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?"

Comments

That's fine by me

[cHALiTO]

It's their choice, and I'm ok with it. Other distros also add or remove support for certain packages based on ideological positions (non free software, no binaries, stuff like that), so ubuntu and Dell can very well agree to do this to promote that way of considering GNU/Linux.

And besides, it's still ubuntu, so nothing prevents those who MUST have wine to add a rep to their sources.list and get it somewhere else.

Good

[Tribbin]

I haven't installed MS software on my computer for about seven years now. People ask me if I got MS Office working on it; it is the first thing they try when they install linux.

"I haven't tried it."

People find that awkward.

Also people often say that 'app X does not work the same as commercial product X'.

Sure, intercompatability is pushed from the open side because of demand. But ...

LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS!

People find that hard to understand.

I think this step by DELL + Ubuntu is a step in the right direction of bringing that understanding.

if you're angry @ dell because this...

[Adult film producer]

it's because you haven't faced up to the reality: Wine isn't very good.

Sure you can make some programs work, sometimes. And sometimes when applications do work under Wine they act horribly, weird, strange, lots of font issues. It's not that the wine developers havent tried, it's just that emulating a Piece of Shit like Windows is nearly fucking impossible.. nobody can emulate the development hysteria that went into building windows. I don't fault the Wine devs, they tried mimic microsofts bullshit, but failed...

It's a work in progress, I know... but now Vista is out now.. and microsoft will release another POS of OS soon enough... they have no chance to keep up with the Redmond madness.

Great idea

[sootman]

I've seen for a decade in my LUG what people go through when they try to use Linux as a 1:1 replacement for Windows. It's miserable. Linux should not be positioned as "like Windows but cheaper." (Especially since Dell's OEM deal with MS and crapware vendors means that a Linux system from Dell will probably cost exactly as much as a Windows system.) Mark S. is doing exactly the right thing here.

That said, I have the feeling that these things won't sell well at all. (Not that adding Wine would make much of a difference.) Be honest: what does Linux offer the average user that Windows doesn't? The main one is "won't get infected with crap."* That's great, but that's not enough. People have put up with crappy Windows systems for so long that they think it's normal to reinstall Windows periodically, or pay a neighborhood kid or local shop $50-150 to clean off the spyware every few months (if they even bother at all), and to buy a new computer every couple years when the one the old one gets slow. People are used to Windows. They fear change. "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't." We love Linux, but we know what's involved, and we understand what the million little differences are and why they're there. The rest of the world just thinks "this isn't working right." The result of all this is, Joe User will NOT be buying Ubuntu machines from Dell. Dell will sell a few, but not many, and there's a very good chance this program will be axed within 6-12 months.

* OS X offers this same benefit, plus it has the great iLife suite, gorgeous hardware, and unbeatable hardware/software integration. Not perfect, but miles ahead of anything else. That is a compelling reason to change, and I've seen a few people go from Windows to Mac, but even so, Windows has 90%+ share and will continue to dominate for quite a while.

Re:And one of those is

[mhall119]

Again, WTF?

What happens if you are not included in a distribution (or just as badly, included but packaged wrong or out of date)? As there's a lot of confusion around what this means, it means you aren't apt-gettable by end users. Not in the repositories.

You offer the file for download directly from you. How do you do it in Windows?

That's OK if it's only one distro, but it quickly becomes annoying if it's several.

No it's not, there are about 4 packages you can make that will cover 99% of users: RPM, DEB, TGZ and source. Just configure your build script to make each one every time you build, it's a 1-time cost in effort for the author.

A package for Feisty isn't good enough. You need the last couple of versions as well, because not everybody upgrades at the same time. To do that you need a separate install of each version, and you need to build the package on each install, using multi-boots, or VMware, or chroots, or just relying on volunteers to fill in the gaps for you. So if there are 3 distros you want to support, each with 3 versions in the wild, that's 9 packages you need (therefore 9 independent OS installs).

Only if your program is written to require the latest and greatest versions of dependent libraries, otherwise if Feisty has a binary compatible version of your dependency, you don't need to create a new package. And your autopackage system will improve on this how? You can create a single package that works with multiple incompatible versions of dependent libraries?

Then you have to tell your users how to install it. Look at the complexity of the page you linked to. This is a light year away from "just download and install it yourself".

That is only because WineHQ offers a repository for easy updating. They could just offer the .deb file for you to "just download and install".

See, this is what I have problems with. It's the general design of the software distribution scheme that's bogus. It can never work reliably. It's like Microsoft announcing that Vista will only install software you got from Microsoft Download Center ... nobody would accept that: it doesn't scale, MS aren't trusted to be impartial, etc. It wouldn't work for Microsoft, so why would it work for anybody else

Or, you can just download and install the RPM or DEB. Seriously, how can you not know this?