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Windows Compatability on the Linux Desktop
davecb writes "O'Reilly has been kind enough to publish one of my
how-to articles,
Windows Compatability for the Linux Desktop, about dealing with that 'one last annoying program
than only runs on Windows'. The answer? Run it under Linux and win4lin, and never venture onto the Windows desktop at all. Especially don't run programs via dual-boot, which tempts you to stay and use all those other wonderful programs like Outlook...
Why spend all that time developing a program that emulates Microsoft Windows products, when they could just devlop a better solution to the software they want to run? I mean, come on people, mIRC, Outlook, AIM, Comet Curson... they're not all that great to begin with.
Run it under Linux and win4lin, and never venture onto the Windows desktop at all.
Except, like, every time you run a windows application through win4lin. win4lin is just a virtual machine! You still need to install an authentic copy of Microsoft Windows on your machine. Although there is a big usability difference, there is not philisophical difference, as the summary seems to imply.
Linux is great for being productive, but when you want to DL some trivial game and waste hours upon hours... You just can't beat a windows machine for that...
And I hate MS...
Of blankness, I know nothing.
You should try OpenOffice (see http://www.openoffice.org/). To keep it brief, it's like an open-source version of MS Office -- and it includes spell check.
- shadowmatter
There are two problems with paths, both of which can interfere with running Windows programs this way. The first is that running programs from Windows can involve directories with spaces in their names.
The solution for this problem is to find the DOS name that corresponds to the directory you want to use. DOS does not allow spaces in names, so you can use DOS directory names in win commands.
OK, so now I expect you all to stop writing Microsoft as Micros~1
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
To get a spell checker in Linux, there is open office, Abi Word (both of which do red squigglies below misspelled words), and one can always type in "ispell -a" at the shell prompt and start typing in words which they're not sure of the spelling of.
I've been playing around with several different solutions for this. Personally I have no need for any of them except when coding microcontrollers at my robotic's competition once a year or so, in which case I just use some makefiles that act as the interface and run the compiler with wine for me. It worked totally fine.
Other than wine however, QEmu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) is a nice speed driven emulator that will do full on emulation of a system. It recently became able to emulate a system well enough to install and use all versions of windows up through XP. Quite a neat thing actually. It's much faster than boches, which I've also tried, and it has a fairly complete feature set. (Though obviously is for a slightly different purpose than boches, as boches is being mostly used as an operating system development tool now.)
Wine, WineX and Crossover all also work for even faster results but of course don't emulate the entire system. The apps integrate better of course though, due to the fact that wine will go ahead and put it on your desktop for you so you don't have to know the difference.
I touch computers in naughty places
Nice article, I have installed and run Linux a few times so I have a feel for it. (Redhat and Mandrake, I loved Mandrake!) The very steps you articulate are so over my head even though you seem to be creating a rosetta stone for others to follow.
Give me DoomIII on Linux and I might switch now.
Give you guys about three years and Microsoft is going to feel the pain to the point they are going to be forced to offer concessions.
I think that day is coming sooner than we think.
I'm not trying to start a big flame war here but my killer Windows app is Visual Studio.NET 2003. If Microsoft put half as much work into their OS as there is in Visual Studio the computer usability world would be a much better place. And if there was a Linux app that had comparable features I would switch over completely in a second (even if I had to pay for it).
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
WINE wouldn't support MS Project, which was specifically what the author was trying to run.
licet differant, aequabitur
Back when I first installed linux (dual boot) I hardly ever booted into it, and thus didn't learn all that much about it.
Half a year or so down the road I read an article on one or the other linux sites that said "just switch to it for a few months". So I did. I did get win4lin for that last program (omnipro for me). KMail is very very good, konqueror is just great (gotta love the file preview), the GIMP is excellent, the scanners work (and the colors with vuescan are even better than those I got from photoshop+silverfast windows), OOo works for texts and spreadsheets and compresses its files too - lovely.
I've been running linux for a year or two now. It helps that I use SUSE, which is nicely polished, as distros go.
-- Henriette's herbal -
Especially don't run programs via dual-boot, which tempts you to stay and use all those other wonderful programs like Outlook
Because we know linux users must only use linux. Nothing else!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
the point of the comment is if:
1) They're working in an office environment
2) They're mainly using office programs (ie. Project, Word, Excel) with the majority of their workload
then why use linux at all? If their work is dependent on Microsoft products then they should use Microsoft operating systems.
It is spelt "compatibility" for crying out loud !
And it is repeated both in the article AND in the slashdot title. Unacceptable...
Where the hell did this weird "compatability" mistake come from anyway ? I see it more and more everywhere, even in important reports and it's driving me crazy.
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
If Linux had a sync option with iPaq PDAs i wold go with Linux. Please cant i have this.
And yes, Linux is ready for the desktop. I switched my own firm PC to Debian/testing last October and I use it for the daily work stuff without any problems. Even being a small island in a Windows-focussed infrastructure doesn't give much trouble.
The trick is not to try to be a 100% compatible to Windows. No, I rather prefer to be compatible to open standards and so I'm sharing my documents not in *.DOC files but in *.PDF and originally they are written with LaTeX. You can't convince a bean counter that switching makes sense if you just want to do the things the same way like before, because then nobody sees some "added value". If you do things different and even more successful then people start to think about the why...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Especially don't run programs via dual-boot,
> which tempts you to stay and use all those
> other wonderful programs like Outlook...
