Slashdot Mirror
"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?
theoretically many DirectX games should run under Windows
just about sums it all up.
-Serp
From the article: Lindows hopes a broader software base will help boost the Linux operating system, a 10-year-old clone of Unix.
I'm torn about how to read this. Are they trying to say that Linux is outdated? Or are they trying to say that it is well established? Or am I overreading and they are just saying Linux is 10 years old?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
be just another OS/2. The WinOS/2 subsystem was so good that it killed OS/2. What's the fun of running Windows apps in Linux? Higher stability? But Win2K/XP is already quite good for this purpose and it comes preinstalled anyway. I think that if you really plan to use Linux, stay away from Windows apps and stick with native ones. Besides, we have VMWare for it and it almost guarantees 100% compatibility.
¦ ©® ±
... Next to the salad fork?
theoretically many DirectX games should run under Windows
Theoretically speaking, of course
Stupid Cheap Guitars
I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?
... 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.
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
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
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.
More brilliance from the guy who brought us MP3.com, your favorite source for spam and poor music. Just who want to make a new name for Linux....
Got Rhinos?
Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I'm still unsure of how a Windows app is installed on a Linux partition, without actually having Windows. Does WINE allow the installer (some Windows installers can be *quite* obnoxious) to run and copy stuff into directories on the Linux system? I've never actually tried WINE before, and I don't know how it works.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
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!
Because that wouldn't be very geeky, would it? A large percentage of Slashdot readers would love the opportunity to strike a pose ("I run Linux!") and still use their precious Windows games....
Got Rhinos?
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.
Vmware enables you to use windows inside linux and then run your windows apps inside windows. So you still need an installed and working windows. It is just a way to avoid dual booting. The drawbacks are that you still need windows and that it requires a lot of ram and processing power.
On the other hand, wine works without the windows OS and runs the software alone. That is a much more difficult task than the first solution because wine has to "understand" all kinds of software calls to the OS. That is why the bigger and more complex apps do not run with wine.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
I'm wondering if that means they are actually angling this at business environments. I know that's the first thing I thought of. It doesn't make much sense to plunk down $99 for your home box, but it's a steal if you have a couple hundred corporate boxes sitting around. It seems like a great solution for the ancient dilemma of hating Windows but needing to provide Windows apps in a business environment. $99 for the whole company versus nearly $200 a box for a Windows license, with no requirement for re-training or document conversion, is going to be an easy argument to make to the CFO.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Wine isn't a bad approach, but it is still an implementation of the Windows API that sits on top of X. Would/could a DirectX for Linux be implemented any differently ?
If not then we might see dissatisfaction to the point of R&D failure because real-time peformance may not be possible in such situations. The biggest issue being latency.
Here is a good, though somewhat dated, article on the topic of Linux Latency.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
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.
Does WINE allow the installer (some Windows installers can be *quite* obnoxious) to run and copy stuff into directories on the Linux system? I've never actually tried WINE before, and I don't know how it works.
:) Wine allows you to specify a path (like /usr/windows, for example) which it will use as the C: drive, and Windows apps running under WINE see it as a normal drive. They don't care what sort of filesystem it actually is, as long as WINE provides the correct Win32 calls to read/write the filesystem. So you end up having stuff like /usr/windows/system32.
Yes, but they don't always work
Vmware costs about as much as a low-end PC. You still need a Windows license. You still have the hassle of dealing with Windows installation and Windows administration. You still have all the privacy and virus problems that come with Windows. And vmware has quite a bit of overhead.
- Home users buys Lindows.
- Home user installs loads of software on Lindows, including MS Office, games, etc.
- Half of this software will be buggy or slow.
- Home user now hates Linux in general, and tells all his friends what a rip-off it is.
The Windows software market is not what Linux should be after. It's not possible to "do" Windows better than Windows. Linux needs to work on making people like it for being Linux.VMware does not support DirectX.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
As many as the market can support, and as many as it takes to get a version of WINE that runs every windows app flawlessly.
Personally, I think there's room in the market for at least two -- one optimized for 100% compatability business / productivity apps and one optimized for excellent games performance.
Hopefully, any company making a WINE port will have the decency to release any propriatary code they write if & when they go under.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
18 to 24 months, they say? They're wasting their time. By then, we'll have something better than MS office, and enough people using Linux to make it the new standard.
sorry, dont see that happening, there is NOTHING on the horizon that even remotly looks like it will take on a new standard
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Basically it sets up a false Windows directory which includes all of the things a windows application might be looking for. Most applications seem to be okay with this set up but it entirely depends on the application though. For example I couldn't get Microsoft Word to install on a pure linux system, but I've heard that people can run it fine off another partition that is running windows. The only advantage to that setup is that you don't have to reboot to run windows apps. So if you were a developer who worked moslty under linux but occasionally had to write docs in Word, you could work relatively seemlessly.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
i saw this comment, and i though, "well, what about plex86? " it was striving to be a free (LGPL) replacement for vmware, and it was mentioned on slashdot a few times, but it looks like the main developer was laid off from MandrakeSoft, and the project is in limbo right now...
