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Linux On Windows - The Thin End Of The Wedge?
AYeomans writes: "LINE version 0.3 has just been released.'LINE is a utility which executes unmodified Linux applications on Windows by intercepting Linux system calls. The Linux applications themselves are not emulated. They run directly on the CPU just like all other Windows applications.' Could this be the thin end, to which the Linux wedge is attached, allowing people currently tied to Windows the opportunity of easily using native Linux applications?" I wonder how many Windows users are actively waiting for Linux programs to use. (TuxRacer one day maybe?) The version number is low but this is an interesting, oddball project.
Isn't that more of a printer driver thing? At least that was what I have been told by people.
We're not talking color laser printers, inkjets or anything else you might be thinking of... When people talk about the need for CMYK and Pantone support they're talking about outputting their creations to film, delivering said film to an offset or web printer and having said printer image printing plates, which then transfers ink to the paper...
To be fair, you should include a category for Price, and you should compare WinME, too. I don't think I've gone a day without a crash yet. Win2k not in the budget. I am a Linux newbie who is ready to start exploring Linux, but cannot afford the time right now to do a Linux install. The LINE app sounds like it will be a good way to experiment with open source without having to commit the hours it would take to do a full OS install.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
My favorite is the one about how free as in (firewood|willy) as opposed to free (coffe|range) is suggestive of not so many licenses as YOU SAY ONE TIME. my bIG BEEF is in the big mess YOU HAVE MADE to the computing world, yet again.
C:\WINDOWS\RUN C:\WINDOWS\CRASH C:\ME\FDISK I to±d yo±, "Never±touch ±he flo±py di±k su
...Not to mention that Photoshop carries a pretty hefty price tag, while the GIMP is free, free, free.
The GIMP is plenty fun for pure wanking around, or doing projects that aren't intended for printing. But Photoship is indeed the tool of choice for our still-not-paperless society.
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"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
I wonder how many Windows users are actively waiting for Linux programs to use. (TuxRacer one day maybe?) The version number is low but this is an interesting, oddball project.
;-)
Wooah! Somebody woke up hungover and hasn't had there coffee yet!
It's okay, I'm there with ya bud...
Not to mention, where I work they guy there uses netscape in 'windows'. It throws commercials at his email client. :) Its actually funny to watch him 'click out of them' so that he can fetch his email off the server.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
why?
One of the great things about linux is that you compile apps *for* *your* *own* *system*, which makes them faster. I'd have thought that a complete set of linux
7 days without prayer makes one week.
...for some good technical work.
Regardless of what you think of the idea, looks like some real smart people have pulled off something cool.
'Course Wine might have moved this fast with the Windows source code, but still...
What? Humm. I'd love to know which icq clone your using for linux. Kicq, is pretty, trim and doesn't crash, but it lacks a few features like searching by icq#, and sending/receiving files. Nahh. I'd rather run the real Windows ICQ client in linux, than a linux icq clone in windows.
Thats just me though.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Well, the author of LINE just says that LINE requires Cygwin so the ones who have not heard about it have not visited LINE home page.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Not that we've done anything that silly, no, not us...
cygwin rocks. If your boss forces you to develop on Windows NT, just install cygwin and suddenly it is a Unix development environment! Beautiful.
Likewise, if you are developing a GPL-compatible application and you want it to run on Windows as well as on Unix, just compile it with cygwin and ship it! (If it is not GPL-compatible, then you have to buy a license from Cygnus. An interesting business model.)
Cygwin is very mature. I was using it 18 months ago for full-time development environment on Windows NT 4.
Regards,
Zooko
It is true that the programs will be less stable under windows, but people have to realize that. Maybe Line should have a disclaimer stating that on the website. But the real benefit to this is to show how much more functionality and power Linux appz posses compared to many Windows appz. For example, many people run the, dare I say it, Aol Instant Messenger, well if they have access to progs like Gaim, that will show them how much more htey can benefit from the better progs of Linux. Just my two cents.
Confucius say: "Man who associates with smarter men than himself is smarter than the men he associates with."
So now we can run win98 as a folder on Linux and then we can run Linux from within that Win98 folder. I'm drunk with confusion.
Does this mean I can run WINE on Line and be 133t?
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Please name the superior Linux equivilant to the following software:
Office
IE 5.5
Photoshop
Windows Media Player
Diablo 2
Didn't think so.
Never. That'd be daft.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Actually, Windows does catch a lot of crashes that happen in the background & hides them from the user.
For example, ever wonder why all the icons on the desktop & taskbar redraw from time to time? Or why your icons display the wrong pictures for an app? These are both the result of a crash in Windows where it recovers & restarts again.
Most Windows users don't really recognize how much havoc is going on behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, the fact that Windows does catch a lot of things is a mixed blessing. It is good that a small error can easily be caught before you lose that important work. It is bad because it doesn't put enough pressure on Microsoft to fix these problems in new versions of Windows.
The thing I worry about is that since Linux operates much differently than Windows it will give a perception to potential Linux converts that Linux is less stable.
Now, no one can claim that they only run Linux because Windows can't run their Linux apps. Perhaps now windows will really gain market share, because we all know that what was missing in windows was apps. :)
Don't you just love it when someone compares the best of something to the worst of something else, when those somethings are either not the norm or not relevant most of the time?
I have a PC with a Diamond Sonic Impact S70 and Matrox G400.
When I install Windows 98, the sound card is NOT recognised and the G400 is merely a fast VGA card at this stage. I have to then install the sound card driver and the Matrox driver to get them working fully.
In comes Linux, Boot of a Linux CD (choose what you like: Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Corel, Turbo, etc, etc), the G400 is found and X is configured for it, as is the sound, without so much as a "huh?" from Linux.
Whats more, Linux has'nt crashed on me in 4 years! Which is why Debian will be going on my new Dell Inspiron 8000 G850U, once I get it. Windows on the other hand will merely be one of the multitudes of apps that I will be launching from a glorious X set up.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Actually yes, this can be bad publicity, since, unlike the Linux kernel, many Linux applications are as unstable as their Windows counterparts, simply because they're in development.
<p>I even recently had to answer a newbie who said <i>"Why does Netscape and Mozilla keep crashing all the time? Wasn't Linux supposed to be more stable, advanced etc? IE never crashed on me as much."</i>. Obviously, he didn't draw the line between kernel and third-party applications.
I'm not sure this software will be very useful, but I'm not sure it's as dumb as people here seem to think.
/.. Whenever a linux guy says that his w2k box crashes all the time, I always assume he built it himself, or that he's overclocking or something like that. If you buy a Dell, it will work fine. To put it another way, it's certainly possible to make w2k solid, and if yours isn't, well you're not doing it right.
My windows 2000 desktop is rock solid. Machines that I've built myself aren't that great with windows, but my Dell never crashes. I think windows is pickier about hardware than linux.
I run linux (and BSD now) for the applications. Things like sendmail and apache, mutt, vim, and fetchmail.
Exchange might be a wonderful package (never used it), but it's expensive, and I'm running email for my own personal domain, not an enterprise -- so the thousands of dollars 2000 Server and Exchange would cost are out of the question. Outlook does a lot of nice stuff, but it won't let me read the headers (at least I haven't figured out how), things like that. Too much hand holding.
The problem with unix apps like sendmail is the learning curve. Once you know it, it really is good stuff, especially when it's free.
The whole idea that w2k isn't solid for a desktop is just silly, and the argument will only be taken seriously when you're preaching to the choir at places like
But at the same time, the idea that stability is the only drawing card of linux is silly too. Unix is simple, it's clean, and it's easy to use, once you've climbed up a bit on the learning curve. It's more than clean, it's elegant. And a lot of the apps are key -- if you want to run NAT, if you want to handle your email, if you want to filter net traffic, Linux or BSD is the way to go.
I'm not sure this particular software will be that useful -- it really makes more sense to me to just have two machines.
Quite seriously, I can see where LINE will have its uses and I have been looking for something like this starting just a few days ago. I am the Network administrator and programmer for the company at which I work. We use a Redhat Linux server and almost everyone else uses Windows workstations (I use Linux/Windows dual boot). My boss asked me to find a program just like this (Hummingbird also produces a similar program commercially) since there is one UNIX/Linux only based program (the X interface of the package is what they want to use) that our company relies on for nearly all work we do. However, the couple of people who use it most are using Windows and one of them cannot switch to Linux due to the amount of software and data he also uses that relies on Windows. This type of program is just what we need to be the answer to our needs.
There are Win32 versions of the Gimp and Tuxracer. I have tried them both. They work.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
When LINE is ready for prime time, it will mean
.NET wants to be.
