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Wine (WINdows Emulator, which substitutes Unix or X11 calls for Windows API calls, allowing Windows 3.1 and Win32 programs to run) is also included in the distribution and installs automatically by default with no need for user configuration.

Just for the record, Wine Is Not an Emulator!

I just had to put that out there so anyone unfamiliar with WINE who read the article didn't learn it the wrong way. The WINE folk are clear that they like the idea of "Windows Compatability Layer" much better than "Windows Emulator."

I don't understand how these guys got to this point. Clearly Robertson is connect to some kind of VC funding hose, or he would be working on his second startup in 10 minutes.

But there's next to nothing to this distro:

• They've made a new "easier" installer. The Mandrake installer has an automation feature already, as does RH's and others.
  
• They installed WINE. Codeweavers' RPM does that really nicely, thank you, and not as root, either.
  
• They replaced the file manager. Konqi's a bit confusing, but not that bad - they could have just disabled in.

But clearly what Linux has been waiting for to turn into windows is progress on WINE . When it works, Linux will run the Windows apps the rest of the world uses. Until then, the idea just won't work.

In this situation the straightforward thing to do is to hire first-classes WINE hackers and move the project forward with the force of money. And why Lindows isn't doing this is beyond me. Perhaps some kind of brand-development trick? Unless the VCs have some other tricks up their sleeve, I don't see how anyone's gonna get their money back. Anyone know anything about why Lindows is proceeding this way? Anything tidbits on FC?

Microsoft thinks it can. If someone did to windows what Linus did to Unix, they'd get their pants sued off, even though it's not illegal.

Then why isn't Microsoft suing CodeWeavers, the company that funds development of a popular free Windows API layer for UNIX workalikes? Yes, I know that Microsoft is suing Lindows, but that's trademark law, easily fixable by changing a name, as demonstrated in Tetrisgate.

Again, I call this out as VAPOR-ware! I want to hear from someone who has run this, or better yet I want to run it myself, before I give any credit to them. And then only if they didn't fork WINE.

Bah! This is garbage.

No sane linux user would ever get caught by this virus.

I heard some rumours that you can run a virus with Wine, I wonder what damage it might make though? And of course using VMWare might enable you to run a virtual virus! :-)

The whole point is that you run programs as a normal user and can only waste your homedir.

Ciryon

Perhaps you forgot about WINE? If you can't beat 'em, build an emulator!

The Qt library offers cross-platform facilities not only for the GUI, but also for the network and threading code. The only thing missing is the serial port: this could be a bit difficult to do. To have an idea of the problems involved you may look at the Wine page: they have a lot of trouble emulating the Windows serial ports behaviour under Linux.

Maybe a little off-topic, but when is Codeweavers going to release another preview version on Wine 1.0? Their "preview versions" work better than the snapshots at the Wine page.

inquiring minds want to know.

Believe it or not, QuickTime runs alright with recent builds of WINE. Buggy interface, but then, I never found the interface that great to start with. :)

Howard (I know this isn't Howard, it probably goes to a default@howardstern.com -- please pass this on to him),

I saw you mentioned on Slashdot tonight: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23009&cid=2477 192

Is that true? If you said "well screw that!" for Windows XP, perhaps you'd be interested in Linux, which can be downloaded freely from the Internet! You can install it on as many computers as you want to; there essentially is no license to violate (there's a license, but it's completely different -- the GPL http://www.fsf.org , which simply says that if you make changes and sell the changes, you have to provide the source code with it). And the complete source code is available, for free!

There's a new company, Lindows.com, http://www.lindows.com which is rewriting Windows from scratch, so they can run Windows games under Linux. Many programs already run under Linux, using an emulator called WINE http://www.winehq.org which can handle 90% of the Windows calls -- and which is constantly being improved, a new version being released every two weeks.

It would help your listeners greatly if you would mention this. The alternative is free, and open -- it comes with the source code, so if there's a bug, or a feature you'd like to see, you (or someone you pay) can easily modify the source. No waiting on hold with Microsoft Tech Support and being ignored because your problem isn't important enough. Any programming shop can fix your problem.

Most Windows programs already run on Linux, and it's only going to improve from here! I have no financial interest in this (I'm retired), I simply want to help your listeners make the better choice. Those with cable modems or DSL can download a CD image in 10-20 minutes, then burn it onto a CD and install it on all their friend's computers, completely legally.

Freedom is killer. That's what this country was based on. Especially in these unstable times, we need to protect freedom. Please help spread the message -- there's a free alternative.

Thanks,
Thing 1

PS It would be really cool to have recordings of your shows available on your web site. I'd love to hear the segment where you discussed Windows XP. Please consider it. You could even sell ad space in the recordings, for a separate revenue stream. Sure, some people will FF through them, but most will have it on while doing other things. I can help set this up if you like.

