported).

Does it run X?

Yes, it "runs X" in the sense that you can build X applications to run in the Interix environment (although it appears its X11 environment is X11R5, not X11R6); "Interix Workstation", as opposed to "Interix Workstation Lite", comes with an X server and mwm, although the Interix FAQ says that Interix X applications should also work with other X servers on NT.

Who wants to port a UNIX app to NT?

The guy who ported the GIMP to Win32 apparently wanted to do so....

This info is buried in the "about the gimp" section of the gimp website. Gimp32 is at http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/.

Chilli