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Is there an aisle for Linux in Walmart!

Ubuntu is available at BestBuy. In the store. On the shelf. In a rather attractive shrink-wrapped box. Open your eyes before you open your mouth.

As for the rest of the bile you've spewed about interoperability:
I purchased a laptop and some other equipment at BestBuy, with absolutely no regard for whether it would work under Linux. Vista was pre-installed (and broken "out of the box", despite that little Microsoft flag claiming "Vista Certified!").
Lo and behold, Ubuntu works quite well, right "out of the box". Sound had a couple hiccups (there was a bit of stutter until I added a line to a config file (using the graphical text editor, not some obscure CLI editor; support was all kinds of apparent as soon as I hit the forums via the built-in help menu item (which, by the way, took minutes, not hours))), and (oh, heaven forbid!) I had to use a "generic" printer driver from the manufacturer for the networked (WIFI!) printer, but the system as a whole worked with a minimum of fuss - almost as quick and easy to set up as the Windows side of the same machine and peripherals. WIFI was detected and set up automatically, even my little remote control works. When I enabled desktop effects, the (restricted) Nvidia driver was offered, and I cheerfully accepted it (I love my wobbly windows, it just *feels* better). No fuss, no muss, damn near all of it "just worked", right "out of the box"... oh, and without the month and a half of driver hell I fought with to get Vista to recognize and interact with the "touch" control bar above the keyboard (among other things). I was never *required* to touch the command line to get my hardware fully functional, and the few things that didn't "just work" were issues on both sides of the OS fence (which screams "shoddy hardware" to me, but I digress).

"Add/Remove Software" actually does its job *BETTER* in Ubuntu than in any Windows I've ever run. Not only can I remove stuff, but I can actually add new software through the menu item called "Add/Remove Software"... and it's not only painless, it doesn't cost me a dime. Need a video editor? Type "Edit Video" into the search box, and poof! Several options to choose from, and you can be editing video in a matter of minutes. Want to play games? There's a whole section of them. Want to install windows stuff? Try "Windows Emulator" in the search box. (and oh BOY has wine gotten better in the past year! I actually get better framerates in World of Warcraft under wine than I do under Windows!)

Take your Microsoft shill paycheck to the bank, then go play in traffic.

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I was going to end this post here, then I re-read yours, and found this gem:

But it is 2009 and folks aren't gonna research just to buy a gadget.

If you're not going to research your new (cellphone|printer|Hi-Def TV|whatever) then you deserve any heartache you bring upon yourself. I am glad to have done a few minutes' research on things like the iPhone, mp3 players, LCD monitors/TVs, etc; it has saved me much grief when I discovered that I didn't actually want a phone/microPC that I'm not even allowed to change the battery in, it has saved me from buying an mp3 player that had a limit to the number of songs I could put on the device (ever, not just at one time), it has saved me from purchasing a TV with a larger screen size once I discovered that a larger resolution was available on a slightly smaller model (for considerably less money, I might add (and the speakers are a separate subsystem in my home entertainment center anyway)). Anyone who fails to research a new electronic gadget/gizmo/toy before spending several hundred of their hard-earned dollars on it deserves whatever grief they bring upon themselves. I mean, really... how hard is it to plug "(whatever gadget name) +issues" into google?

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I threw away mod points to reply to your egocentric, bigoted, uninformed commentary. Please have the decency to read and understand my comments before replying.

http://www.winehq.org/

Kubuntu is the biggest pile of shit ever! Ubuntu's KDE implementation is horribly buggy, and then with that piled on top of Ubuntu's other buggy crap it really is the LAST distro I would use.

There is no such thing as a KDE implementation. You like Debian (everything works) but hate Ubuntu (pile of shit). Wake up call: Ubuntu is Debian.

I quite like Fedora (I used to really hate it, but since F10 it has been really good), Debian (just works!) and I am currently using Arch Linux (I was hesitant because of the whole rolling release thing, but it seems OK so far).

