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Ulteo Shows Linux-Windows Crossover Potential
An anonymous reader writes "With Wubi and now the Ulteo Virtual Desktop, we're starting to see examples of the potential 'cross-over' appeal of Linux to Windows users. Ulteo gets a nice look from Channelweb, which writes, 'Considering that this is not even a version 1 beta, we have high hopes for Ulteo Virtual Desktop. It allows Linux novices to dip their toes into the water without any fear, and lets Linux pros use their favorite applications when they are forced to be in a Windows environment.' This also seems to play into comments by Mark Shuttleworth, who has said the Ubuntu community may want to think about how it can start appealing to Windows users."
If you put a stable platform on an unstable one, people who are unfamiliar will not realize that the new one is not the problem.
If you put a secure platform on one that is generally more insecure, people will still think it may have gotten a virus through it because they don't understand.
The only thing you are doing is getting people introduced to common applications like Open Office, Firefox and other more commonly used OO applications and there are far better ways to do this than with something that a common consumer will probably never use; if you want them to start using Open Office and Firefox, burn a bunch of Disks and nice labels and start a campaign on 'back to school' periods when everyone is shopping for their kids and college students and stand outside that Mac Store or the BestBuy handing out OpenOffice and Firefox CD's.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
running open source apps on windows, just port and compile with cygwin or equivalent. Why all these pseudo solutions exist is a riddle to me.
But if you really want to help open-source projects, do this with CD's purchased from Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. That way, the products get the public awareness, and the developers of the products get the funding they need to continue developing them.
Anybody want my mod points?
It's always handy to have a DSL install on your USB stick. Linux on windows has been done, it's just much more preferable to use wine on linux and never look back.
The linux-on-windows solutions (cygwin was the first, now the more user-friendly ones) present an interesting dilemma. Most windows users I know hate the windows interface. If given an easy way to try gnome/KDE, they may just like it so much that they'd decide to ditch Windows altogether and move all the way to Linux. These installers allow them to reassure themselves that everything they need to do in Windows can be easily done in Linux as well.
However, my feeling is that these people are outnumbered by the people who will not give up Windows. They will not give up Windows because it runs their games, or because it runs their proprietary applications, or simply because complex Microsoft Office files still look wrong in OpenOffice. These people, I think, are in the majority. Even if they like GNOME/KDE, they will still stick with Windows to get the best of both worlds. This is especially true if they can run GNOME/KDE within Windows without rebooting.
That is both good news and bad news. Many free software applications will get a boost out of this, but the Linux kernel unfortunately will not.
So.. granted, I personally think many of these applications run better and more naturally on Linux, but still it's kind of funny to see this list. (Not sure what will happen with the KDE applications.)
If they wanted to show off Linux applications that don't have Windows ports they might have chosen maybe "KOffice", or "Gnumeric", or "Evolution". I dunno.
When I first read about Ulteo, I thought it sounded great. And the few "reviews" I could find were all glowing. When I installed on on my XPMCE/SP2 system at home, it did something to my network configuration that made the physical network adapter disappear, so I had no networking what-so-ever in Windows. I cannot comment on Ulteo because it never would start up. Luckily, the uninstall even fixed whatever it had broken, because networking was back as soon as Ulteo was gone.
Personally, I'll be waiting until something much closer to a 1.0 release before recommending this one to any linux neophytes...
I've been using andLinux for a while now, it's great for running linux apps under windows. Essentially it's a patched linux kernel that actually runs at the same time as the windows kernel, with a small manager which gives time to both windows and linux. Since it's not virtualized, performance is great. Display is done by running Xming, a win32 X11 server in rootless mode, which then connects over the virtual network to the linux host.
colinux itself is very user-unfriendly, but andLinux has a nice simple installer and launcher that lets you launch linux apps as if they were native windows ones. It's based off of an Ubuntu distro, so you can use apt-get and run pretty much any linux app. A few things don't work that well such as fast paced games, playing videos with mplayer etc, due to running over X11 over sockets with zero acceleration. But any standard desktop app should work fine.
