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Wyse Ditches Linux For WinCE
Scrymarch writes "Wyse has switched to Windows from Linux on its thin-client devices because of lack of driver support, etc. Story is on CNET." I feel like a bitter boyfriend. 'You'll be back! You'll be back here on your hands and knees, begging me to take you back!' Maybe I can play 'Mom,' too. 'When you get nailed by stupid licensing schemes, don't come crying to me! It's all fun and games until someone loses stock value!'
I am dual booting with Linux and Win98, but i pretty much always use Win98 because my video card, Rendition V1000 (yes, it's 4 years old and way outdated), is only "supported" in Linux and not accelerated. That means that video (even text scrolling) SUCKS in Linux on my machine, yet runs beautifully in Windows. Power Management from my motherboard (a year old MicroStar) isn't recognized either by Linux, so no power management in Linux.
And barcode scanners, projectors, etc. that they mentioned as things for which Linux doesn't have much support are pretty hairy even in windows. Yes, they could write their own drivers, but what if a product gets updated or discontinued? Will they have to spend the time/money to write new drivers every time someone wants a new device on their system or a currently supported device gets discontinued?
This is a major area where Linux needs work, but until then I think Wyse is justified in this decision.
I totally support Open Source and all that, but I am not a developer. Since it is still a relatively new field to the larger corporations, the developers who support open source are going to have to work overtime to make it a viable choice to the broader market.
IANAL, but I play one on
Man, I really wish the editorial crew would grow up.
"Wyse introduced a Linux-based thin client last year but will be phasing out that machine because Linux didn't have adequate support from companies that made bar-code readers, scanners, printers and other hardware with which the thin clients had to be able to communicate."
That says it all. Big whoop. Yes folks, surprise, Windows is better at Linux at some things. Raving like a lunatic and shaking your fist in anger and denial won't make your penis grow.
Instead of acting like immature snots and running around chanting "Winsux" and "M$" while recalling wonderous anecdotes of NT crashing every thirty seconds, why not look into establishing better partnerships with IHVs so in the future Linux will be a viable option?
Who the hell cares about thin clients anyway? You know, I am one of those bizzare people who feels that it's not worth trying to provide a version of Linux that my grandma could use. My thinking is - use what ever you like, if you want user simplicity, use Mac or Windows for christ sake, if you want a great stable multitasking multiuser secure hard core OS go with UNIX if you need to use IBM mainframes use OS/400 and if you want to run some cool code at home for yourself without your OS crashing, all secure and neet, use Linux or freeBSD or Beos and stay with them until you decide to run Halflife again.
So get out and stay out!
You can't handle the truth.
Individual developers can't approach the device driver problem the way a company can - largely because individuals cannot afford the test hardware. I'm quite disappointed at how little device infrastructure has been added to linux from the companies sporting huge market caps off of its backs.
NetBSD is so magnificent that 6 people in the world use it.
THAT IS EXACLTY MY FUCKING POINT!
NO ONE in their RIGHT FUCKING MIND uses NetBSD. NO ONE knows how to fucking install it. There are NO fucking APPLICATIONS. You want shit? You FUCKING CODE IT YOURSELF.
You must be wondering, then, why anyone would want to use it, or why I advocate it so strongly. Since you're obviously new to the "game" let me explain the rules:
Rule 1 The harder something is to use, the more l33t it is.
Rule 2 The less number of people that use something, the more l33t it is.
Rule 3 To win the "game", you must become the most l33t0 d00d of them all.
For example, Linux used to be hard to use. And few people used to use it. In those days, Linux was what we in the industry call 'l33t'. Linus Torvalds was 'l33t'. Alan Cox was 'l33t'. Neither of them are anymore, because Linux is so incredibly simple to use that any drug-addled adolescent who takes five minutes from downloading britney spears pr0n can install Debian on his fucking Pee Cee. l33tness is not cumulative. It is always changing. You must seek out sources of l33tness as the old ones dry up. Linux is drying up. It is not l33t. Abandon it while you still can.
NetBSD, with its six users and no applications (not to mention drives; you want color graphics? Write it yourself) is very l33t. In fact, it is sucking all the l33tness out of Linux, FreeBSD, and now even OpenBSD (the choice of the highly paranoid, criminally sociopathic, or in the case of Theo deRaadt, both). The only way to be l33t is to use NetBSD. No companies use NetBSD. There are no NetBSD PDAs. No NetBSD in my fucking toaster. No "Teach yourself NetBSD in 12 minute" bullshit either. NetBSD is l33t. Linux is not.
To win the "game", you need l33tness.
To win the "game", you need NetBSD.
If Wyse really believes that WinCE (or are they still going to call it "Windows Powered"?) provides a better foundation for their system than Linux, then let them; it's not important for them to use Linux, and it's not important to us either. A world dominated by Linux will be no better than a world dominated by Windows.
Personally, I think that both Linux and WinCE are bad choices for thin clients and other such computers. I don't believe that Linux provides any significant advantage to the corporation or the customer of these computers, in the technical aspect, particularly in comparison to other existing OSs - NetBSD has already been mentioned, and Be's IA offering (which runs on Stinger) seems rather nifty. Call me crazy, but I don't think any "regular Joe" wants to be forced to use an operating system whose primary focus has always been on an user base of hackers, sysadmins and other "advanced" users who like to play with Unix.