Okey let me get this straight. You hate bleeding edge Debian (Ubuntu) that has been all preconfigured and scripted together, yet you love the most bleeding incompatible, research lab stuff even, Fedora, while Fedora is more buggy then Ubuntu. Hell the policy integration stuff in Fedora 10 and 11 is a nightmare. You do like KDE 'inegration' yet you use DIY Arch. You are absolutely full of shit.

You are also way oversimplifying Wine - I can tell you from a look at the Appdb that the latest photoshop does NOT work out of the box (consistently rated GARBAGE!) except for some Kubuntu user (you?) who rated it Gold.

No that's not me. There is no single mention of the stable Wine (1.0.x) in the CS4 entry of Appdb. So if you just use the stable version, packed with every distro, even Arch, you can just install it and use it. Google paid for it.

Kubuntu is the biggest pile of shit ever! Ubuntu's KDE implementation is horribly buggy, and then with that piled on top of Ubuntu's other buggy crap it really is the LAST distro I would use.

I quite like Fedora (I used to really hate it, but since F10 it has been really good), Debian (just works!) and I am currently using Arch Linux (I was hesitant because of the whole rolling release thing, but it seems OK so far). All three of the latter distros have good KDE implementations. Try them.

You are also way oversimplifying Wine - I can tell you from a look at the Appdb that the latest photoshop does NOT work out of the box (consistently rated GARBAGE!) except for some Kubuntu user (you?) who rated it Gold.

I am a Linux user (only one, rarely used VM of Windows), and a frequent Wine user (I am in #winehq every day as DDevine, and I play Steam games just fine).

Overall however I do agree with you that Windows is just a bunch of the same problems which continue to iterate and all mainstream distros provide features which have only recently been poorly implemented in Windows :) Virtualbox has acellerated graphics now so maybe Photoshop not working in Wine isn't really a big deal...

Or through the gui on Ubuntu...

* Select places menu at the top of the screen
* Select connect to server
* Select the 'ssh' service type
* Type in your details and connect

You'll get a window where files can be manipulated as you would with your own machine. Locations can be bookmarked/categorised with credentials save as you like (although you should probably be using password protected certificates to authenticate yourself - which Ubuntu will also take care of). WebDav, FTP, Windows shares work the same, out of the box.

Although to answer his question, WinSCP seems to work great after you install Wine. You might want to try the native SecPanel application which seems similar though. Both can be installed in five clicks, and will be updated as necessary.

Yet you even suggest that the popular Linux distros are more user friendly in some areas than Windows, and I get looked at like a moron!

work on Linux.

lol.

Wow, you proprie-tards just don't know when to shut the fuck up. You think I give a shit how many computers you don't have? Go buy a fucking netbook or something. Or, shit, get an ssh client for your cellphone. You have one of those right, you unimagininitave prick? I'm just saying that you can unfreeze a stuck Linux machine by logging in. Something you singularly can't do with your precious Windows. Of course, you won't acknowledge that I am just right and move on. No, you have to pull the classic professional propaganist dick move of just dancing around a point when you are cornered on it. You make me want to vomit. But back to the point, for anyone else that may be reading this, as a matter of fact, with putty, you can even use the Windows box to do the logging in with.

And, something else, you keep throwing the bait out there about Linux not having many games. Last I checked, there were plenty of first tier games that work on Linux. Are they Linux games in the truest sense of the word? No. But, who gives a fuck? FarCry 2, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, Half-Life 2, etc. seem to work well on my box. So, suck it, bitch. This is Linux on the desktop. And I hope you don't like it. Sucks to be you because we will be here long after the last BSOD has faded into ancient history.

Sketchup runs reasonably well in Wine though it's not perfectly easy to set up and it still works best with Nvidia cards apparently. That said, Google could do a proper port to Wine like they have in the past, or better yet a native port so that it runs without issues. But if you'd like to use it, go file some Wine bugs on anything that doesn't work for you.

