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The issue with using Wine is that it's not an emulator, it's a compatibility layer. It passes x86 code from the legacy Windows app to the processor to be executed. It only works if you're running on an x86 system.

There have been projects like Darwine that have incorporated an x86 emulator (in this case QEMU) along with the Wine layer to actually run legacy Windows x86 apps on PPC hardware. This is possible but the result will be very slow due to emulation.

A better method would be to have the OS take care of everything emulating x86 code when needed like Apple's Rosetta because you could use the actual Windows 8 DLLs and pass only the needed x86 code to the emulator. Microsoft has a team doing x86 emulation (or at least virtualization) but it's unknown how portable it would be to ARM. Obviously they have decided that this isn't going to be implemented though, probably due to it being too slow to be useful.

If you want to see how slow an ARM is at emulating x86 code, fire up DOSBox on your smartphone or hacked console. Granted that will also be emulating things like VGA and all but the x86 emulation is the brunt of the work. It's not going to be fast, and it would be a poor experience for most users.

Alternatively there is Pentadactyl a fork of that project. I move over as they were faster to provide Firefox 4 support.

Won't BOCHS and QEMU work* regardless of host architecture.

*By "work" I mean run the apps... I know they're both fairly slow compared to native apps. However, they could be made faster by only emulating the app and allowing the WinApi calls to be thunked to native calls.

Recreating original sound is extremely difficult and has a more limited interest in providing equivalent emulation.

There is in fact a project in active development that tries to emulate the MT-32 in software (usable on Linux/Windows): munt

You still need the original MT-32 ROMs though, which might be under copyright in your country. You can extract them from a MT-32 unit or from google. :)

In my opinion, it sounds pretty good, although its been a while that I've played around with it and I've never actually heard a real MT-32... To anybody who owns one: Does it still work through e.g. DOSBox or are there occasional hiccups with games? Is there other fun stuff you can do with such a unit besides games (e.g. interesting MIDIs)?

for Grim Fandango get residual - http://residual.sourceforge.net/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcl/ says: "Tool Command Language (Tcl) is an interpreted language and very portable interpreter for that language. Tcl is embeddable and extensible, and has been widely used since its creation in 1988 by John Ousterhout. See http://www.tcl.tk/ for more info." Another good source of information on Tcl is http://wiki.tcl.tk/

Tcl functions well as glue between applications. Some folks know Tcl but call it "Expect" and may not realize Expect is simply Tcl plus an extension. Another extension, Tk, provides GUI features and is so powerful and popular that it's commonly used from other languages. Bindings exist for several other languages, including Ada (called TASH), Perl, Python (called Tkinter), Ruby, and Common Lisp.

Tcl is used by many people and companies (large and small). Cisco network gear uses embedded Tcl for automating tasks. Oracle uses Tcl for automating testing. The Fortune100 company where I work (but I am not a spokesman, so I won't name them) pays me to write and maintain an application written in Tcl to process payments for many thousands of customers totaling millions of dollars every day for payment through banks and the Federal Reserve.

Tcl is FOSS, but a very popular build is ActiveTcl from ActiveState. http://www.activestate.com/activetcl/

I think for oldschool PC gaming, emulation isn't quite there like it is for oldschool consoles. Yet. The amazing combinations of HIMEM.SYS, EMM386, and SMARTDRV (and clones, HyperDisk was truly amazing) that each developer chose to run with makes for lots of variables that emulation seems ill-equipped to deal with.

Actually, this makes DOSBox a much better solution, especially with a frontend (like D-Fend Reloaded or DBGL [warning, it's Java-based]) that maintains separate configuration files for each game. It also handles booters (those the-game-is-its-own-OS titles) quite well. Now you only have to configure the funky memory setups once for each game, and you're set.

So I'm going to get modded down for this, but you shouldn't go back. I had memories of playing Battledrome over my modem and the game "in my head" was awesome. I loaded it back up, played it, and shattered the nice memories I had of that game - along with many others. I grew up with Doom, Blake Stone, Wolfenstein, etc. They were great in the past. You should not go back there.

