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"Lindows" Coming Soon?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the exactly-what-it-sounds-like dept.

nstbbuff sent in a link to a story running at ZD about Lindows, a recently funded startup founded by MP3.com's old CEO that plans to sell a WINE oriented Linux dist for $99. As usual I'm skeptical about these sorts of things, but provided code is released back, I'm down with it. Meanwhile Transgaming is doing their thing, but with game-specific stuff. Their flagship release is The Sims, but theoretically many DirectX games should run under Windows. I'm still skeptical -- I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?

3 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Transgaming patches are NOT closed source by Wizard+of+OS · · Score: 3, Informative

    I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?

    The transgaming patches are NOT closed source, they are just not Free Software. You can download them (see the winex project on sourceforge) or get them from CVS, you just can't use them for anything commercial. And ... as soon as they have enough subscribers, they'll release it all under the Wine license. Okay, I must note here that I don't know the specifics about that one, but it's more Free than the currently used Alladin license.

    --

    --
    If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
  2. Re:Even if it is a success, it will... by LordNimon · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can run Win32 apps on OS/2. Just check out Project Odin. Also, VirtualPC for OS/2 will be out in a couple months.

    You also might want to consider upgrading to eComStation. It's an updated version of OS/2 Warp 4, with lots of big and little improvements.

    --
    And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
    To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
  3. Re:Wait now, I'm confused... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are a few base classes of emulators:

    1) "Classic emulators": These emulators provide a dedicated memoryspace for the target platform, provide CPU emulation, and provide some means to interact the "virtual computer" with the host operating system. (Think SoftPC, KEGS or SNES9x)

    2) "Translators": These emulators, upon loading, convert the target platform's code to code compatible with the host platform (Like MIPS->X86). Libraries of the target are either mapped to native libraries or new libraries are written. Dedicated memory is likely to be required if the target application does not have a memory manager. Think UltraHLE here.

    3) "Virtualized Systems": Provide seperate interfaces to the hardware of the host system to different operating systems thereon. May include combining ethernet packets, sharing access to IDE controllers, providing a means to change access to the video hardware etc. Think Plex86 or "Classic Environment" (OS X).

    4) "API Emulators": Host and target are the same platform, but different operating systems. Rather than provide a direct means to share hardware as in virtualized systems, the libraries used by the target operating system are mapped to libraries on the host, or new libraries are written to provide easy compatibility. This is what Wine is.