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Talk to the GNUWin II Team
imevil writes "GNUWin II is a collection of Free Software for Windows, and it also includes articles about Free Software and explanation pages. It is multilingual (it was born as a Swiss product). You can browse the CD online or download the ISO from one of our mirrors. The GNUWin II team is ready to answer to your questions, about GNUWin II, and also about GNU Generation, the student association at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne who gave birth to the GNUWin project."
What was the hardest aspect of producing the GNUWin II CD? Was it selecting the software? Was it making sure the software worked okay (ie, were there any major portings issues, and if so, how much work did you have to do vs. how much did the developer do). Was it something else entirely?
Also, what criteria did you use to select the software? Did you consider which applications had a UI that Windows users would find more comfortable? Did you consider any programs that you weren't able to get running under Windows?
BTW, best of luck with the project. My father has been using the Win32 port of the GIMP for about two years now and loves it! As I type, he's (ab)using his work's net connection to d/l the ISOs.
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
Windows is pretty easy to live with as it is.
I guess it depends on your paradigm... command-line commandos don't like the GUI's insulation, while GUI geeks hate remembering a bunch of bizarre program names.
Unless I'm missing the point - the only real failing of Win32 is that a lot of stuff can't be scripted because of the lack of a CLI. Does GNUWIN allow for some of this? Does it have hooks into system admin programs on Win32?
Product registration? Oh yeah, I forgot that the Gimp required you to register with them the first time you run, or the program will terminate. Oh wait. It doesn't. Silly you. *plonk*
By the way, SCO doesn't own anything on the Windows libraries these programs were compiled against to run on Windows. If they do, MS has probably already paid them the money and you therefore have nothing to worry about. It's a good thing this is just a troll, otherwise I'd have to laugh at your company's lawyers for being waaaay behind.
Really? Their first documented release was around 1996, five years after Linux. Am I missing something?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
"In the past year, we've seen a lot of attempts by companies to make a profit by selling mixed open and closed source software. Lindows and CrossOver spring to mind. How do you, both personally and as a representative of the EFF, react to this trend? Is it beneficial to the Free Software Movement in the short and long term?"
---- By tps12, one of the best Slashdot members of all time
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Windows already runs more software then linux.
People who use windows often pirate copies of commercial software so they don't need or want open source software.
Even if a an open source software was clearly superior to a windows equivalent (zope, apache, postgres etc) why make it so that it runs on windows. Aren't you discouraging people from using linux by doing that?
War is necrophilia.
No. For some reason, RMS considers Windows a ``complete system'' which is left in place by these sorts of things. So, no GNU labeling (just like installing GNU on BSD doesn't involve a GNU/ holy war from RMS). I'm not entirely sure what crucial system component Windows has that Linux (as distributed by Linus) doesn't (however you want to read that), but RMS has appearantly identified something.
Btw., this came up on the Cygwin mailing list a while back (RMS was cc'ed); google cygwin.com for it if you're interested in a link.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Do you have, or would you consider adding, a voluntary popularity rating system for the programs on your CD? I'm thinking of the likes of the debian popularity-contest which tracks which programs are installed (and how often they're used I think) to decide what programs should be included on which CD of their release. It would also help for the Linux (BSD, any other FreeOS you care to name) community as they could see which programs Windows people like and therefore can help most in bringing them across from Win to Lin.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I have to agree.
The parent also makes the mistake that just because something is Open Source, that is has to run on Linux. Open source is open source and open source that runs on a proprietary system is still a good thing. One could argue that you shouldn't be using a proprietary system in the first place, but that's not relevant to the question of whether open source programs should be developed for use on proprietary systems.
If you don't expose users to open source programs, then how can they ever become supporters of open source? If all you use is proprietary software, you won't know that there are other options.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
so i click the site, click the english flag next to the pretty picture, click programs and what's the first thing I see? Celestia (a beautiful planetarium) described as a 3D Game! sheesh have these people even run this software?
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