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Porting Debian to... Windows

Posted by michael on from the not-making-this-up dept.

mike_sucks writes: "The first step to porting Debian to the Win32 platform has been made - dpkg is compiling under Cygwin. Check out the post on debian-devel and the Debian GNU/w32 port's site." Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

6 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. One Word by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Informative

    VmWare...

    Why go through the hassle of porting it, when you can just run it on any OS you like using VmWare...???

    --

    ---
    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
  2. Read the mailing lists ... by SuperDuG · · Score: 3, Informative
    First off like any linux mailing list whenever you make mention of the word Windows you piss off the die-hards. So that really didn't surprise me at all, but then for some unknown reason they make mention of RMS.

    I know RMS is the God of GNU, but he is NOT the deciding factor on a damned thing when it comes to peoples ports. If it's in compliance with the GPL (source code is re-released) then there is no reason why you can't make a Windows 32 port of debian.

    Looks too me like all that's been accomplished thus far is a ./configure, make to Debian Base inside Cygwin, no big deal, but you HAVE to have some place to get your feet wet.

    Then we hear the rants about how sourceforge is the devil? Since when? I would love to see another FREE (as in someone else gets stuck with the bill) For LOTS of bandwidth and lots of server space. Not to mention free web-hosting, Free CVS, Free advertising, and a whole lot more ... so what if they're owned by VA ... so's /. ...

    So where do I stand in my views of Debian ... Like GNU I will not let the views of a few define how I feel about a project as a whole, but it pisses me off and makes me want to kill the whole thing and go to slackware (ohh yeah ... BTW, a little FYI ... apt-sucks ... no one is allowed to make fun of redhat any more ...) And the only reason people from slack like to compile from source ... SIMPLE ... you _can_ compile from source on slack ... try outta the box compiling on RH or Mandrake ...

    This Victory Strengthens The Soul

    --
    Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
  3. Re:Why not port Xlib? by kdgarris · · Score: 2, Informative

    Because Qt under Windows is not free. They do have a special licence for non-commercial development, but the license is not compatible with the GPL.

    Also, not all important X GUI apps use Qt or GTK+ (which also has a Windows port).

    -Karl

  4. Re:At first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Is being worked on, project name is debian-installer will be ready for the debian release after woody (woody will still use the old boot-floppies)

  5. The "controversy" by Daniel · · Score: 5, Informative

    A lot of people seem to think that the posters on debian-devel are trying to somehow suppress or forbid this port of software. Although some of us may be uneasy about it, I haven't seen anyone actually suggest that.

    The question causing argument is whether this port should be officially recognized by the Debian Project, given that one of our foundational documents says "Debian will remain 100% free software", and that software which depends on non-free software to run is considered "not part of Debian".

    The crux of the matter is this, from a post on the list by Stephen Langseck:

    I recognize the advantages of a dpkg-based system for cygwin, and think
    it's an interesting idea that will benefit many people who can't
    necessarily choose the OS of their computer; but even so, I have
    misgivings about using the Debian name on such a port. If the non-free
    archive is not part of Debian, should a port built on a non-free kernel
    be called 'Debian'? After all, unless all the compiling for this port
    will be done using Wine and gcc, you effectively will have an entire
    port with build-dependencies on non-free software.

    Daniel

    --
    Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
  6. Re:At first by Urchlay · · Score: 2, Informative

    >With Debian, you don't even have to run the
    >installer when the new release comes out: do
    >apt-get dist-upgrade

    Right, that was my point. With Debian, even more so than other Linuces, he should only ever have to run the installer once...

    Even on Slackware, I've got boxes at home where I installed 7.0 when it came out (year and a half ago?), and upgraded them by building everything from source (kernel, gcc, binutils, fileutils, et al), without ever needing to run the installer. I'd hate to have to do that for a whole network's worth of servers though... which is why I keep a `reference' system around to serve as a master image. Basically I rolled my own solution to the same problems apt was designed to solve (and I'll admit my code is nowhere near as nice as apt, but I'd rather Keep It Simple because I'm Stupid :)