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:At first

[silicon_synapse]

I'm not sure I agree. The Debian tools aren't too scary; it's the Debian install that's a bear. If there was a better installer for Debian I garauntee many more people would use it. It really is terrible if you haven't installed Debian a dozen times. Most people would give up on Debian before the install is complete and just use Mandrake or something. Are there any private projects to provide an alternate isntaller for Debian?

Re:At first

[sam@caveman.org]

Progeny Linux was working on just such a thing. too bad they canned Progeny Debian.

-sam

Re:At first

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how the slashdot people can look at the positive side of everything...

When tools make it possible to run Windows software under Linux, it will make people switch to Linux, as they can still run there Windows software.

When tools makes it possible to run Linux software on Windows, it will make people switch to Linux becourse they will be familier with the software anyway.

Well have to give you credit for the spirit, if not the logic.

Re:At first

[Glytch]

A Win32 port of Gimp? You mean like this?

Re:At first

[Apreche]

Yeah, seriously. The only reason I don't use Debian is because the install sucks. I mean it really sucks. I used to use RedHat because the install was SO easy, but then I switched to Mandrake. Mandrake had the hardware support, the packages, and as far as I've seen, the easiest most powerful linux installer. But I really like the way debian runs after it's installed. Debian on Windows would be cool though, because then I wouldn't have to restart my computer to do a CS lab. And I could still have my mandrakes.

Re:At first

[aozilla]

When tools make it possible to run Windows software under Linux, it will make people switch to Linux, as they can still run there Windows software.

When tools makes it possible to run Linux software on Windows, it will make people switch to Linux becourse they will be familier with the software anyway.

And I agree with both. The only real reasons I can see for not using Linux instead of Windows is 1) interoperability, and 2) ease of use. Once you've gotten over these two hurdles, you're going to get a mass exodus out of Windows and into Linux. Both of the above (porting Windows apps to Linux and porting Linux apps to Windows) increase interoperability, and IMHO help Linux.

Re:At first

[aozilla]

Why would anyone want to port an OS to another OS (don't start with "Windows is not an OS, please!")?

This is essentially what Sun did with Java. It didn't exactly work out, but debian has the advantages of 1) being free, and 2) being fast. Wouldn't it be great to have compiled software that you can write once and run anywhere?

Re:At first

[McSpew]

Didn't Progeny GPL their installer? If so, I'd like to see Debian scavenge it for stuff they can use in the Debian-installer for the next version.

I know it's a cliche, but it's true. Most Debian aficionados forget how awful Debian's installer is because you only have to do it once. That said, I've installed Debian on about a dozen systems, and once you're used to it, it's not as awful. I even got it up and running on a Dell Inspiron laptop with full sound and PCMCIA support without too much trouble.

The real bear was trying to get Potato installed to a Compaq Proliant 1500 with a Compaq SMART-Array card. I *never* got that damn thing to work. Red Hat 6.something installed no trouble.

Re:At first

[Daniel]

Are there any private projects to provide an alternate isntaller for Debian?

I'm not sure what you mean by "private", but Joey Hess (joeyh) is working on a complete replacement for the current installer, which hopefully will be used for the release after woody. (at which point the current installer will be taken out back and shot, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief)

See Adam di Carlo's recent interview for more information on the installation system.

Daniel

Re:At first

[Daniel]

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 don't think this is true -- my observation is that Cygwin makes Windows bearable enough for people that they don't see it being worth the effort to install a full Linux system.

That said, I have been forced from time to time to use a Windows computer, and so I think this port is a useful thing, although I'm very uneasy about Debian officially supporting it. (something that looks unlikely to happen right now anyway)

Daniel

Re:At first

[Jason Earl]

The trick, of course, is to get users hooked on Free Software. Whether they do this by running Windows with some Free Software programs, or Linux with some proprietary software the point is that they are running Free Software.

The more exposure people have to Free Software the better. Once you start using one piece of Free Software you become more and more likely to experiment with other pieces of Free Software. After all, most Free Software packages rely on other Free Software packages for extended functionality. As users start realizing that there is an entire world of useful Free Software many of them will start to migrate in that direction.

The reason for this is quite simple. Free Software is a lot less expensive.

That's why porting Free Software to Windows has the potential to be a net win for Free Software advocates. It is advertising the entire GNU system to the people who would benefit most from a switch, end users.

Re:At first

[Azog]

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why the Debian people don't just take the Mandrake, or SuSE, or Red Hat installers and modify it to install Debian?

Hmmmm?

Writing another installer is just stupid. It's like writing another word processor.

And what's worse is that it misses the whole point of having Free Software! Debian people should know better!

Re:At first

[aozilla]

We've already broken rule #2.

I still can't get my printer to work on linux... Just one example of many.

Re:At first

[iabervon]

If the tools include the ability to set up a Linux installation along with a Debian-on-Windows installation, you could skip the installer entirely.

That is, people install Debian under Windows to get the Unix tools that the developers downstairs keep telling them about. After a while, they find they're using mostly Debian programs. They repartition (or stick in, or clean off, another hard drive), and then run the Debian tools to install Linux versions of what they have Windows versions of. The system can thus be installed very much the way the user wants, because the user has a functioning Debian system to point it at.

I've always felt that the idea of a Linux installer is broken: it hides the use of a number of tools that you're likely to know (or need to know eventually) behind an interface that is just different. It would be much better to give direct access to the real tools and provide guidance as to what you're doing with them and what order to do things. If the underlying tools are insufficiently friendly, they should be improved, not wrapped in special-purpose code.

The main justification for an installer, rather than good maintenence tools, is that you can use an installer without having an existing system. But if you can use the Windows installation on a machine as a system under which to run the maintenence tools for a new Linux installation, there's no need for an installer.

Re:At first

[Ian Bicking]

At work we've standardized on Slackware (because it's easy to adapt to your needs and it doesn't try to second-guess you), and I only have to run the installer once whenever a new release comes out..

With Debian, you don't even have to run the installer when the new release comes out: do apt-get dist-upgrade and it upgrades it for you. This had been the only way to install woody for a long time: you install potato (the previous version), do a dist-upgrade, and you have woody.

Re:At first

[Urchlay]

>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 :)

Re:At first

[Daniel]

Not everyone, I don't know what all this hub bub about the installer being bad is about

See Adam's comments in the recent interview. To quote him, since it seems many people didn't read that:

It should be noted here first that the boot-floppies system is a very ancient code base. I believe there still some lines in there from Eric Raymond! It has some very deep design flaws, the worst being overall fragility and too much "coupling" in the technical parlance. It is very sensitive to changes in the base system of the Debian archive. The build process is a monster. And the installer itself isn't modular and doesn't do the right thing when it fails.

He's been working on it for several years now, so I believe he is in a position to know what he's talking about :)

Daniel

Re:At first

[ninewands]

In a primarily Windows desktop environment that may be true ... In a primarily Unix desktop environment like I work in, Windows is the one with the interoperability problem.

Re:At first

[Bishop]

Cygwin is awsome for my laptop. Linux runs on the laptop but is missing several features that are only supported under windows (3com modem, video capture, suspend/hibernate). I tried linux on VMware on w2K, but the speed really sucked. Cygwin is a great middle ground. There is some software that works better under a pure *nix, but in general all the tools that I like under *nix now work under w2k.

Re:At first

[iabervon]

In order to install the system without being present, the installer would have to not be interactive. If you want any configurability, you need to be able to script it (i.e., burn the configuration options on the CD beforehand). But in that case, you really don't need an installer, which primarily wraps a bunch of tools in a UI.

The issue is that an installer wraps a bunch of tools (which generally have UIs) in a special UI that only works if you mostly wipe out your system. If you want to then change anything that you set up, you have to use totally different programs (unless you reinstall). If you like the installer, it sucks to maintain the system; if you don't like the installer, it sucks to install the system. In any case, there's no reason for an installer which does something other than run fdisk, the system config tool, and the package manager. At most, you'd want to have it delay all the slow stuff until after you've done all the configuration.

Re:At first

[Daniel]

I like the current debian installer. Its not X based which means it can run quickly on old Pentiums etc. and it is pretty self explanatory.

No-one that I've heard of is planning to change the ability to run without X (although I have heard suggestions that an alternative graphical install will be provided)

What will be changed is the internal design of the code and the build system and stuff, so that it's easier to maintain and keep up to date. (my recollection is that a number of freeze delays have been caused by boot-floppies being broken) See Adam's recent comments.

Daniel

Re:At first

[Daniel]

You would take an existing open source word processor that was close to what you wanted, and modify it. Same thing with installers.

That presumes that there is a word processor or installer "close to what you wanted". I don't think (eg) a modified RedHat installer would be sufficient, at least not without more work than it's worth to avoid a rewrite. Evidently the maintainers of the install system agree with me.

Of course, from your posts on this thread, I presume you have a vast amount of experience with install systems and putting together distributions. I know the debian-boot and debian-installer teams welcome contributions and constructive criticism. You can reach them at debian-boot@debian.org. Thank you for your help.

Daniel

(PS: If you can manage to avoid telling them how stupid you know they are for a few minutes, you'll do much better. For some reason, people don't respond well to insulting language, even if you happen to be right)

Re:At first

[psamuels]

Doing the "change the sources file, then upgrade" thing is a surefire way to wind up with an assload of broken dependencies on a system.

That's because woody is not "released" yet - the QA related to making sure there are no upgrade issues like broken dependencies hasn't really been done yet.

A better way to do it is [...]

Probably true, for now. The middle step, forcing it to install a couple of key packages before anything else, is not hard to do and could easily be documented in release notes, even if the Debian people don't figure out a way to make it unnecessary in the final release.

