Porting Debian to... Windows

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.

Comments

At first

[PigeonGB]

I thought this was an odd idea.
Why would anyone want to port an OS to another OS (don't start with "Windows is not an OS, please!")?
Then I saw what this all meant.
If people can get used to using Debian tools and programs on Windows, then they won't be nearly as nervous about using them in a GNU/Linux environment.
Bravo! I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Re:waste of time and effort...

[JWhitlock]

this seems like another HUGE waste of time and effort on the part of the Linux community. Why is it that so much code has to be wasted on these "we're doing it because WE CAN" projects? If you want to use Debian tools, USE DEBIAN!! Not Debian on Win32; not Debian on OSX, just DEBIAN. Does that make TOO MUCH sense or something?

Waste of time? It only wasted a minute of your time, and most of that was wasted by you posting a reply.

Waste of time for the developers? They are working on what they are interested in. If you want them to work on something they are less interested in, pay them. "Silly" side projects is what makes this games work.

Waste of time for the users? Some folks have to use Windows in a job context, because the tools they use are Windows only. Once people are used to Unix tools, it's hard to go back. Plus, what happens to the Wintel platform when:

The user runs free office applications that freely work with Microsoft Office formats, but have an even better native format

The user ignores the latest "vital" Microsoft operating system extensions, in favor of tools ported from the Linux / BSD environments

The user uses non-Microsoft entertainment apps, because they are less restrictive than the "official" ones

Core Microsoft facilities are replaced with ones that work better with the "ported" tools

Users have the option of emulating Windows software/games, or buying a native Linux version, and start to seriously think about the Linux version

The hardest part about moving to Linux is learning the 200 basic facts that allow you to work at all (deleting files is called "removing", user files go here, applications go here, you start X11 by typing "startx", etc.). If you can learn 100 of those facts under a Windows environment, you are half-way there.

This is a stepping stone in a migration to the standard Debian, or it may be the start of new and interesting developments. We just have to wait and see.

(Dammit, responded to an AC again...)

The Application is King

[quixotal]

I use native win32 ports of gnu tools daily. Why? Because they are small and just work. The application is king. I don't really care where I run it. quixotal

Who is this 'we' you speak of?

[autopr0n]

Should we be porting software from Windows to Linux(e.g., WINE) instead of from Linux to Windows?

Really, who do you mean by 'we'? This may be a shock to you, but there are some people who actually *ghasp* like windows, myself included. The fact of the matter is, for me, A lot of things are just easier for me to deal with in windows then in Linux, even setting up and running Apache, because I'm more used to it. I have a little Linux box for playing around with, but for the most part I like windows.

I mean, the driving force of Open source software is people doing stuff because they feel like doing it. people doing stuff because they want to. You can't just say "we should work on WINE for accomplishing our political objectives" and then have Everybody magically want to spend their time reimplementing Microsoft skank-nasty APIs

This may bother you, but everything on Debian is Open Source. And that means that you can take it and do whatever you want to with it, including porting it to windows.

If this is a success, there's a good chance I'll be running it.