However, Ultima 7 is still a great game. I verified that and there is an emulator that allows it to work great

I think it was sold because of pride. How could a CPU giant license designs from puny ARM from England?!

-- http://bashrc.sourceforge.net

People think Intel's purpose is to impose the x86 instruction set and also that the only culprit that keeps them from making a successful product is the overhead of that very x86 instruction set. I don't believe it.

The interpretation and translation of instructions is some constant number of transistors, the rest of the architecture is moving ahead. There will be a moment when brute force alone, the supremacy of the fabs, will win the race.

Another factor is that when you license ARM you can customize it. You can't license and customize Atom CPUs. Intel is at the moment kept back by a combination of factors

-- http://bashrc.sourceforge.net

I was quite irritated when IE9 gave me the "this program is not commonly downloaded" warnings that I had to say yes, OK, accept, and download anyway to.

I was downloading unetbootin so I could easily install Kubuntu...

Gentlemen, start your conspiracy theories.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ doesn't work?

You probably want to go here instead: http://atomos.sourceforge.net/aos-1.1/index.html

I would probably switch from Ext4 to BtrFS if it had full Gparted support.

I don't know, it really is a country club in Africa, but I think Miguel went for "Tamarin", which is a type of monkey. But unfortunately this name is already occupied by a Mozilla project, which strangely is some kind of scripting language, and to his dismay is also being used as the name for a Java framework. *head asplodes*

Using AutoHotkey, I send VirtuaWin a message to toggle between the last two virtual windows when I press the forward mouse button (I also map Alt-~ and a double-tap of the Windows key to do the same).

and here you have it: VirtuaWin

I have glumly come to the conclusion that if I want something equivalent to or better than MacOS's Time Machine on Linux for doing time-based incremental backups, I'm going to have to write it myself, and it's going to have to rely on LVM's snapshotting mechanism to do a consistent backup until BTRFS is ready.

BackupPC has been around and mature for a whole lot longer than Time Machine, and has more flexibility, while allowing you to do exactly the same thing if you want. It's also cross-platform, and can use rsync over ssh, windows fileshares, or anything else you want to throw at it.

I used to run it for company backups, and pool all workstations into a single backup blob, but with each user able to manage their own "view" of their data; this means that if you're administering a single (or limited number of) drive image, you only have a single copy of each file sitting around. Plus, the system allows for rotated off-site backups as well as hourly incremental backups -- and you can set multiple overwrite rules if you want to.

I like the fact that such systems, similar to the current popular OSes, allow you to use sane defaults with minimal management, or to dig into the system to customize it to fit your exact needs, instead of having this dictated by the original developer.

I know this thread is dead meat by now.. but just a suggestion.
Maybe it's time to donate cash or skills to one of these projects.
Heck, I'm up for a challenge and technically literate, if not elite.
The biggest challenge is getting past the "brand". If M$ changes the
name, it'll be easy to create and fund an alternative that could give
them a run for their money.. I had a paid subscription to Skype
for years. The Linux client, although pretty hackish, worked
and was my primary means of long distance voice coms. I'd be
willing to pay someone other than M$ for that again.

The last time I checked, most of the free hosting sites had problems unique to free hosting:

• Free hosts banned scripting languages "for security reasons", instead requiring pages to be static HTML, offering server-side includes at the most. Even those few free hosts at the time that offered PHP did not offer a database.

• [...]
  If you were faced with these problems, which again are unique to free hosting, how would you work around them?

If you are in the sorry position of being unable to find $5 a month for hosting, I would suggest writing your demonstration application using HTML 5 and JavaScript. No scripting support needed on the server, and your database is client-side. People have written entire Wiki applications that way.

You might also want to consider this thread on the linux kernel mailing list. It is about adding a module to the kernel that has only one use: to talk to proprietary user space code. The module got rejected from mainline for this reason. By using CUDA and the proprietary user space portions from NVIDIA, you module will also never make it into mainline (unless hell freezes over and NVIDIA opens up their drivers).

I don't think I'd be able to survive windows anymore without unxutils. No, mr. Troll, that has nothing to do with being a one-trick pony; it just so happens that UNIX-like skills tend to port well across OS platforms. It would be silly and a waste of time to throw all those skills right out of the window just to re-learn to do the same thing, but this time in a non-portable fashion. Also, I happen to like grep and all the other tools that Just Work.