;-)
having a single executable enviorment that runs
unmodfied on BSD, Linux and Windows.
This is an alternative API which is truly cross
platform - binary compatiable for x86 and compile
compatiable with almost everything else.(S/390 anyone?)
This could mean that the Linux API may become
the France Lingua of virtual machines.
A true "write once, run anywhere" the way JAVA
and
Of course, there are many problems to overcome (GUI - X is not a normal part of Win* installs)
but if they are solved we may do unto Windows
what it once did to OS/2 - since OS/2 ran Windows
apps, none wrote for OS/2.
LINE is one cool hack for the hackers that wrote it, but one huge leap for Wolrd Domination
Gilad.
Why on earth would I want one application to crash my whole machine? I thought that was why I used linux?
Why not just use VMware?
I really just don't get this. I run Linux because I like the stability, speed, the operating environment, shell, ability to custimize the look and feel of my UI beter then windows, etc.
I do NOT run linux becuase of the avaliable application support. Yes this has goten beter with Gimp, various office suites, and more better software, but still not as good as windows for some of those programs you NEED sometimes.
If not for a small group of applications, I probably wouldnt run windows ever. But what does a windows user really benifit from running Linux applications on windows?
I dont have a
Initially when I was reading this article, I thought "Oh no! Another battle for Linux!" But the truth is Windows users have had access to Linux on their windows boxes ever since the first windows telnet client and a linux/unix shell. Sure this project will allow users to use more linux applications. However, there is a time and a place for every operating system. Bottom line is Windows users may now be able to use more linux applications but they will still only have the stability and reliability of Windows. So is this really something the Linux community should worry about? I don't know for sure, but it will do one of two things. Convert users from Linux to Windows (due to windows exposure) or it will convert Windows users to Linux. Maybe it won't do anything at all.
kha0z
Master of ImportChaos.com
Windows does not have any concept of a fork.
Well, maybe not exactly...
"The CreateProcess function creates a new process, which runs independently of the creating process. The function provides two methods for identifying the program to be executed. ..."
I've heard Windows programmers complain about Unix programmers because since practically every Unix system cleans up after a process when you shut it down, the programmers don't worry about memory leaks except in long-running programs. When you recompile this code for something like Windows 95, it eats a pile of memory every time you run it until the whole system goes down.
The less stable the OS, the more carefully the software must be written. Moving software to a less-stable OS can cause serious headaches.
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Unstable? Infrequently updated? What are you smoking? I've used the last release for a month without it crashing. And it's a port of 1.2. I'd say that's pretty recent.
Love Linux. Nice, stable, a REAL OS.
Love Windows. Diablo II (where's my in game save?,) NASCAR 4, GPL, Pirates!, IE 5.5.
What on Linux would I want to run on Windows? Sobkan? Xemacs? X windows screen savers?
Nice idea, poorly concieved.
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This
Somewhat interesting. I wonder if when this piece of code matures, we will be able to run a non-windows GUI.
My good sig is in the laundry
Oh, I agree that Notes is a POS. However, a lot of the Qunicy stuff is *not* generated by Notes. Look at the RIP files to see -- lots of explorer.exe and winword.exe faults from when Notes wasn't even running. For these minor faults, Dr Watson does NOT pop up, and the user is blissfully unaware of what is going on.
So either Quincy is broken (or over sensative), or there's something going on under the hood of Windows that isn't pretty. Note that I haven't seen this on NT, only older mucked-up 9x installs.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
No, the way to get up-to-date applications is to run Slackware and compile the source yourself.
CreateProcess is not the same as a fork. When you fork a program it will maintain the same global state. CreateProcess will create a new process without the state of the current running program.
To do a fork, you have to copy the program memory and then jump to the execution point. Very expensive under NT.
Sorry, I know that I've gotten slammed for this. What I MEANT was that I can run the *nix version, in fact a Linux binary version. That is actually a big deal. That means I can keep my development environment consistent.
While there shouldn't be a difference between Windows and *nix versions of Apache, if I'm developing/testing commercial software, I want to keep my environment consistent.
Sorry for my unclear post.
Play DVDs
Rip DVDs / encode to DivX
Play DivX
(As best I can tell, Wine support for directshow filters and a DVD ASPI layer would solve those)
Games would be nice, but I don't use them that much and I'm not too picky. Get a few of the popular ones working (including something by blizzard), I don't really care which, I'll be happy.
Oh, and linux NEEDS A BETTER WEB BROWSER!!! Netscape and mozilla are both slow, they do a poor job with dialog boxes, drop down menus, text boxes, etc. Haven't tried Konqueror, but I doubt it's all *that* much better. I do like the better cookie/ad managment under the various linux browsers though.
MP3 playing linux does a fine job with.
Word processing I can deal with star office. I really do prefer MS office for anything of a size I will ever do in the near future though.
So basically, I need Wine better before I switch, not the other way round. I don't plan to even try this out.
TuxRacer is already available for Windows -- I know I've played it on my system. (It's an openGL application with standard C calls, not much more to needed to make it highly portable)...
You are right in a way, but bear in mind that tux-racer uses the cygwin api (the windows version even includes cygwin.dll!)
Actually with WINE you can. It's similar to the old win32 stuff we used to see on Win3.11. Check out WineHQ for more info.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BUG!
Are already available in THIS distribution! It's also free of bloat caused by those annoying "source" files.
I'd say that the cygwin developers did a good job of doing what they can, given the assumptions that were made for the filesystem and just about everything else on Win32.
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
Wait for the next versions of Windoze. Maybe then M$ isn't interested in your "old" Notebook and the hardware-companies (if still existent) develop drivers only for the newer systems.
For example, try to get a Win9x mousedriver for a good oldfashioned 3-button Mousesystems mouse.
I "live" in a Windows environment, on my laptop, by choice. I also don't have a Linux partition since hard drive space is precious on a laptop. But I do a lot of Linux development, usually by telnetting into a Linux box. LINE would allow me to do Linux development when I'm not hooked up to the Internet or otherwise don't have access to a Linux box.
licq (http://www.licq.org/) all the way - I can't stand the real Win32 client (or mac, but macos has it's own unofficial ones too).
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Just about anything is preferable to Office. The proprietary file formats might be bearable, if only it didn't force me into the page layout business, gobble up valuable data or mangle the page layouts across printers, platforms and versions. Pure suck.
Windows IE is continuing its long tradition of sucking. So does Mozilla, Netscape and so forth, and a useful web browser remains an unattainable dream. Perhaps, "IE 5.5 sucks not as much" is the best one can say for it.
Which sucks compared to its Mac equivilent. No real win there, either.
Anything without the "content control" shit should be preferable. It's very flashy, and flashy still sucks.
And another game - not even a great one for that matter. I give "nethack" the nod for more staying power.
And none of those five are anything I really want to use anyway. So, I'm still waiting for apps, and still using an OS that has them, unlike Windows.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Might be, but I can't afford Photoshop and Gimp's good enough for me. Even if I could affod it, I wouldn't buy it, because it's possible that the current Photoshop version won't work on future M$ OSes. With the Gimp I won't loose any money and it's probable that "./configure && make && make install" will work for a looooong time ;-).
WINE: Good for users because you can use Windows applications on Linux.
LINE: Good for users because you can use Linux applications on Windows.
The problem some people having with the Windows part of this is that they want to see Linux do better. Users don't care which does better. They just want more and better choices, and LINE gives them another choice. Open source doesn't empower users (not directly anyway) because they can't modify source (most of them are not programmers). Additional choices empower the users, because they are all capable of making choices.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Double click the message, so you have it open in it's own window, pull down View, select Options.
Headers will be located at the bottom.
Leave it to Microsoft to put it in the most unthought of place.
Dear nerds,
Sorry, but there's not a single Linux program that Windows users are itching for. Not one. May I suggest putting your programming resources into improving those pieces of shit that currently make up the vast majority of Linux apps? Maybe one day, you too can have a decent web browser!
Cheers,
Oh man, the shockwave movie is a riot.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Windows does not have any concept of a fork. Cygwin reimplements this as well as a unix like process table. It limits the number of processes to 127 and fork are very expensive with all the context switching going on to make it happen.
I wonder if they did anything different
I'm sorry, I can't believe for a minute that you seriously see Linux apps making headway into the desktop "productivity" software that is Microsoft's bread and butter. Microsoft will never allow it, they'll change some random part of the OS and break LINE as soon as Star Office or any non-MS application gets even a sliver of market penetration. Then they'll jump up and down and shout "Stable! Hah! It won't even run!" and the Linux community will be shafted just like we are with the buddy-buddy Microsoft and Hardware Vendor relationship that excludes us and makes us reverse engineer hardware just to write drivers. Microsoft people get to work on their drivers before the hardware release, we have to start from scratch when, and if, we can get our hands on one.