(And, of course, the first step, "change /etc/apt/sources.list", will also be unnecessary once woody is released, assuming you use the default sources.list, with the release path "stable" rather than "potato".)

You have to admit, it's still a lot easier than "make notes or backups of all local configuration, install your new OS version from scratch, reconfigure everything" which used to be the only way to upgrade e.g. Red Hat. I don't know if recent releases are better about letting you do an incremental upgrade to a whole new release or not. Presumably they are - otherwise how could all the other players hope to compete with Debian?

Re:At first

[psamuels]

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why the Debian people don't just take the Mandrake, or SuSE, or Red Hat installers and modify it to install Debian?

I have never installed Mandrake, but from what I hear, it's rather inflexible. They went and made it easy-to-perform basically the same way Microsoft did with Windows 2000 - by not offering you as many choices. The standard Win2000 install, unlike the NT4 one, doesn't ask if you want or need the Accessibility Options. Why not? I don't know, honestly I don't, but I suppose it does make the inst process "simpler" and "quicker". (I know, there are ways around this in win2k, that's not my point.)

I could be talking out my south end, but I think that's why the Debian people think they can do better. With Debian I feel like I have the freedom to configure my system any way I want - on most of my boxes, that means "without an X server". There are only a few packages that I ever need to uninstall after the initial bootstrap - emacs20, ae, and tetex spring to mind. From what I've heard, mdk puts a bunch of stuff on there you may or may not ever need.

The one major feature I'm missing from the current Debian installer is a record/playback mechanism for automated installs. Some other Linux distros can do this, I understand, and I think it's in the works for the Debian installer rewrite.

Re:At first

[psamuels]

WEll I've NEVER had any problems with it, but that's just me and my personal experience.

The main problems with the current code base are not user-visible - basically it is hard to maintain because of cruft, a difficult built process, wrong levels of abstraction, etc. That does not necessarily mean that the finished product will be buggy or quirky - just that the developers have to work much harder to insure that it is not.

The fact that you've never had problems suggests that the developers do in fact work hard.

Re:At first

[psamuels]

Wouldn't it be great to have compiled software that you can write once and run anywhere?

Debian != Linux. Newsflash for all you /.ers. This article is about porting the Debian user space tools to Windows, or to the win32 runtime environment to be precise. That doesn't mean you can run a Linux binary on Windows - it means you can run a Linux shell script on Windows, because the programs the shell script tries to call will be there and will behave as expected.

Linux binary emulation on Windows (with or without Cygwin) would be a major undertaking. Well ... maybe not that major, depending on the completeness of the Cygwin libc implementation, and assuming the program doesn't try certain "verboten" things like doing its own syscalls without going through libc. But it's still a very different thing than what the Debian/w32 people are attempting.

Re:At first

[psamuels]

Cygwin can be quite slow at times, especially if X is being used.

I wouldn't know about using X under cygwin, as I've never done it, but I've definitely noticed the speed difference! When emulating an API, there's a tradeoff between correctness and speed. Cygwin strives for 100% correctness, which means in many cases they can't just put a trivial wrapper around a win32 function, because the error return values are all different, etc.

XEmacs under Windows 2000 is painfully slow. I don't know why, specifically - I haven't profiled it or anything. (And no, it's not using an X11 client/server, it is using the win32 widgets directly.) I installed it on a quest for a usable IDE for MSVC work, but with the several-second keystroke lag of XEmacs at times, it's actually less painful to just use the VC++ IDE itself! (Coming from me, that means something.)

Re:At first

[aozilla]

Debian != Linux. Newsflash for all you /.ers. This article is about porting the Debian user space tools to Windows, or to the win32 runtime environment to be precise. That doesn't mean you can run a Linux binary on Windows - it means you can run a Linux shell script on Windows, because the programs the shell script tries to call will be there and will behave as expected.

I didn't say "compile once, run anywhere", I said "write once, run anywhere". Yes, running linux apps might require a recompile (I'm pretty sure they only require relinking, and even that can be done runtime through dlopen). In any case, porting Debian user space tools to Windows is a big part of the whole deal. With no decent package management tools available, cygwin is not accessible to those who are not in the know.

I'm not talking about binary emulation. That would be silly since the underlying platform is the same. I'm talking about relinking the same object code with different OS specific libraries. I'm going to have to try it, I guess. The only thing I'm not sure about is if there will be a problem with the formats (ELF, A.OUT, etc.).

Yes, this is not the part that Debian is working on, but others are (it's what cygwin is all about), and it's largely already done. It's still somewhat useless because the cygwin tools are all you have to manage the whole thing.

Some people want to run Windows and Linux. There are three major free options (I'm not counting VMWare). Dual boot, run linux apps on windows, or run windows apps on linux. Dual booting is pretty much done, but it sucks. Running windows apps on linux is something that will never be finished, because it relies on reverse engineering a moving target. Running linux apps on windows OTOH is quite possible. No reverse engineering needs to be done, because the source code to the linux kernel and standard libraries is open source.

Re:At first

[psamuels]

I didn't say "compile once, run anywhere", I said "write once, run anywhere". Yes, running linux apps might require a recompile

Pardon my confusion, then. Since you used Java as an example (including Sun's tag-line), I (mis)assumed that you were talking about binary compatibility.

I'm not talking about binary emulation. That would be silly since the underlying platform is the same.

Thinking about it some more, I'm not so sure it is silly. To get 90% of the way, all you really need is

• Cygwin glibc support that supports most Unix syscalls with approximately the same semantics as they have in Linux - I figure glibc is most of the way there already. Note that these don't have to map 1-to-1 to win32 syscalls, they just need to work. Very few apps use syscalls "directly", they almost all go through the libc wrapper functions.
• a Windows app that loads and executes ELF programs - I'm not sure how hard this is
• dynamic linker support for ELF libraries. This could be part of the ELF-exe-loader app, or it could be integrated into glibc like it is on Linux
• libdl dynamic library loading support - would probably be combined with the above

Note that XFree86 v4 has some whiz-bang technology to load multiple types of object files as server modules. They made a big deal out of being able to use a driver module for your X server in OS/2, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. without recompiling. (I didn't and don't see the point of this, except to benefit 3rd-party closed-source driver writers, but whatever.) I don't think this system supports Win32 (I believe), but it's the same concept.

Re:At first

[psamuels]

OTOH, I'm not convinced that doing all of that would be particularly beneficial.

Well, there is one benefit: the Debian people would be able to take the same approach as the Debian GNU/FreeBSD people (yes there does exist such a port in development - though I don't know whether it's being actively worked on). That is, they port the base system libraries and kernel-related stuff, get dpkg and other basic Debian stuff working smoothly, and use the Linux compatibility layer for everything else. Thus, 95% of Debian doesn't need to be recompiled for FreeBSD.

For the most part, though, I agree with you: there is, in general, not a lot of use for Linux binary compatibility in Windows.

The first step...

[Anonymous Coward]

After this I recommend they work on getting the Linux kernel to work, then maybe a Windowing system, XFree might do the trick, then the various utilities that Debian is known for.

Wait a minute, that's not Windows at all...

Re:The first step...

[Hiro Antagonist]

And we keep accusing Microsoft of trying to assimilate everything... *grin*

Re:The first step...

[psamuels]

XFree 4 already runs under Cygwin

The server? Or the client libs? The X client libraries have been available for Windows for some time, but nobody seems to use them because nobody runs X servers on Windows except to talk to Unix boxes.

(Not quite true - today I installed Madymo, a crash test simulator app, on someone's box. It "requires Exceed", which is to say it is a direct port from the Unix version, complete with X11. At one point we didn't have Exceed running, so I set the DISPLAY variable to a nearby Unix box to verify that Madymo itself was working. Which it was. <g>)

Walking arse first

[KarmaBlackballed]

Isnt this backward? Should we be porting software from Windows to Linux(e.g., WINE) instead of from Linux to Windows? Come on, Windows has enough good software already. Why spend time porting the useful stuff from Linux into the busted Windows environment?

This makes it easier for people to stay in Windows. I'm gonna do some research because I suspect Bill G. must be behind this.

Re:Walking arse first

[FortKnox]

As an another post states, to make a user comfy with linux, you introduce the idea in a safe environment (I'm not saying windows is "safe", but some people believe it is). If you can set it up so that the user is in windows AND using linux, they are more likely to try it, and become comfortable with linux.

After a while, you introduce them to linux without the windows, and they are comfortable with the idea, and may never return back to windows.

I think its a clever way to get people using linux.

This is explanation is assuming some people would be scared if they had all their windows software installed on linux, because they aren't comfortable with the environment, which I think is a safe assumption.

Re:Walking arse first

[KarmaBlackballed]

I think there is less opportunity here than some people think. Most of the soccer moms do not use Linux on their home PCs because of the following reason: It was not installed on her machine when she purchased it at Circuit City with 4 years of AOL service for the family to balance the checkbook and surf the net.

That's it. Nothing more. Have the big consumer outlets sell PCs with Linux and a useful office suite running in Gnome or KDE with an Outlook clone and you have them then.

Bring the good Linux apps into Windows? Where is the motivation for the retailers to gamble on Linux if everytime that rare soccer mom asks for that "Linux thing her kids told her about" the sales person can say, "Ohh, you don't have to do that. It all runs under Windows too!"

Re:Walking arse first

[jmccay]

Historically, Windows "borrow" from Unix a lot! Especially bsd style stuff. In reality, this seems to keep up the current trend. I like the idea. Get people used to Unix on a platform they like and feel comfortable with.

