Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software?

XRayX asks: "I'm currently installing a Windows 98 PC and I'm trying to install just Open Source Software (except Windows and Drivers). Okay, there's Freeamp, GIMP, Mozilla, OpenDivX, VirtualDub, Audacity, Abiword, Tuxracer and FlaskMPEG for Windows; but I'm still missing some good Open Source Tools for Windows: a picture viewer and a GUI Zip-program. Can anyone help?" While an interesting thing to try, I don't think it will be as easy as it sounds. How many others of you have tried to pull this off and how successful were you?

Comments

Open source GUI zip app...

[Anonymous Coward]

...available at http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WiZ.html

I've modified my copy to make the toolbar buttons larger and more colorful and fix a few annoyances.

Re:this topic reminds me...

[Mark Pitman]

One benefit that hasn't been mentioned is cost. While I may never make modifications to the source of the GIMP, I also will never fork out $500 (or whatever the cost is) for Adobe Photoshop. So I can use the GIMP instead of pirating a copy of Photoshop (come on, how many of you occasional Photoshop users actually paid for it yourselves???) So, I don't need the source, but since it is open source, I can "afford" to use it!

Re:thx for the tips and why I'm trying to do this.

[unitron]

Leave some of those computers using Windows. Maybe even throw a Mac into the mix. Getting them and the others to network together and play nice with each other might be a big headache but you'll learn a lot that you can use in the real world where such "mixed marriages" might be unavoidable.

Re:Why not an open source distro for Windows?

[Cato]

Thanks for the pointers. I've played with Cygwin/XFree86 and it took over the whole screen - once it can share the screen, letting some windows operate under X and others run native Windows apps, it will be very useful. I look forward to a GNOME on Windows port using Cygwin/XFree86, to avoid the need for commercial software such as U/WIN and most X servers.

One key point is that many Windows to *nix porting tools exist, including freeware options such as WINE. Not so many Unix to Windows porting tools exist, and fewer are freeware - until they are as good as the Windows to Unix tools, the temptation is for software companies to write to Windows APIs and then port to Unix.

Why not an open source distro for Windows?

[Cato]

A big obstacle for adopting open source in the Windows world is lack of understanding of the benefits. The Windows culture is all about commercialware and shareware; even 'freeware' means binary-only software. Providing an easy to install set of open source tools for Windows is not a bad idea - it would be much easier for newbies to experiment with this, and if it included a set of tutorials (most are on the web already) it could make quite a big contribution to educating people about Linux/Unix culture.

I'm thinking about developers and power users here, who might want to experiment with Perl, Unix scripting, GIMP, and other handy open source tools. Of course, it might be better in the long run to just install Linux, but incremental upgrades are a big reason why Windows won over OS/2 (you could try Windows 3.x but retreat to the safety of DOS without problems). Now people are running native mode Windows (NT and 2000) because it is more stable, faster, etc - why not make an incremental 'Linux tools on Windows' setup, allowing upgrade to true Linux later? Ideally, someone would take Cygwin and a bunch of other tools, and put them on a single CD including much of what's in a current Linux distro. I end up doing this on some systems, but a ready-made CD with installer would be much easier and more complete - no more systems with Cygwin but without Perl...

The majority of users in business have to use Windows on their desktop/laptop and would get in trouble if they installed Linux, particularly if the multiboot install messed up and stopped Windows booting. Having an open source distro for Windows would be a great way to provide some benefits... 'Linux for Windows' with an easy upgrade to 'true Linux'.

Re:Why not an open source distro for Windows?

[GeneOff]

I think this idea has some merit and is actually quite feasable. In addition to Cygwin, I'd add the packages mentioned in the post as well as some alternative GUI stuff ported to Win32. The basic problem with this is the state of free software X servers for Windows is poor at the moment. Other projects are based on recreating the POSIX primatives: Gnome Desktop on Windows. This has been discussed at /. before

Apparently, it needs a free-for non-commercial use unix library and an X server, so no real joy yet. Since the Gimp uses a non-X layer for Windows, it must be somehow possible to port other GDK based stuff to Windows.

Re:cygwin!

[jfunk]

I have to concur here. I recently installed CygWin on a Win98 box and it's pretty impressive. Furthermore, you only listed the basic utilities that get installed. By default, you also get gcc, make, autoconf/automake, Python, Perl, CVS (In my copy, there's a strange CVS bug, where it performs the intended operation and hangs...), etc.

Many tarballs simply work when you configure&&make&&make install, too. I installed CURL without a single problem.

