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"Lindows" Coming Soon?
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 $99. As usual I'm skeptical about these sorts of things, but provided code is released back, I'm down with it. Meanwhile Transgaming is doing their thing, but with game-specific stuff. Their flagship release is The Sims, but theoretically many DirectX games should run under Windows. I'm still skeptical -- I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?
Seems steep to me, .If you need to yous Windows apps that badly why not just boot up windows? and save yourself 99 bucks?
Snoozer.
Confused confused confused!
You want Linux, cause its stable and wonderful. But we want to run DirectX. So lets emulate windows in linux. Now lets emulate DirectX in the emulated windows in linux.
Simplify the equation, and you have "run windows with native DirectX".
Wouldn't the "best" solution be to update the SDL to run DirectX natively in X on linux?
This story makes it appear that the average Linux zealot is willing to take the time to emulate windows and DirectX for gaming, but not willing to just emulate directX natively....
OK, I just read what I wrote and confused myself even worse...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I think they're going for the business market. I.e. they'll certifiy certain business apps to work with it and license it to companies at a rate less than M$ would charge. IF (and its a mighty big if) they can pull a distro off that runs a pretty good chunck of mainstream biz apps then they may be on to something. I wouldn't expect a mad rush over to them, but they might be able to carve a nice, niche biz out of it.
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't part of the thing from getting away from windows is paying the high price? You can probably upgrade to some version of windows for about $99 from a previous version. My college was giving away about 100 copies of win 95 about 1.5 years ago b/c they never used it.
I understand that there are some costs w/ making the product...but if it's based off of WINE, then isn't that part of the GPL. And since their work would be derived from the WINE project, doesn't the GPL cover this? If this is the case shouldn't it "technically" be released under the GPL as well?
I'm not exactly sure on this but wouldn't that just mean ppl can dl it? Unless of course they decide to hide the code for a long time till legal action is brought to them...then they'll say they're working on the fix...like we've seen before w/ the bttv drivers.
I'm all for doing this...but at what cost does this not warrant actually doing this anymore? If you REALLY want to run windows in your linux/unix platform, then get VMware for about the same price, but what you get is a stable product which works very well and has a proven track record. I'm not trying to discount the work that these ppl are doing/going to do, but it would help if they look at these factors and not sit in the basement and think...Hey! This is a good idea, lets market it and sell it!
A little bit of marketing and business classess would surely teach you better.
Being from mp3.com, he's probably trying to point out Linux's age to potential investors and skeptics out there. In a day when three-year-old companies with one-year-old products go belly up daily, basing your product on one that's been around for a decade probably makes good business sense.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
well, there are actually very few specific things, most of them the obvious ones:
1 - MS Office XP beats the hell out of staroffice - i don't care who you ask, or what they say about office, the open source alternative just doesn't stack up.
2 - Windows is better for games. Quite simply, if i want to run a Windows game at maximum performance, I'm going to run it under windows. Emulating windows or creating compatibility layers just doesn't perform the way real Windows does. This particular feature is probably the only reason that i HAVE to use windows.
3 - Windows for Cakewalk/ProTools/other music editing/recording stuff. Linux just doesn't have it, simple as that. And even the apps that it does have tend to quibble with my sound cards. This is also evident in video editing apps...video capture and edit just doesn't make sense on a Linux box at present.
4 - Linux for just about everything else. E-Mail, news, web surfing, web design, graphic design, PERL, and a few other tasks work remarkably well under Linux. I really like the streamlining that you find in a lot of Linux design apps...for instance, GIMP vs Photoshop is no contest when it comes to usability.
So Linux definitely has the really basic tasks down, but when it comes to more involved software such as big, graphically-intense games and productivity software, Windows takes it.
Well, I still think that the perceived ease-of-use of the Windows GUI is just that -- perceived. Or perhaps more accurately learned. As usual, I point to the opinions of Mac users on the Win gui and vice versa. Oh, and it's also better in that category than Linux GUI's, but I don't care. :)
:)
Its apps are bloated, buggy, and riddled with security flaws, but when they work, they work REALLY REALLY WELL. That's simply a result of having 10 years worth of REAL development support, and a huge bank of developers.
What is, the bugs and security flaws? Ah, but I jest. Though surely you were jesting about having REAL development support and a huge bank of developers? I think the list of contributors to Software Libre would amply satisfy any definition of "huge". At least in comparison to those employed by any one development house.
Any linux zealot who tells you that windows is useless is just that...a zealot.
Anyone who makes a blanket statement like that is a zealot, indeed. As always I say use what suits your purpose. If that is the newest games, or sound editing, or 3D Studio Max (as opposed to suitably sophisticated modeling software in general), use Windows. Since I need none of that, I can without zealotry say that Windows is useless. For me, obviously.
I used to try to sell people on Linux, but I find that its best to just expose them to it, and let them gravitate toward what works for them. I've gotten more converts that way than I did before.