Eventually you might even be able to replace parts of Microsoft's OSes with more stable stuff from the Unix world.

The snake eats its tail...

[Anonymous Coward]

This port is meant to run on any win32 implementation. Some win32
implementations are free (wine, reactos), others are not (microsoft).
free implementations are of course recommended and cygwin is proven
to work fine on wine.


Let's see... Install Linux, configure WINE and then....
Install Linux!

One Word

[Quasar1999]

VmWare...

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

Re:One Word

[Syberghost]

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

Because once you've ported it, the expense involved in using it is over and done with, and you've got every possible piece Open-Sourced.

VMWare is even more expensive than Windows and is closed-source.

Re:One Word

[Syberghost]

So use Plex86 instead.

Frankly, it sucks.

Honestly, who really cares if _everything_ is open-sourced or free. Some software deserves to be paid for, this includes VMware.

The beauty of the Open Source movement is that it leaves things free for you to make that choice. More power to you. If you like, you could even pay double for the software, to make up for me not buying it. Think of it as a tip.

Re:One Word

[Syberghost]

So you're saying that Plex86 (with Debian) sucks, even though the Debian port sucks more in its current state?

Yes. Why? Is there something wrong with saying that they both suck, and that there is value in trying to make them both suck less?

w32?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not GNU/Windows?

Re:w32?

[Make]

they were thinking about calling it Debian/win32, RMS told them 'win32' sounds like someone is winning - obviously, nobody is ;)

Re:Will this attract new users - NO

[KarmaBlackballed]

No. Why would a user move when everything is being brought to them. Seems to me this makes it easier to stay in Windows.

Perhaps not attract them at first

[PigeonGB]

but they should have no problem if they find themselves in a Linux environment as opposed to Windows.
I still think it will take more for them to be attracted to any GNU/Linux implementation.

I don't get it

[beth_linker]

What's the point of the project? Are they porting specific tools that aren't already available with Cygwin, or are they reinventing the wheel? If I've got Cygwin running on my Win2K box, what extra benefits do I get from using Debian?

This is a good, if not fun, idea

[nirvdrum]

I remember when this was first discussed on debianplanet, and a lot of people started flipping out. There's simply some places (such as the work office), where one is forced to use a Win32 OS, and cannot dual-boot. Besides, dual-booting is a PITA. If I can "dpkg -i" a package under cygwin, and get to using the gimp VS photoshop, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

At best, one can say that this will deter people from linux. But then again, everyone loves linux because of all the OSS available for it. And if the whole goal is to promote OSS, why neglect the largest user base? Then when people get sick of Windows, they can convert to FreeBSD or Linux or whatever without there being a huge learning curve involved.

I don't think I really agree with the port being called w32 though. win32 is not a moniker that promotes Windows as a winner, it's just the first syllable of the word, just like a lot of nicknames are formed. I wish RMS would spend more time coding than trying to be a politician :)

Re:This is a good, if not fun, idea

[Cally]

Yes, you're right - I got familiar with bash and the GNU utils under cygwin long before I could be bothered to try a 'real' Linux install. I now get a real pervese kick from trying to compile arbitary Unix progs under Cygwin. Most recently I've been tinkering with Lynx... you mean people really /use/ that thing for web browsing?! ;)

Of course, as I'm sure others will have pointed out, Gimp already runs on win32 using a port of Gtk.

Re:This is a good, if not fun, idea

[ameoba]

Unfortunately, many (if not most) environments where you are prohibited from installing your personal choice of OS, you are also not allowed to install software on the machine.

Not to mention that the Windows' default behavior for handling window focus makes using the gimp unpleasant.

Yes please

[Mwongozi]

If they're doing what I think they're doing, this would be a very nice thing.

One of the great advantages of the *nix platform that Windows has never really been able to match has been it's remote access capabilities.

I run Windows on my desktop at home, but I also run a Debian GNU/Linux server, for the sole reason so that when I'm away from home, I can telnet into it and read my mail, use IRC, etc.

I even have a Nokia 9210, and using it I can telnet to my Debian box and then use IRC from anywhere in Europe, Asia, or indeed anywhere with a GSM 900/1800 signal. (Basically, anywhere except USA. Suck. :)

Being able to do "apt-get install telnetd irc" on a Windows box would be very nice indeed!

Re:Yes please

[banuaba]

You actually can. I run win2k at home, as well, and I have cygwin's server package running sshd. It's a beautiful and sick thing, being able to ssh into my home box from work.

Just the other night I got XFree86 running on my windows box, but I'm still having a whore of a time getting KDE to run (the tarballs for it suck, bigtime. they're missing a bunch of DLLs that one needs for success)

Re:Yes please

[Mwongozi]

I can't use SSH (Or, indeed VNC, or RDC) because I can't find an SSH program for the Nokia 9210 that works. There's also no VNC client, and no (unsurprisingly, because it's Microsoft) RDC client either. Plus I can't guarantee that any remote PC I may want to use will have SSH/VNC/RDC capabilities either.

GSM *is* encrypted, however, I'm not terribly worried about anyone hax0ring my Debian box. All they will get is access to a normal user account, and they won't even be able to read my mail without another password for the mailbox.

Re:Yes please

[ncc74656]

Plus I can't guarantee that any remote PC I may want to use will have SSH/VNC/RDC capabilities either.

PuTTY is small enough that you could stick the binary on your webserver and run it from anywhere. It won't do tunnelling, though...for that, you would need OpenSSH under Cygwin, which is a hefty download. (You don't need VNC to read mail or news, but you already knew that.)

That still doesn't solve your problem with SSH from your phone, though...

inflection point for free software ...

[timothy]

is when people start griping for commercial software as easy and smart as their free stuff.

Yes, this already goes on sometimes (in server rooms, say), but it's still funny and as much a contrarian in-joke in many cases as it is a genuine sentiment. When it stops being funny -- well, that *will* be funny ;)

I'd like to see Red Hat & c. (IBM is doing this a bit) play up the HUGE upgrade free software means when it comes to complexity, ongoing costs, etc.

Ongoing costs for software rental / licensure (and remember, companies don't *buy* most software, esp. from Microsoft -- they purchase quite restrictive licenses) are like holes in your money bag. From a business standpoint, they'd better be doing a lot of "making your memos more productive" to make up for it.

The more software that can be apt-get installed, the flatter the (overstated) learning curve becomes. Someone will probably make sure that Windows has a cute apt-get wizard too ;)

timothy

Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[Syberghost]

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.

That is not true of all the folks here who have to run Windows.

Some of them indeed do have to run whatever OS their company has selected, and don't think that what OS happens to be on their computer is reason enough to quit their job.

Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

eventually the linux apps will overtake the quality of the windows apps

Waiting...tapping foot...still waiting....yawn...

Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[garcia]

reminds me of using unix based apps on OS/2. When given the choice of telnetting to a box and running ircII or using it on OS/2 natively the choice was obvious.

I know that there are better examples of this now (as BitchX -- ick runs on Windows natively already) but you get the idea.

I had been using cp, mv, rm, etc for years on Windows b/c I was so accusomted to it I couldn't get out of the habbit of doing mv instead of move.

Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[Suidae]

If I'm developing a program spec'ed to run under windows, developing it under linux is asking for trouble. When I'm testing, I really need to be testing on the same platform that the users will be using.

I could write code on linux and test and debug on windows, but I'm not that much of a linux zelot, I'd rather spend time coding than switching OS's

Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter

[Col. Panic]

Correct - I work for a really large bank and users run the company standard - NT . period . We grudgingly install 9x if the application requires it, usually because we have to interact with some vendor's own system and they only support 9x.

Since I am in IT, I can *also* run BSD or Solaris, or just about anything non-Linux, which is forbidden on corporate-owned PC's (I could actually lose my job for installing it after the moratorium was imposed). However, I have to run Lotus Notes, Netware's administration utilities, and a couple of inhouse products that were developed on NT. For those reasons I cannot get along without NT. The posix tools and some stuff from sysinternals.com make it more bearable. A port of Debian would still be verboten tho.

Good news

[The Bungi]

As an experienced (~10 year) developer who has spent most of his time in the Win32 world and a little bit in the *nix court, this is good news for me.

A lot of people think Windows is inflexible because it does not have a layered windowing system ala X, but this is not an issue if someone wants to write a shell for the OS to replace Explorer (see http://www.geoshellx.com for a very basic implementation). It's not easy, but it's not forbidden or blocked by the OS architecture in any way. If someone wants to bring this type of good stuff to Windows, I think everyone will be more than happy.

Re:Good news

[The Bungi]

I know about those as well, but GeoShell is probably the best implementation I've seen.

We're already cluttered with replacement shells ! The problem with that under win32 is the undocumented APIs, not the coding skills.
Oh, I beg to differ. You're just parroting the common wisdom around here. There's undocumented stuff, sure. But it's all at the kernel level (see www.sysinternals.com). The shell is perfectly documented. Visit MSDN one of these days and take a look for yourself. No, the real problems are I see are:

• Most of the shell stuff is COM-based. Ergo, you need to understand COM to implement services (such as folder extensions and so on) that applications expect. That implies C++, not C
• The whole shell implementation is completely screwed up in Win9x. Windows 2000 was the first real, robust version of the shell that wasn't "piled on" after an IE install. That complicates compatibility with other versions of the OS, to say the least.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I've written several shell extensions and they're a pain to get right.

If someone creates a good shell for Win32 that gives Explorer a run for its money then things are going to get interesting. Maybe that's the way to go, instead of trying to sell Mom & Pop on a whole new OS from scratch.

What is Stallman's take?