Hmm, some years back I installed Linux to perform one task. But a couple of days later I started to use Linux for the other things as well and a couple of months later windows was gone with the wipe.
cb
Win4lin does its job quite well.
Having a non trivial amount of old 16 windows code, win4lin allows you to keep all those old aps that will not be ported in the near future, while living in the Linux world.
It's not 'perfect' (It needs a patched kernel), but works fine and without problems.
What's in a sig?
More importantly, how can you write an article published by O'Reilly and still be unable to spell a word in the title of your own article? Compatibility you muppet!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
WINE can do Winzip perfectly, but it's the games and the ease of use that keep me on windows.
With Windows at least all my hardware is detected. Sure it doesn't perform the greatest under bloated XP, but it works... which is better than it not working at all under linux (and by the time it gets supported it's several years down the track)
Windows installs things really easily. Linux on the other hand can be a total NIGHTMARE when it comes to installation... I must admit that some installs on linux are a dream.... just a shell script does the job. As for having to compile source code for most of the other stuff???? you need to have a good distro or you will spend a whole day compiling something... only to have some library missing or the code breaking and not working for some inexplicable reason. Then Fedora won't let me install the KDE development packages due to some bug there. Heck I just compiled a 2.6.7 kernel today and some modules barfed on install to the point where I had no modules.dep file to mkinitrd with! I still don't understand why!
On security fronts Linux wins HANDS DOWN. Windows forces you to buy stuff from Symantec, when a free IPTABLES script from the net can do the same job on Linux for free. And linux viruses are almost non-existant.
The day when Linux takes over the desktop can't come soon enough... but at the moment its capabilities are pretty limited to being an alternate email/internet/office/server replacement... but not much else.
WINE is getting better but it's still jagged in places. Still pretty unusable for me. It gets some business Windows apps going, but as Linux apps get better to replace them, I hope WINE will eventually be used as a front end just for old windows games.
Sure linux is free.... but that doesn't help someone like me who shelled out on Windows only because Linux and WINE isn't really there yet.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Anyone got any luck running warcraft on linux? I suspect it could be done under VMWare etc but what about the performance? Please enlighten.. warcraft is impt to me :D
This still doesn't fix the problem of games under linux, unless someone's managed to port DirectX 9 and hardware-accelerated drivers for the major graphics cards...
Well I've got karma to burn, so I'll speak my mind:
If you haven't used windows recently, maybe you should try. It's actually gotten much faster and more stable, and it's actually very easy to cut out a lot of the bloat with just a few settings.
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement. Compare to Windows XP Professional:
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
Don't get me wrong; Linux is great for a server environment and a viable alternative when you have limited hardware and only need certain limited programs, but here at Slashdot it seems to be the solution to everything.
For reference, I'm a Computer Science student and work as a programmer in the summers. My home computer is Windows XP Professional running on a pentium 4 1.7 ghz and my work computer is a pentium 3 450 mhz. I've managed to get some pretty snappy performance on my work computer by running xfce or blackbox (I prefer blackbox) as long as I don't run more than one or two real programs.
I basically run the same few programs on both computers (emacs, mozilla firefox, aim/gaim, winamp/xmms) most of the time. Granted, it's a little unfair because my home computer is three times the computer of my work computer, but I think I get a lot more than 3 times the benefit out of it.
Flame away.
My first post instinct was to ask why anyone would bother trying to get anything that's buggy windows to run on anything Linux. But then I read the second post.. and the third... and so on...
There is a lot of software out there that doesn't run on linux natively that only runs on windows.
But you have to keep in mind why Microsoft killed Netscape and tried to kill Java. The desktop application environment is being replaced by the webtop application environment and there isn't anything they can do about it.
So, if there is some project/application that you want to run under Linux that only runs in Windows, don't rewrite it first to run under Linux as in Gnome or KDE, but write it to run under Apache plus whatever you need. It might be more appropriate to run it under web pages.
Good examples of these are anything to do with corporate financials, email, or planning/scheduling. Bad examples of this are going to be anything that isn't really shared, like Instant Messages, IRC, or other personal user specific applications.
Some of us don't have that luxury. Outlook and Office are STILL the main things keeping me on Windows. Oh, just use thunderbird, or some such thing... Well, I'd love to, but the company I work for uses Exchange. Oh, well just use Evolution or Kontact! Tried both. While I was able to get them to connect to our servers and send and receive mail, the addressing needs serious work. There's something like 80,000 employees in the company -- adding these one by one into Kontact's address book, or Evolution's address book, or even Thunderbird's address book (when using IMAP) is a major pain. Sure, I don't need to import 80,000 addresses. I need to import several hundred. One by one. By first searching through a list 80,000 names long. The name search feature in Outlook is far and above anything I've seen in any exchange client in Linux. Oh, and why do I have to "import" anything? Why can't I just use the entirety of the company directory AS my address book?? That, and the fact that I need Visio (sorry, Kivio doesn't cut it.) and while OpenOffice works fine for simple docs, I spend most of my time in a word processor working with company templates, most of which include formatting and macros that DO NOT work in OpenOffice. Oh yeah, I'll need a copy of Visual Studio (yes, we are trying to go Java... we just need to kill off these F*@!*#$ vb apps first...) ...and some of the corporate benefits web pages only work in internet exploader. So, until there are open source apps that REALLY are able to replace office, I'll be stuck in some sort of hyrbrid world. (not to mention all of the company-specific Windows-only apps like: the timecard system, the purchasing system, the travel system, and, oh, I almost forgot about MS Project....)