From their site, Ulteo is also based on colinux, and it appears they go even further than andLinux in making it very userfriendly. But with userfriendlyness often comes with a lack of control, so if you are a linux power-user I'd highly recommend andLinux. It's great to be able to pull up a Konsole instead of having to use the lame windows command prompt (or the sucky cygwin stuff). The only thing that's really missing is being able to launch windows apps from a linux script, but that doesn't come up too often.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
If they wanted to show off Linux applications that don't have Windows ports they might have chosen maybe "KOffice", or "Gnumeric", or "Evolution". I dunno.
Gnumeric runs fine on Windows. It is MUCH better than Open Office's spreadsheet. Evolution on Windows is HORRIBLE, though. There is an alpha quality version of KOffice for Windows.
If you do want Linux and not apps ported to Windows, and want to run both Linux and Windows at once, far better would be to install the free VMware player and install Debian (or your personal choice of the many Linux religions to pick from) and then you really can install and run whatever Linux apps that you want. And, of course, the choice to run Windows under Linux rather than Linux under windows ramains an option for many, although I doubt it would be acceptable to many of the Gamers out there.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Year Of The Linux Desktop ... Again!
Ulteo installs spyware (a Firefox toolbar that tracks every page you visit) and changes the Google icon in Firefox search to go to their site.
I probably won't try them again.
I've actually been hoping things like this come along for quite some time. For me, it all started with Samba, Synergy, VNC, NX, Cygwin and Wine. Some Thinstall was thrown in for application portability, but it wasn't until I saw VMware Fusion that I began to get really excited. I'm not a Mac user, so while I definitely liked it, it didn't do me much good.
:)
After discovering VirtualBox's seamless mode and the new cross-platform Unity feature of the latest VMware Workstation Beta (Putting Windows apps into Linux) and coLinux/andLinux/Ulteo (Putting Linux apps into Windows), I am finally seeing what I've wanted to see for quite some time. Integrating OSes with each other can have some very interesting results.
After using Linux and Windows together for several years, I actually began to like both OSes more than before. Yes, I even began to appreciate Windows more. I guess it's because I have less reliance in Windows on the things Windows does wrong. It works the other way around too.
One of the things I did was find a way to keep Windows more safe and secure than it is on its own. While putting a Windows box behind NAT is a pretty nice way, I looked at it from another angle. While incoming connections to possibly insecure and exploitable services is one path to destruction, I noticed that another big one is through the browser. This is where coLinux (and its relatives) came in.
(Linux->Windows)
To me, the web browser is among biggest sources of malware infestation in Windows. What if I don't use a web browser in Windows? What if it runs on Linux, but displays in Windows? I've done this before using NX, but it was VERY inconvenient. Now with things like andLinux, I can use what looks like a native Firefox, with a negligible risk of it being able to harm my Windows machine. This plugs up quite a large security hole, not to mention making my Windows machine feel like some sort of hybrid freak of nature.
(Windows->Linux)
An example of it working the other way around is at work. My work laptop runs Ubuntu. However, some software and services that we use only runs in Windows or has an MSIE-only web interface. Having that Windows-only (Wine can't handle all of them) app open up on my Linux desktop running perfectly in its native environment (behind the scenes) is definitely a plus.
I'm sure others will come up with multitudes of purposes that will keep this thing going.
I'm the "Go-To Guy" for computer support as far as friends, family, & some of my coworkers are concerned.
In the last few years, I've convinced many of them to start using Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo, Gimp, and others, instead of their Microsoft counterparts.
In the past few months, I've set up many of them with dual-boot systems so they could give Ubuntu a try.
Putting all their now-familiar-with applications as prominent icons on their desktop, I've had only two complaints in the entire time.
One was "Why don't the [computer companies like Dell & HP] put this on their systems [instead of Windows]?", and "Why didn't you get me to switch sooner?"
If you get them used to using Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo & the rest on Windows, showing them how easy Linux can be is a piece of cake.
My goal is to (hopefully) get ALL of my family, friends, & coworkers using Linux - either full time, or at least as the majority of their computer time, using Windows only when they absolutely MUST do so.
Just what I've managed to do so-far has lessened my support calls down from multiple times a week, to one or two a month, just from the antivirus/scumware issues alone.
=)