[toupsie]

I can't imagine he would be too happy with GPL licensed software being ported to a proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft. But then again, after Fink utilized GPL software for porting to Mac OS X (half free source/half proprietary), this is not too far fetched of an idea.

People who already use Cygwin...

[Ruffiej]

I think a lot of people who are already using Cygwin (for instance if they have no other choice at work than to work with windows) will be very pleased with this.
Apt-getting all your software in stead of compiling and recompiling and recompiling everything would be a huge improvement. Lots and lots more software will get availible for the cygwin users this way...

I will follow this with great interrest

Brain Masturbation

[dudle]

Please take a breath, it's only dpkg compiling under cygwin. Nothing more.

Debian under w32 ... Look at the HURD and tell me what it is that you see.

"Debian" or "Linux"?

[jbeamon]

I feel this has been done. There's already a bash-for-windows and a ksh-for-windows, both of which come with a number of common Unix tools. There's vmware itself. It strikes me that a lot of "Debian tools" are simply GNU tools, freeware, open source software, and Linux ports of historical Unix tools. I visited the sourceforge "homepage" for this, and it was a few paragraphs about getting windows users accustomed to using "Debian tools". I did not get the feeling this was anything new or unique, or that it was Debian-specific, except for maybe the apt-get system. That's about it. Am I missing something?

--
-j

Re:"Debian" or "Linux"?

[scrytch]

> Am I missing something?

The organizational scheme of debian. How things are packaged, how they are configured (be damn sure that config scripts are going to vary on win32), the debian quality control. cygwin currently doesn't even do dependencies in its packages, it's a pretty simplified distribution. The difference between debian and redhat and slackware is the same quality that would differentiate it from cygwin. Of course it's already been done, this project would just aim to do it better.

I don't think this is good..

[acomj]

By giving Windows developers access to the great development tools of Linux/Unix (Cygwin et all..) I think you make it easier to have developers stick with windows than switch.

I worked at a small software house that had a linux "mainframe" . Developers machines were dual boot Linux/NT. The NT had a Xserver and once Cygwin was installed on the NT side almost noonne booted into linux ever..WinCVS and SAMBA, TCL for windows, emacs, perl and Java, X made it super easy to do development on NT as opposed to using those tools in the native linux world. once compenets were build they could be loaded onto the linux machine and tested.

I think it may make some more open to using linux, but not as many as those who stick it out with windows longer because the tools are almost the same now.

Re:I don't think this is good..

[HiThere]

Any application that you get away from MSVC is one that is easier to port to Linux.

Given my druthers, I wouldn't reboot either. What needs improve ment are the screen builders and the report writers. Glade is promising. "Nearly useable" in practice. Report writers? The category seems to be missing.

I understand that MS got their report writers from CrystalReports, but it works. And their Screen Builder is pretty good too. IBM does that as well, in their Visual Age Java (though Linux releases seem slow). But with Linux the best choice is to write out a tex or docbook file that you hand design, and then have a shell script create the report. Doable, but quite clumsy. And the Glade Screen Builder just isn't really quite adequate (though I LIKE the multi-language feature! Using the same screen builder for C, C++, Ada, Eiffel, and Python is obviously the way to go. [I just wish that Ruby was on the list]). Unfortunately, most of the languages seem to have their build modules broken, so all I can generate is C (and this is on a vanilla install from Red Hat). And even when it works ... being able to place the cell where you want it, to drag it around, and to resize it by dragging with the mouse is so obviously better than ...

Well, perhaps I'm just not sufficiently used to it. I rarely really want a dialog that interfaces to C.
.

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...)

Why not port Xlib?

[kdgarris]

The biggest problem with ports of GUI apps to Windows is the requirement of an X server. If Xlib could be ported to Windows in such a way that it draws to Windows directly instead of using the X protocal, then other X toolkit and applications could be ported-over, and would seem more like native apps.

-Karl

Re:Why not port Xlib?

[kdgarris]

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

Re:Why not port Xlib?

[spitzak]

Xlib is such a horrid mess that it is much more productive to write a nice higher level that can be implemented on both Xlib and Win32. This is what all the toolkits do to allow the programs to be portable (Qt is one example, but all the other Linux toolkits have some kind of Windows port as well).

The advantage of not using Xlib is the hope (maybe a vain hope...) that Xlib can be eradicated from Linux as well.

I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[hawk]

It just doesn't make sense to me, unless you have ideological reasons to insist on the GNU utilities. And if so, the BSD kernel shouldn't meet your purity requirements.

Why not just use a BSD outright?

While building a Linux distribution with bsd rather than gnu utilities makes a certain amount of sense, I don't see anyone putting time into it for other than being truly annoyed by RMS. I'd be somewhat interested, as I've prefered the bsd to gnu the couple of times I've noticed differences, but I solved that by switching. Little sense as that makes, though, stripping the free software utilities integrated into the BSD's in favor of the GNU versions makes even less sense to me.

> the one thing that keeps me with Linux is Debian's packet
> management.

Debian's package management is better than bsd packages. It seems to take a back seat to bsd ports, however. It's all compiled right there on your machine, and it handles dependencies. portupgrade can search and upgrade/replace these, too. Give it a try. I've never missed debian since switching.

hawk

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Luyseyal]

OH YEAH! I want to spend XXX hours waiting for all the upgraded versions of BSD to compile on my box! No thanks, just give me the binaries for anything that doesn't need optimization. If I need to compile, I'll use the apt-get command to dl'd source and autocompile with appropriate gcc opts.

That said, I think the open packages project is a good idea for sharing ports between the sister BSDs. Still, I'd probably never upgrade NetBSD on this 7100/80 because I'd grow old waiting for it to finish. On Debian, I have around 7000 packages or so at my disposal with only download and install time.

Have fun with your fast boxen.
-l

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Zach Garner]

*Sigh*

as always:

if you are on FreeBSD try /stand/sysutill. Automated package dependancy additions, hierarchal views of the packages, searching, etc. Its right there from the very beginning.

On openbsd, pkg_add url/package.tgz works great. There may be something better on OpenBSD, but I only use the ports tree, so I do not know.

NetBSD probably has the same, but I have not used it..

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Luyseyal]

sigh all you want, you've not addressed the compilation problem.

-l

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[hawk]

> sigh all you want, you've not addressed the compilation problem.

In which universe?

in the original comment, I wrote
>Debian's package management is better than bsd packages.

The post which you reply to wrote,
> Automated package
> dependancy additions, hierarchal views of the packages, searching,
> etc. Its right there from the very beginning.

Packages are pre-compiled. Ports are not. That's why I distinguished between them.

hawk

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Luyseyal]

If you will notice, my previous comment is not in response to you, but rather Zach.

My main complaint about ports is compilation time. Like I said, with apt it's easy enough to compile the few packages that I might want to compile and install, etc. so it's a better solution for me. There has been some discussion on debianplanet about making "compile everything" ala ports work easily. It's doable Right Now[tm], but you gotta write a script.

http://www.debianplanet.org/debianplanet/article .p hp?sid=521

-l

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[hawk]

> If you will notice, my previous comment is not in response to you, but
>rather Zach.

Yes, and Zach was writing about packages--a purely binary system.

> apt it's easy enough to compile the few packages that I might want to
> compile and install, etc. so it's a better solution for me.
> My main complaint about ports is compilation time.

So use the packages, and only use the ports for the handful that you want to compile yourself . . .
Like I said, with
> apt it's easy enough to compile the few packages that I might want to
> compile and install, etc. so it's a better solution for me.

But it's the same solution . . . you can mix ports and packages; the ports make a package and install it; the fetchable packages are really pre-compiled ports.

hawk

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Luyseyal]

Are the fetchable packages only available for stable releases? I run unstable and update every couple of days.

-l

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[hawk]

> Are the fetchable packages only available for stable releases?

FreeBSD is organized a bit differently, and it's been too long since I've used NetBSD to comment (it was MacBSD and moving fast).

Anyway, there's a major release every 6 months, e.g., 4.3 Release. This is just a snapshot of the stable branch on that particular day, as the stable branch is constantly updated. The 2.x and 3.x trees are also updated for security, but not features. 4.x (actually, I think it's 4.0-STABLE for this purpose) gets features ported from CURRENT once they're stable, as well as bug fixes. This covers the kernel, base utilities, sendmail, X (though X is also available as a port), and so forth (Far more than linux kernel and the GNU utilities--enough that it's actually usable as an os, but still far less than a linux distribution.).

To run applications (other than getting email with mail, or editing with vi, or printing), you'll want some ports or packages. There is a single ports tree, and I've always assumed that STABLE and CURRENT have the same packages.

So running STABLE gets you to about the same as the unstable branch of debian. Running CURRENT is closer to running a kernel off the development branch and applying the patches as they appear on the kernel devlopers list--and doing the same for all of the base debian distribution (i.e., running the to-the-minute devlopers' versions of sendmail, tar, etc.).

>I run unstable and update every couple of days.

You're a brave man. :)

I used to do that, and around '96-'97 it worked. After that, the twice-a-year "showstopper" got to be just too much, and the testing branch didn't exist yet. (OK, and the politics were getting more and more annoying, too.) I'd be hard pressed to give you an exact date for my switch, but it was to 3.3 or 3.4. (though I did use debian on my office desktop in the 99-2000 academic year, as the inaqdequate machine provided a visiting professor at UNI just didn't have the resources to compile).