My solution? A dual-head box running SuSE 9.0 with Windows stuffed into a vmware box completely covering one monitor. Have to use Windows? Drag the mouse to the right. Get to use Linux? Drag the mouse to the left. Works great. When Windows needs to reboot, it can do so without interrupting my telnet/ssh sessions, XMMS player, Mozilla windows, etc. I only reboot the Linux box when I need to update the kernel. The strange thing? XP actually boots FASTER inside vmware. Just be sure to feed it LOTS of memory.
The solution that I introduced to the company I work for a few years ago was to run an old box with Windows 2000 Server on it as a terminal server. We had a guy running VMWare and putting up with trying to get it to work again with every kernel update and this eliminated all the hassle.
I'm sure there are commercial terminal services clients for Linux, but we run rdesktop. Since we started using it rdesktop has included support for RDP5 which supports 16 bit colour, so with a Windows 2003 server ( we have upgraded ) you get a reasonably nice looking windows desktop. Audio seems to go mostly too, not that its needed for a couple of minutes worth of checking some html renders in IE or talking someone through how to setup outlook express.
If a windows only accounts package or similar is keeping you from running Linux on your desktop this could be a good solution, the only negative is possibly the Windows server licensing is a bit steep for some situations.
I am a lawyer and this constitutes legal advice and I shall indemnify you against any losses arising from taking it.
I'll try to address this without it sounding like the "zealot".
I have had serious problems with 2000, and can't afford to purchase XP... so call me cheap. Makes me want to choose linux.
Perhaps the OS is actually just a smaller target for security threats... so call me pragmatic. Makes me want to choose linux.
I installed my distro to nearly exactly where it is now in about 20 minutes. It runs faster, looks prettier, costs less, does everything I ever do on a windows system, and requires less work to get it moving the way I want. Call me lazy...
Makes me want to choose linux.
I don't think people who use windows are morons. I don't even pity them. I'm not really worried about sticking it to the man. I'm no crazy linux guru. Best of my understanding, the only place it seriously lacks is in video gaming... but I don't play video games.
Now, maybe someone could create a knoppix type distro that has some super cool video game that only works on linux. It might work as an inroad into the gaming market.
yes the java client is supported in Linux, also there are a couple of other clients that work, look at http://meanwhile.sourceforge.net and also this plugin for trillian. http://sourceforge.net/projects/stplugin. IBM community tools http://community.ngi.ibm.com/ also works on Linux and that is Sametime under the covers. You should be able to point the buddy list at any sametime server, by default it points to an IBM public sametime server at messaging.ngi.ibm.com The Lotus notes client also is a sametime client. I haven't got awareness working under Linux+WINE yet but I haven't tried that hard. There are a couple of other java clients people have written but if you want a C app I guess the meanwhile source would be a good start.
Win4Lin is pretty spiffy, but it only works with programs that will run on windows 98 and only require 128Mb of memory...
Ok, here's my situation:
At work, we have 4 desktop machines running Windows 98, and a file/print/web server running Linux. The Windows machines were purchased years ago, they're cyrix 686 machines running at 200mhz, with 32-64mb of ram. All up, we spent about $5000 or $6000 on hardware way back when, exluding the server - which was a P90 with 16 megs of ram.
The people I work with don't like computers. The existing machines are 'good enough' for the job, and that's that. So, under what circumstances do I buy and install Windows XP on these machines? Or indeed, upgrade them in any way?
I bought a new PC (wow) as a server - an Athlon 2500+ with 512 megs of ram and a 20gb hard drive. The goal was to have all the old clunkers running as LTSP terminals so that they would operate a lot faster - and about a week after I'd got things set up, one of the machines had a hard drive failure. One by one, I've swapped the rest of the machines onto Linux via LTSP, and despite some fun and games it's been smooth sailing since.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
if you had a choice - either buy some crappy p100/32 _and_ a windows licence OR that your shiny new XXGhz - without windows - which one would you choose ? of course, pirating could help you have both, but it's not that fun when somebody actually takes away your computer and you have to pay fine ;)
don't dismiss price as insignificant factor just because you can easily afford buying windows. not everybody can - and there are people who prefer spending that money on something more useful.
Rich
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement.
Freedom. People like to talk about technology but forget why the whole thing started.
Absolutely no-one - but then that's the type of question I expect to be asked by somebody who doesn't fully understand what the Open Source model is.
The fact is that Linux has already denied Microsoft a substantial share of the server market & is starting to eat into the desktop space. Despite the backing of the likes of IBM, it has not done this through clever marketing and advertising campaigns but because the word has been getting out of a viable alternative to Windows that people have tried and liked. There will never be a "mass conversion to Linux" because in the corporate environment, these decisions are made on purely financial benefits.