Sketchup runs reasonably well in Wine though it's not perfectly easy to set up and it still works best with Nvidia cards apparently. That said, Google could do a proper port to Wine like they have in the past, or better yet a native port so that it runs without issues. But if you'd like to use it, go file some Wine bugs on anything that doesn't work for you.

Yeah, sorry.

It might run in Wine, if you use Linux. The WineHQ App DB says it does.

Well, not really. It requires a bit of fiddling around but ended up with a gold rating running through Wine on Ubuntu Jaunty.

I'm feeling kind today.

The wine app database shows it at platinum. I myself wouldn't give it more than a gold since it requires some configuration, but compared to the terminal full of errors and fixme's i get when trying to start up impulse, yea i'd say its flawless. Even the autorefresh utility i used with warcraft3 worked like a charm. The only significant bug i experienced was the game turning greyscale when rotating the desktop in compiz fusion, but thats hardly typical usage.

Or simply add the WineHQ repository to your software sources in Ubuntu - http://www.winehq.org/download/deb. Always up to date with the latest.

http://www.winehq.org/ While it does not run everything, it is always worth a try. Probably more capable at this point than ReactOS (although I have not tried ReactOS myself).

I've done both many times, and $300 is way too much. I have rarely had to muck with the GNU/Linux video configuration files in the past 3 or 4 years, and when I did it did not take me 6 hr. The last windows license I bought (I stopped pirating years ago) was XP for $150, which was a significant fraction of the hardware cost even then, about 3 or 4 years ago. I have only used GNU/Linux since then, usually Ubuntu. Wine is starting to be a seriously viable alternative to Windows, IMHO.

The pricing is far too high. Windows 7 Professional should cost $50 or less. You are not getting more value than that. This isn't 1985. They have been making OSs for nearly 30 years, it is absurd to expect customers to believe that there is that much additional value in it when the hardware cost is so low.

On the plus side, this will add yet another small impulse to the slow relentless move towards GNU/Linux. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but the days of $300 consumer operating systems are coming to a close.

Good luck with that

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=1026

Most programs work well in Wine now. Solidworks link was not added because it has not been tested on a recent Wine build in a long time, but I bet it works at least pretty well.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=1026

Most programs work well in Wine now. Solidworks link was not added because it has not been tested on a recent Wine build in a long time, but I bet it works at least pretty well.

There's a big difference between clicking on an icon and having to do this. You and I might be able to handle this, but if she's using Ubuntu there's a good chance this is above her computer skill level.

XTest? That generates synthetic events, I don't think it lets you read relative mouse input data, or stop the cursor moving around when doing so, which is what that bug needs.

You might be thinking of XTrap, which Xorg dropped in 1.6. See comment 237 through comment 241 of that bug for details.

In fact, if you read this post, you'll see that Max has no interest in implementing the DIB Engine in the fashion that Alexandre has requested - it's too much work.

That seems a little unfair, as that post says that Max doesn't have time for the "trial and error" way of fixing patches, i.e. presenting them to Alexandre, resulting in little more feedback than "not good enough" (as corroborated in further detail by others in this discussion).

People seem willing to put in the work - paid or not - but I'm sure a little more support from the top to those who are trying to contribute would go a long way.

good response. any idea about some other issues, like http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5567 ? :)
as you can see, the issue was reported some 3 years ago, and was tested quite regularly with new wine releases - for no benefit at all.
requested debug output was provided, but nothing has come out of it so far...

You're absolutely right that Wine would benefit from more developers.

Would you like to help? See winehq.org/devel for info on how to get started.

You must have a vastly different definition of "easy" than the one I know. These are from a long time ago, as I have, sadly, not been an active Wine hacker recently.

I did not manage to find much more than fragments of the epoll patches. I have a link to one of the (many) review cycles I sent out to the list here, and one of the review cycles Mike did here. Like I said, neither were accepted once submitted, despite the many review cycles.

As for the Window posistion patch, the patch is here. I have the IRC log saved. If you want, I can email it to you. The bottom line was that we disagreed on code aesthetics.