The bottom line is that running CURRENT is about equivalent to debian unstable or testing with regular updates from security, but you don't tend to get those disasters that tend to happen with unstable, or the annoyances that happen when a package from unstable gets pulled before entering testing--but still has other packages depending upon it. CURRENT just isn't comparabloe to a Debina distribution. FreeBSD has never sent something down the pipe thaqt rendered my system unusable; I can't say that about debian.

hawk

Re:I've never quite understood Debian/BSD

[Luyseyal]

I'm familiar with the 6 month release cycle, actually, I was just wondering if packages were available only for the 6 month release and security updates or also for the interim, in-progress distribution. Is this what you mean by "There is a single ports tree, and I've always assumed that STABLE and CURRENT have the same packages. So running STABLE gets you to about the same as the unstable branch of debian."?

What prompted my original response was a friend of mine's comment that he'd just switched from FreeBSD to Debian cause he got tired of compiling everything. I should've said that. Heh, maybe he didn't know work-in-progress packages were available?

Actually, though, I enjoy the occasional disasters, versions of Evolution that can't compose mail, etc. For example, the PAM guy released a package that wouldn't let you log in multi-user. :-) But it doesn't happen all that often and I enjoy being part of the process (reporting bugs, etc.). I don't sit on debian-devel, but I know they're working on a testing framework to eliminate stupid bugs like the PAM bug for unstable packages. The testing distribution's tests already exist so that doesn't happen there.

From what I gather, the BSD people have simply had more background on the testing, regression, etc. stuff than Debian folks did. But they're getting there... which brings us back to what's great about free software: cross-pollination of ideas and code. Journaling inspired soft-updates. Soft-updates inspired the TUX2 Phase tree algorithm. and so on. Package management and ports cross-pollinate, etc.

I'm getting boring, but feel free to drop a mail if you like. I'm not sure how many comments are left before this story rolls over.

-l

Yes, it will

[Planesdragon]

If I can try out Linux tools, and wean myself and my wife to a system that can work all on Linux, we very well might switch. (assuming that I can find good games, and a word processor that fits my needs intelligent spellchecker.)

Trust me; if you can show me an OS that does everything that Windows does that I like, is more stable, AND is free / cheap, I'll switch. But the simple fact is that #1 hasn't been shown to me, and that's really the most important one.

(I have tried AbiWord and StarOffice 6--and they both had very real performance problems, like not counting em dashes as punctuation!)

Re:Yes, it will

[KarmaBlackballed]

Trust me; if you can show me an OS that does everything that Windows does that I like, is more stable, AND is free / cheap, I'll switch

By bringing the apps into your Windows PC you are not getting any proof of anything. You are just getting a better Windows machine. Why would anyone be fool enough to switch from Windows if they can have it all there?

Lets be real, there will always be an app or two that only runs in Windows until there is a critical mass of soccer moms using Linux as a desktop. Ports like this hurt the chances that such critical mass will ever be achieved. Bill likes this.

Re:Yes, it will

[hopeless case]

O.K. Suppose MS succeeds in monitoring licenses over the internet and moving to a subscription model. Now suppose you are a soccer mom with a new PC that with WinXP pre-installed and you install debian for windows later for whatever reason. Then suppose you grow to like the debian stuff and rely on it.

Now suppose the XP license expires after a year and your computer refuses to let you run anything until you pay a renewal fee. Now suppose your nephew, a linux savvy high school age kid, offers to blow away win XP, install debian linux, and restore your files and debian environment.

Now do you see the logic in this? It is putting constraints on what MS can do with its nefarious licensing plans.

Re:Yes, it will

[HiThere]

The reason that I switched at home was the MS license agreement changes. And that was years ago, now. Until MS started playing games with the licenses, I didn't think it important enough to switch. Once I did, I started looking for options.

OTOH, I think that money will motivate more people more easily. A monthly or yearly licensing fee will cause people to consider changing whenever the fee comes around. And some of those who let it slip will be quite angry about how they have been treated. (Of course, they'll need to be. If they switch OS's at that point they'll likely loose all of their data. [Read the WinX license, and tremble for those who sign it.])
.

Re:Yes, it will

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I agree.

There are plenty of ways to look at it. For one, if developers are really spending all this time bickering about politics rather than actual coding, then the object being developed will lag by default. Here you have some people trying to needlessly control what other people do with code. Unless that control is codified into the licence they don't have a leg to stand on.

So debian packages work under Windows. How many people will really use it? If the usage does get widespread, you'll get a wider user base and wider distribution of the code in those packages and maybe you'll even get some more developers.

And rather than just trying to keep Linux and its associated code "pure" why not subvert Windows to the point that eventually Windows isn't needed anymore?

Re:Yes, it will

[WeedMonkey]

Once there are no killer Windows apps left to replace, there will be no reason to have Windows at all-- and wouldn't that be nice? :)

Well, that's one of the problems, isn't it? Bill and his armies of coders aren't going to stand still, wait for Linux to catch up in terms of application volume and quality (as perceived by the average PC-buying person), and then say "Ah, now we have a fair, level playing field on which we can compete with Linux. Let's start designing stuff again".

Re:Yes, it will

[Chagrin]

• By bringing the apps into your Windows PC you are not getting any proof of anything. You are just getting a better Windows machine. Why would anyone be fool enough to switch from Windows if they can have it all there?

Probably because Windows isn't free, and with the pricing going up, stricter licensing, and pirating difficulties (WinXP), many users will be looking for an alternative.

Re:Yes, it will

[Daniel]

Here you have some people trying to needlessly control what other people do with code.

Hello, could you please post a link to the message where someone tried to forbid these people from porting the code to Windows? I must have overlooked it.

Thanks,
Daniel

Re:Will this attract new users?

[zangdesign]

Why would it attract new users? Use of the command line is not a normal action for the majority of Windows users. Most, if not all, system utilities work through a gui that is, in normal use, stable and well-defined.

I don't see any reason not to do this, but I also don't see any reason to do it. Having had cygwin installed on two boxes for the past six months, I find it to be more useless than a five-assed monkey and porting more stuff to it will not add any measure of usefulness.

That being said, I think I found only one person on the mailing list didn't think it was a good idea. Most of them seemed more worried about whether or not RMS would approve variable names or something. This is apparently "one of those Linux things".

Maybe they should port that stuff to Win32. If nothing else, he might get really apoplectic and have to be straitjacketed.

An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[Masem]

Right now, Cygwin has a working version of XFree for win32 that now works on all Win9x/NT/2K/XP playforms. This is great news as it's also very much free (as in beer) compared with other X server solutions for Win32.

However, Cygwin's default install method is that you have to download about 20 files from their site, extract them, then use a script to get everything installed right. Not impossible nor difficult to follow, but is mind-numbing. (The split of packages is similar to that for XFree in other distros; the engine, the fonts, the programs, the libraries, etc. Cygwin just tends to trim packages down to the floppy 1.44M level so some of the packages have multiple parts).

Having dpkg available, with cygwin as the sources, will allows them to distribute the XFree files as a single task, making the job of installing them that much easier as well as keeping them up-to-date. Two commands (update and upgrade), and one can be set!

Re:An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[Syberghost]

Having dpkg available, with cygwin as the sources, will allows them to distribute the XFree files as a single task, making the job of installing them that much easier as well as keeping them up-to-date.

Wouldn't it have been easier to zip the files and create a GUI installer using one of the various tools available for doing just that?

Re:An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[Luyseyal]

Wouldn't it have been easier to zip the files and create a GUI installer using one of the various tools available for doing just that?

Open Source GUI installers such as... ? I've heard some good reviews of the installer GNUe uses called "Inno setup", but deb packaging is probably superior and less time-consuming for these kinds of tools. I think integration with the Add/Remove control panel would be absolutly killer though. the latest versions of apt-get work with rpm, too, so don't think RPM vs DEB crap.

• http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/gnue20011124_4.html#3
• http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm

-l

Re:An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[Luyseyal]

Eh, the main reasons Debian would not work on this system are dependencies, upgrading, etc. I mean, you don't really want separate .exe self-installers for each package, correct? Have each application's installer manage uninstall dependencies, etc.?

No, the "Package" philosophy is an installed application [or group of apps] that manages all issues surrounding installation of packages. On this philosophy, integration with Add/Remove would entail a shell-builtin to launch the Debian package manager if you clicked on a listed installed application to be removed. Hell, I bet you could make a shell builtin to have "Debian package" listed for one of the Add sources, but don't quote me on that.

But, the Nullsoft or similar code would be a good place to look for ideas for a Windowsy front-end for apt and friends. Handling of registry entries and whatnot.

Cheers,
-l

Re:An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[scrytch]

However, Cygwin's default install method is that you have to download about 20 files from their site, extract them, then use a script to get everything installed right

When was the last time you used cygwin? I installed it by clicking on the "get cygwin"
icon on the site, about a 200K download, running it from the save/run dialog, putting a checkbox next to every package I wanted, and letting it install itself. I just wish every distro was that easy to install.

Re:An example of *why* this is gonna rock...

[Masem]

Except as of (checking) right now, the XFree port is not part of the cygwin distribution (it's mostly all command line tools). They may include it at some point, but right now, it's not there.

The GNU meme must flow...

[noser]

My first exposure to the GNU project was through programs like GNU chess ported to Windows, and the djgpp C compiler for DOS. I think that as people are given the opportunity to see that GNU software solves their problems, they will become more interested, leading to more interest in Linux and GNU software in general. This could be a great way for more of the public to "stick their toes in the water".

Re:The GNU meme must flow...