.NET and the service industry. OS and Hardware got them where they are, but they would be dumb to sit on their laurels. They're moving on into the application market, and since applications are much more static than operating systems and _FAR_ more static than hardware, they'll be even harder to dislodge there.
Now WINE on the other hand, I could see getting some slack from Microsoft. WINE still encourages the use of Microsoft products on the Application side. When Microsoft gets broken up, the Application side is where the real market dominance will show. The OS doesn't matter, it's transparent to the end user, use whatever you want, but the work? The data formats? All the things a _user_ will deal with? They will be Microsoft. As computer usage grows, Microsoft cares more about mindshare than it's OS. Let the technophiles use whatever OS they wish. The PHB and the average Joe don't care what OS they use as long as they know how to use the Apps. And Microsoft has by FAR the largest user base of all the application vendors.
Most people don't understand, Microsoft's future isn't in the OS, it's in the applications. It's in
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Agreed. But, if i was a graphic designer I would not mind spending the money of photoshop since its use value is way beyond the price. Photoshop is optimized for an effecient workflow, while GIMP tends to be rather cumbersome and unfriendly. There also used to be a crippled versionof photshop called photoshopLE that was bundled with scanners, which could be considered free(as in beer)
From a 'good for bill gates POV'
;-)
If an application is 'only' a "linux" application, such an ability will allow the user to remain on the superior Windows platform. They get to run thier 'linux' app, and do not have to worry about the user having to make a choice about switching.
From the 'good for Linux POV'
This will allow people who are afraid of the concept of linux to see that it does not byte
From the 'about time POV'
Given 180+ linux distros, BSD/SCO/Solaris/QNX/etc la, the declaration of the X86Open group that "the standard for interoperability is Linux ELF" perhaps vendors will get their collective crainums extracted from their rectums and decide that:
1) The don't need the infighting LSB whiners to agree on a 'common' platform.
2) Vendors make sure the code runs on systems like FreeBSD (which runs Linux binaries FASTER than Linux distos do), SCO, Solaris and projects like LINE. If they run there, and don't run on the your chosen version of the 180+ linux disro, the distro you have is broken. (if the people doing "linux compatibility" can get faster execution speeds and run big hunks of complex code like Oracle and VMware, they've done their homework)
3) Vendors then offer FORMAL support for the SCO/Solaris/BSD users, just like they would offer for RedHat.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I suggest you immediately check yourself into the nearest mental hospital. You, sir, are clearly insane. For the good of yourself and others, please remove yourself from the streets.
--
--
Can you guess who I am?
"If you had been using Microsoft Access/Money/Excel for your accounting needs, you would have experienced no downtime. I'm afraid it isn't Microsoft's responsibility to be sure each other vendor's applications work on the latest version of our operating system. Could I interest you in a Microsoft Money solution for your payroll needs? We can import data from virtually all of our competitors products and with our easy-to-use Setup Wizards, you would be able to re-build your application in next to no time. And best of all, this product is from Microsoft so it's guaranteed to stay current and keep in sync with the very latest in desktop operating system changes and have the highest level of operability with other industry-standard products like Quicken and TurboTax. Could I have a credit card number?"
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
So does LINE
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
But it does make a difference when Mozilla crashes and Wordperfect doesn't go down versus when IE crashes and the system (including your word processor) goes down with it. I've had Netscape take X down on me once--and even then, I think it may hae actually just been hung (as opposed to crashed), but I just killed X.
Or how about when IE brings down explorer (being that they're pretty much the same proggie) but then, after restarting explorer, you can't get to some application that was minimized to the tray?
It also makes a difference when the C++ (or assembly language or any other language that uses pointers) homework I was doing tries to change some memory it shouldn't and I get a nice error message versus a BSOD (granted, this is a 9x versus Real OS issue, not a Linux versus all versions of Windows).
Ahh, we're "winning" and "losing" now? Now that's funny if you actually think the posts of a bunch of anonymous people on some half-assed website are actually significant enough to be "won" or "lost". Or that they even have "rounds", for that matter.
The notion that someone actually takes anything on this particular half-assed website seriously or personally amuses me to no end...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I can't wait till this is do able!
According to the Cygwin project, XFree86 4.0 already compiles and runs under cygwin without patching, and has for some time. I was very surprised to learn this a few weeks ago; I would think many people would have the same excited reaction, but it's not a well-publicized part of the Cygwin project.
(PostgreSQL 7.1 also compiles under cygwin without patches. Cygwin rocks.)
Dear nerd,
:-)
Sorry, but there is a plethora of Linux apps that I am itching for when I have to work on a Windows box, or when I have to work with other Windows users.
Every once in a while some clueless bloke like you comes up to me asking "how can I do this-and-that?" Now I am very willing to explain such stuff.
"How can I set up a local server to test my PHP and CGI scripts [which use Sendmail and MySQL along the road]?"
"Oh, that's easy. Just install the Apache package, the PHP module and MySQL."
"...on my Windows box?"
"Oh. wait. Uhh... I know of some small free Web server for Windows that does CGI, but PHP and MySQL... hrm."
From a Mac user with a stupid FTP program: "So how can I resolve these carriage return upload problems?"
"Try ASCII upload."
"My program knows Text, MacText, BinHex [etc.], but no ASCII. Which one should I choose?"
"?? Try all of them for what I care."
"Not one worked OK. Now what?"
"Sigh. [dreaming of installing DebianPPC on that thing]"
I happen to have a couple of 100 more of these anecdotes. Whenever I am forced to work with a Windows box, I have my Linux box running as well, if possible, and through OpenSSH, smbclient, VNC, WINE and other stuff I can finally do what I have to do on that Windows box.
I am mostly using Word and Netscape on the Windows box to a) make my homework and b) do something while making my homework. But the Linux box is always there for the kewl stuff and for the programming.
It just happens to be so that Windows doesn't interoperate as well with Linux as is the other way around. In other words, when working with Windows, I _miss_ all kinds of Linux' functionalities. So YES, I am _very_ glad that Windows now finally gets some better Linux interoptability - one that doesn't require a reboot into Linux!
BTW, if you're seriously thinking that Linux folks aren't working hard on improving their "pieces of shit" evey day, *I DARE YOU* to keep up with Debian Unstable. Hehe
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Thanks for the heads-up on Miranda. Looks pretty cool.. Hopefully it won't be the memory leak that is the real Win/icq client ;)
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Win4Lin is not slow, cumbersome, nor a resource hog. Get it and you'll forget how to reboot!
I'd hate to run Unix apps on Windows (like, yuck,) but anything that will let users see the power of open source is good.
That means of course that whatever software escapes down the LINE has to be visibly supported otherwise, there's no point.
A nice little app that get out to the Windows community, say a little calendar thingy, that would grow as people use it and provide feed back or code mods would be absolutely great and very visible feed back to hang Redmond with.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Glad to keep this at an adult level.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Not on NT, they don't. You see, there's something called the "Hardware Abstraction Layer." All of the calls to hardware are made through the NT kernel. Though this means that all the programs are under direct supervision of the NT kernel (and hence the much higher level of stability), the programs don't perform quite as well as they would on a Win9X system (though the higher chance of instability on a Win9X system immensely offsets the speed benefits).
Just a little more speed, or a lot more stability, which would you choose?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'd love to make *the big switch* and lose windows. I strongly support all of the ideas behind open-source and GNU, but I can't afford the downtime to learning to use a new OS, nor can I afford a separate machine just to play and explore on. I tried dual booting a year ago. That was a nightmare.
Combine that with the fact that I'm not a huge geek and don't have much programming or coding experience, and the lack of available *nix mentors in southern West Virginia, and I'm stuck on 'Doze.
Maybe this app, or future versions, will give me the ability to get my feet wet and at least learn to navigate the Linux's interface and learn to use apps like Star Office before I once again try to change over on my own.
Back in the days of Notes 2.0, my employer installed Notes throughout the organisation. It dumped .RIP all over the network, with any directory that was writable susceptable to the problem. During those days we ran Windows 3.1 on workstations with 40MB drives, and generally had fairly small drives on our fileservers (600MB maximum). I had to write a batch file that ran once a day, connecting to all file services and deleting any .RIP file it found.
A collegue of my was developing Windows applications and ran Notes under the debug version of Windows. He never saw as many error messages.
That's the problem for Microsoft: Closed source apps where they original company has gone out of business that force them to choose between having backwards compatability longer than they want, or preventing the users from upgrading, thus reducing their revenue source.
The large number of Windows 3.1 installations out there is a good demonstration of that principle.
