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Will Linux For Windows Change The World?
An anonymous reader writes "A month ago, a trial version of a little-known Linux application called 'CoLinux' was released that is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. It's the work of a 21-year-old Israeli computer science student and some Japanese open source programmers; in Israel, analysts are already saying it could help transform the software world." (CoLinux is short for Cooperative Linux; we mentioned this project in January as well.)
I'd be interested to know the technical aspect of this 'program'. The article is pretty vague on what exactly it does. I wonder how windows handles it, like as a separate process or group of processes, what kind of filesystem it uses, whether it's emulated or not, and how in god's name he got linux kernel code such as virtual memory management and scheduling to work within the windows environment. Very interesting.
I'm not one to fawn over eyecandy, but seeing the WinXP interface side by side with the twm GUI (actually twm inside of XP!), I really see a major lack of user interface design effort on the Linux side.
Even with the KDE shell (via Knoppix), the XP UI is much more polished and 'consumer friendly' than the KDE shell.
Not that the UI is the most important part of Linux, of course. Linux has many more benefits that makes the lack of a polished UI relatively minor, IMO.
I have been pwned because my
Why? and How?
Hardware is so cheap, I would just get two boxes.
Landrew, guide me!
why would i wanna do that? i am unable to comprehend of a case scenario, where I would wanna do that. If I need to use Linux Compiler while sitting on a Windows box, I would rather use vmWare. Also vmWare has made great progress in their GSX and ESX, to make all this very easy.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
This could be neat, and potentially allow for a speed up in cross platform development. It would be nice to hop back and forth from one OS to the next.
Jeoin
The biggest benefit I see is that people could start running (and liking?) Linux applications without having to make "the big switch." Once they realize that they like Linux better and [hopefully] can do everything they need to under Linux, then the next computer they buy may run Linux alone. It's certainly more elegant and appealing to current Windows users than just telling them they're unsophisticated dolts for not using Linux.
Sigs are dangerous coy things
...so users don't have a choice when they buy Dell, Compaq/HP or other brand names.
:0>
Thats how you change the world.
Worked well for Microsoft.
Here's a list of things linux needs to conquer windows.
1.) cleartype fonts
2.) automatic directX compatibility for games
3.) one solid universal gui
It's a pretty short list, and I just don't think this project is filling the gap just quite yet.
Either OS can now crash the machine, so the MTBF gets worse. You get to pay both Microsoft and Red Hat. And few people run Linux because they like the desktop applications.
This sounds like one of those "I'm l33t" toys.
The ability to run Windows apps on Linux is far more useful.
There are still many many many (many) pieces of software for linux that will probably never get a real Windows port. Linux emulation for Windows will make it easier to use this software.
This comment was thought up very late at night and does not necessarily reflect my views at a more reasonable hour.
Hmmm. This whole OSS business is supposed to engender, among other things, choice.
Now, for various reasons, some geek, some pragmatic, some even business-like, I - a die-hard Windows user/programmer of over 10 years - am interested in Linux. Not to the exclusion of Windows, hoever.
It's not necessary to call us whores. Not all of us. At worst, there are the vast majority who think there is no choice, and they certainly need to be educated. But, having educated myself on the alternatives, I still choose to use Windows, and damned if I will apologize for it. If you want to convert the intelligent Windows geeks, (we're out there, lost in a sea of clue-bies) you might want to consider that we're worth a little respect.
By the way, I'm loading Mandrake on a virtual as I type this.
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
They could be doing that now, easier in fact than this, with a live cd. It would still require someone with technical knowhow to set this up on an office full of computers. They could just as easily set up a whole mess of linux installations or just custom live cd's.
I doubt this will turn to much, it seems like a toy for geeks.
