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No Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth
yuna49 writes "News from last week, but still worth noting: Mark Shuttleworth told eWeek in a May 3rd interview that Dell will not include open-source software such as Wine with the PCs it plans to bundle with Ubuntu Linux. Says Shuttleworth: 'I do not want to position Ubuntu and Linux as a cheap alternative to Windows ... While Linux is an alternative to Windows, it is not cheap Windows. Linux has its own strengths, and users should want it because of those strengths and not because it's a cheap copy of Windows ... Often we see proprietary software companies just completely fail to understand not only the motivations of the Linux community, but also the processes. It's very practical, there's a way to get things done, and it's different. The VMware guys have really engaged with us completely and worked to the agenda set by the Linux community, which is not an ideological agenda but a practical one.' Does that mean Wine won't even be listed in the package manager?"
What in the hell are you talking about? The Ubuntu that will ship not have Wine installed by default. The article does not say it will not have Wine available. You will still be able to launch Aptitude or whatever Ubuntu actually uses and install Wine from the Ubuntu repositories.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It's not any harder than that. I don't see what you're raising a stink about.
WINE isn't included in the main distribution Ubuntu by default, and there's a good reason. It's still a beta. The current version in Ubuntu is 0.9.36. But anyone who wants to have WINE can add it easily in three, easy-to-understand clicks. Why should Dell do anything differently than the main distribution?
sudo apt-get install wine
seriously - whats so hard about that ?
TBH i think this is a good idea, why should dell install a boatload of rubbish on your PC, the same goes for windows, you can install it yourself if you want, that's why its a PERSONAL computer
also - although wine is good, it is no alternative to windows yet, its still not simple and easy to use, and its not 100% there, but if you are moving over its definitely a nice way to keep your favorite windows apps going (if they work)
If they want to go that far, they can just compile the app with winelib and have a Linux binary. That way they don't need to worry about a new version of wine changing out from under them at all.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.