Photoshop isn't really professional, its a 'tool', not really a major rendering suite. Compared to some of software Ive seen for doing 3D, photoshop is a cheap ripoff compared to them.
So your comparing a 2d graphics editor to 3d modelling software? I don't get it. What other 2d image editing software do you consider 'professional'? Is it not fair to say in respect to the Gimp, as *it* being a cheap ripoff of Photoshop? Have a look at it's tools for example, everyone of them has been lifted from Photoshop, from the filters to the brush based tools like the magic wand and blur tool.
[Sig placeholder]
Jabber is a free IM standard which supports linking to ICQ, MSN messenger, AIM, Yahoo, at the server end - One client for all of these messengers. It's damn handy.
The old ICQ98a client isn't bad either. I'm still running that (on the odd occasion that I boot to Win98) because it supports message, chat and file transfer. And it's even less bloated than licq which uses ~8 megs of ram on my system.
There is a Windows port of Tux Racer, why would I need to run the linux binary on Windows?
I've known so many guys like you.
;-)
Don't you love these type of guys who will always yell "I know your type" / "I know guys like you" ?
--
...just think, now all the Micro$oft users can see how unstable Linux applications are when running under Windows -- talk about a great way to present bad publicity to the uninitiated masses.
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Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
This is a great idea. The windows operating environment is so far removed from the *nix philosophy. The idea of using tools and having a shell that is really powerful has fizzled away. Hopefully this will allow people to see the power of having such a tool.
So, what's your point? Think of Cygwin as a "Unix [class] library". It's no different than using MFC or any portable library. Using Cygwin doesn't make TuxRacer any less of a Windows program. It's like saying that a game compiled with DJGPP & Allegro isn't a DOS program.
If it bothers you that it uses Cygwin, why not try compiling it with Mingw instead? Then it wouldn't need cygwin.dll, just the C DLLs that Microsoft distributes with Windows.
Actually, seeing as WINE can be faster than Windows NT in some cases, is it theoretically possible that certain Win32 programs will actually run faster when using WINE and LINE? :-)
Of course, you could run LINE using WINE on a Linux box?
Stuart Brady
There already is a port of GIMP to Win32... look here.
What this project gives me is the ability to standardize all my environments on a set of good, free apps - Linux apps.
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It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I've known so many guys like you. You can't admit when you're wrong. When you get trapped into looking foolish, you either a) argue incessently that you're really not wrong until the other party just gives up, and you declare unilateral victory, or b) just say some variation of "well, we weren't really discussing this seriously..." thereby attempting to distance yourself from your own silly opinions.
They other thing about people like you is that you arrogantly think you're smarter than everyone else, but your arrogance far exceeds your capabilities. Take your posts here -- you want to be seen as so brilliant because you use the tools of the green screen luddite. Woop-de-doo! Got news for you... smart people use the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's command line utilities, sometimes it's MS/Word, and sometimes it's pencil and paper. Only the truly ignorant (such as yourself) thinks that command line tools are always superior to graphical tools (or as you call it, the "time consuming point-and-click process"). That fact that you think Word requires knowledge of the "page layout business" just proves your ignorance of the tool.
In short, why don't you learn about a platform and the tools thereof before knocking them and just proving to everyone that you're a fool?
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Can you guess who I am?
"very CLI instance of any type of application that I have ever used did NOT leave out important features and did NOT force me to become a member of that developer's design religion" So I'm guessing you're NOT a graphic designer. Or in the music industry. Or any kind of film or animation. Or DTP. Or any business which involves documents or presentations. You're some kind of system administrator, right? If only everyone had the same job and same interests as you, there'd be no need for GUIs. Or art galleries or record shops or television or sunlight. Anything really that distracts us from the miles and miles of unceasingly identical text. Chris
One important advantage this gives developers is the ability to develop on the platform of their choice, and deploy the application on the platform of the consumers choice, which may very well not be the same.
This could be an important foot in the door, allowing people to develop on Linux and deploy on windows (taking much of the programming frustration associated with developing under windows -- oh the humanity of it all! Memories best left repressed -- out of the picture). Potentially quicker development cycles not held hostage by Microsoft release schedules and instant deployment to two popular platforms could make for a very potent combination that can well favor platforms such as Linux.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Razor 1911, one of the world's largest IT piracy conglomerates, announced its newest software distribution yesterday. Sold under the name (version number?) of "31337," the package is causing quite a stir among PC enthusiasts, especially Windows users. RabidWarth0g, a courier for Razor 1911, described for us a few of the most important new features in the 12-CD package.
"Users of proprietary software no longer have to struggle with an incomplete set of tools, difficult installation procedures, and high maintenance costs. Our new solution, 31337, brings the user interface of the quality Windows 98 operating system up-to-date with that of the technically inferior 'Linux' and 'BSD' distributions, which were long preferred for their ease of use and extensive lineup of applications. Our new system, 31337, combines the stability and power of Windows with the ease of use traditionally ascribed only to UNIX-like systems. In short: 31337! j00 ph33r!"
The new system is installed and automatically maintained by the use of the new "Razor Package Manager," or RPM. RPM checks compressed .diz files for virii and trojans, installs their binaries into the proper directories, enters the required serialz, and patches the Windows registry as required. RPM maintains a database of the thousands of appz, gamez, mp3z, t-filez, gifz, jpgz, phreakz, and other filez installed on a system so that any package may be cleanly uninstalled at any time. 31337 also contains sophisticated remote administration tools such as BO2K and Netbus installed by default. An animated paper clip on the desktop guides users through difficult parts of the installation.
User groups applauded the distro's completeness-it includes networking tools (IE 5.0, AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Outlook), text processing software (Microsoft and WordPerfect Office 2000), a warez replacement for Postscript capabilities (Acrobat), and many, many games that -- surprisingly -- run as well as they do on Linux (Quake, Unreal, Solitaire). Affirming Razor's commitment to the pirated software community, the distribution also includes development tools such as hex editors and ripping tools for various media formats.
A 14 year old sKr!p7 k!DD!3 told our reviewers, "This operating system is very advanced. I was able to use my skillz to set up Quake and its networking in under an hour." His parents noted the AI features: "That cute little paper clip is so smart! He even opens our e-mail attachments for us!"
In addition to its extensive lineup of programs (none of the 12 CDs are bloated by source code), 31337 offers improved hardware compatibility over other distributions of proprietary software. Many peripherals are detected and configured after just a few reboots. Additionally, some manufacturers offer drivers for download. While bleeding-edge technologies such as real memory protection, symmetric multi-processing, and RAID are not yet supported, 31337 may work with them as soon as next year's kernel is cracked.
However, free software advocates insisted on spreading FUD about the new distribution. According to the gnu.org "Warez Mythz" page:
"The system's closed-source development methods are completely unreliable. Bugfixes, as usual, will take weeks or months to appear on developers' websites and in retail stores. So-called 'Service Packz' only serve to protect Razor 1911's interests in keeping the system incompatible with freedom."
Warth0g replied to these accusation by pointing to Razor 1911's long reputation for being the first on the scene with the latest hackz, crackz, and ripz. He also quoted part three of the Warez Advocacy-HOWTO:
"Relax with some free beer."
Authors of the software bundled by 31337's have been strangely quiet about the matter, neither refuting nor accepting GNU's accusations. Microsoft, Corel, Symantec, Adobe, Id, and others seemed to pretend that they had never even heard of this enormous collaborative development effort.
Released at the end of April in Russia, Africa, and South Asia, the CD-ROM version of 31337 will be available in the United States as soon as licensing issues are worked out. Until then, get 31337 from your friendly local warez d00d.
The full version (avaliable only from Razor 1911 distribution centers) also includes 100 megs of .nfo documentation and two months of 0-day updates.
Posted on Wed 24 May 05:49:39 2000 PDT
Written by Anand Desai ad3u@virginia.edu
...wine or plex86 inside this one...?
Whoever modded this down as offtopic is full of shit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Hm, well, for one thing, running remote X apps using a 'real' native X server under Linux would be faster than using Exceed, and Netscape (unless you're sticking to 3.0 Gold) is surely not depedant, on Windows. So, only real reason you have to keep Windows for is *cough* Lotus Notes... Wait, I'm guessing this might be a machine at work... find a better job :P j/k
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Miranda ICQ is a GPLed ICQ clone for Win32 with a nice, slim design. Its very plugin oriented, so developers start developing some plugins for this thing for those of us who are still bound to the Win32 platform. Miranda doesnt have file transfer, yet, but Im sure it will soon.
http://miranda-icq.sourceforge.net
this will open the eyes of the windows idiots who think that linux software is inferior to M$ software. show them the applications and they will come
-shut up
Yeah. The only thing holding me back from running Windows is the lack of decent apps. Not that I can run all of my wonderful Linux software, I've got no reason NOT to switch!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
john
This Japanese guys life must be a nightmare ..