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
Now I can use all my Cygwin stuff in Linux!
... so they can work on the same non-free fork.
Are those like dinner, salad, and dessert forks? If you were going to use utensils to drink wine, wouldn't wine spoons work better?
Best Slashdot Co
Second, I disagree that Linux should not be after the Windows market. What Windows does is the same (albeit a subset) as what Linux does, essentially; just not as well. Linux has a long way to go to take over that market, but licensing plans like XP's are just the thing to make managers eager to find an alternative. That said, I doubt this is the alternative for your reason #3.
When I tried to install a whole slew of applications under Wine about 6 months ago, it proved to be :
1 - A pain in the majority of cases : I assume the Lindows product will come with pre-chewed install scripts, so I don't worry about that
2 - Impossible in a lot of cases : I guess Lindows will have to come with "approved to run xxx" stickers, or maybe with a list of supported applications. Again, not really a problem if they market it well.
3 - Possible in many case, provided I used one or more native DLLs ripped from the real Windows from the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. These were either DLLs that Wine didn't emulate, or DLLs that Wine didn't emulate correctly. Without those native DLLs, many important apps wouldn't have worked at all.
So, without some Windows DLLs, the Lindows guys will have to cut their already reduced set of working apps : how are they going to get around this ? I can't think they'll manage to license the DLLs from M$. Will they do additional engineering work to complete/fix the DLL emulations in Wine ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The main problem with using VMWare is that it can't do hardware 3d. So gaming in VMWare sucks quite hard.
I use Linux as my desktop OS both at home and at work, and at both locations I have VMWare installed. Now at work, I use VMWare because sometimes I need to write code for IIS apps. Everything else (word processors, spreadsheets, email) I do natively from Linux.
At home, I still use Linux for all of my email, wordprocessing, and etc, but I rarely ever start up VMWare. Simply because the only reason I could ever want to run Windows at home is to play a game, and frankly VMWare just can't hack it when it comes to DirectDraw. It's very slow. Don't even bother considering Direct3D or OpenGL, as it is completely unusable.
So, until vmware gets a better 'host OS video driver' that will better support hardware accelerated video operations, I will continue to only use it only for novelties that I can't easily duplicate in Linux.
Wouldn't the more appropriate name be "winux"?
--Jim
A better comparison would be Win4Lin. This appears to be essentially a distribution with Windows access integrated. That is essentially what Win4Lin is, they just aren't including the Linux. This results in problems whenever your distribution upgrades.
... well, the only reason that I can think of is for Windows games.
... if Lindows could handle both of them my wife would beg me to convert her!)
I think that this may have a reasonable chance of success. I wouldn't put it any higher, but reasonable.
If I wanted to use this at work, it would need to support the Novell logon procedures, and MSOffice 2000 (perhaps I would be able to substitute KOffice or StarOffice, but there is not substitute for the Novell logon).
If I wanted to use this at home
If I wanted my wife to use this at home it would need to support the HP all-in-one OfficeJet products. Scanner as well as printer. And an old program from PassPort Designs called "Encore!" (a music editing program). Deneba Canvas would be a real plus. So would Pokemon (this is a real non-standard program, though... installing it on Win95 kills the current HP all-in-one drivers
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
42
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Rather than try to make Windows apps run on Linux, why not take all that development effort and time and make a systemmatic porting toolkit from Windows to Linux? Not only that, why not do what Apple did with gcc and write one hella fine IDE and give it away? If an x86 Unix-like OS can run MS apps, there will be absolutely no reason for developers to write native applications.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I don't like the recent Windows licenses. That was what originally got me interested in Linux about 3 years ago. It's become more true in the intervening time.
I wasn't bothered too much by the original Win95 license. Starting with Win98 I became bothered. I have refused to install or recommend recent MS software. I consider that anyone who installs software with a license like what I've seen of the XP license is guilty of malfeasance. Even if there isn't an obvious alternative (and, for some applications, I admit that there may not be).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
-
(...)I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?
Why don't they just thread instead of fork?Seriously, I know I have already said that forks are great and variety is essencial. But too many forks will lead us to nowhere! We need variety, but not that much.
When there are few projects about a topic forks are wonderful, very welcome. But when it's starting to get messy, maybe we need to think if it's better to fork, or to thread, or even to merge!
think about it
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Face it, I want to play games. If it means I get Linux and can play Windows games, I'm happy.