[bcrowell]

After two failed attempts to install Linux distributions on my home machines, I've finally given up on the idea. But then I decided to go ahead and install X Windows on my iMac. Voila! Now I can run GIMP, freeciv, etc. Now I really feel like a member of the free-information community instead of an outcast who happens to read Slashdot. And as I migrate more and more of my work and play activities to free software, I get closer and closer to the day when, if someone gives me a computer with Linux preinstalled for my birthday, I can just start using it and continue doing what I want to do.

Zealotry is the inverse of freedom. The stupidest thing the free information movement can do is to erect another barrier to exclude outsiders. Let's all subversively and promiscuously mix free and proprietary software. We don't have to convince our employers to erase Windows off of every machine they own. All we have to do is start using free software to get our work done, and Windows will die the slow, painful death it deserves.

I doubt it

[autopr0n]

What would be the point of switching? you could have everything you want right in front of you (windows apps, linux apps). If anything, It might bring Linux users back to windows. And with win2k the stablity thing isn't so much of a factor anymore.

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

Computers are Tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

The whole idea of open source software is that people can extend it to do the things they want to do. In other words, it allows them to get the job done in the way they want to do it.

Why do people get upset when others extend the capabilites of a system in a way that they find useful? If you don't like losing control over a piece of software - don't release the source.

Re:Computers are Tools

[TeknoHog]

No, no, no... Computers are not tools, they are sacred instruments of religious worship. Every Windows CD microwaved is a sacrifice to Linus the Great. There is no god but Linus. Praise the Penguin! Grovel before the Beatified - RMS, AC et al. Soon the Kingdom of OSS is to come, and the Mighty Redmond will perish. The geek shall internet the Earth.

Re:waste of time and effort...

[autopr0n]

Why is it that so much code has to be wasted on these "we're doing it because WE CAN" projects?

Um, why do you think Linux development was started in the first place? This has a potential to be very useful to a lot of people who actually like windows (or OSX or BSD or GNU HURD even) and don't want to deal with dual booting.

You're not paying these people to work, they aren't doing it for you, they are doing it for themselves. If they didn't want to "waste time" then they wouldn't be working on Debian at all.

Re:He says

[toupsie]

Good one! :) But will he start wearing shoes again in public?

I think

[autopr0n]

I think what the above poster wanted would be a mechanism where, if he didn't like a kernel, he'd be able to completely swap it out and replace it with a totally different one with out any significant problems.

Having different kernels with the exact same user space could be pretty convenient. Why deal with more complexity then you have to?

What is very funny...

[opkool]

..is that they recommend to do all this "...with free implementations of win32 (Wine)...".

This is plainly hilarious.

I know that cygwin will compile under Wine. But using it under Wine to run dpkg ... the idea is just beyond my mind!

Let me quote the whole parragraph:

This port is meant to run on any win32 implementation. Some win32
implementations are free (wine, reactos), others are not (microsoft).
free implementations are of course recommended and cygwin is proven
to work fine on wine.

Who had the idea in the first place? Terry Gillian? Pratchet? Benny Hill? Jay Leno? Chiquito de la Calzada?

Why is this bad?

[Mindjiver]

How can using Free Software on NT ( or any other non-GNU system ) be bad? I just think its great that there are tools that make a mixed development enviroment work smoothly. I fail to see how this is bad..

Linux isnt the answer to all the questions out there and its really nice to use familiar tools no mather what platform your on.

The OS Hardly Ever Matters....

[Carnage4Life]

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.

Read the mailing lists ...

[SuperDuG]

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

Re:Read the mailing lists ...

[ncc74656]

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 ...

I compiled a2ps from source yesterday on a Redh*t box at work as I haven't yet figured out how Redh*t's package-management system works from a command line (never installed Redh*t on any of my systems; I've only used SLS, Slackware, and SuSE). One of these days, I'll blow Redh*t off of it and build up Linux From Scratch on it, just like I did with the other Redh*t box that the previous admin allowed to be 0wn3d.

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.

Re:Who is this 'we' you speak of?

[KarmaBlackballed]

Many of us live in free countries where we can dissipate Linux's desktop momentum by making Windows a platform that runs everything. Don't get your panties in a bunch, this is happening and no one is going to pass a law to stop it.

The WE that I refer to is those people that would like to see Linux become a real alternative for every business and home user for every purpose. Not just a niche OS that is almost ready for business desktop use.

The people that fall into the WE category (not you) should not get too excited in a positive way when good Linux apps are delivered into the Windows OS. The folks that should get excited are the ones that want Windows uber alas.

Some people....

[atyr]

Ok I could be wrong but has anyone noticed on those posts ANYTHING from Branden Robinson that didnt have some uber hacker wannabe slang in it? just a little curious as to the intellectual integrity of some of the people involved in the distro ;D

Why is it that people even care. I wonder, what is it going to bother people if anything is ported. I dont think its quite made for them to use now is it? If you dont want to use something DONT! Maybe someone NEEDS windows for something. Like i believe it was an earlier slashdot article about spell checkers and linux. Editing atm is superior on windows, why use windows the way it is if you can use apps you like. Just like wine, some people want the stability of linux but like some windows apps. Why are we being so close minded. I dont want to hear any "oh its M$ cra..." Think beyond the box, realise that not everyones needs are the same as yours. This does not show my personal opinion. I personaly think its a waste of time and everything should all be on some type of unix varient =] but its just no rational to think this will happen. We need to learn to deal with this, and bringing linux to windows in more ways than one is a step in the right direction.

Re:Some people....

[Overfiend]

I DONT NOW WHAT UR TALKING ABOUT D00D. 1VE ONLY MADE 1 POST 1N THAT WHOLE STUPID DEB1AN NEW WINDOWZ (1T RULEZ MAN!!!) THREAD + THATZ RIGHT HURE

SORRY IF MY L33T JARGON TURMZ L1KE "MONIKUR" ARE 2O MUCH 4 UR FEEBLE BRANE. IN THE FUTURE 1L TRY 2 TALK 1N S1MPLE LANGUAGE + RUN ON SENTENCEZ LIKE THIZ THAT U CAN UNDURSTAND AFTUR AL 1 WOULDNT WANT 2 CAUSE A STACK OVURFLOW 1N UR CUREBRAL CORTEX OH SHIT THURE I GO AGAIN WITH THE üBUR KEWL HACKUR D00D!!!!! WANNABE SLANG CUZ GOD NOWZ IM A WANNABE

WATCH UR X SURVUR 4 TROJANZ. D00FUZ!!!!!! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Re:Will this attract new users?

[Otter]

If Debian is successfully ported to Windows(tm) to the point where a non-computer savy users could set it up, does anyone think this would bring about a new batch of Linux users?

I've been installing and using Linux since 1997 and I have never succeeded in getting Debian to install successfully. I think a working console with hopelessly broken X was the best I've done. Maybe they could start with getting Debian Linux (excuse me, Debian *GNU/Linux*) to the point where a Linux-savvy user can install it without devoting a week to the project.

And sometimes it does

[HiThere]

I suppose that it really is about the apps, but the one I'm thinking of is the Novell Client logon application. I understand that it was working back in Linux 2.0, but it's been broken as long as I've been using Linux. This means that I can use Linux at home, but not at the office. No printer, not network server, etc. (TCP/IP gets through though). So periodically I try out a new distribution at work, and then I go back to using Win95.

As for Debian ... I wonder: Can I generate stand-alone applications that I can share with others using Debian in a CygWin environment? I can with CygWin (when it doesn't get confused ... SmallEiffel has been giving me problems recently).

P.S.: That Win95 part means that X Window doesn't work. There may be commercial ones that do, but the CygWin port doesn't work on my computer. So Debian would be just the text window install.

Re:And sometimes it does

[Daniel]

P.S.: That Win95 part means that X Window doesn't work.

I've seen an X server (I think it was XFree) running within Cygwin. Just because it doesn't work on your computer, don't assume that it doesn't work for anyone else.

Daniel

Re:And sometimes it does

[ncc74656]

I suppose that it really is about the apps, but the one I'm thinking of is the Novell Client logon application. I understand that it was working back in Linux 2.0, but it's been broken as long as I've been using Linux. This means that I can use Linux at home, but not at the office. No printer, not network server, etc. (TCP/IP gets through though). So periodically I try out a new distribution at work, and then I go back to using Win95.

It's been a while since I did anything with NetWare, but with NCP and IPX support compiled into the kernel and IPX support enabled in NetWare 5, I was able to mount NetWare volumes under Linux. Your server username and password get passed in the parameters to mount in the same way you'd access an SMB share on an NT or Win2K box...it should be something like this:

mount -t ncp -o username=foo,password=bar //nwserver/vol1 /mnt

Can't help with the printer problem, though, as I've never tried tackling that.

Another advantage...

[mav[LAG]]

...is when the team announce the latest Unstable release, Windows users will feel right at home :)

pre-installed @ OEM's

[Agent Drek]

maybe it's too hard for OEM's to preinstall RedHat or Debian (insert your fav here), but once they are allowed to 'modify' the default windows desktop (after the court case) then I wonder how many OEM's could be convinced to preinstall cygwin or debian? The results would be a generation of kids growing up on gcc, bash, etc. That would be cool.

VNC!!!

[autopr0n]

VNC If your nokia has a web browser, you can control your windows desktop from anywhere.

Actually, windows 2000 has a telnet server if you choose to enable it. The problem is that all files are basically a+rwx in windows and you have to setup ACLs on file access for the whole system if you have any other people with log-on rights to the system if you want to have any kind of security. I'm not talking about share security, if any users telnets in they can "DIR" their way anywhere on the system and do whatever they want with the files. If you don't have anyone else using the machine it's not a problem though.

The other problem, of course, is that you just can't really do that many on windows with just the command line :(

Re:VNC!!!

