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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.
Because this is a relatively painless way for "mom & pop" to try Linux. There's no way my dad could "just port and compile with cygwin".
Trolling is a art,
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?
I kinda concur (though it looks like you incurred the wrath of the moderators there).
Linux as an OS is not at all hard to use. Most people who don't figure it out probably aren't doing any better on their current Windows system. The apps are where people run into issues. If someone is already using Firefox on Windows, then that's one less thing to get used to if they "convert". It helps if you can do this a little at a time.
If you'd look at my desktop (a Windows machine) at work I've got it setup with Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, MySQL (with HeidiSQL GUI), PostgreSQL (with pgAdmin III GUI), 7-zip, Pan, Songbird, Filezilla, etc. There are a few proprietary apps that we use here that aren't available for Linux that I use too, but for the most part, all of the "everyday use" stuff is open source.
Get people used to using Windows machines like that and it'll be cake moving them over to a Linux machine running the same stuff. No need on wasting time on OS's running on top of each other , which BTW, confuses the living HELL out of your average user. Having recently setup some users with RDP sessions that they could use to work with machines off-site, I can say that the whole concept of them working on different systems but on the same keyboard and display just boggles their poor little minds.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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 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!