However, as MS increases its Windows licensing costs, as Windows suffers more and more from downtime as a result of worms and viruses, the cost of running Windows is getting more expensive as time goes on.
I myself am in a customer-facing support role and deal with a lot of IT departments in big corporations and have been doing so for something like 20 years now.
Five years ago, I would never have seen a Linux server in any of these locations but these days, there is always at least one SuSE or RedHat box on a desk or in a server room.
This in turn means that those same companies already have people capable of administering and maintaining those servers (many of these customers are big financial institutions with incredibly restrictive security policies in place). Those admins, in turn, can educate others.
The fact is that the uptake of Linux will continue but will be at a relatively slow rate - but then, nobody in the community (apart from the zealots) really care about that unless it's because demand for Linux knowledge increases and so salaries get even higher (we may be "eggheads" but we still like our fat salaries!)
Take your head out of the sand and just accept that it is happening, albeit at a slow rate...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If running linux and windows in parallel tempts you to stay on windows and not use linux, then by all means - use windows.
You should use the OS you like best. If the parrallel installation does not tempt you to use more linux then either there's (still) something wrong with linux on the desktop or windows is in fact (still) the better desktop OS - at least for you. And you're who should matter to you.
Stick to windows.
1. Is there an application that you just have to have that runs on one operating system?
If yes, you have no choice. Change your life or live with it.
2. Do you want to just use the computer or want to fool around with the internals?
If you just want to use it as a tool, go out and buy something from Apple. Yes, they are more expensive at first, but they last longer (unless you have a dual USB iBook, of course), are trivial to use, don't get viruses, look great, and you can always run Linux on them if you change your mind. The only drawback is the lack of a good, free office package: OpenOffice.org for OS X just isn't there yet, and it looks like we're going to have to wait at least a year. Apple should have addressed this problem earlier.
If you want to play around with the computer for its own sake, you want Linux. If you are buying a computer from scratch, still buy an Apple, because the hardware is great. Then, install either Gentoo or Yellow Dog. If you have a computer sitting around, just install Gentoo. You will learn all kinds of stuff, and the system will work like greased lightning.
Notice there is only one case where you might get Windows: If there is an application that you really, really need and that only runs with Windows. The chance of that is getting pretty small for normal people -- I have had lots of fun point out that OpenOffice.org can export directly to PDF whereas MS Office can't. And Firefox and Thunderbird are better already than anything that Microsoft or Apple can offer. In about a year...
Your story works 2 ways. Hooray for you if you think Windows covers your needs. Other people feel the same way about Linux (fashionable or not) or OSX et.al. Just because Windows covers your needs doesn't mean that is true for everyone (and vice-versa).
>If you haven't used windows recently, maybe you should try
I have no need to change, so why should I?
>1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet.
Hm.. since I don't use XP I really couldn't answer this one. But no kernel panics here yet.
>Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
Hm.. that depends, sometimes I get my favourite desktop fully configured and with all *MY* settings and stuff with a simple reboot. I just take my Knoppix-cd and boot the damn thing with it. Of course it takes some time to compile your custom cd, but I think it's worth the effort.
>2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
I've been told by the MS-zealots, that the problem isn't really Outlook, but Outlook Express. And from what I've heard it does come with default installation and it's next to impossible to get rid of.
(Of course I might be wrong.)
But since the article was about migrating away from Windows, I'd think there has been other reasons for the change than just coolness factor.
.signature: Command not found
For me, it's when things start to go wrong that the differences really stand out. Killing an errant process which is stealing RAM and cycles from the system is rarely successful in XP et al; if it does die eventually, don't expect to be able to run a new instance of it until you've rebooted! A simple system running software and hardware put together by Dell, for example, runs XP very nicely thank you. Try pushing the enevelope a little and it all starts to fall apart.
Ok, I have a dual boot Windows XP (Home) and Fedora Core 1.
1) Linux is *much* more stable. I can count the amount of times I have needed to cold reboot it on one hand. Windows BSODs quite often, usually when switching users. It can also get into a state where one program is using so many resources that Alt-Ctrl-Del takes *ages* to display the task manager.
2) Linux appears more secure, probably because there are no viruses, trojans, spyware, etc. Windows is forever being taken over by spyware/adware. I have to run web filtering software just to keep the machine running ok. Security through obscurity is still security...
3) What extra aggrivation? The only thing I have a major problem with is USB mass storage. On Linux, more work may be done to set things up, but on Windows I seem to spend all my time chasing Spyware/Adware/Viruses. Linux therefore requires far less maintanence, but maybe a bit more set-up. That's fine by me.
Performance: Linux beats Windows by miles, no exact benchmarks, but things feel far more responsive, which is what people really mean when they feel that their computer is slow.
Oh yes and you would get more that 3 times the speed out of it. Proccessor frequency is not the only thing involved in the speed of the computer. P4 will be faster that P3 at the same MHz, and I bet the P4 has more RAM and a faster hard disk, what about the video card?
The article says even though MS Project runs only on Windows.
Actually I think you all will find that MS Project does run under Codeweaver's WINE, see MS Project is there on the list. It's got a Bronze on the Supported Applications list too, up there with Outlook XP which also has a Bronze (and that runs very smoothly on my PC).