[biglig2]

Let us rephrase that: if your nokia has a Java VM blah blah blah.

Re:VNC!!!

[djocyko]

I wonder...is there a way (perhaps via cygwin) too get a lot of those cool tools like grep available on windows (2k)? I would be extremely happy to be able to telnet into my machine and grep things...

(then again...I already have accounts to multiple *nix machines...why would I need it)

still, I think this is a relavent question.

Re:VNC!!!

[scrytch]

I wonder...is there a way (perhaps via cygwin) too get a lot of those cool tools like grep available on windows (2k)? I would be extremely happy to be able to telnet into my machine and grep things...

Of course you can, just go to cygwin.com and download the distribution. The installer is a bit annoying when you don't want to install everything, but it is certainly simple. w2k has telnet built in, though I'm not sure whether it has security holes, so I don't run it. Possible that there's a sshd available, the source for that almost certainly wouldn't port out of the box. I use bash as my main command shell on w2k, though it still has annoying terminal emulation bugs.

WINE on Win32

[DVega]

I'm dying to see WINE ported to Win32! :-)

Re:WINE on Win32

[Mignon]

I've been working on just such a thing. The following works pretty well. Just save as wine.bat in your path:
@echo off
%*

Leave out the @echo off for debugging. Oh, and this software is GPL'ed.

Uh, why not?

[autopr0n]

the GNU system ran for half a decade on commercial UNIXs. It was designed on commercial UNIXs, this is really nothing new, other then the fact that its got a different interface

Of course, who knows how Stallman would actually feel. He opposed GNU work on the original Macintosh, and he clearly isn't the most rational man...

Re:Uh, why not?

[Alan Shutko]

He opposed GNU work on the original Macintosh, and he clearly isn't the most rational man...

That was because of the Apple look and feel lawsuit. Seems like a decent reason to me.

With Win32 you get Win32 drivers

[yerricde]

If you want to use Debian tools, USE DEBIAN!! Not Debian on Win32

With Win32, you get all the Win32 drivers. For instance, Debian GNU/Linux doesn't support my laptop's internal modem. With Debian on Win32, on the other hand, I could alt-tab out to Mozilla and dial the Internet.

RMS does it again.

[Karma Sucks]

Has anyone read this: msg01641.html

Ben Pfaff wrote: > Last I heard, RMS really hates the moniker "win32" because it has > the string "win" in it, implying that there's something winning > about Windows. I suspect he'd like w32 better than win32 for > what that's worth. During Emacs 20 development, rms insisted on changing all the elisp win32-* variables to w32-* for precisely that reason, so it seems he's happy with w32. Craig Jesus Christ. Somebody needs to get a life.

Re:RMS does it again.

[leperjuice]

As my mother said (speaking about activism):
"You have your tree shakers and your jelly makers."

Translation:
You have your people who make a whole lot of noise and get everything all shaken up. These people are often zealots who are viewed by most rational people as being partially out of their gourds.
Then you have the people who "gather the fruit," so to speak, of the zealots efforts and make something constructive out of them.

You need both types. The tree-shakers are often willing to push boundaries and to take risks that might seem insane, but that in the end serve to advance the cause as a whole. But people rarely listen to nut-jobs, it's up to the level-headed people to transform the work of maniacs into something suitable for everyone (and to filter out the psychotic ideas).

So pay no heed to RMS. He's nuts, and most people recognise that, but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about (only due to the people who know when to listen to him and when to tune him out).

Re:RMS does it again.

[leperjuice]

Um, RMS has done real work for Free Software -- he wrote emacs, gcc, gdb, and many other tools that we use every day.

From my earlier posting:
...but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about

Hey, I'm a die-hard emacs user, and I know who to thank for it. But that doesn't change the fact that RMS is out there.

For all those who "don't get it"

[pete-classic]

A lot of people are saying "why port Free stuff to windows?" or "why would you want to do this?"

Well, some of us still "have" to run windows sometimes. That's just how it is.

I've been using cygwin (in the larger sense, not just the .dll and one or two apps) and it is GREAT. A real shell, nano (my favorite editor), grep, sed, less, tail, uniq, which, etc. It is all packages in a nice installer (afaik it is just called "setup.exe") which reminds me of the BSD ports system.

The point is, when you are "stuck" with windows the more "real man's" tools available the better!

OTOH, it bugs me a little that this seems to be under the name Debian, which stands (in my mind anyway) for 100% free, no fillers or meat by-products.

-Peter

Speaking as a user with no Linux experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you Linux proponents should be *ecstatic* over this! Seriously! I want to mess around with Linux and such, but I'm not going to go through the hassle of dual booting- but seeing something like this- I'm like hmmm, well maybe I'll give it a shot, so...

...next thing you know I might just be using various Linux apps, now I'm getting use to all of this Linux stuff, say this is pretty cool...hmmm maybe I don't need Windows after all...

See what I mean? If I can have access to Linux software from my Windows computer then eventually I might just kick the Windows habit- at the very least I'm using more OSS and am more likely to support it in the future.

This could well be my gateway into the world of OSS!

What ever you want? Don't Think So!

[toupsie]

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.

This may shock you but you cannot "take it and do whatever you want to with it". I would receive a Richard Stallman rectal exam if I were to take any of the GPL components of Debian and utilized them in a commercial product without releasing the source. I have done some stupid, dumb things in my life like bungie jumping, walking in certain neighborhoods in New Orleans after midnight and running a NT webserver but there is one thing I would never dare to do. I would never do anything that caused Richard Stallman to come in contact with me. Now that's scary.

Respect the GPL or meet a fate worst than death!

Re:Here we go again.

[nirvdrum]

False. Not everything has a political agenda behind it. Yes, promoting free software is good (although I personally like the BSD license better). But arguing because people don't call linux GNU/Linux achieves nothing, and at the end of the day, no one really cares.

False again. I realize how much he has done. And I fully appreciate it. I use GNU tools on a daily basis. I rely on them. My point is that the whole OSS movement seems to be just one huge circus of politics, and he always seems to be at the front. I agree with a lot of things he has to say, but a lot seem ludicrous at best (such as this w32 moniker).

Re:Will this attract new users - NO

[mshiltonj]

No. Why would a user move when everything is being brought to them. Seems to me this makes it easier to stay in Windows.

This makes it easier for people to migrate away from windows. If the path from win32 to Linux is a literally that: a path and not a cliff, people will be more inclined to walk that path. Few people will jump off the cliff, even if what's below is much better.

Once this port is working, then all of our win32 joe-sixpack users will start being exposed to all sorts of software packages that they can use: games, productivity, etc. Gnumeric. Abiword. Xmms. Not demos, but free. Always free. Just download and run. They'll see GNU and OSS in license agreements. They's see it our emails. They'll join announcement mailing lists get immediate upgrades -- for free.

They'll come to expect free software all the time. Not as a political statement. Not as a anti-corporate philosophy. But because they are cheap bastards. No offense. (None taken)

Then, in a couple years, when ol' Bill rolls out his next Windows XS. Joe six-pack will think: "What? He expects me to pay?"

At that time, he say "I've got all this free software that people keep telling me will run on a free operating system." So instead of getting Windows XS, he will get RedHat 10.2.

And the transition will be complete.

One last note: The OSS community often complains about people taking from the community but not giving back. This phenomenon will increase as more joe-sixpack's start using free software. As oss gains more popular, the ratio of those who contribute to those who don't will continute to grow.

Most of these guys wouldn't even know how to contribute if they wanted. They sure aren't going to donate cash, because that's the overidding motivation for the growth of free software beyond your basic slashdot reader: free as in beer. Screw politics.

That's okay. Consider it this way: they're primary contribution to oss and your project is:

1) a big user base bestows legitimacy
2) they *aren't* supporting ms/aol/apple etc.

This will have to be enough. We can *not* spit on these people. We can't view them with contempt because they understand "The specs are open. Write your own device driver to that digital camera."

So much for OS neutrality

[MouseR]

Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

It's interesting to note that, while porting anything TO Linux is acceptable, porting Linux to something else irritates some.

I think this is something positive. If you can give users of other platform a taste of your own cooking, chances are they'll come for a full meal at some point.

Or at the very least, make them taste something else and open up their minds.

I see this as a teaser, and a pretty good way to get some free software (like Gimp), other than the OS itself, a chance to open up to a new crowd.

Re:Will this attract new users - NO

[aozilla]

Why would a user move when everything is being brought to them.

Because applications run natively will always be faster (even in theory), and less buggy (in application). Also, new driver support for old versions of Windows will eventually be dropped, so users will also switch because it's free.

If this allows users to stay on Windows 2000 (or XP or 98 or whatever they have) forever, and never have to upgrade, freedom has already won.

Re:What the hell are they thinking?!?!?!?!

[aozilla]

How could they port something which is open source, onto a platform which is and always will be closed source.

Why run linux on x86 chips, which are closed source and always will be closed source?

How 'bout BSD?

[Eck]

What I'd like to see is a Debian distro on the BSD kernel. They've got a HURD distro, which is very cool. If they're trying to show how unbiased they are, wouldn't it make more sense to help heal the smaller divisions with the BSD community first? Not to mention that it would be extremely handy to be able to do apt-get updates on a BSD pf firewall...

Does Cygwin == Porting?

[Xunker]

According to the Cygwin web site, Cygwin is "a UNIX environment for Windows...a UNIX emulation layer".

So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?

Re:Does Cygwin == Porting?