Good suggestion. However, Isn't it a sad state o affairs (for slashdot) when users have to be redirected to a third party web page to get answers about questions related to technical computer stuff?

Appart from what everybody has suggested, I would like to add that a lot of the tools available in Linux (say, awk, sed, cat, and others) for Windows via gnuwin32 (this is not like cygwin but native ported tools). Additionally, it is completely possible to use Python and Perl in Windows.

The key advantage of the spreadsheet approach is the ability to go back and check that I've entered the right things after the fact is worth the extra key presses. You can correct a complex problem just by finding the error and fixing it without re-keying. I have to admit accuracy isn't my forte. I'm the kind of guy that would make one silly mistake in a complex calculation at school and bollox it up.

As for an Octave tutorial, I'm no expert here. Google is your friend, and I'll bet there's good information on the Octave site too. My Calculus is very very rusty. I managed to do an Astronomy masters where calculus was optional. It was geared to teaching at school and introductory college level. But I didn't do it with the aim of a career change. I did it because I wanted to know more about the subject.

Don't forget to check out other options. 3 that I've come across that were interesting to play with were Maxima (still current), Mupad (no longer offered I'm sad to learn as I type this) and Xplore (old one man project, no longer supported). I've used Xplore since the DOS days though and used it at uni so while I don't regularly fire it up I have a soft spot for it, and it was simple.

Here's the link for Maxima
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Yes, downloading and installing a vim plugin (or using vim in the first place) is indeed reasonably difficult for most people.

That's why PasswordSafe [ http://pwsafe.org/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe/ originally written by Bruce Schneier http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html ] is what people need.

It doesn't solve every problem (e.g. key loggers and such things as might be on an untrusted system) but nothing does. It's a very simple, flexible, convenient piece of software that not only securely stores usernames and passwords, but URLs, email address, notes and more with the ability to copy/paste and/or drag/drop and/or autofill forms. Although it is mainly a Windows application, it's FOSS portable installs (e.g. U3) available. There is also a recent Linux port.

At the moment, I have 87 passwords in my primary passwordsafe file with related usernames, URLs, email, notes, password generation parameters, password expirations and more, all stored in a convenient hierarchy where work, banking, retail, hardware and other types of passwords are grouped in a tree that makes sense to me. For folks with simple needs, the hierarchy is optional and the entries can all be a flat list.

Sony's latest debacle has prompted me to wade through all my "important" entries (banks and such) and generate unique, random, secure passwords with expiration dates recommended by my PWsafe settings. Sadly, many of the accounts I created before I started using PWsafe used the same username and password combination for similar sites (e.g. retailers with CC info); I have now made my data much more secure with passwords I could never remember, except that PWsafe now remembers them all for me.

I have had similar problem. I cant say its good or bad but I adpated myself to use batch programming but I heavily use Gnuwin32 ports and UnxUtils that give most of the Unix commands as exe http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/ Happy Hacker

I have had similar problem. I cant say its good or bad but I adpated myself to use batch programming but I heavily use Gnuwin32 ports and UnxUtils that give most of the Unix commands as exe http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/ Happy Hacker

Vimperoperator is basically a set of keybindings, not the complete UI makeover pentadactyl is.

CNET? Really? Is this 1997? Back in the day, CNET was the one stop for all of your hacking needs, but that time is long gone.

If this lawsuit proves successful, look out Sourceforge, you're next.

Don't have to:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/forums/forum/329220/topic/4503818

If you find alt-tabbing easier than moving your head maybe this might be useful: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/

Most people won't find it useful but a few do.

Basically with it you can quickly switch amongst 9 windows with their respective hotkeys. And set up the key-to-window mappings quickly.

That has already been done, back in 1997:
http://lng.sourceforge.net/lunix/doc/lnet.txt
Works with up to 6 C64's.

I used ipac-ng http://ipac-ng.sourceforge.net/ for many years, until its lack of maintenance caused it drop significantly behind newer Linux kernels. sigh. Worked brilliantly when it did work though.

