Open Source on Windows - Boon or Bane for Linux?

A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward puts this tough issue up for discussion: "There seem some more determined efforts underway currently in some corners of the KDE project to port substantial parts of the software stack to the MS Windows platform. These efforts are now met by fierce resistance on the part of some of their core developers. Aaron J. Seigo summarizes his reasoning in his blog: 'If the applications people want are available on Windows, they will tend to stick with Windows...by porting software to Windows, we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers while Microsoft has all the rope they need to shut the door once again on us ... Free Software desktop applications on Windows represent a no-win situation for Open Source, but Open Source desktops on Free Software operating systems do.'" (Read more below.) "Does it hurt the 'Linux to the Desktops!' battle fanfare, if Linux apps and other OSS are ported on a large-scale to MS Windows, or will it rather have a 'pave the way' effect? Does it help to migrate enterprises and public sector units if users to Linux if users are already familiar with Firefox and OpenOffice.org from Windows, or does it take away the motivation to migrate at all? Is porting Unix desktop software counterproductive? Does it even help Microsoft and damage Windows users?"

Comments

Re:Platform or application?

[Chromium_One]

The required underpinnings for this already exist.

Check out coLinux.

Installation is currently somewhat painful if you don't want to use a provided system image, but progress is definately being made.

Colinux + Xming (or your favorite X server for win32) = Windows and Linux applications running seamlessly side by side, with very little performance loss compared to running Linux natively.

(Don't let the last update of May on the front page fool you, check the snapshots for more recent updates, documentation also updated on the wiki site more often than anywhere else.)

coLinux can be installed as a system service that starts at boot. Put Xming in startup also, and on the Linux side add whatever you want to startup to contact the Xming session and go.

There's no fundamental reason why someone couldn't make a nice package that sets everything up automatically, it's just that so far as I'm aware, nobody has yet done any targetted application setup this way that I am aware of.

Cheers,