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

Good point!

[Dog and Pony]

I was actually wondering the exact same thing.

Ah damn. I just made a "me-too" post.

Anyways, my first thought was that it was cool that they tried to do it just because. It would also be a nice test on how complete cygwin is, right? I mean, if you can run the OS it is supposed to emulate on it, it should be pretty well done. :)

Remember though, that most people that would be afraid of Linux stuff won't have Cygwin either, in most cases. If they are already using Cygwin, they should have little problem with the basics of Linux, and I think they know this. Cygwin is actually harder to get used to, and I tried Cygwin first, not the other way around...

To really break in the new-but-curious, you would almost need a complete installer, with cygwin and debian. Hopefully explaining a lot of the steps on the way, so the curious understands what this is about. :)

Well I think it is cool.
I hope it will bring good too.

Incorrect assumption

[Shippy]

>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.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with your above assumption. I just can't see why this would really help Linux at all. If we're just porting apps, how does this help the OS known as Linux get a better rep? People will say "This is a great app, good thing it runs for windows so I don't have to switch to Linux". It sounds like the same thing I say for apps ported from Windows to Linux. Besides, I also have to admit that many apps for Windows are better. StarOffice sucks in comparison to Office and many apps that do show promise (Mozilla) are already available for Win32. We need great programs like Evolution to be available for Linux exclusively because it may help persuade people to go the other way. If when I first thought about switching to Linux, there was a software package available to help the stability of my Win98 so it's just as stable as Linux, I may have never switched because Linux seemed hard and Windows seemed easy.

I just don't think this is the right way to go. There's other things we should be doing to promote Linux.

undermining windows:)

[datalife]

Then you could make
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install kernel-image-x.xx

good bye bill!!