After all, this IS a capitalistic structure we're dealing with, so as always - YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
That's just not true -- particularly with regards to Software Libre. After all, you got an OS that never crashed your workstation for free. The truth is that "IF you get what you pay for, you can't really complain." Also, as a corrollary, "If you get LESS than what you pay for, you have every right to be pissed." This is why official support for Linux by corporations is a big deal. Then you have someone to bitch at who you can reasonably expect to take you at least seriously enough to fabricate a scapegoat.
Linux quite simply does not have that advantage; and as much as we would like it to, the Open Source/Free software development system just isn't as effective as the closed source/marketed software approach.
I would say that is dubious at best, demonstrably untrue at worst. There are two things that you must consider when judging the performance of the two models - prevelance and longetivity. Closed source is the dominant development model. The companies developing closed source software are multitudinous, and though many only produce one or two apps, that's still a lot of software in the codebase. Sift out the crap, and you'll end up with some pretty nice programs. Software Libre is growing very rapidly, but is still behind in this aspect to be sure. Second is longetivity. Software Libre projects are, for the most part, fairly new. When you compare Gimp to Photoshop, remember how old Photoshop is compared to Gimp. Or KDE to the Win95 shell. Or StarOffice to MS Office -- and also remember that StarOffice started as a closed-source app, as did Mozilla. It is impossible to measure such things as "code effectiveness" quantitatively, which is why I wouldn't say that Software Libre is without a doubt better. However, my qualitative analysis tells me that the days that you can find virtually any closed source apps that are better than any libre counterpart are numbered.
The enemies of Democracy are
Linux is much more than 'a ten-year-old product.'
It's also:
-A network fileserver which can do RAID entirely in software (my in-house fs is doing an IDE and a SCSI RAID 5.. you need that kind of reliability when you're making movies!);
-Able to take advantage of almost any configuration of hardware, from an 80386 with 4MB RAM and a 40 MB HD to an multiprocessor Itanium with gigs of RAM and teras of HD, to distributed supercomputing a la Beowulf (To contrast: WinXP Home can only use a 300Mc+ single processor Intel32/AMD architecture; Pro can use up to eight SMP processors of the Intel32/AMD variety;Mac OS X needs a G3 or better; both need at least 256 MB RAM and more than a gig of HD to be run properly.)
-The most configurable Internet servers possible;
-Great workstations for almost any apps you can think of;
-The most evolutionary software product out there.
That last feature is The Big Deal(tm). Linux is a kernel which has been evolving since release 0.0.1. It's gradually expanded to every kind of processor possible, developing the ability to work with a wicked lot of hardware, growing to PCMCIA utilization; video acceleration support; USB & 1394 access; and ust about any filesystem of significance can be at least read by Linux.
Now.. I haven't had the chance or the excuse to use WINE yet, but I hope it works (so I don't need a Windows partition on my new laptop.. a vaio.. (drool)... (cleaning off my chin... sorry)) because I want to be able to use an old, pre-DMCA (can we say no Macrovision problems? I knew we could!) PCMCIA card which could both capture video without processor overhead at 1/2 resolution (it accepts PAL, SECAM, and NTSC input) and act as a TV tuner anywhere in the world. I haven't seen any info on it working under Linux, so I must use the mabnufacturer-provided software and perform acts of RevEnge on it (since the pricks at Nogatech have refused to give me any useful data on the card.... jerks)
If this 'Lindows' distribution works, it would be a boon for all us open-source types, because one more barrier to entry would be lowered and the bar of stability under Linux (or *BSD, for that matter) is miles above that of even this new bastard XP. (I'd place money they've got some GPL code in there. I can just smell it.)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Once again someone else makes the mistake of spouting off tired old sayings like "you get what you pay for" as if that actually said something definitive about Linux. Problem is, Linux is *NOT* -
(and just in case you're not paying attention)
- LINUX IS NOT -
(let's pound the point home, since the religious capitalists have such a hard time with the concept)
- a business venture working within a capitalist environment. This means that *basic market rules re capitalism do not apply to Linux development*, any more than basic market rules under the rubric of capitalism can say anything whatsoever about charity efforts (other than how they impede good ol' capitalistic efforts to sell needed aid).
The entire issue of money is a non-sequiter in Linux development. Payoff comes in terms that have nothing to do with a market economy, or any economic theory whatsoever. Trying to apply market economy fundamentals or the basics of capitalism to Linux is a fool's game.
Not only is it a fool's game, but it's painfully, obviously so to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about.
Off-topic but still in relation to the previous post, I'd remind the poster that a good deal of the effort put into Linux comes from *non-capitalist* countries. In fact, you might even say a major part of the effort comes from *socialist* countries.
(alert: No need to rant on the evils of socialism and bore us with your stupid, ignoramus attempts at humor, trolls. Whatever comments you thought to make, they aren't original and they aren't even mildly funny. Well, maybe to your fellow college buddy losers after a few beers, but not here. So, trolls, piss off and do the Beavis someplace else.)
As a final note, any moron who starts spouting off on why the cathedral is inherently a better approach than the bazaar is just that...a moron. Or perhaps a microsoftie, or both. The moron can't *prove* that this is true, of course, but hey, when you're worshipping at the altar of capitalism or whacking off to a poster of Bill G. no proof is needed.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?