You're WRONG! TuxRacer 0.61 runs perfectly on Windows! See?!?!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
"Thanks, you just made my day."
I would direct your attention to debian's unstable branch and then post again please.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
What's your point?
I don't use Windows. I'm talking about GUI designers forgetting about the user and lording their "vision" over the user's head. CLI programmers have no such distractions.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
"Linux" is the one thing that you can't run with this software. "GNU applications" is far more appropriate.
PERFECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok... I'll go cry now
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
There really are a bunch of graet programs for Linux.
I don't know why many poeple act like Linux ios so constrained in software - so XYZ corporation doesnt make some software for it yet, and hardware manufacturers don't automatically provide drivers - I can do everything I want on my Linux system and I do, every day, run all sorts of programs. I can't think of anything somebody hasn't written yet for Linux.
Juln
Wow, that's terrific, I sit here on my Win2K desktop, and I'm just thinking, "I love the OS for it's stability, if only I could natively run ALL those *nix applications!, then I'd have the perfect desktop".
</SARCASM>
In fairness, this is moderately useful, I could run Apache/PHP locally for development work on my standard desktop, but that's roughly where the usefullness ends. I mean, obviously the use for this isn't X-Windows applications, although with an X-Server running it would be.
While WINE is a useful project, this isn't. I give the people working on it props, it's a neat idea, and probably a fun hack, but doesn't seem terribly useful. I mean, while this is definitely different than the Cygwin project, I'm of the opinion that Cygwin provides 75%-85% of the benefits of a project like this, so the extra effort of this project isn't worth it to "the community". However, as it is worth it to the developers, good luck.
Try instaling Linux 2.0.11 and see if your cards are automatically recognized. You'd see that the micro-kernel does have its benefits in the MS world. It might not optimize it but it lets you go online to get the newest drivers faster than using a dumb terminal to recompile.
Try not to worship Linux so much. It's not the Messiah.
I mean really. How many Linux users do you know that actually want to use windows?
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
I see a lot of people writing about BSOD and the instability of Windows, while they are savioring the stability of Linux.
Personally, I have been running Windows 2000 for about a year without a single crash (other than when writing bad C code).
My experience with Linux is that things break down there as well, when bad programs are executed.
At work, we are constantly crashing applications and sometimes subsystems in S/390 Unix. When making root cause analyzis the result is almost always that someone has written a bad application (be it our developers or the third party vendors', like IBM or SUN).
Since one can break an S/390 with bad apps, it's hardly suprising that W2K might go down. My personal experience is that the ones developing for mainframes are often people with very high skill and long experience and are relatively few. Compared to the Windows world, where there are a gazillion people developing with a very mixed knowledge and skill, there is hardly a big suprise that applications might fail on this platform (as it can on all).
The point here is that an operating system by itself shouldn't be blamed for being unstable. It's mostly in combination with "bad" applications that things break down.
Ok, that was my five cents to this religious debate.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Didn't you know that not only is TuxRacer out for win32, it has been for a while and the version releases are simultanious? (pimpinmonk shakes head in dismay)
_ ______
also, this is pretty cool. I prefer gaim to the actual AIM, and of course GIMP (but you can get it running under win32 anyway, check their website).
So in fact, many linux programs worth porting have been ported. Or are a blatant rip off of original windows products that work fairly decently. A cool project nontheless, but maybe something that works "natively" like this could find its way on to linux (wine and vmware are too slow, cumbersome and resource hogs--I'd much rather reboot into the other OS and be done with it.)
___________________________________________
Why would somebody want to run linux apps on windows? If you want to run a linux app, you probably want to run some linux distribution..
I know I do..
First, Windows is not a monopoly. Large Market share is not the same as monopoly. Second, how do you define 'Linux' applications? Can you be more specific about "sharing between OSes" and "barrier"? If "sharing" means portability, then Mozilla, Zope, Apache, MySQL etc already have Windows ports. Binary compatibility is not that important when you have the source code. Why WINE is more useful is because most Windows applications are not open-source.
What percentage of wimpdose users are going to even think about installing this, supposing they actually get to hear about it? Come on now, put yourselves in a typical Word-Excel-Outlook user's or Space-monster-killer's shoes and tell me if they even suspect that there is other software out there that you don't buy in a shrinkwrapped box, or if they even care about it for that matter. Learning curves are not everybody's cup of tea.
So put yourselves in a W2K system administrator's shoes: now you're different - your employees WANT you to spend money on Microslime-specific products to help shore up their decision to invest in the pathetic operating system they opted for, and you want to keep getting your paycheck so you're not going to play games that might break their expensive toy, are you.
Which leaves what?
I'll go along with all the others who say that this is no more than a geek toy, whose usefulness can't be compared to the potential benefits from its vice-versa brother Wine.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
At long last, the stability of windows with the broad application base of Linux -- we could make a less useful computer if we really put our minds to it!...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Additional choices empower the users, because they are all capable of making choices.
I agree. Furthermore, making sure users always have this kind of choice is likely to make both Linux and Windows better in the long run.
The shareholder is always right.
"easily using native Linux applications" - I didin't know that this was possible even under Linux... Smile, dammit - I'm a disfunctional Mac user...
now all those packetkiddies can run ./smurf from their 9x desktops :(
Super Awesome Broadband
If you had bothered doing some research you would have found add on programs that replace the windows explorer shell with unix look alikes. One is a clone of the afterstep WM.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The biggest thing that killed off OS/2 apps was the fact that OS/2 could run Win31 apps very good. That is, OS/2 could run Word 6 in the Win-OS/2 session, so there was little incentive to port Word 6 to OS/2.
Just think. If Windows could run Line very good, then one could write Linux apps, and run them under different OSes. In this way, you could do open source, what Java tried before, and what MS despirately fears: "cross platform" Linux apps.
One migh A worthy goal, if I must say so.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I've used Photoshop for Man and PC, and I've also taught classes on Photoshop where the students in the class were a Mac and PC mix (and at that the Macs were a year older than the PC's).
Photoshop is more intuitive to the Mac way of doing things. Window layouts, minimizing, hotkeys, etc were easier to teach to Mac people than Windows people. They are easier for me to use than on Windows.
For me I always go down the hall and use Macs when I use Photoshop becuase it is easier for me. And I am even more familiar with PC's than Macs.
Photoshop is also faster, more glitch free on Macintosh. It is a much smoother operation. It may sound aesthetical but the experience is actualy very notable.
I won't touch the rest of the flamefare, except to say that I like both. Everytime work on Linux for a long time and move to Windows there's things I realize I missed. Then when I go back to Linux I realized that I have missed a lot of functionality and fun there too.
Windows has more polish and integration. Linux has more power, robustness, intelligence and ingenuity. Things I do in Windows, I do a lot easier in Linux when I know how to do them. In fact I run Cygwin on Windows becuase its shell tools are much easier and more powerful than the windows find command, etc...
Linux: great o/s, lacks mature apps
Microsoft: criminally unreliable o/s, useful apps
So what you are saying is my gnapster client can get the BSOD? Where do I sign?
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
I'm sure a lot of people will justify the Gimp's interface by talking about innovation, etc. But have you noticed that tools like emacs and vi haven't exactly changed much in the past 10 years? The fact is that people don't like to learn a new way of doing things when the old way is working fine.
Things like Pantone and CMYK aren't important to anyone who isn't planning to print things out.. in fact no one except professional publishers cares about Pantone.
I'm sure that a lot of the plugins are impressive, but the program design is to bizzare to do anything quickly.
Oh goodie, finally I get the applications from Linux without loosing that daily reboot. :-) :-)
It's a nice concept, that I am sure that Jim Allchin wants to bring to the goverments attention too.
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Running bash on windoze may have some merit! Give windoze users a decent command line shell, just what they need.
All your Linux apps are belong to Windows.
I agree that Photoshop is not very good at 3D. But then, that's not what I was talking about, nor is that what Photoshop is designed for. It's PHOTOshop, not 3Dshop. Photoshop is the best and most professional piece of software for editing Photographs and other graphics for publication in a print media.
I have worked as the photo editor of a magazine, as well as backshop at a local weekly. In both these positions Photoshop was essential. Photoshop allows you create CMYK files, files you have to have to have your magazine printed on an offset press. It also allows you to tweak each of the CMYK layers as well as adjust you image for the specific paper type and even type of offset press you will be printing your images on. It also allows you to adjust all these variables so you can do a preview of your issue on a regular laser, but still end up with the same tones as the final edition even though you are using a completely different printing process, inks and paper.