Shachar

You must have a vastly different definition of "easy" than the one I know. These are from a long time ago, as I have, sadly, not been an active Wine hacker recently.

I did not manage to find much more than fragments of the epoll patches. I have a link to one of the (many) review cycles I sent out to the list here, and one of the review cycles Mike did here. Like I said, neither were accepted once submitted, despite the many review cycles.

As for the Window posistion patch, the patch is here. I have the IRC log saved. If you want, I can email it to you. The bottom line was that we disagreed on code aesthetics.

Shachar

You must have a vastly different definition of "easy" than the one I know. These are from a long time ago, as I have, sadly, not been an active Wine hacker recently.

I did not manage to find much more than fragments of the epoll patches. I have a link to one of the (many) review cycles I sent out to the list here, and one of the review cycles Mike did here. Like I said, neither were accepted once submitted, despite the many review cycles.

As for the Window posistion patch, the patch is here. I have the IRC log saved. If you want, I can email it to you. The bottom line was that we disagreed on code aesthetics.

Shachar

I find this story spin deeply offensive and highly misleading.

Let's start at the bottom, because that's the one that offends me so mightily. My blog is pointed to, with a caption 'adverse commercial agenda'. In that self same blog post, I refer to the energy we put into the DIB engine - I paid Huw to work on the DIB engine for six months. In fact, CodeWeavers has had the highly unenviable job of doing the long, hard dirty jobs that no one else wants to do, because they're not fun. (Can you say "COM", boys and girls). CodeWeavers contributes all of its patches to Wine first, and if you look at the top contributors to the Wine project throughout its lifetime, you will find a stunning number of CodeWeavers people. I find it personally insulting to the many people at CodeWeavers that have worked so very hard on Wine, often for very little pay, to imply that we have an evil agenda. We don't. We do want to make a living. We do put our customers ahead of shills on mailing lists. We do sometimes focus on making CrossOver better for specific tasks, but at all times our core mission remains making Wine better.

The proposed 'wonder' patch is based upon solid work by Jesse Allen, along with some of the work we paid Huw to do. And, in fact, it does some nifty things, because the author went after the fun cool part of the task, and ignored the long, hard, nasty part of the task. Indeed, the author repeatedly refuses to consider Alexandre's requirements for doing it right. Max has not 'satisfied all requirements set'. In fact, if you read this post, you'll see that Max has no interest in implementing the DIB Engine in the fashion that Alexandre has requested - it's too much work.

Wine has come a long way in the past 8-10 years - anyone who has used Wine lately can tell you how amazing it is becoming. This is largely driven by the ever increasing standard that Alexandre is using - the bar for patches, particularly against stable and well tested code - is becoming very high. This is a Good Thing (TM).

And finally, up to the top, this phrase is troubling: 'the dissatisfaction of core developers with the arbitrary project governance'. Once a year, the core Wine developers get together at WineConf. We often have a topic called 'Wine governance', where we have great fun lampooning Alexandre. (He certainly is terse, and can be incredibly maddening). But the overwhelming and unanimous consensus, year over year, is that he does a damn fine job and that the Wine project is lucky to have him.

Change that to be 'the dissatisfaction of a bunch of vocal people on the mailing list, who don't really understand the technical issues at hand, but think they're missing out on a cool shiny' and now you have an accurate statement.

Cheers,

Jeremy

I find this story spin deeply offensive and highly misleading.

Let's start at the bottom, because that's the one that offends me so mightily. My blog is pointed to, with a caption 'adverse commercial agenda'. In that self same blog post, I refer to the energy we put into the DIB engine - I paid Huw to work on the DIB engine for six months. In fact, CodeWeavers has had the highly unenviable job of doing the long, hard dirty jobs that no one else wants to do, because they're not fun. (Can you say "COM", boys and girls). CodeWeavers contributes all of its patches to Wine first, and if you look at the top contributors to the Wine project throughout its lifetime, you will find a stunning number of CodeWeavers people. I find it personally insulting to the many people at CodeWeavers that have worked so very hard on Wine, often for very little pay, to imply that we have an evil agenda. We don't. We do want to make a living. We do put our customers ahead of shills on mailing lists. We do sometimes focus on making CrossOver better for specific tasks, but at all times our core mission remains making Wine better.