Is it pure? No.
Do I or most consumers care? No.
Will it sell like hotcakes, more than XP? Yes.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Nope, You can get them all without M$ tax or even with Linux preinstalled (Red Hat on Dell, HP and IBM i do belive)
IBM is actually a really big Linux retailer. They even have a laptop that I do not think you can get with M$ tax.
It may not be "fun" to run Windows apps under Linux, but few of us run Windows apps for fun anyway. We run them because they're a requirement of our jobs.
VMWare is expensive, requires a sophisticated user, and has a big footprint. Makes sense for developers (having a complete VM is handy even if you're not working cross-platform!) and for some server apps. Can't see it for a basic desktop environment.
I read the license. I like it. It gives me the following abilities which are the main things I want out of Software Libre:
- The ability to view the source code and make changes to it.
- The ability to distribute the modified source and binaries compiled from that source.
- The ability to create a fork independent from the original authors (mostly for if they decide to close the source entirely or if they go under).
The only thing you don't get is the ability to sell anything based off of their source -- they get exclusive rights to profit off the code base.
So no, it is not Software Libre, but it has most of the benefits that I care about. I think it is a reasonable compromise.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nowadays I don't have much need for Windows; StarOffice works ok, imports/exports MS Office stuff nicely, TV-card has support & apps, can burn CD, encode oggs. Even browsing with Mozilla is on par with IE on Windows. The only remaining issue are games... And there are signs indicating things will get better in near future. :-)
Likewise, I did purchase a version of BeOS at one point, have paid for some of the Linux installations (and copied/downloaded some). I don't like stealing, and hypocritical "Windows sux but I still steal a copy" people are pathetic.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
WinOS2 did not kill OS/2. WinOS2, by letting people do things they need to do while simulataneously letting them keep OS/2, kept users in the market for OS/2 apps. At least it did for a while, until Win32 apps became common.
Apps running under emulation do not compete with native apps. The user doesn't run emulated apps unless they have no other choice. And if they really have no choice and there isn't an emulator that can run the app, then they switch platforms. And that's when the original platform really gets hurt.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Including your notebooks? Please direct me to somewhere where you can buy all the notebook parts to "build your own".
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Most programs use APIs to open files and let the OS do the work. So the filesystem is irrelevent. The only programs that HAVE to be aware of the filesystem are filesystem utilities, like scandisk.
In response to:
Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I'm still unsure of how a Windows app is installed on a Linux partition, without actually having Windows. Does WINE allow the installer (some Windows installers can be *quite* obnoxious) to run and copy stuff into directories on the Linux system? I've never actually tried WINE before, and I don't know how it works.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I mean, how many closed WINE forks does the world need?
None. You can't drink Wine with a fork. Duh!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It's a single file, but it's a binary db. The wine emulation thing used tabs to look like a tree in a real plain, flat text file - no db about it. Literally like the expanded tree view you get in regedit. Windows uses something more like a dbm file with keys and values - thoug with the seek times you'd think it was just flat text at times... :) Check out regmon someday when just starting a program and see how often the registry is really hit (regmon's a free download from one of those sites whose name I forget right now but google will certainly remember).
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.
works over the network to your remote X display
This is where I see Wine taking off. Not for workstation use, but for terminal application servers. Everyone seems to want to get on the thin-client bandwagon, but Windows Terminal Services leave little to be desired in my opinion.
I don't want a full desktop terminal when I already have one, just show me the app (like X does). And when I want to use two different servers then I have to maintain three desktops at one time. X makes this all transparent. Citrix may add the funtionality that I'm looking for, but it's even more money!
I think a Wine-based Windows terminal server would be more profitable than an actual workstation. Let the user keep any X compatible system (including thin-clients and Windows with software) on thier desktop and let the terminal server run the apps.
I see no reason why you couldn't have a shortcut for Word (assuming you can get Word to work on the server) on the local machine which will instruct the server to fire up word and display it locally. The user wouldn't even know, or care, that it's running on Linux on the backend because as far as they know it's running on Windows on the local machine. A simple `ssh -X [host] [program]` should do it, but in my searches, I've yet to find a Windows ssh client that'll handle that.
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.
if you define that which is not Open Source is closed source (as most Linux users do).
The Open Source Definition defines (oddly enough) what Open Source means. The non commercial restriction violates these guidelines and means that Transgamings patches are not open source.
WineX is `source code available' software (although thats not a well definied term), like Qmail, TinyDNS, Microsoft PocketPC, or Pine.
...with or without capitals.
After watching that for just a short while, you begin to be amazed that windows runs at all, and then realize part of the reason it's *way* slower than it really needs to be on fast hardware...