I got X working, but... it's weird. I didn't find it useful enough. I can't run X apps along with Win32 apps like you can with some commercial Win32 X servers.

No biggie. The other thing is that I couldn't compile mc. For some reason, I need GTK installed to compile a console app. There's no configure option for "just compile *real* mc and not that terrible WinExplorer ripoff that shares only a name with mc."

Its possible .. with enough time.

[stevey]

It is possible to install an awfull lot of GNU/Open Source programs on Windows.

The hard part is spending the time to track down clones of the software you want, or software that is good in its own right.

I suppose the biggest thing you need to think about is the kind of software you want:

• You want graphics - get The Gimp
• You want an editor - Get Emacs
• You want encryption - Get GNU PG
• You want music - Get FreeAmp

Start at one of the meta-repositories, such as Freshmeat, or GNUSoftware.com - and search around.

With enough time, and patience, you can go a very long way..

Steve
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Re:this topic reminds me...

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Actually, there's a very good reason why ordinary users (non-developers) often prefer open-source programs over other alternatives: they know that it's much less likely the program will die.

I can think of many great Mac and Windows utilities that are no longer available because the original author lost interest. However, if a program is open-source, there's a much better chance that someone will continue to maintain it.

Of course, it's silly to use an open-source program when it's simply not as good as a closed, but free, or cheap shareware program. Support open-source, but don't sacrifice productivity! For example, Audacity, the open-source audio editor I'm developing, is usable now, but doesn't have as many features as CoolEdit (yet). So if you are running Windows, and can afford CoolEdit, you're still better off buying it (of course, I love it if you use Audacity when you can and send in bug reports!).

ImageMagick for image display

[Chagrin]

There are ImageMagick binaries available for the Win32 platform which would solve your simple image view/edit problems. You might have a little digging to do to find them, but ...

Anyway, start at http://www.imagemagick.org/

for zip: powerarchiver, free but not open source

[danpbrowning]

powerarchiver.com has a good gui zip program that is free but not open source.

No offense but....

[jchristopher]

Seriously, what's the point of this exercise?

If you are choosing GPL/GNU/Open Source because you are making a political statement, or doing it for philosophical reasons, you shouldn't be using Windows.

If you AREN'T doing it for political or philosophical reason, but are merely getting the best tools for the job, there are better inexpensive/free, (closed source) tools, so use those.

Re:No offense but....

[XRayX]

As explained before, I'm doing this not only because of politically and/or philosophical reasons; I'm doing this: a) just for fun b) until my Dad gives me the permission to install Linux on all the PCs in our Network c) to show my friends how great Open Source is (Use ogg instead of MP3 etc.) d) to statisfy my geekiness while staying at Windows e) because of philosophical reasons X

cygwin!

[imipak]

Cygwin gives you many of the most familiar commandline utils from the unix and Free Software worlds: (at random, ottomh) bash, tcsh, ash, sh, cron, mutt, grep, ls, ps, less, hell Ieven got gpg to compile under it. If you want to go the full distance XFree86 now compiles and runs, as does WindowMaker. "Be the envy of other major governments! Wopw, this is big league stuff..." ;)

HTH...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

Re:cygwin!

[imipak]

granted, X is somewhat, um, experimental at present... but the coolness factor makes it well worthwhile. I've had some problems along the way (currently I can't get Mutt going, presumably [I'm fairly clueless about how mail works in Linuxland] because it's looking for Sendmail, rather than my existing local (nonfree) mail server.

Hmmm, now there's a thought - isn't Sendmail ported to win32?

There's a ton of other s/w that will run under win32 outwith cygwin - Bind, for instance, which I'm now running here (as a cacheing only server of course), and the aforesaid Sendmail, Apache, mod_perl, etc. The most frustrating thing is how much of that kind of stuff requires MS VC++; I was most disappointed that moz wouldn't build with gcc , though I suppose it makes sense.

Now all we need is for the FreeNT project to come through and voila, a Microsoft-free Windows... :)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

Re:this topic reminds me...

[imipak]

Other good reasons for Free software on Windows are (a) if you've got 5 years' worth of Windows skills paying your rent, but want to move over to Linux or BSD, it lets you get familiar with shells, GNU utils etc (and, to some extenrt, the Think Unix philosophy of everything's a file, pipes, redirection etc) without dropping you in at the deep end; and (b) it lets you do what I did, subvert a clsoed All-Microsoft shop from within. The Partner in charge of IT at Bain, London, wasn't too happy when he discovered that our intranet was now powered by Apache and Perl... oh look, we haven't had to reboot the machine for six months! spooky...
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

rules are rules

[nukey56]

one word. vmware.