I really doubt the Gimp offers this, I didn't last time I used it. Not to mention that the fact that there is no Pantone support for Gimp makes it virtually useless to a print publisher or designer. Also, to my knowledge, GIMP is unavailable for the Mac, which the majority of design houses I have been to use.
As I stated, the Gimp is great for web graphics or other electronic media graphics. Photoshop is great for print graphics. You pretty much have to have it, if you are a print designer or publisher. If you are a 3D designer, use softIMAGE or Maya (both of which I have used before, though not beyond the "just fooling around" stage). It's like anything else, use the right tool for the job.
Josh Sisk
Um, this is obvious and maybe I am feeding a troll, but Photoshop is not free, and doesn't come with Win2k, so I don't see your point, unless you are a software pirate or have tons of money lying around. For the rest of us, free software is nice to have around, even with the politics aside.
Duh.
OK. Name a Linux application that a Windows user might have a reason to run. I'm serious...
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Cool, filesharing actually works!
I got yer thin edge right here --a Linux run time for Macromedia Authorware.
It seems I saw games listed as an example of where Linux falls behind in the apps department. Well, perhaps, but let's talk about another kind of game.
I realize commando command line die hards don't ever want to see a multimedia authoring package for Linux because it will do the same thing it does to Windows, ie pollute it with zillions of trashy pseudo-commercial educational apps. But there is at least one market that is so juicy ripe for Open Source multimedia and that is education.
The tools marketed to educators are more of a barrier to the creation of on-line curricula than the technological skills necessary to develop interesting lessons. If an instructor plans to profit from their work, they've got to pay $2500 bucks for a licensing agreement for stuff that might even have come pre-loaded on their machines under special academic licenses. Oh yeah, it makes pretty pictues and sounds and all that and the students might actually dig it, but this is serious cash you have to put up if you want to get any kind of compensation as a small time developer. I think it acts as a barrier to people who might otherwise at least attempt to produce content they feel some pride in which is often all it takes to hold the student's respect for another semester.
But let's not sweat the run time agreement. Hey, what's a few grand for a big living prof. If this imaginary prof was really into it this deep then she'd be flopping down the cash and smiling all the way to the bank.
Now what about student scores and stuff --"is this where I put a database?" our hapless faculty member inquires. Oh yeah, this is where IBM breaks out the lube. Suddenly you've got a reason to contact Lotus. Hmm. What do they do again? Oh yeah, now it's getting hot and heavy. The education market is in deep bondage.
I don't know all that many teachers, but I'm in the education market myself and I've seen copies of Macromedia Authorware in teacher's offices from California to Taiwan that simply don't get used. Perhaps if the chump change side of it looked more appetizing these suckers would bite. Plenty of teachers will write a little app to try and make even a few hundred bucks. But when the overhead gets like it is, there's just no motivation to try. An open source run time might change that.
Even if you just look at the university side of things in the next year or so, building an Authorware run time for Linux could be a real wedge because it would probably reduce a lot of the insistance on windows PCs in computer labs coming from faculty doing their own multimedia materials.
Okay, this seems to me like a pretty damn pointless application, the sort of thing that programmers churn out just to practice their programming skills rather than produce anything truly useful.
Think about it - you can already get most of the essential Linux tools over at Cygwin if you're after better command line tools. Otherwise, what does Linux have to offer? Most Linux software is perpetual alphaware or just a rehash of other projects (witness the truly scary number of CD front-ends out there). These programs already have free native Windows equivalents out there, and the Windows ones have often been in development longer (the big Linux bandwagon wasn't all that long ago) and can take advantage of Windows features.
And out of the few open sourced packages that are approaching professional quality, many of them are already available on Windows, like Apache. Sure there's the GIMP, but Windows users using Photoshop aren't going to want to change, and PaintShop Pro is pretty much the package of choice for low-end use.
I just don't see that there's any real use for this.
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
But it is unstable and less frequently updated.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
Heaven help you if you try to chmod kernel32.dll
I've experimented a little with CygWin on my NT machine at work. chmod runs, but doesn't seem to actually have any effect. The file properties are the same after I run it as before.
The great circle is now complete; before, we could run edlin on Linux; now, we can run vi on Windows.
(shut up, I know, it was a joke).
Now if only someone will write a HOWTO on compiling your kernel under Windows...
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For those who miss blue screens.
Now you can get them while running linux applications.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Unless I'm very mistaken, this may put a serious hurt on Cygwin and it's port of the Unix tools. I run Cygwin to get the bash shell and all the CLI utilities (find, grep, whatever). I'll need to pull this down When I Have Some Time (WIHST)(tm), so all of my speculation could be just so much crap. But yes, I see real use for this.
I don't think there would be a way to do the printing stuff on the plug in level, because it has to do with the way the software interacts with the postscript printer. I think it would have to be written into the software itself.
This could happen, but will probably not soon, since most people who use Gimp probbaly do not use it for printing a newspaper or magazine, so may not have the specific knowledge of that industry ( example: you probably have the skill to write some medical-related program, but do you know enough about the medical industry to write one that works well and is intuitive to medical professionals, using their workflow and tailored to their needs?).
I doubt there's much impetous to write these features into Gimp (since it is great now for most uses-just not certain specific ones), though I'm sure they will eventually appear.
Another factor that makes me doubt Gimp will replace photoshop is that most people who do do print design use macs and are happy with their Mac-based graphic design software. I really doubt any *NIX will make a significant dent in the graphic design world in the next decade for these and other reasons (some labeled below). Most designers love their Macs, indeed, they were the only ones waving the Apple flag in those cold dark years before the G3s and the iMacs. To them the Mac is a way of life that they will defend to the death (and before you mention Linux PPC, its MacOS they love, mostly). And don't make the mistake that all Mac Zealots are geeks. The ones I know generally are not. They like macs because they don't have to fool with it to much. Everything is simple and streamlined. Everything generally just works.
It's possible that unix software that can run on OS X may make some headway, but before it does, they'd have to have: a) a photoshop killer with full print capabilities, b) a Quark XPress killer, also with full print capabilities AND c) a Freehand/Illustrator type vector graphic illustration program. These applications would have to work together very tightly.
Even then, adoption will be very slow. Many shops find what works and stick with it, especially in publications that are published regularly. Changes mean problems with workflow. Also MacOS suppossedly has better color handling than any other OS... I don't know if that is true or not, however. Most shops also automatically upgrade to the newest versions of Quark and Photoshop, so Gimp will always be playing catch-up to their feature set if they want to woo designers away.
All in all, I'm not saying that a version of Gimp couldn't be developed that is as good as Photoshop for print, just that it's unlikely to happen and even if it does, less likely to get designers to switch. In summary: Gimp is a great piece of software. But Photoshop is definitely here to stay, at least in MY industry.
PS - there is a world of difference between PS 4.0 and 6.0. Check out a copy of 6.0 is you can, you'll be amazed at how many more features are in it than before. There are also lots of useful little touches, like when you do a select, it greys out the area around your selection. Not a big thing, but there are dozens of little things like that I've noticed... It blows away 4.0, which was kind of a dog.
Josh Sisk
Could this not be a good tool to broaden the Linux community. I run Linux only as a hobby, because all my needed applications are for windows and I am not porting them myself. Yes, I love the way Linux runs and feels, but I also have a very stable Win2K box that I can actually run everything I need on... I see this not as a "threat to Linux" or "useless programming practice", but as something that would actually introduce more people to Linux and show them how much fun it can be. After all the more users the better it will be for everyone in the long run.
I downloaded the december compile in early january and did some very basic image creation. Then when I clicked on the 'X' to close the window, it would generate a fault and crash. I'm a graphics wimp, so I didn't test it beyond this.
1.2 is recent, but 1.21 is more recent. I will admit that I'm probably confusing links and other unix-first software with gimp. Most of the time it takes some kind soul to compile the win32 version.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
Can I quote you on that?
"StarOffice runs like a dog (provided the dog in question has three of it's feet embedded in concrete and is strung out on thorazine)" -- Cid Highwind
Hands in my pocket
When will will it be the other way around so that I can run all the Windows apps like Office and games under Linux (without dual booting)?
Why would I want to run a Linux program that was made by a few unpaid developers, when I can run a well organized program that is good.
I have seen Linux apps and they are small and simple. Clean cut and nice. They lack power. It would be the same as me saying screw Office2000 I wanna run StarOffice! Right sure! Let me laugh for a moment... Ha!
I am done.
I am sorry but I have to admit the Linux apps that I would run... frankly suck compaired to the library I already have. MS Money is onbe powerful program... especially the 2001 version.
