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Ignalum Linux - A Bridge to Windows?
linux slacker writes "Ignalum Linux 'is an intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box and offers unrivaled compatibility with Microsoft Windows' or so says their website. The company is owned by four university students in Ontario, and one of their goals is to allow companies to incorporate Linux into their Windows environment, so users could still run Word, Excel and other popular Microsoft fare."
Could this possibly be the answer to gaming on Linux? As an avid gamer, the main thing that has kept me from using Linux as my primary OS is the fact that its support for the games I grew up loving is very limited. While I love the newer open source games, I'm just too attached to my old games to fully migrate to Linux...
I am a bit wary of a Linux company that posts screenshots of their 'product' while being root every time. What kind of message does this send out ... "Yeah, it's ok to log in as root all the time" ?
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
So wasn't this same thing tried with OS/2? Better multitasking and the ability to run Win32 apps just as if you were on Windows? Only the apps never worked as well as they did on Windows and while some things were better - it was basically just a waste of time. I think there are enough Office Like apps that copy Office enough for usability, the focus should be on interop with file formats - I see that as what is really holding adoption back.
Will these guys be able to offer a valid alternative to the Linspire/ Lindows trainwreck? And will they not get crushed by the 800 pound gorilla that is the MS legal department? (I'm sure they're going after these guys, and 4 college students don't exactly sound like they have a lot of assets). Let's hope they survive, choice is good for us all.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Everything they claim is perfectly able to be done with existing sudo-emulators.
For instance with Suse when you buy a retail version you get a liscence for Codeweaver's crossover stuff.
You can then run Office 2000, IE 6.0, Quicktime, Quicken and other applications.
So if you do want to run Linux but will not because it doesn't have support from your favorite windows apps, then there are options.
Almost any distro can be made to work. But I suppose it would be convenient to have one that was designed specificly to work with Windows apps right out of the box.
1) Is Ignalum a source distribution, built from LFs, or an enhanced version of an existing distribution?
2)Are exe files associated with WINE so Windows installers just work
3)Kernel version?
4)Obviously KDE 3.x from the s/shot linked above, but is it a full or stripped-down version?
5)Are they using a Windows driver wrapper to allow win32 device drivers to function as well?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The screenshots look incredibly ordinary. No emulated Windows programs, or even anything that looks remarkably different from Fedora Core. It doesn't look that much easier to use either.
We'll see how useful it really is when the reviews come out.
Very true. But most of the JR Sixpacks I know don't just play games - they use their computer for all sorts of odd stuff.
And in many cases the knee-jerk reaction to a new requirement is "find a program to do it" rather than "use the perfectly good existing software".
So they call you to fix their computer, there's hundreds of crappy little programs on there, which may or may not have ever worked very well, and JR Sixpack's forgotten why he installed most of them in the first place. But most of them installed and ran the first time around. I simply don't see that happening with any "Windows Compatible" linux distro - much of this software is so badly written it only just runs on Windows.
If you want a Linux for the average user, it's going to have to be that way. Now we all know that su-ing to root is easy for when you need it, but it is something that will piss off and confound most users. You wouldn't think so, but it never ceases to amaze me the how the simplest things (froma geek perspective) can confound normal users.
This goes double for an underdog OS trying to win converts. It has to offer a user experience at least as good, and probably better. Carrying on about OSS, configurability and monopolies means jack to most users. They want it to be as easy as what they have now.
So to do that a Linux distro needs to either be root all the time, or break away from the traditonal UNIX security model and offer something like Windows NT's Administrator accounts that, while not all powerful, are capable of doing just about anything.
This is just the reality of the average individual. I mean, why do you think the government mandidated passive safety restraints in cars? Because LOTS of people don't wear seatbelts. It's not like it's hard to do, takes you 2 seconds to put on. However, I know lots of people that don't unless reminded and even them often don't.
Extra steps that are different from what they have now (like having to su) are the things that will turn them away. IT'll only take a few things before they whine and say "I hate this, give me Windows back".
I really don't get it. Why is it better to write an application that works on linux than to try and make a platform that can utilize both linux and windoze apps?
As long as the aforementioned platform is free as in Willy, who cares anymore? The whole point of the excercize was to be freed from the constraints of the evil kingdom in Redmond, right? So if you can run windows apps without windows, you're free, right? This will give you freedom to use whatever software you like (ok, Mac apps next but I think those can wait a little longer) on your box, paying for it only to those who you deem deserving of it.
Why is Samba good for providing linux-windoze compatibility and suchlike, but this Canadian linux bad for providing (allegedly, I haven't tried it so I don't know for sure) the capability to run windoze apps on linux bad? Sounds to me like a bad case of "blame Canada"
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
Beside that WineX already does run a lot of games on Linux, yet, no breakthrough. While I agree that games are a very important factor in Linux, we are not at a point were they are really that important. As long as I still have to dive through weird config files to get my printer working and have to update or patch my Kernel for a more or less common piece of hardware (graphic tablet, 3d card), Linux won't go mainstream. Linux needs one standard and userfriendly way to handle and configure hardware, not one or two ways to do it for each distro. Linux has all the capabilities there, it just needs some more agreements on standards across distros.
I don't really like that many choices though. It's like those car commercials where they tell you that On-Star is available on 51 GM models. 51 !!! How am i really supposed to choose what kind of car i want.
In order for each person to have a distro that fits each person's needs exactly, we would need about 6 billion distros. Instead we should focus on having a few distros to fit general needs of people. One Server distro, one desktop distro, one exactly like Windows distro, and maybe one or two others. Choice is nice, but when you are overwhelmed with choices, you just end up going with what everyone else uses, which means we all end up using windows.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.