The IDF is famous for torture, assassination and opression. This is just some Israeli PR to deflect everyone from the reality of what the IDF does.
it would seem more productive to do this in reverse... that is to say, windows running under linux... not simply a compatability layer [wine] or an emulated system [vmware] -- it would be cool to see the NT kernel running as a process under linux (just as linux ran under mach in MkLinux, or OS9 runs under OS X)... it would probably be a lot faster to reboot that way... ;-)
-m
How long before MS issues a service pack that "breaks" CoLinux?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
In short: get companies to develop for Linux. Give them as incentive all the LGPL libraries already available and not ported or better maintained.
Then convince them that the 95% market share of Windows is not a problem, since the app will run in Windows anyway.
For the moment, my only computer is an XP box. I'd rather have a Mac, but can't afford one at the moment. I'd also rather run Linux than XP, but there's a couple XP only apps I don't want to give up. Which means that my Dell 4600 is running XP exclusively, even though it has a second drive and even though I'd rather boot in Linux 95% of the time.
After playing around with Mepis, I was immediately impressed, and I'd like to do nearly all of my work in Linux. I don't want to give up my ability to run Windows, though, so what I want is a dual-boot system. Trouble is, I've asked at least one well-credentialed tech person who uses Linux heavily, and he says dual-booting is still fraught with complications.
I guess my question is, why is it possible to have a decent Linux distribution that runs within XP, but it's not possible to take a dual-drive Dell and easily make your system let you choose between XP and Linux atstartup? And why would anyone want to run Linux within XP, if they could simply have a dual boot system? Seems to me, if you just want to get a flavor of what running Linux is like, get ahold of Mepis and give it a whirl. Your next step should be the ability to gracefully install Linux and make your computer a dual-boot system.
To me, Linux under Windows sounds a lot like divorcing your wife but continuing to live in her house.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
A big part of what keeps many users from switching is fear of being in a totally new environment that don't understand. This provides a midpoint between the two worlds: get a taste of Linux, and if you start to panic just hit the good old "Windows" key on the keyboard and you're back to familiar territory. (Or CTRL-ESC, but chances are if you're running Windows you have a keyboard with a "Windows" key...)
.conf file that you have to edit by hand.
Of course, the second biggest part of the hurdle is customizing the system without having to learn all the nuts and bolts of operating system function. This is *almost* solved, but compared to the rather intuitive and standardized interface that Windows has nothing in the OSS community has been able to match it.
For example, tweaking options for a program should be done via an "options" menu of some kind there is a logical, visual organization to the settings with checkboxes and drop down lists, not a 30+ page
God help you if it's case sensitive or syntactically anal, too; you may never get it right unless you've done it several times before. Your average home user doesn't have the patience to deal with that kind of thing, and until this hurdle is taken down they'll stick with Windows for sure.
=Smidge=
How often do we, here at /., ask if a new software development is going to change the world? Constantly. And how often does it? Never.
This is no exception. It's just a sort of more native version of Cygwin. Sure, it could be kind of nifty, but it's not some major breakthrough which will leave the world shocked.
Could people please stop being so melodramatic with their subject lines?
definitely a good thing, because it might then encourage more people to take up Linux and have a look at it. It would give those people who are so 'married' to Windows a chance to look at what all the fuss is about, and to really evaluate Linux and see if it would be right for them. They wouldn't have to partition, re-format, re-jig their hard drive... and if things got too tough open up the appropriate Windows application to get their job done instead.
I also see it as a good thing in some corporate environments. Say you have a call center, and all the operatives have been trained to use some program for their task (let's say they're in a credit card environment) and their software is Unix based. Well, porting to Linux could be straightforward. Also for these operators they don't need to access the computer for anything much besides this application... and maybe the web and email to keep in contact with people. So these guys would have Linux desktops. Now there would also be some other administrative people who don't take calls, and who have other tasks. Like payroll, or some other fancy tasks. Maybe these programs were written for Windows, and there is no Linux port planned. Rather than trying to make these programs work through Wine or Crossover Office or something like that the obvious solution is to make Linux run on top of Windows. Then people have the best of both worlds for those kind of operations.