So in this admin's humble opinion. This project is a waste of time and resources. The only people who might want to use this is hardcore Linux/Gamers so they don't have to duel boot. Then again usually these people have two machines so it doesn't really matter anyways.
~AdmrlNxn
Whistler is to Zeus as Linux is to Hercules
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
I mean who cares if its useful or not?
;)
The only thing that matters is that its just so COOL. I say it again: Its just cool!
Warphal
Running AIM, MSN, ICQ, and whatever else, is just plain annoying. I'd also find it much easier to work with if I was able to have the same interface for each, it would be a lot easier and more intuitive.
I could stand to live without all that bloatware on my hard disk anyway.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
I'm sure static executables can run without much effort, but shared.. I can only imagine hours of trying to get 100's of different libraries to run properly, probably only having to resort to finding a Linux machine to staticly compile your application to run properly..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Everyone knows that the biggest obstacle to getting Windows onto the desktop is application support. Being able to run the plethora of Linux applications on Windows is a step in the right direction.
Soon Windows users will be able to stop using Linux forever. World domination!
The main thing is to get important applications like OpenOffice working under Windows, to allow people to make the switch, then develop proprietary replacements to forever release the user from the tyrany of open/free software!!!
Long live Bill Gates!
--
"Chiswick! Fresh horses!"
"Chiswick! Fresh horses!"
As many others have commented, the strong part of a Linux distribution is the operating system, not the applications. So, a project like LINE will most likely not encourage users to migrate to Linux; Linux applications are too weak and unfriendly for most Windows users, so, if anything it will discourage users from seeing Linux as a viable desktop solution.
Also, it's obvious that the author doesn't really know what he's talking about because:
1) - There is a version of GIMP that has been ported to Windows. 2) - There is a TuxRacer version for Windows.
Also, I tend to think that the apps on linux mostly suck when you are using linux as a desktop. Server applications are where linux shines, and if you were going to run something like apache webserver, why not just use the linux version on linux, or the windows version on windows?
Anyways, I think this could be an interesting project, but it's no holy grail to get people to start using linux apps since the applications for Windows are usually superior. It's the OS that everyone hates, not the applications (well, some of the applications too.)
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
not only can you now run multiple versions of windows under windows (via line->wine) but it shouldn't be long before line gets ported to win ce, and you can *nix on the dreamcast, xbox, etc....
or run either win or *nix on various platforms strictly by emulation...
hmm....
I can't wait until it's at a good level- this will allow me to easily test out Linux graphics apps as they develop, and perhaps, one day, find some that are worthy enough to make a switch...
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
If you could install this, get it happy, run some script to syncronize things, and then have it such that you could just reboot and switch from Windows+LINE to Linux+WINE and have the system run exactly the same with respect to apps, it would make a very nice switchover.
In particular, you could make sure that your important apps never stop working as you transition, because you could install and test WINE while still running Windows; once everything works, you can just switch which kernel you're actually running and which you're emulating, and keep working.
-- flossie
http telnet
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
LINE strikes me as something that can both help and hurt efforts to inform people about the benefits of linux. If LINE sucks, the implication (to the average windows user) is that linux sucks. If LINE is good, then there is less motivation to move to native linux.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
"Like they're any better under Linux. Terminal windows mysteriously die. Navigator crashes constantly. GNOME crashes while it's crashing, and then crashes again. "
Man you really must have some flaky hardware. Or a crappy distro. try debian for some up to date linux apps. And if the software dies on you submit a bug report and make sure it gets fixed. The community needs all the help it can get.
"I'd say Windows users are getting a pretty true-to-life introduction."
more like a biased picture through rose coloured glasses
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Due to the generally more open nature of programming for Linux and Unix in general over Windows, Windows already gets to benefit from the good apps being ported over to it. The makers of Perl, Apache, Gcc, and whatnot aren't trying to create artificial scarcity to force users onto UNIX with them. (As is usual, Microsoft benefits from the goodwill of others without having the common polite decency to reciprocate on occasion. I believe the technical term for this is "mooching".)
Anyway, I have to wonder how much demand for Line there will be when many of the good apps on UNIX are already portable to Windows as it is.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Since the source of Linux is available and that of Windows isn't, LINE will surpass WINE. It is just a matter of when it will happen.
Then, I bet you'll be hearing people say "Hey, you can run all Linux apps on Windows but just sone Windows apps on Linux!! Why use Linux??"
I am somewhat surprised at the rather sharp condemnation this project received, especially considering the obvious utility of it. If you want people to switch to Linux, they need to see that Linux has something to offer aside from propoganda. If they can try the applications that Linux offers, such as The Gimp, perhaps they will actually take Linux seriously. Am I wrong in thinking that there needs to be a bridge between worlds that the average user can cross? The single most difficult part of trying Linux applications currently is installing Linux; you need to set aside space for it, repartition your drive (possibly) and finally experience an installation process that you could only describe as friendly if you were one of the Sopranos. If you could simply download and exeute a Linux application, without having to do anything special or difficult, your initial experience would be vastly improved.
-- My cat, Chairman Meow, would like you to join his political party.
Combine a reasonably more robust Windows system (most people don't keep their systems on 24 hour uptime), with all its pretty UI, with the free software suite that Linux and its open source cousins provide, and you either have a way to bring free software to the common man, or a way for certain other companies to suddenly offer most of the benefits that the open source community has been claiming all along.
Then, you take your standard GPL'd utility, and write a windows wrapper of some kind. Releasing the source of course.. and you'll have utilities that look pretty, and are as open source as the next guy, but not backward compatable...
This is probably at least half troll, but how would non-*nix compatable GPL software impact the community? Branches of software tend to grow on their own... would 'good' software on a 'bad' platform be beneficial to computer users as a whole? Personally, I don't feel that alternative operating systems have to be commercially successful in order to serve their purpose, but a move to run or port the functionality of free software to a non-free system might split off the marginal users that define the desktop market.
Yes, but I'd be willing to bet you are not involved with professional graphic design or publication layout.
the Gimp is great for doing web graphics. Not anywhere near as good for doing print graphics, where you have to have exact color matching as well as pantone support.
Josh Sisk
as a developer, i'd love to write all my apps for linux, however to allow my apps to run on everyone's computer (and use C, legacy software), i gotta write for windows. cause windows users use windows, but linux users use both linux and windows (here they do anyway).
:/
with line, i can write my software for linux, and then thats it! woo hoo i've been waiting for something like this for a long time! suddenly porting apps is a non-issue, and as linux is open, it should be a LOT easier to write line than wine, so i dont have to wait a decade for wine to work with all my apps
Paul
Cygwin from www.cygnus.com already gives you a bash on Windows, and you can switch on tab expansion for filenames in the dos-cmd shell by some registry hack (tested under win2k).
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The use I can foresee for this is running one of the Linux ICQ clones on Windows. The official Windows ICQ client is a bloated piece of cr@p, I've always found the "unofficial" Linux clones to be far superior.
"Uh, I don't understand. I was running emacs on my windows machine and I got a blue screen saying something about a fatal exception. I thought these linux/unix things never crash, even on windows." This project is like building Fort Knox on a foundation of jello.
Ah, the mirror image of WINE. It would be useful for places where an in-house end-user app or commandline utility runs on Linux and they don't want to go through the trouble and expense of porting to Win32 with the MKS or Cygwin tools, especially when it's a command-line utility that needs to do I/O redirection with a Win32 app. Obviously, for more heavy-duty needs, at least when something doesn't have to integrate tightly with WIn32 apps themselves, something like VMWare makes more sense.
I do wonder how practical and successful this will be for running many applications, though. How will it deal with Win32's lack of a POSIX base? How will programs that rely on filename case-sensitivity and Unix-style file permissions and setuid issues, for starters, cope? Not many easy answers, especially if they're targeting Win98/ME and not just NT/Win2K.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
GIMP.
Yes, I know there's a windoze port of it, but with ALL respect to the guy(s) who slave at porting it (and theres alot of respect), its just too big for a few guys. This could mean runnin the latest version(s) of gimp when they're released rather than waiting for the guys to port it.
-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Why just think about it, when you could research it.
The Sonic Impact S70 came out 3 years ago and the Matrox G400 came out 2 years ago.
Windows 98 came out about 4 months after the G400.
Try not to worship Linux so much. It's not the Messiah.
I'm not worshiping Linux, I also use OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris 7. All of which have never crashed on me.
Windows 95, 98 and ME still don't boot from my ATAPI CDROM or my Ultra SCSI CDROM. Linux has been doing this no problem since years before I started with it.