PPS You may also want to let your listeners know about the piece of legislation Senator Hollings is embarrased to discuss, but is promoting because of payments from the entertainment industry. It's called the SSSCA, and will kill the technology industry -- all digital devices will be required to have strong copy protection, which means writing "hello world" will require a Computer Science degree to protect the output. It also means the death of the open source industry, which is what created Linux. It's a response to the Napster-like ability of all media to be digitally transmitted, at no cost, with perfect copies. It's a new world; just as we lost the buggy whip industry when automobiles came around, we will lose the "media conglomerates" -- but they'll try to stop progress by buying legislation, and that hurts everybody. Imagine if you couldn't make mix tapes. That's their future. Again, choose freedom. Thanks.

From Timothy's question concerning GPL infringement, it might be construed that he has already assumed that there _is_ GPL infringement... and he's quite possibly right. Unfortunately becasue SkyOS is closed source, we will never know. Wine OTOH is an implementation of the win32 API written without access to microsoft's windows code... and therefore can't be an infringement of the windows copyright. In theory they _might_ be guilty of
reverse engineering microsoft code but that's alot harder to do and probably not the case. Linux has been successful because it has been open sourced. Microsoft has been successful... well not's get into that, but what I was going to say included the word "illegal". SkyOS will most probably go nowhere. ReactOS OTOH has a very good chance of being successful (althought in a much smaller arean than Linux). In the original posters article, the ReactOS link[osnews.com] links to an article in osnews.com where the authour of ReactOS talks about similarities and differences with PetrOS and also about GUI stuff... but presumably, the best GUI for ReactOS would be implemented through wine... Isn't that the only API / GUI (in the windows world API and GUI are confused) that makes sense?

Also, The official AOL client works
under WINE (You'll probably have the best luck using the 16-bit version of the AOL client).

Windows links to IE base code libraries only

IE links to Windows base code libraries only

They both make calls to each others basic code libraries

Figuring out which libraries to LPGL for IE could be, um, problematic at best.

I'd preffer that they be forced to LPGL both, of course. That would allow some one to write an OS that could compete with Windows in it's own space (Would you like some Wine with your cheese, Mr. Gates?) ^_^

The final line of the article is...

Good software, like wine, takes time.

(Okay, so I changed the link).

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

That would only work if you could blame MS bugs for a failure in Linux/BSD.

Perhaps this is the secret agenda behind WINE?

Acccording to The Register, AOL, HP and Compaq are in cahoots to derail the whole .NET platform. Now imagine the corporate weight, experience and cash of these three companies getting firmly behind Linux, and more importantly devoting programmers and some of that cash to improving WINE, and I think this is a win/win situation for Linux.

More users, and more applications that will run under Linux, this could change things in a big way. As the arabs say: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

If Microsoft can deliver on a *cross-platform* solution.

.NET relies on standard Windows APIs. Only a "compact" version is designed to be portable.

If .NET handles the 30 odd languages they claim to support, with easy extendability for more.

See Microsoft's use of future tense and this list of JVM languages.

If they make .NET a standard, ... What motivation does MS have to lose control of their market? I don't have links readily available, but all I have heard is of MS planning to take the C# specification to ISO, which has nothing to do with standardizing their whole platform. Even if they did, any takers on rewriting Win32? Ask the WINE people how easy it is.

If they can make sure .NET really is vendor neutral, so shipping the .NET foundation is not like shipping the JVM which is little more than a commercial Sun product.

And .NET won't be a commercial MS product. I have not seen MS even try to claim that anything they produce for .NET won't be owned by them. Read carefully.

Then HECK YEAH, I'll take an open, free, extendible, cross-platform platform any day, especially if it ships with millions of Windows machines...

Aha. Windows machines. That's right. .NET is supported on Windows machines. It should make doing Windows network development nicer, with a compact version in various devices acting like embedded Java. MS supports Windows. They make Windows. What motive do they have for changing that? When did they say they were changing that?

I think from a technical perspective the .NET platform...

Try reading the technical documents. Here's one on SOAP. Read it. It's not that exciting. It specifies that you can use normal XML Schemas with a few extra rules and an envelope that mimics HTTP functionality.

You can do little new with SOAP and .NET from a non-Windows computer that you couldn't do with normal HTTP and CGI. SOAP provides almost nothing on top of standard XML. There's nothing new under the sun.

If you want open and exciting, try Linux or FreeBSD. If you want cross-platform software, try something open like C, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, or anything else on the list. They also interoperate just fine. Unix had cross-language interoperation working in the 70s. It's called pipes, and it's at least faster than SOAP.

- Tom

Some anonymous coward said:

I've TRIED to copy programs from Suse to Redhat. It doesn't work. They crash and burn for lack of proper DLL's. These are not the same OS!

YM "Windows to Redhat". ;) (Linux doesn't have DLLs, and I copy stuff between SuSE and Redhat distributions of Linux regularly. Not little programs, either...I've successfully compiled uqwk (an offline Usenet newsreader) on a SuSE box, taken the binary to both Redhat AND Debian boxen, and the darn thing *works*. :)

Now to run stuff that requires DLLs, you need a little utility called Wine. I've never seen a huge use for it myself, though. :)