The proposed 'wonder' patch is based upon solid work by Jesse Allen, along with some of the work we paid Huw to do. And, in fact, it does some nifty things, because the author went after the fun cool part of the task, and ignored the long, hard, nasty part of the task. Indeed, the author repeatedly refuses to consider Alexandre's requirements for doing it right. Max has not 'satisfied all requirements set'. In fact, if you read this post, you'll see that Max has no interest in implementing the DIB Engine in the fashion that Alexandre has requested - it's too much work.

Wine has come a long way in the past 8-10 years - anyone who has used Wine lately can tell you how amazing it is becoming. This is largely driven by the ever increasing standard that Alexandre is using - the bar for patches, particularly against stable and well tested code - is becoming very high. This is a Good Thing (TM).

And finally, up to the top, this phrase is troubling: 'the dissatisfaction of core developers with the arbitrary project governance'. Once a year, the core Wine developers get together at WineConf. We often have a topic called 'Wine governance', where we have great fun lampooning Alexandre. (He certainly is terse, and can be incredibly maddening). But the overwhelming and unanimous consensus, year over year, is that he does a damn fine job and that the Wine project is lucky to have him.

Change that to be 'the dissatisfaction of a bunch of vocal people on the mailing list, who don't really understand the technical issues at hand, but think they're missing out on a cool shiny' and now you have an accurate statement.

Cheers,

Jeremy

I have had quite a bit of code go into Wine. The entire BiDi support was done by me, as well as some other parts (I did a rewrite of wineboot, for example). It is very hard to claim I don't know how Wine works, or how to submit patches. I even used to appear in Wine's "who's who" page, and have an interview with me for WWN.

Not only that, but Alexandre knows me. The last time we met (wineconf in Germany, a few years ago) we had a (good humor) conversation that went something along those lines. I mentioned I don't have much time to work on Wine any more, and that maybe it doesn't matter because my patches get rejected anyways. He said that it's too bad, becuase he likes rejecting my patches. I'm saying this because I want to stress that having your patches rejected is all a part of working on FOSS, and is not what I was referring to at my grand parent post.

But the rejections I'm talking about are not explanations received on the list, where communication is short. The actual patches were flat out ignored. The explanations were received on IRC, where communication was bidirectional, and there was no misunderstanding that resulted from lack of time.

And yet, the above reasons were all that I received.

Shachar

Do not buy Windows products if you want to see them in Linux.

So, if I refuse to buy a copy of Fallout 2 for Windows, I will see it ported to Linux? How long will that take?

Can you name one of these games that needs it?

Oh, there are only about 50 of them. That's not even a complete list, I know I don't bother to report the bug anymore. What would be the point?

The great thing about git hosted projects is that anyone can merge in your changes with ease.

If it's not as easy as updating Wine from the Apt repository then it is a loss. Seriously, who has time to rebuild Wine every time a new version comes out?

In the case of Sun's patch it sounds like "not pretty" means he either did something like put in C++ style comments or didn't match the coding standard on the file he was editing.
However, without giving us the link to his patch on the mailing list we have no way of telling.

You've given two possible interpretations of what was meant, and someone else in this thread has suggested that it could be also be construed as a critique of algorithmic elegance. No doubt there are other interpretations. Perhaps when the code is printed in fixed-width font and layed on its side it didn't look enough like a mountain range.

If Sun, if I can infer from his e-mail address that this is he, was unable to determine what was meant, I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, if a maintainer is willing to turn patches away, for the sake of spending an extra 2 or 3 minutes giving more constructive feedback, then what incentive is there to patch submitters to continue doing so. How long would it take, even just to type "Remove C++ style comments, fix coding style to match rest of file"?

Since you're only providing another anecdotal point of view, I fail to see how you can judge his comment to be false.