The author also writes With this, I can have my "must-have" programs: MS Project and Visio.
Well, with Crossover you can have both Visio 2000 and Project. The question is, which one would you spend money on, $89.99 for Win4Lin (slower) or $39.95 for Crossover (faster).
I think that a better way to migrate from Windows to Linux would be to start using open source apps that run on both for your everyday chores while still using windows. Once you are comfortable using those tools, switching the OS won't be such a scary process. It's much easier to switch one app at a time then to switch everything all at once.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually, I believe it should have been stated before, but I'll repeat myself from an earlier posting some time ago.
The new Crossover Office does really run Microsoft Project and does this flawlessly. I wish it could run Rational Rose as well, but since we weren't able to force the poor emu-layer to do so, we decided to evaluate Borland Together which is cross-platform by nature. Up until now, it manages just fine and even better, since it integrates with StarTeam really smoothly.
___
On Slashdot, Russians comment on YOU!
I'm a graphics/video production student, and "heavy-weight" software like Photoshop, Maya/MAX, Painter, Premiere, After Effects, and so forth are a major part of my computing. I'd like to try Linux, especially because of HeroineWarrior's Cinelerra, which I'd like to get some experience with, and support. But I can't live without Photoshop/MAX, and really don't want to have to pay for a Linux liscense of Maya (the only one of these programs for which I think Linux support natively is even an option) unless I'd be paying for an upgrade anyway, and even then I'm nervous about being locked into an OS I'm not that experienced with.
Yes, I know Linux has GIMP and FilmGIMP and Blender, but in all honesty, while I like the idea of Blender, I need the featureset I'm used to working with in order to be productive.
Unfortunately, I'm guessing that these emulators probably can't handle emulating these complex programs without a pretty big performance drop. I have a fast system because I want fast response from my complex apps, and I don't want to lose that for the sake of running OSS, as much as I'd like to try. Anybody who's tried care to share their experiences? I'm sure WINE and their ilk are fine for programs that mainly involve poking around text in various datastructures, but what happens to digital video or image manipulation software?
I'll try to answer this from my own experience:
1. Is it really more stable? Sure has been for me (though I don't run XP... I've got a bit of a beef with their "Product Activation," since I change out hardware almost as often as I change my socks).
2. More secure? Oh yes... I'd say definitely fewer attacks. You can argue whether there's a selection bias with the number of windows systems out there, but the vast numbers of attacks/viruses/worms still stands. Besides, even if some 1337 linux worm comes along and compromises your unpriviliged user account, so what?
3. Aggravation? What aggravation? I've got a bunch of neighbors, friends, and family members running redhat and mandrake linux. Setup these days is no problem... and once installed and configured, you don't have to do too terribly much.
I don't think linux is perfect for everyone either... but the look of wonder on a win98 or winME user's face once they start using a nice KDE desktop under Mandrake warms my heart, particularly once they find out that they don't have to sweat the lastest windows Worm-du-jour.
After I've rescued/recovered someone's hosed windows system a few times, they always ask me what I use. I hand them a knoppix CD, tell them to try it out for a few days, and let me know if they're interested. You'd be surprised what an eye-opening experience that is for many windows users...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Actually it would. Project is now a supported application for Crossover.
JBuilder and Eclipse.
There are numerous other IDE's for other languages for Linux as well.
Faster, more stable, sure... But I still can't get used to the lack of features. I get lost with how hard things are to find and accomplish with a Windows desktop.
Yeah, linux is very fashionable for the technological elite to use, but what actual benefits do you get from using it as a Windows replacement. Compare to Windows XP Professional:
A good interface, quick command line access and a useful command line. SFTP/FTP/HTTP/everything/etc directly accessible under my filesystem browsing (KDE/Konqueror)... lots.
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
Yes, it's more stable. From what I understand of XP, the BSOD doesn't happen anymore because the machine just reboots rather than show a screen dump to most people who will never know what it is. And sound support is not so hard as you make it out to be. It just works, just like in Windows. As for the total 2 hours of configuration, that's BS. I can't remember ever rebuilding a Windows box in under a day. My Debian install, should I need to reinstall it, can be reconfigured in less time than that will all programs and preferences and configuration carried over.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
Yes, and the fact that Outlook insecurities can affect the OS is proof that the OS itself is also insecure.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
Again, I choose Linux because it works better for me. I can't do my job from a Windows machine anymore. It just isn't capable. As for aggravation, the only computer aggravation I have is crappy hardware that I can't afford to replace when the caps on my mobo blow out or something.
Don't get me wrong; Linux is great for a server environment and a viable alternative when you have limited hardware and only need certain limited programs, but here at Slashdot it seems to be the solution to everything.
I use it on my servers, my desktop, my laptop, and my TV. That's a whole lot of environments, a wide variety of hardware, and lots of different programs, moreso than I think is even available for Windows. Linux isn't the solution to everything and karma whores here are often pointing that out while those that say it is are usually modded down for lacking insight. That doesn't mean it should be pigeon-holed to only specific circumstances though.
