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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. Re:Installer support? by cloudmaster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You're wrong. :) Many (most?) need some sembelance of a registry, and some work better with dlls from a windows install, but you can get by with most to all of the apps that work on wine without a FAT or NTFS (which partition format did you mean?) filesystem or a win 3.x/9x/me/nt/xp/2K (which windows did you mean?) install. The dlls don't know what OS they're living under, and the "registry" was emulated by a flat text file the last time I tried wine out - which was admittedly a while back.

  2. Why? by scott1853 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know I'm going to get modded as troll or flamebait, and I'm sure this has been asked before, but...

    given the attitudes of the zealots that think Linux software is superior, and that open source is superior to everything closed, then why is this considered such a big deal, and even supported by the Linux community?

    Everybody talks about how much Windows and MS software sucks, but then they turn around and do their best to emulate it. I'm not just talking about WINE either, this topic extends into the GUIs. They all take things from Windows.

    Anonymous Cowards need not respond.

    1. Re:Why? by turbine216 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      you bring up a good point, one that definitely does not deserve to be flamed.

      Linux users (myself included) like Linux because it's stable, it's secure, and it runs Linux apps really well. I've NEVER crashed a linux workstation...never.

      Windows users (again, myself included) like Windows because it is so much easier to use than Linux (an easy-to-use GUI is just that, and people recognize it for what it is). 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.

      So it stands to reason that any Linux user with any sense would want to do one of two things: either (a) run some windows apps in Linux, or (b) develop similar or better apps for Linux. The problem with developing apps for linux lies in the severe lack of support for it. So if you don't have enough people or enough collective experience to really work on development, what's the next best thing? That's right...use the apps that have already been developed under windows, but use them in Linux. That way, only one emulator needs to be developed that will (hopefully) cover all of the windows apps.

      Any linux zealot who tells you that windows is useless is just that...a zealot. Linux is good for what it does, and Windows is also good for what it does. After all, this IS a capitalistic structure we're dealing with, so as always - YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. As much as we don't like it, every time someone spends money on a Windows distro, some of that money is channelled back into developing a better windows. 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.

      Just my 2 cents...take it for what it's worth.