I also see advantages of running CoLinux in a dual boot environmemnt. That is, if you are short on disk space. I presume that CoLinux would run on the same filesystem as Windows. In a traditional dual boot system you might have a 20 gb disk, and split it up two ways - 10gb for Windows, and 10Gb for Linux. Let's suppose you are a Windows fan, and you easily eat up that 10Gb for Windows use, and hardly use Linux, except to 'play around with'. You then have 8Gb of disk space that Windows can't access natively (yes there are third party apps now that get around this) and as such you are short on space. So if Windows and Linux are sharing the same 20Gb partition, then Windows can use more than that smaller partition on those occasions it is deemed necessary (like downloading by broadband that 5Gb linux distribution on X # of CD's).
I don't see it as a "real major" security problem, because I perceive its main target is the desktop, and not for running security-critical applications which could get hacked to shreds. Also that these Windows boxes would be firewalled anyway for Internet access - behind native Linux firewalls on native Linux machines.
Mark.
There are a lot of laptops out there that aren't powerful enough to run linux on vmware on windows or windows on vmware on linux.
I wouldn't do it without a 3.0 Mhz system with 2 Gb of RAM, and at least a 40 Gb disk. I happen to have such a laptop, and I bought it especially for this purpose and paid lots of bucks for it. But my old 1.7 Ghz, 30 Gb, 256 Mb RAM Vaio R505 should be able to handle this...
I think that by doing this, it would only motivate people away from Windows and onto the Linux platform. Besides, with Linux LiveCDs, we can run Linux on Windows boxes without having to rid outselves of Windows itself.
And on a different note, people will get to see the most stable program that Windows has to offer. Even though it may crash a few times, giving Linux a bad name... but it's Windows fault.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
A lot of newbie users who have some desire/need to do UNIX software development (for example, a good deal of MUD "coders") could benefit from this a lot. Most suffer through the hell of trying to get Cygwin to compile and run their apps. Getting an easy-to-install Linux system that Just Works would be bliss for these people.
;-)
And no, a second box is not a solution. "Hardware is so cheap" doesn't cut out the fact that many aspiring coders may not even have $50 (hell, I started at 9, think I had that kind of chash?), may not have the desk space, may not want the extra power drain, may not want to get a second monitor (or a KVM), etc. Just running Linux in a "window" on Windows is very cheap ($0, assuming they already own the Windows machine), provides no physical space/power hassles, and would be rather easy to use.
Again, for some people, switching to Linux, a second box, or dual booting just *isn't a choice*. For those people, CoLinux is a boon. For the rest of us, it's just a sick toy.
Whaddya bet that MS changes their EULA to make running another OS concurrently a violation of said EULA? I can see that happening judging by their history.
It's amazing how all the glory is given to the Israeli, boasting how he's the genius of the group while the other "Japanese programmers" simply helped.
What's even more amazing is that most of the screenshots show Japanese text in the background, indicating that most of the work was done by these "Japanese programmers", while the Israeli is apparently piggybacking along for the ride.
Nothing new there. Just your typical western media bias.
Bzzzt. Wrong. YOU are a troll. The most cursory of Google searches shows the article appears verbatim as above here.
Red Hat 9.0, Mandrake 9.2 and Knoppix 3.3 'just work' for me including supporting the motherboard sound on my brand-new off-brand (ECS and Gigabyte) Athlon motherboards. No crashes, normal mouse behavior and keyboard works fine on GRUB or LILO boot selection. Frankly 'name brand' hardware, by that I assume Dell, HP or Sony, is crap, but I don't know what you are doing wrong since I've not seen those problems on at least recent Dell (1.8GHz P4) hardware. Haven't tried an SBLive! card (the motherboard sound is good enough for anything I need) though. I am a little suspicious that you won't name the hardware or Linux distro that is supposedly causing you such problems.