RTFA: your complaint
and the response.

DGA mouse grab is (claimed to be) not evil.

RTFA: your complaint
and the response.

DGA mouse grab is (claimed to be) not evil.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10778

I hate having to cripple my system with mem=xxxx to make things run without crashing.

DGA sucks. It's a painful kludge. When you use DGA, you are asking both X and the kernel to stand back and respect your right to draw whatever you like on the framebuffer.

It is true that the framebuffer part was deprecated, however DGA also includes a mouse handling extension. Please read the bug report comments.

Last time I've used DGA was in 2004, and it required the application (not just the X server) to run as root because it writes directly to the video hardware.

Please read the fine bugreport comment thread.

DGA shared memory video was deprecated because it required superuser privileges (essentially it mapped the video memory into application memory space, so that a game could draw stuff at the fastest possible speed, provided that the window was completely uncovered). In essence, it was useless for security reasons. DGA mouse grab has never been deprecated, and is still fully supported in most xorg input modules (evdev did not support it until recently though). I don't see any reason that DGA mouse grab would ever be deprecated without a better replacement, and as long as it does work we should use it (it is a queryable extension after all).

a way to deal with this problem without asking for personal favors from X.org and the Linux kernel, namely, to use the DGA subsystem to achieve the required mouse behavior

DGA sucks. It's a painful kludge. When you use DGA, you are asking both X and the kernel to stand back and respect your right to draw whatever you like on the framebuffer. This is a hell of a lot harder than it sounds, and is just simply fail in modern setups.

Another long-standing issue is "Bug 6971: Mouse "escapes" window or is confined to an area in the full screen program", which affects A LOT of games out there. The developers in charge insists that it could only be fixed by making changes in the code all the way down to X.org layers and perhaps even in the kernel mouse handling. However, this is demonstrably false, because: A) there is no such issue in Wine's fork Cedega; and B) some "outside" developers pointed out that there is a way to deal with this problem without asking for personal favors from X.org and the Linux kernel, namely, to use the DGA subsystem to achieve the required mouse behavior. But that's not going to be accepted either, because someone somewhere decided that DGA was "deprecated" and never mind that the deprecation was ONLY concerning its graphic component. The bug was reported almost three years ago, and it's almost like it's kept "in" on purpose, so that Wine never works properly with many games, and so that users will always have a need for the proprietary Crossover Games product.

XInput 2 is coming to the next X Release, and the support for relative mouse movements means that this bug will be fixed "the right way" shortly thereafter. There are already Wine devs testing out the latest X alphas to make sure XInput2 does what we need.

Another long-standing issue is "Bug 6971: Mouse "escapes" window or is confined to an area in the full screen program", which affects A LOT of games out there. The developers in charge insists that it could only be fixed by making changes in the code all the way down to X.org layers and perhaps even in the kernel mouse handling. However, this is demonstrably false, because: A) there is no such issue in Wine's fork Cedega; and B) some "outside" developers pointed out that there is a way to deal with this problem without asking for personal favors from X.org and the Linux kernel, namely, to use the DGA subsystem to achieve the required mouse behavior. But that's not going to be accepted either, because someone somewhere decided that DGA was "deprecated" and never mind that the deprecation was ONLY concerning its graphic component. The bug was reported almost three years ago, and it's almost like it's kept "in" on purpose, so that Wine never works properly with many games, and so that users will always have a need for the proprietary Crossover Games product.

XInput 2 is coming to the next X Release, and the support for relative mouse movements means that this bug will be fixed "the right way" shortly thereafter. There are already Wine devs testing out the latest X alphas to make sure XInput2 does what we need.

Another long-standing issue is "Bug 6971: Mouse "escapes" window or is confined to an area in the full screen program", which affects A LOT of games out there.