It means running all data through a linux box, but this is a given for me as I always have a firewall box for iptables, so I can split off my public IPs and home network. But all a bit much for a home ADSL connection really.

I'm posting this using K-Meleon on an old notebook with minimal memory (256 MB...with a bunch of that allocated for the video). K-Meleon is built on the Mozilla Gecko engine.

It's fast, stable, and lightweight. You won't see a lot of CSS3 effects, but otherwise, it's a fine small footprint browser, even for a tab-heavy user like myself. You can use a number of older Firefox extensions with a little work, and it responds to the usual Firefox performance tweaks as well.

If you're on Windows - Kmeleon http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/ Otherwise (all joking aside on this!) - (E)Links. I use it on both Linux and Windows regularly - with the right setup you can even get a graphical UI... http://elinks.or.cz/

Symbian was released under the EPL (which was later changed to a mostly-closed license) in 2010.

Full source code dump is available here and some other stuff are available here.

I've played around with Google's OCR framework (tesseract) and it is far from perfect. So, this isn't really a surprise.

Its also far from new. Didn't they get that from some long dead Open Source project?

Answered in the order you mentioned each:

Yes, far from new (project started 26 years ago).

No, not long dead. Just "recently" (roughly 6 years ago, give or take) open sourced and ported/compiled for Linux, OS/2 (and other platforms I am sure).

Yes (open source project), and I think it was called... Tesseract. Kinda like the poster you responded to mentioned. ;-)

To save you the work, it was an HP/UNLV project, started in 1985, that was open-sourced in 2005. It is still available on SourceForge.

I also didn't like "If we modify these Terms of Service, we will post the modification on the Site or provide you with notice of the modification". *Or* provide me notification? So they basically can change the terms at any time just by posting a new set to the web site, and they aren't even promising I will be notified? Yeah, let me jump right on agreeing to that.

The main options I'm aware of for hosting your own bookmark server are:

• Cutemarks. Pretty simple, but not maintained anymore I think.
• Firefox Sync Weave server. Seems like it's trying to solve way more complicated problems than I really care about, with the associated complexity that comes with that.
• Firefox Sync server on Google App Engine. Interesting proof of concept, adding another server source compatible with Firefox's API. I don't really trust Google's infrastructure either though, and this hasn't moved much beyond prototype yet.

Perhaps the terrible terms for the relocated Delicious site will finally kickstart more development in this area.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

My generalization is without merit because you can produce an example of the "not" my generalization accounted for? WOW. That's amazing.

I just went and looked and there is a new version of open filler on source forge with the date 4/11/2011 so it may be back in active development.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openfiler/files/

You don't.. I mean, how... what the... eugh.

IVAN. Go play.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

It's already been done...

Dope Wars

wget for Windows. Enjoy.

I haven't gotten to use my Samsung drives much yet because I'm still waiting for them to put out a firmware update for the HD204UI that increments the revision number in addition to fixing the IDENTIFY bug (so the fix can be confirmed). Was supposed to be out months ago...

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/SamsungF4EGBadBlocks

And agent ransack gives you back a decent file search tool: Agent Ransack

Classic start menu: ClassicShell

I've been doing a lot of web development lately with aptana which basically is eclipse just with a whole bunch of web-by add-ons and plugins. I must say that it is the best experience I've ever had with an ide for this kind of work. Supports code completion for jquery, dojo, plain javascript, css, html and a whole lot more out of the box. Add in some vi keybindings and I'm in dev heaven. Not sure if it will impress anyone's co-workers but it sure makes writing web pages fun.

http://jvi.sourceforge.net/ parent was close. The best part of NB is how light-weight the modules are: NB was built to be a platform from day-1; has epic other language support.(php, ruby, python, C, etc...)

? They have for quite a while, actually.

Some areas (Denver being the big one) is having native IPv6 deployed as their first 'test' deployment. Other cities will follow.

Everyone else can still use 6rd or 6to4

http://www.comcast6.net/6to4-config.php

http://www.comcast6.net/6rd-config.php

There's also an image for openWRT users:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dslite-6rd/files/

Doesn't beat the program named Pornview though (an image viewer).