I guess you think Microsoft is the "Messiah"?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I do web graphics. If I did graphics for a movie Industry, or other, id use an IRIX box, and SGI's software. Not photoshop. I can do most of anything on Gimp, whatever I need to do, i can draw it up in gimp. Even If I have to mod it pixel by pixel, which I have to do sometimes. Photoshop isn't really professional, its a 'tool', not really a major rendering suite. Compared to some of software Ive seen for doing 3D, photoshop is a cheap ripoff compared to them. Im a BIG SGI fan when it comes to 3D modeling, take Jabba the Hut for example off of Star Wars, that was done with an SGI box. So was the stuff on Lost in Space, and X-Men. The animation morph on X-Men was done with Gimp. And the character sequence was done with SGI's software. (dunno wich one they used). Ive seen both Gimp, and photoshop used in strange places, but photoshop never really amazed me.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
I can't believe how many people are whining about what a stupid idea this is.
How is this any different than wine? HMM? The tables are just reversed.
Who cares if YOU have no use for it, someone else might.
W2k ran pretty well on this current box. I switched to ME (still wanna play diablo and stuff) because W2k simply took up too much RAM. I had 128 megs total, and after a few minutes of counter-strike the computer would promptly freeze. This does fit in with your hardware argument, but I'd rather use a system that doesn't require so much extra resources just for an OS.
It would be rather impressive if you could run Gnome as your shell in MS Windows :)
WINE: Good for Linux because you can use Windows applications on Linux.
LINE: Good for Linux because you can use Linux applications on Windows.
The projects are mirrors images of each other--but both good for Linux. How can that be?
I'll tell you why. Because there is at least two assymmetries already between Linux and Windows: 1) openness and 2) marketshare. The Windows monopoly is helped when there can be no sharing between OS's. It raises the barrier. But Linux is helped when there IS sharing (to get over the barrier). Both WINE and LINE allow sharing (of apps across OS's)--therefore both are good for Linux.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
This is actually a great idea. There are a lot of great Linux apps (Like Evolution, Konqueror, etc) that are reaching a usable level of feature completeness. This make it easy to show these apps to Windows users and maybe get them hooked on them.
A good example, lots of Slashdotters are always talking about using Evolution as an Outlook replacement. The problem is that there is no Windows version of Evolution. That means either running Evolution on *nix desktops and still running Outlook on Windows desktops, or replacing all of your Windows desktops with *nix desktops. While I love the idea of replacing Windows desktops with *nix systems, replacing your OS just to get rid of Outlook is pretty silly. With this program, an IT guy like me could load Evolution on *all* of the desktops (*nix or Windows) in the company and get rid of Outlook completely!!!!!!
I congrat the people of the LINE project for this success because this technological interesting, but that's it... it's interesting. Okay, it may be nice replacing the ugly Windows GUI with GNOME or KDE, but how many Windows users will do that ? But I think that doesn't matter... it's one of these 'just because I can' issues :-)
But, now that I think about it for a moment, most of that broad Linux application base is released under the GPL or some other free (beer|speech) license, whereas a lot of the useful Windows apps aren't. I could easily see a lot of college students who don't feel like shelling out for Adobe but also don't want to switch to Linux using this to run the Gimp, for instance.
(The Gimp may actually run on Windows already; I wouldn't know. That was just an example.)
--
John Hyland
Backend Coder and Kung Foo Master
Yes tat's a good idea.
If I could I would rather run LICQ in windows too.
Umm, Photoshop supports industry standards such as CMYK and Pantone(TM), and Gimp doesn't?
Don't get me wrong, I think Gimp is a great package for what it is, and if you just want to noodle around with scanned in photos then it's brilliant. Then again nobody is going to buy Photoshop for home use anyway, so Adobe don't really lose out in that market (Unless you have more money than sense, of course, in which you may buy Photoshop for messing about with).
But for professional use, if it doesn't support the industry standards, then it's just a toy.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
I use bash on my windows box daily (along with sed, awk, gmake, uname, find, file, RCS-5.7, telnet, in.telnetd, and a host of other common tools).
Ever heard of Cygwin? It's a pretty damned fine piece of kit. It understands the way UNIX people work, and all that Windows stupidity at the same time. Brilliant, I say.
Wes
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Not so great for creating stability.
/etc or /conf'
As I write this, the link to the information has been slashdotted out of existence, so I'll have to make some assumptions.
First of all is the fact that this is going to have to intercept pretty much all file-system calls and do some pretty damn nifty conversion to get the different shells to work properly. Heaven help you if you try to chmod kernel32.dll or something like that... ^_^
Second is the fact that this is going to be a popular program amoung 'amature' hackers, and people who consider themselves hackers because they know a little more about their workstation than the guy in the next cube. For every guy who manages to get 'xeyes' to run, you're going to end up with two or three calls to any given IT department like this:
'My computer won't boot into Windows any more!'
'What did you do to it?'
'I tried to run linuxcfg, but it crashed and deleted my Windows directory when it couldn't find
'Hybrid' sytems are never fun to support.
If this works, however, and starts working reliably, it could be a great boon to getting certain apps ported over to Linux. If a Windoze software developer can run an app that will allow him to a compile a linux binary of his Windows program, it will start to open the door for a lot of 'effortless' porting work between the two OS's.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Boy, those guys at Microsoft sure have done it again by developing a stable and highly regarding Unix based os.
yes, sco has bought it but Xenix was so much more stable when Microsoft has made it.
I just wait for the day when Freebsd or Linux can stay up for half as long as Xenix or SCO openserver.
ITs just that Xenix and sco have such high respect form us Linux and Freebsd users. I wish we could right an os as good as MIcrosofts.
Since they're one of the great examples of killing a better product through inept marketing.
So, I can have my cake and get instability, too? Awesome! I'll run all these sweet Linux ports of lame windoze apps and still be able to read .doc files! Rock on!
rid-ic-u-lop-a-thy
I think this is a Good Thing (TM)! It will give Linux applications more exposure. As people try all these new programs, they will beging to say "hey, with all this great stuff, I might as well completely switch to Linux!" Ok, maybe not.
Running linux apps under windows seems a lot less hassle to me than running windows apps under linux.
For me using windows as my basic opperating system has a lot of advantages:
I tend to use cygwin all the time and gives me the best of both worlds. If only someone would write a good vt100 terminal I'd be happy.
Why would anyone want to run Linux on Windows? Windows boast a large app base, Linux boasts stability and open-source. The opposite (windows on linux) seems useful, bringing the broad number of apps to work on Linux. But, this just seems like a silly exercise in futility...
$20 Domain Name Registration - Click here
But you forgot a category:
linuxcost: 10
total: 49
Win2k
cost: 1
total: 44
It's all in how you arrange your statistics!
I'll be that asshole who spams MS mail boxes with screenshots of xbill.
AK
Even though this LINE project is pretty cool. I have an even cooler idead. How bout running windows apps natively in linux? I mean without going through all the VMware trash. It'll be fun to use Photoshop 6.0 in linux and Dreamweaver will definitely cut down on the HTML design time.
God is real...Unless declared an Intger
I am more interested in windows programs for linux, WINE is a much more important project that should have the title "thin end of the wedge"
Does it go on forever?
Commodore Amiga.
That should read: "All your App Are Belong To US" the noun is singular
Why not make windows applications run on Linux?
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
You forget that if they do stuff like that they'll break tons of other apps as well, and people will be screaming in outrage about their payroll application which stopped working when they "upgraded" Windows.
CMYK output and Pantone color matching ensures that a printed image looks exactly the same as the output of a monitor. Photoshop allows for the easy calibration of monitor output to printer output largely because it is the standard in the graohic industry. And the reason it has become a standard is through use, practically every design firm uses photoshop, primarily on the mac. The gimp unfortunately is a pale imitation of photoshop, which suits most home users fine since some of photoshop's tools are unnecessary.
In fairness, this is moderately useful, I could run Apache/PHP locally for development work on my standard desktop,
Hrm, I've been running Apache on my windows desktop for years, it wasn't really hard, seening as how they've had a windows port available. You can getphp for windows as well.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
show them the applications and they will come ... Riiiiiiight
Show them how Kword crashes every 5 minutes, how Abiword can't insert tables and graphs, and how StarOffice runs like a dog (provided the dog in question has three of it's feet embedded in concrete and is strung out on thorazine) and watch how fast they go scurrying back to MS Office. Office may be bloated, ugly, and unfree, but it's by far the better than any of the alternatives.
0 1 - just my two bits
I don't think anyone really cares about '2 features of photoshop'.
I do all my work with gimp. I have no reason to spend $150 on a software package, and $200 on an OS just to use '2 features'.
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.