The developers in charge insists that it could only be fixed by making changes in the code all the way down to X.org layers and perhaps even in the kernel mouse handling. However, this is demonstrably false, because: A) there is no such issue in Wine's fork Cedega; and B) some "outside" developers pointed out that there is a way to deal with this problem without asking for personal favors from X.org and the Linux kernel, namely, to use the DGA subsystem to achieve the required mouse behavior. But that's not going to be accepted either, because someone somewhere decided that DGA was "deprecated" and never mind that the deprecation was ONLY concerning its graphic component.

The bug was reported almost three years ago, and it's almost like it's kept "in" on purpose, so that Wine never works properly with many games, and so that users will always have a need for the proprietary Crossover Games product.

Another long-standing issue is "Bug 6971: Mouse "escapes" window or is confined to an area in the full screen program", which affects A LOT of games out there.

The developers in charge insists that it could only be fixed by making changes in the code all the way down to X.org layers and perhaps even in the kernel mouse handling. However, this is demonstrably false, because: A) there is no such issue in Wine's fork Cedega; and B) some "outside" developers pointed out that there is a way to deal with this problem without asking for personal favors from X.org and the Linux kernel, namely, to use the DGA subsystem to achieve the required mouse behavior. But that's not going to be accepted either, because someone somewhere decided that DGA was "deprecated" and never mind that the deprecation was ONLY concerning its graphic component.

The bug was reported almost three years ago, and it's almost like it's kept "in" on purpose, so that Wine never works properly with many games, and so that users will always have a need for the proprietary Crossover Games product.

Massimo Del Fedele seems to be working towards a solution. Which of the devs is calling for this fork on the mailing list?

Other posts mention Multi-seat linux. That is what you are looking for, plus WINE. At most, you will need to buy an extra graphics card. To run games on legacy systems, test it first under WINE. You get better performance and compatibility for games on WINE on Linux than you do for MS Vista. There are some that won't even run under WINE, though, so for those check out Cedega.

What to do about those suggesting Windows server? Double-tap to be sure.

Depending on how hard this is to do in Windows, it may be worth just running two instances of CoH in Wine. It sounds like it's playable.

1) Who needs Microsoft Office? The answer is: unless you're in a corporate environment, almost no one. OpenOffice.org works just fine for Aunt Tillie who needs to write letters and keep her recipes on the computer. And even those in a corporate environment have gotten by with out it.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. I agree that OO okay for people that just need to type something and print it, but EVERYBODY ELSE uses MS Office. It's become the standard whether people like it or not and OO doesn't handle the formatting well enough to be a replacement yet. If you need to share electronic documents of any real complexity with anybody else, it's just not good enough.

2) Photoshop is not needed by nearly as many people as you might think. Unless you're a professional photographer or a serious amateur, Photoshop is simply overkill. Krita and GIMP will meet the needs of 99% of anybody who needs photo editing, including a lot of those professionals and prosumers.

Agreed, but it's hard to convince people of that when Photoshop has become a verb.

3) iTunes is reported to run under Wine.

Really? Most of the contributers on it's WineHQ AppDB page are BRONZE or GARBAGE. Maybe it runs for some people, but that's hardly the same as WORKING. That's not a solution for a typical user.

4) I don't stream Netflix, but have heard that you can do it under Linux.

No recent knowledge of this one, but I tried a few months back and it was a futile exercise. Where'd you hear that?

5) Playing what games? There are plenty of native Linux games. Oh, you mean playing the latest-and-greatest RTS/MMORPG/FPS/etc.? Well, if that's your bag, then you need Windows. BTW--you're still in the minority of computer users.

Native games aren't Windows games. People want to play the game their friends are playing or that they saw on TV.

6) There are ways of playing Blu-Rays on Linux....

I have no direct knowledge of this one, but your typical user is most likely not going to get it working.

Left4Dead is rated as "Gold" on WINE's AppDB for Ubuntu... For a fact, most of Valves games on Steam do as well. Check the AppDB and see if you wouldn't be better served with WINE. Personally, I hate having to emulate so much of windows to get some of my older games to run (Conquest of the New World, Caesar 3, etc).

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=14592&iTestingId=40053

Maybe you want to take a look at the WinHQ AppDB ?