For reference, I'm a Computer Science student and work as a programmer in the summers. My home computer is Windows XP Professional running on a pentium 4 1.7 ghz and my work computer is a pentium 3 450 mhz. I've managed to get some pretty snappy performance on my work computer by running xfce or blackbox (I prefer blackbox) as long as I don't run more than one or two real programs.
Sounds like when you want to work from your machine, you use Linux. But for the home machine, it doesn't matter. Lots of people here use their computers for work and therefore rely on their functionality. Linux is a much more viable choice then.
I basically run the same few programs on both computers (emacs, mozilla firefox, aim/gaim, winamp/xmms) most of the time. Granted, it's a little unfair because my home computer is three times the computer of my work computer, but I think I get a lot more than 3 times the benefit out of it.
For the
I've nothing to say here...
Not all programs run in win4lin. In particular, Pro-Engineer 2001, and Wildfire, refuse to run on my machine, I believe because they have a lot of underlying platform and machine specific code.
:(. That means that for that program, I and other mechanical engineers are stuck dual-booting.
Unfortunately, I've read elsewhere that PTS is refusing to make a linux version
You make some good points, I reply I would say that I am happy in running Linux in a corporate environment and find it far superior to Windows for what should be Windows strengths, office productivity applications.
To answer your points
i) Stability.
Here is the uptime from my PC from a few months ago (running SuSE 7.1)
alistair@omlette:~> uptime
5:31pm up 393 days, 2:06, 9 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
I have an XP machine and it doesn't come close to these figures, it still seems to have Virtual Memory problems from time to time.
Sound works excellently for me, and I have two large LCD screens running flawlessly from my Matrox card, dual head actually being easier to set up and tune in KDE / X than Windows XP.
Open Office has come on laps and bounds recently, I have over 250 Powerpoint presentations on this PC and they all open flawlessly these days using OO 1.1.1. I actually prefer OO Writer and Presenter to the MS equivelent these days, only Excel is clearly better.
I use Mozilla for mail and web browsing, it often goes for 30 - 40 days between restarts. I currently have 744 emails on my IMAP server and 27,000 emails (3 years worth) in my local folders and Mozilla indexes and searches then very fast on this average PC.
Upgrading to SuSE 9.1 took me under 3 hours and I have done very little upgrading since. However, bear in mind that before that I had the 400 day uptime, and before that 293 days uptime and think about all the time saved by rebooting the PC once a year on average and you'll see where the performance benefits come from.
There are many more benefits but I'll finish with just one.
I use a Mac at home and Linux on the laptop when travelling. Often I will be called on to find an email thread from 18 months earlier. All I have to do now is connect to the corporate network, ssh into my PC and X back Mozilla, 3 years of work history are now in front of me, this has saved so much time on more occasions than I can remember.
I am certainly no longer a geek and wouldn't say Linux is the solution to everything, however in my corporate role involving email, web sites documents and powerpoint I would estimate I am 10 - 20% more productive using a Standard SuSE Linux build than if I used the Windows XP Microsoft Office equivelent, but as I said, your mileage may vary.
Two computers? One Linux, One Windows. Don't start me on WINE and all this stuff. I KNOW. I was using Linux only for about a year but there is one simple point that cannot be ignored, if you still play games you still need windows. It is better to have two machines, less rebooting back and forth and you can always remote X into the linux one or KVM or whatever you choice would be. I recommend two computers for all homes...especially when you play enough games to make it matter.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
People like to talk about technology but forget why the whole thing started. ... which was mainly because Linus Thorvalds wanted to make proper use of his new and shiny 386 and none of the systems available to him back then enabled him to do this. The whole freedom shebang (while not necessarily bad) got added later on.
What pisses me of is that Word messes up its own documents even when they are made with the same version of Word (not to mention if the document comes from an older version). Ever worked with a document containing images anchored to the paragraphs. When the paragraph moves word happily shifts the image outside the margins! Then when you have finally all images where they should go suddenly several of them have been replaced with red crosses! This is why at my work the user manual is written using OpenOffice.org. We can trust OOo with our documents. OOo allways behaves predictable and its style system is much more powerfull then that of Word.
Strange how people allways bitch about it when OOo imports a word document incorrectly but they never mention that Word doesn't read sxw.
Your post seems thoughtful, so I'd like to give you a point by point response.
Windows certainly has gotten faster and more stable, to the point where its just installed performance is no longer an issue. However, under use by normal users, it seems to pick up a variety of little applications, which eventually interact poorly. The registry is not your friend. The response is to lock down XP sufficiently so that users can't install anything, but I wonder what other problems this would incur. It certainly wouldn't work well in most home environments.
Linux is only fashionable in Linux friendly circles, like Slashdot. People who have choosen other OSes usually think you're weird for choosing something else. I also use XP Pro, not for my primary system, but so that I can gain familiarity with it, to better support my clients. I prefer Linux for several reasons, including:
*) Apps are easier to install (config && make && make install) and easier to obtain in that I can always download the app I need, for instant gratification.
*) Better logging when things go wrong. When Windows apps fail, I frequently get no error message, or a useless one. Not long ago I had problems with a sound card in Windows. It was in Device Manager, it was in the list of sound cards in the Multimedia config panel, but when I went to the pick list in the Multimedia panel to choose it as the device to output sound to, it didn't appear. Huh? In Linux, at the absolute worst, I can use sh -x and strace to find, at a very low level exactly what is going on. This shows me what I need to know to fix the issue suprisingly frequently, as I'm not a systems programmer.