No, really? DirectX was designed explicitly for games. That means that early in its life, it sacrificed accuracy for speed (compared to OpenGL, which took the opposite approach and didn't really gain speed on consumer hardware until 3D accelerators took off). Even now, DirectX is driven by games and multimedia, not CAD and scientific/engineering requirements. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and in fact it's better for games that it's focused on games and multimedia rather than engineering applications, because the requirements for games are different.
If you're writing scientific software, use OpenGL. If you're writing a (Windows- or XBox-targetted) game, use DirectX.
Oh, yeah, it's also possible to use DirectX and OpenGL together. Like SDL, DirectX is an entire framework, not just a 3D rendering interface. Id and theCarmack use DirectX for input and sound while rendering their 3D visuals in OpenGL.
The problem is, which version of windows has the standardised interface? Where do you want to go to find the same item on half a dozen windows machines today? The only way you get a standardised interface on windows is if the same person installs the same version of the OS and most of the same applications on all the machines - or if your organisation has a procedure to duplicate this. Even just with the NT branch you need to ask people whether they are running NT4, 2k, XP, 2003 before you can tell them where to find something as simple as the network settings. Once you branch off into the realm of 98, ME etc, you then have to remember a whole different visual map of where things are in menus. I forget lo look for "dial up connections" in "my computer" every time, I expect it to be with the network settings. You don't need server 2003 to duplicate a typewriter, so we are stuck with a confusing array of interfaces from just the one vendor. It shouldn't be a big suprise that a lot of us just drop to the command shell or use key shortcuts almost every time we use someone elses machine. Where do you want to go just to find the file browser icon to click on today?
CDE, KDE, Gnome etc are also only the answer if you want a common GUI environment and you stick it on everyones machine. Linux is a version of *nix, with all the things that entails, a very different way of doing things to MS windows. Being able to pipe just about anything through grep or a thousand other programs would be difficult to put in any easy to read menu - so the command line is essential.
Personally, I would rather have a configuration file that can have comments in it, including commented out previous selections, than some unreadable thing like the windows registry. With many programs it is possible to choose settings which prevent the program from running at all - so you can't even run the program to change the settings to something that will work, you need to reinstall - or try to find out what all the bytes in the binary configuration file are supposed to mean.
It's a case of different forms of memory - visual memory which some people are good at, or being able to remember a method or sequence of events. Being able to group things into sets should work - but it doesn't because menu options either cannot or are not sorted into logical groups, and the location of items in menus differs between programs and versions. Syntax can be looked up - menu options need to be hunted down and found unless the help system is better and more up to date than in most programs available.
The differences between the systems make it a pointless exercise to have a slavish copy. If the users can launch their applications the same way, and the applications behave the same way, that is a good thing. If anything else needs to be done you need a vague idea of how the systems works, so admin tools that pretend to do the same thing are confusing - you'll go looking for a defragger or scandisk. Showing first year engineering students how to do simple graphs in MS Excel (no, they weren't stupid, it only appeared that way since the program is NOT intuitive) made it clear to me that even using computers the MS way is not easy - computers ARE hard things to use and most people are lazy enough to think that the MS skills they took so long to learn are all they need to know - but it is specialized knowlege that only applies to a given array of menus. Even macs are not obvious. I had trouble on a iMac just starting up a dial up connection - obvious once you know what the icon is, but unfindable in the manuals.
To sum up, it's all different - but MS doesn't have a standard interface. If go so
Distributions.
Distributions put these things together for end-users to enjoy, and any recently updated distro worth it's beans has either Gnome 2.4 or the Bitstream Vera fonts. In my not-so-humble opinion, they are far superiour to the fonts in Windows. Unfortunately, however, they look pretty horrid in Windows, if you ask me.
Don't you think you're being pretty unreasonable saying Linux w/KDE or Gnome is unsuitable for anything like this (fonts) when it's already been addressed? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, download a better distro plz.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
now they'll be able to "break" Linux... ;)
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Well yes, I do agree with you that the idea is "back asswards" (and i mean it). But the point is that it's a way of introducing Linux into the equation while keeping the Windows that the PHB wants on.