Someone says "but Linux is open-source". So what? So is {Free|Net|Open}BSD; so is eCos (although eCos isn't really meant to be used on thin clients, I think it'd make a nifty fit). Free Software is good, but not all Free Software is good, and not all Free Software is Linux. I personally dislike many aspects of Linux (aside from those which stem from its Unix heritage), although I'm a fierce supporter of Free Software.
In conclusion: although one must wonder why they've picked WinCE as the alternative, Linux is by no means the optimal OS for this job; come to think about it, one must wonder why they had picked Linux in the first place. IPO, anyone? And even if it were optimal (or even appropriate), it's not the responsibility of the Linux community at large (or the fraction thereof which reads Slashdot) to make sure that Wyse picked it. World domination is not a goal.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
A thin client in this regard is a device being used to connect to a Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition or Windows 2000 Server with Terminal Services installed. The devices usually support the Microsoft RDP Protocol and the Citrix ICA Protocol (if you are also using Citrix MetaFrame).
This idea of these systems is to run these protocols. Like X Windows, the MultiWin system (developed by Citrix and licensed to Microsoft) divides the application's logic and display, processing on the server and displaying on the clients.
Without the Citrix MetaFrame system, the clients include Win16, Win32, and WinCE (OEMs only). With Citrix MetaFrame there are ICA clients for those platforms plus ICA clients for like a dozen Unixes (there is now a Linux version to) and JAVA.
The reason that Wyse switched to Linux was that it was cheaper than paying a WinCE license. Also, Linux can be run on cheaper hardware than the funky chips that CE runs on. However, the sole purpose of that machine was to run the RDP and/or ICA client. Because it wasn't Windows, it was probably the ICA client (this is a condition of the Microsoft/Citrix licensing deal, not Microsoft arrogance).
With the Citrix packages, you can have serial and parallel ports on your dumb terminals and map them as though they were connections on the Terminal Server. This allows you to include things like local printers, bar-code readers, etc. However, with a Linux based client, you would NOT be able to remap the serial ports (that is limited to the DOS, Win16, and Win32 clients), so you would need a driver for the base OS that would handle the barcode and make it available for mapping.
The idea for Wyse is to make prebuilt WinTerms that have this functionality so the customers can use those in their installations.
Citrix's ICA (and to a lesser extent Microsoft's RDP) are really amazing. While MultiWin isn't amazing (it makes NT multi-user, and it is sometimes flakey if the programs aren't properly written), ICA allows you to run a really quick connection of as little bandwidth as 28.8.
Now before I get marked down into oblivion for supporting a Microsoft related technology, I will point out that Citrix is developing a MetaFrame for UNIX system. I believe that the Solaris port is done and they are working on the Linux version.
The idea is that in addition to the Windows applications, you can deploy your UNIX and Java based applications through ICA for display on the clients. Although X DOES support this, rolling out a thousand or so X-servers is a pain in the butt. The Citrix ICA client has some amazing capabilities with automatic roll-outs.
These products are NOT aimed at home users. They are aimed at Fortune 1000 companies.
Disclaimer: I am a Citrix Certified Administrator and make my living (well, my pocket change, I'm a student) as a consultant. I also worked a summer job at Citrix a few years ago.
Alex M. Hochberger
M.C.S.E., C.C.A.
It isn't a few drivers. WinCE is THE standard for Windows Terminal devices. That is the one market that WinCE is doing VERY well in. A few years ago, before Microsoft strongarmed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pursuaded Citrix into licensing their technology, the only system using this was Citrix WinFrame with their ICA technology.
At the time, they licensed their DOS client to their OEMs (WYSE, NCD, etc.) to be modified to run in the ROM of the clients. The clients had an ugly configuration interface, and if there was a fix in the client or improvement, you needed to swap firmware. Along comes Microsoft WinCE and there is an underlying OS and they can flash in new client software. Also, with WinCE, they can just recompile the Client for the chip in question (usually a Cyrix cheapie) and recompile the relavent drivers. This is MUCH easier than customizing the software for each system.
As a result of dozens of WinCE based Terminals, the specialized hardware that makes this system so impressive became reasonable, and interchangable parts kicked in. Now the manufacturers of these devices release the relavent WinCE driver and it can be used by the OEMs with little difficulty.
IBM has a Linux thin Client which also could run (I believe) JAVA, 3270, and a Web Browser natively. Wyse tried to follow suit, in large part to stop paying licensing fees. Unfortunately, without WinCE, you couldn't do RDP (the MicroSoft protocol) which meant that you could only sell your device to MetaFrame shops.
The move to Linux, IMHO, was never really intended. By proving that they could switch to Linux and save money, the OEMs demonstrated to MS that they had to stop charging for WinCE, which they announced what, a week or two ago? MS was NOT happy if the OEMs all had cheaper Terminals that were Linux powered and were MetaFrame specific. Microsoft didn't want to be removed from having credibility in this market, so they buckled.
This was the right decision.
Alex M. Hochberger
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Citrix Certified Administrator
note: those credentials are NOT bragging, it is a disclaimer so you know where I am coming from and can discount my opinion because I make my income with this stuff.