*) Superior flexibility. There are many small tools that do one thing well. I can glue them together in spontaneous shell scripts to extract information from large numbers of files. Recently, I attempted to help a coleague to do a similar analysis on information contained in Word files. No similar solution was found. Lots of nuisance manipulation by hand. I prefer to make the computer do the mindless work.
*) Text file-centric configuration. A simple SSH session (from my T-Mobile Sidekick, a great sysadmin tool!) can configure nearly any app, and run most of them. Also, since I can grep/sed/awk I can mangle them with easily. If I'm really stuck for where a config option is, I can grep the entire file system. It's not a great option as it takes a long time, but when other options fail, it's there. I can't grep config dialogs in Windows.
*) Support. Suprised? Don't be. Does Microsoft even offer "free" support with a purchase? When I do call support, I get the annoying level 1 tech that is employed to keep the idiots away from the techs who know something. Depending on their training, I may or may not get passed to level 2 quickly. When I post to the mailing list for a given app, the developer and several people who have dealt with the same issue usually see it almost immediately, and give me the help I need, immediately.
*) Simplicity. I never have registry problems under Linux. Uninstalling an app is a simple matter of deleting the files. I don't have the sort of application interaction issues I see in Windows.
*) Security. Yes, it really is more secure. There have been viruses for UNIX, but they have not propigated well. There are technical reasons for this, and at least a couple of papers written about it. Google is your friend. Patches come out more quickly. Common client apps tend to have fewer issues, and do fewer things on behalf of the user without consulting them.
*) Freedom. Can't underestimate this one. It's just nice to really own my system.
To your numbered points:
1) Yes. No BSoD so far, but I've seen XP lock cold and less dramatic failures. Yes. Yes. Yes.
2) It is really more secure, see above. It is more secure considering only the core system, not to include apps. It is also more secure considering apps. Considering system secur
Linux is bloated? So exactly what would you leave out of the kernel? (Besides the fact that you probably can do it if you don't care recompiling your kernel)
Ah, you mean "Linux distribution XY is bloated"? So, then don't use Linux distribution XY. Use Linux distribution Z instead. Or even: Use Linux distribution XY, but do a selective install and don't install that software which you consider bloat.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Care to elaborate on your Win2K experience? I always wonder what the source of people's complaints are regarding these things.
Personally, I use it exclusively and I've never had it crash, catch a virus, get any kind of spyware/malware (other than tracker cookies). It runs quite fast unless I'm doing a whole bunch of CPU and memory intensive stuff simultaneously: Running AutoCAD, running MD5CRK in the background, burning a CD, playing music, and having 6 or 7 pages open/loading in FireFox - all at the same time (Plus other typical services like antivirus and such). Usually at that point AutoCAD's regen starts to take a little time and Firefox gets a little jittery on the scrolling but that's about it. Specs: 1.5GHz P4 with 128MB RAM. Performance wise I'm quite satisfied.
The machine I'm on now has also been running for about four months. I just 'lock' it at night to keep people from screwing with it. When I get in the next day I just turn on my monitor, type in my password and it's like I never left.
=Smidge=
... to something like +5, informitive.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I use Streets and Trips quite a bit when travelling - it's got flaws but for easy off-line map finding it works fine. I have not been able to find a good alternative to this that will run on Linux or Wine. Also I can't use my modem in my Dell laptop - somehow the modem drivers eat the sound card drivers and vice versa. If those two things were fixed, I'd switch to Linux in a heartbeat on my Inspiron. (and it would be nice to get Macromedia Studio to run, too).
12:50 - press return.
I use Evolution with the Exchange server at work, and it does a pretty good job. The calender and groupware features seem to work just fine, and it can even use directory system as well.
Wheather or not it is worthwhile is solely based on how it is implemented. Exchange accounts are done on a per-seat license, so you have to pay no matter what. This means, however, that you have the option of using alternative platforms instead of paying for Windows licenses though. You can save money on the OS and office suite by using Linux in conjunction with OO.o and Evolution. Ximian/Novell may be directing their efforts towards OSX versions of Evolution as well (according to a rep I saw about 2 weeks ago). The process of being able to slowly move away from Windows, while keeping all of the major groupware features really *does* allow you to save money, and possibly move to other alternatives. Unfortunately, there are not any viable opensource groupware alternatives at the moment. So you're going to pay for something like the groupware software from Novell or IBM.
I work in a small research group (10-15 people) and our solution was to install windows 2003 server on an older box and use rdesktop access windows. Sadly we need windows for things like our plotter which is only supported in windows. If you have a small group and have an older computer to spare, I think rdesktop is a good solution.
-- john
1) Is it *really* more stable? How often can you *really* get the BSOD to come up in XP? I haven't managed yet. Can you get the uptime I've experienced with Windows on Linux? Probably. Can you get the same uptime and still have sound support? Maybe. Can you do it with the grand total of around 2 hours of configuration necessary?