If there wasn't a PHB in charge but a rational manager who knows his shit, you won't need run hoops around him anyway.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Which of these do you get if you run Linux over Windows?
None of the above, of course.
If one simply needs a Open Source Office, that's what OpenOffice.org is for and there is a Windows version.
If there were a killer app for the general population that only ran on Linux and can't be ported, this might make sense. Name one.
This may be touted as a technical miracle, and it might be. But change the world? Looks more to me like a solution in search of a problem.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Does it have a Wise Installation Wizard? Does it require any knowledge of anything that looks vaguely dissimilar to Windows?
Then no, it's not going to change anything, because having to know even one little thing about Linux is just as equal as having to know it all. Most Windows users don't even know what it looks like and the only gnomes they have seen are in their gardens.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
First let me say, this program is absolutely AWESOME.
I'm a Windows user. Why? Because I love to play games, I use quite a bit of software for which there is no Linux clone, and I like the rapid response and eyecandy format that Windows provides.
Having said that, as an engineer, I've always wanted to get better at using Linux. Oh, sure, I can log on, cd, ls, updatedb, locate, man, and generally get my way around a linux system. But I don't know my way around a Linux box like I know my way around a Windows box. I spend all my time in Windows, so this is no surprise.
I don't want to run two boxes, and VMWare is dirt slow at running linux. I have a 2.4Ghz P4, and it's just frustrating to watch VMWare boot like it's running on a 250Mhz K6.
In comes CoLinux: In just a few short hours, I've installed the Debian distribution, installed KDE, and now have a full fledged KDE desktop running in Windows! Now I can use Windows AND Linux side by side, and finally have the oportunity to learn to use Linux the way I've always wanted to.
Now, I'm an engineer. Your average joe probably wouldn't get as far as I have gotten. So what needs to happen next?
If some bright programmer out there (I have no time, unfortunately) would write a server application for Linux and Windows that would connect to a client application in the other operating system and LAUNCH APPLICATIONS ON REQUEST FROM THAT CLIENT -- it would be the start of mass transition to Linux.
Imagine: You start Windows. In the background, the linux "box" starts up as a service. The Windows "box" is networked via Samba to the Linux drives. The Linux box is networked to the Windows drives. The Windows box starts an X-Server.
You click "START" in windows: Up pops all your favorite (hated?) Windows apps... ALONG SIDE YOUR LINUX APPS! You click a linux app. The shortcut causes the Windows Client to send a UDP message to the Linux Server to start that application. The Linux box starts the application, connects to the already running XServer on the Windows box, and up pops your Linux application!
Now imagine, your Windows user has come to love linux so much, he decides to switch to Linux. He's not ready to dump windows yet, but he wants to start using KDE instead of the Windows Explorer.
You set windows to connect to the Linux box at startup, and you have KDE running. Now you log into KDE, click the K-Start button, and up pops all your Linux apps -- with Windows apps right beside them! You click on a windows app, the same thing happens in reverse: Linux contacts Windows, Windows starts the app, up pops your windows app.
Even shortcuts to applications work in their respective OSes.
All data files are visible from either OS.
Finally, after months of learning to use Linux, our user finally reformats with Linux, goes fully secure (notice we're assuming this linux box is single user, and non-secure while being used from Windows to make life easier for our Windows user.) Now he runs Wine or VMWare to get access to the few remaining Windows applications he still has to have.
THIS is the key. THIS is what will let Windows users finally break into Linux. When my GRANDMOTHER can finally click START -> Programs -> Konquerer and be using Linux instead of Windows, THAT is what is going to change the world.
Oh, and of course, the Clipboards of the two OSes MUST interact. =)
It's a great day for Linux and Windows users alike.
-tENS0r