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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.

2 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Sometimes the OS doesn't matter by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The folks here who *have* to run windows, don't really, they *have* to run certain windows apps, because they are a defacto standard in the relevant application domain and the linux apps aren't quite up to par yet and WINE isn't quite ready for that app.

    They'll never willingly quit Windows cold-turkey, but if they can start to run debian/gnu/linux (pick one) apps on Windows, eventually the linux apps will overtake the quality of the windows apps and the people will then be using them and have no reason not to switch (cost, cost, cost).

    I used to think that linux on the desktop wasn't a goal worth persuing at the moment - then I realized every Windows/Office purchase is money for Microsoft to use on its quest to eliminate linux.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  2. The OS Hardly Ever Matters.... by Carnage4Life · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Except for some people who think choosing an operating system of importance equivalent to choosing a religion most of us don't care what OS we use. Instead most people care about what apps they can run on a given OS. My favorite apps/tools are Emacs, Perl, Internet Explorer, WinAmp, ICQ, ssh, bash, grep and Word. Windows runs all of them with the least amount of hassle and that's why I use it. This is true for most of the computer users in the world, the OS that the app happens to run on is incidental.

    I used to think that linux on the desktop wasn't a goal worth persuing at the moment - then I realized every Windows/Office purchase is money for Microsoft to use on its quest to eliminate linux.

    Short of acquiring a genie and using their three wishes to wish away Linux, Open Source, and college classes on operating systems there's no way that anyone can eliminate Linux. Most reasonable people realize this (including Linus) and rightfully don't see Linux vs. Microsoft as some sort of war that should be won at all costs.