/etc/modules
Back in 2001, the last time I used windows, it was on an old Compaq Armada 1592dt, a fairly run-of-the-mill PC laptop with APM and no ACPI, I would switch IPs regularly, and sometimes frequently, as well as switching between a Xircom Realport and Cisco 802.11b wireless card several times a day. This was all part of my job, the computer was used for troubleshooting and configuring high end networking equipment.
Windows 2000 would frequently lock-up completely when inserting a new PC card, and/or get confused about networking settings until I rebooted.
Sometimes the problem was so bad I had to remove the drivers and all related registry settings before I could get the cards to work again.
I switched to Debian Linux, and after setting up the drivers the problems were gone. It was very difficult and sometimes impossible to do my job with Win2k, and easily possible with Linux.
2) Is it *really* more secure, or does it just invite fewer attacks? Yes, I know Outlook is terrible, but that's not the actual Windows OS, nor does it need to be installed.
Windows ships with a bunch of services installed and listening for connections by default, Debian installed with ports open at all. I'd rank that as being infinitely more secure.
3) Is all the extra aggravation *really* worth it? Yeah, you're extra cool for running Linux and you're sticking it to the man, but why?
In my case, it had nothing to do with being "cool" and everything to do with getting my job done. It's supremely arrogant of you to assume that you know anyone else's motivations for choosing software. In my line of work, it is certainly not strange to find people who prefer, or even need to use some kind of UNIX for their workstation OS, and it has nothing to do with being 31337 like you seem suggest is everyone's motivation. You need to get out more if you think Windows can do it all.
In my case, as I said earlier I was unhappy with Windows 2000 because of it's apparent problems with changing hardware and networking settings. Secondly, having installed all the relevant drivers from Compaq, I also wasn't happy with the amount of time the computer took to wake-up and sleep using the APM BIOS (about 30 seconds to sleep and 30-40 to wake in Win2k). In Linux, I was able to tweak the settings and move much of the APM subsystem into a RAM disk to streamline the process, and prevent having to wait for the disk to spin up, I was able to shorten the sleep time to around 10 seconds and wake-up time to less than 5 in Linux - that would not be possible in Windows. Stability problems I had experienced in Windows related to APM sleep/wake-up also disappeared when I switched to Linux. I was able to use tools in Linux that were not available in Windows that worked at the ethernet rather than TCP/IP level and I was able to change my MAC address without needing to use promiscuous mode, these were both very valuable features.
Finally, having been UNIX obsessed since a young age, I was familiar with many UNIX type operating systems including Debian Linux prior to installing it on the laptop. So it was a departure from normality for me to be using windows at all, but I decided to do so because it was pre-installed on the laptop, and I was not convinced that Linux would be better for portable hardware.
Incidentally, setting up sound on the laptop (as with most systems) was a matter of typing one command.
echo "sb" >
With the latest release of Crossover Office, I've been able to run the three gotta-have Doze apps for my work: Sametime, Visio & MS-Project.
Gotta check that Meanwhile option, though, for one less app that I need it for; thanks for the pointer..
as a Sys admin at a small software company in Austin, I'm enjoying running only Gentoo Linux as my desktop, with two other boxes (a build machine and cvs) running the same as servers. With the Exchange plugin now free for Evolution, I have no need for Windows anymore. What do I need day to day? A terminal for ssh, a webbrower (firefox) to view status of other groups (and post on /.), Evolution for mail/meetings/calendar, AbiWord for any .doc viewing/editing, rdesktop/vnc to control any Win activities, xchat for support, gaim for fun, and Eclipse for everything else.
We're at a point where you just need an Admin (me) that will install/configure/maintain Linux as either a server or Desktop enviroment. I'm playing with Slackware/Swaret (again) as a primary desktop, and with it auto updating to current weekly (daily if you need), that solution is the best overall for me, while still using my fav overall distro. I'm ready to move everyone over to Linux on the desktop. Sure, maybe the marketing folks *need* MS Office, maybe some of the VPs *want* to stay with it, so let them have Windows XP if they want em, while we save on any Lic costs from 90% of the company, we're way ahead of where we were.
After that, we just need to stop paying for the 'priviledge' of all the Exchange problems (locking for no reason, getting stung by worms/viruii) and go with a Linux backend there.
Call me an optimist, but I think we're ready for Linux on the desktop, and beyond.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Where the hell did this weird "compatability" mistake come from anyway ?
I blame the loosers who spend all their time masterbating instead of reading teh dictionary.
enable autochecking on open office. or koffice (IIRC - i cant be arsed checking). i think abiword has this too.
Dia is terrible. I had a hell of a time just getting the thing to do grid snapping consistently and having a drag selection actually SELECT the objects I was trying to select.
Just because it's an OSS "clone" of Visio doesn't actually mean it comes anywhere close to being a replacement for Visio except in the simplest of cases.
Who needs Everquest? Play NWN on a Persistant world like NeverSummer. Not only is it cheaper, supports Linux, and most mods are open source. Wan't to play Golf game on Linux? Duffer's Golf is an excellent UT04 Mod which plays fine on Linux.
As someone who spent a couple years working in the video games industry, I've had more fun with Mods, and open source games than with "professional" games. Mods and OS games are the last spark of creativity left in games.
Quit worrying about what you can't play, and enjoy what you can
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.