[leperjuice]

AFAIK, Cygwin != Linux (exactly). Code that compiles cleanly on a stock Linux (be it Debian, Mandrake, etc) is not guaranteed to do the same under Cygwin. While Cygwin provides a Unix-like environment, it has its idiosyncracies which may require some hand-hacking, be it in Makefiles, or in the code itself.

So I'd say that while some of the code may not require any modifications, there is probably enough tweaking involved that I would count it as porting.

Re:Does Cygwin == Porting?

[Xunker]

Makes sense you looke at it that way. So, technically it's porting Debian to Cygwin -- but since Cygwin only runs under Windows anyway..

Sir, I am now enlightened.

Imagine, actually having an intelligent reply on Slashdot. Who'd a' thunk it? :)

Re:Does Cygwin == Porting?

[scrytch]

So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?

Cross-compiling is when you compile on the system you are porting from for the system you are porting to. Cygwin has been self-hosting for quite some time -- it's all compiled with gcc on cygwin. So no, it's a port.

Who is this really about?

[Proud Geek]

Is this about doing good for the users, promoting their freedom to run software on whatever platform they happen to be using?

Or is this about confining users by forcing them to use proprietary software just because their OS is proprietary, in the name of the ongoing battle between free and proprietary software?

If so, this reeks of exactly the same thing as the DMCA, geek profiling, and dozens of other violations of our rights. You have to be very careful when fighting the enemy that you don't become the enemy.

Philosophically, this is the question of, "Does the end justify the means?" I don't have the space to get into that whole debate here, but the short answer is that before you squish a project like this, you better be damn sure it does.

Re:Who is this really about?

[scrytch]

Is this about doing good for the users, promoting their freedom to run software on whatever platform they happen to be using?

Or is this about confining users by forcing them to use proprietary software just because their OS is proprietary, in the name of the ongoing battle between free and proprietary software?

Maybe it's about people who are scratching an itch, people who are sick to death of all the polemic and war metaphors who just want to do something interesting like create another gnuwin32 distribution. Cygwin is very much becoming a distribution in its own right, it just makes sense that debian would also pick it up.

I guess GNU's Not Unix after all...

Why are people so against this??

[3141]

Most of the posts here seem to be upset that Debian can now be run in a proprietary environment. Don't people realise that Open Source programs are not simply used because they are "free", but because of their superior functionality? Now it is possible to do something that was impossible before, and people are complaining?

Open source developers aren't simply trying to get Linux used everywhere 'because it's Linux,' they are actually trying to make the software world a little better, more functional.

You would think Slashdot readers would be pleased at a technological advancement.

Re:Will this attract new users - NO

[Cro Magnon]

Joe Sixpack and Susie SockerMom CAN be an asset to Linux. For one thing, when he whines that feature X doesn't work right, he's exposing a bug. And, more important, if a lot of people start asking if that snazzy new digital camera works with Linux, the vendor will make sure that it does or he'll lose $$$.

The minute people considered their OS a religion..

[rebelcool]

is the minute they lost most of their credibility.

Really, computers are tools to get things done. Most of us who write code for a living in the real world (and no, webdesign and little shell scripts is not coding. I'm talking real applications) couldn't care less about what OS and language is used, provided that it's the right tool for the job.

Windows I've found is the top platform for a number of things. Mainly anything dealing with non-technical users. Windows also has plenty of server benefits (especially if you're using java on the backend.. java + linux = nothing but trouble).. but of course, it depends on what you're trying to do.

Linux provides a nice development environment, and is grand for CS students. GCC is the top C compiler, hands down. I know it's been ported to win32, though i've never used that version.

In the end, the people who actually make a difference in the industry and their field are the ones who don't get caught up in the pseudo-religious muck that flies on slashdot.

*gets off soapbox*

The "controversy"

[Daniel]

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

Re:Will this attract new users?

[ncc74656]

Having had cygwin installed on two boxes for the past six months, I find it to be more useless than a five-assed monkey and porting more stuff to it will not add any measure of usefulness.

That's odd...I've found sox and id3ed more useful than any equivalent native Win32 apps, and bash does more than cmd.exe (more powerful scripting, longer command lines for controlling stuff like vcdimager, etc.). OpenSSH under Cygwin is also useful for tunnelling through firewalls so you can use VNC to control Win32 boxen on remote networks...it works better here than pcAnywhere.

NOT fun, NOT good

[Erris]

This will be bad for Debian and difficult for Cygwin. The software will all be limited by the poor design of the OS underneath, and will give a bad impression in the best of worlds. This is not the best of worlds and M$ will waste little time breaking things. The overall impression will be, "Dude, this share ware stuff sucks".

My closest brush with stuff like this was Exceed, the X port to Win32. It made me think X sucked, and I never learned a thing. Why? Because half of it was broken by the suck OS underneath and I had no reference to the way things were supposed to work. A year later I learned to program the Win95 API and understood how things had shifted around under the shiny binary.

Think about how crippled the ports will be. How on earth can you issue ssh user@host -X and expect it to work under M$? Even if the X GUI interface can talk to Windoze, what user is runing the local display? How can you keep malicious third parties from corrupting your display? How on earth will you be able to tunnel that unholy mess through a secure shell? The path issues alone are enough to make me gag, can they be passed to new shells in M$ land? Heck, I can't even find the much vaunted (and sorely incomplete) kshell on my NT cripled work box. The average M$ box lacks basic security features such as users, PIDs and embeded file permisions. How can you build anything on top of that stinking dung heap?

Good luck to the folks at Cygwin. They are taking on a endless, difficult and thankless task. Breaking everything on a windows platform is as easy as changing default fonts. Try running ispell under NT service pack six. Changing the functionality of dlls is a sure way to break stuff. In the end, M$ will only tollerate M$ on their Micros~ OS.

I'm sure win32 is a registered trademark. The name should follow the fine tradition of negation. GNU is not Unix, Lesstif acts like Motif, Loss32 would be a good name for Win32 TM.

It's about domination.

[rebelcool]

Look at the posts on slashdot..people here merely pay lipservice to the creed of 'use what you want'... and that's true of a larger part of the OSS community. It's turned into that which they criticize the most - wanting domination of one platform.

The zealots are afraid it will draw people away from their own choice of OS, rather than making one OS work with another one. Shameful and against all the 'open' philosophy, but zealots tend to ignore the parts of a philosophy they don't like.

Re:waste of time and effort...

[Nater]

I can't even count the number of times I've been at work or in a computer lab at school or some other place where I don't have access to Unix tools, and simply wanted to use grep. Just grep! Of course the other tools are nice, too, and I use Debian at home to great effect... anyway you get the idea... It'd be nice.

Actually, I've also had that experience (wanting to use grep) while reading hard copy. (You know you've been at the computer too long when...)

Re:Will this attract new users - NO

[Urchlay]

>They'll come to expect free software all the
>time. Not as a political statement. Not as a
>anti-corporate philosophy. But because they are
>cheap bastards. No offense. (None taken)

They already do. To Joe Sixpack, most of his software is already free (as in beer), he just downloads it from a warez site, or gets his buddy to burn him a copy.

Joe Sixpack isn't going to pick legal but harder-to-use software over illegal but easy-to-use software, I think. And trying to explain the virtues of `Free as in speech' is a waste of time (Joe Sixpack watches wrestling, not the History Channel. Joe Sixpack reads Maxim, not Nietzche (which I probably have spelled wrong)).

>Then, in a couple years, when ol' Bill rolls out
>his next Windows XS. Joe six-pack will think:
>"What? He expects me to pay?"

He already thinks that. Joe Sixpack is the type that will let his buddy installed a `hacked' version of XP, with the expiration code stripped out or whatever. Even though this is a risky move (in a technical sense, if not a legal one), he will do it anyway, then proceed to bash Microsoft (*) when the OS dies & takes all his data with it.

(*) Not that I'm making MS out to be the good guys here, but if you're going to bash MS, at least bash them for things that are actually their fault!

Bizarre.

[fanatic]

From the linked post: free implementations are of course recommended and cygwin is proven
to work fine on wine.


So I run Linux to run wine to run debian? Am I missing something here? What kind of computer pervert do you think I am?

Does debian care about its users or its agenda?

[bmetz]

To me, it comes down to that simple question. I'm a once-linux-diehard who has come to realize that I have a lot more time for my life if I stop compiling utilities all day in linux and start just using IE and Outlook Express in Windows XP like Microsoft tells me to. I admit it, I've gone to the dark side :) And, so sue me, I feel really good about it.

Now, that being the case, I'm not about to give up the powers of perl, bash, wget, make, etc. And don't forget vi! I use these things about twice a week in Windows via cygwin. It's a major timesaver. And that's what computing is SUPPOSED to be about for the average joe..saving time so we can get back to our lives.

I say let's give people the opportunity to decide what for them is the the best way to do their work. I'm all about choice. I choose to use Windows and I choose to use cygwin just as freely as I could choose to use Linux and run win32 apps in WINE. Don't deny me these choices.

Cygwin? Why?

[krogoth]

Cygwin is horribly slow. I once tried to compile OpenSSL in Windows98/Cygwin on a 450MHz P3 and I gave up after 3 hours. They should work with mingw32...

Where did you learn to spell?

[HanzoSan]

Its leeches not leeches.

And as a contributor, I think programming for purely selfish reasons which helps yourself but harms the entire open source movement, does not count as contributing.

Why not next, port the Linux kernel to Windows and next thing you know Linux is no longer needed just use Windows.

These guys are prolly Windows programmers who cant get Linux working so they want to bring Linux to Windows instead.

Different goals

[Goonie]

Because their goals for their new installer are different to the above distros. My understanding is that they want something as flexible and portable as possible, with ease of use an important but secondary consideration.