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."

Comments

There are better ways

[Foofoobar]

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.

Re:There are better ways

[hansraj]

While I agree with your comments that this is far from the ideal way of using linux, I disagree with your assessment that it serves little to no purpose. Once a windows user gets used to the KDE task bar, and then eventually with the whole lot of programs that come with it, it would be easier for them to totally abandon Windows. Of course not everyone will switch boats but a good enough chunk should :)

World domination, naturally, is the next step.

Re:There are better ways

[MachoBidniz]

There is a KDE clone for Windows already? Can you post a link? .... In any case, I would appreciate a link. http://windows.kde.org/

Re:There are better ways

[hansraj]

From the linked page:

KDE on Windows is mostly in an alpha state, so not suitable for day to day use yet. The parent poster made it sound as if it was ready to use. Anyway, thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of it.

Re:There are better ways

[Foofoobar]

I use Windows too and agree it has been MORE solid but I also use Mac and Debian Linux as well and in comparison, side-by-side... it's buggy, unstable, virus ridden and hackable. Sure props are due in them coming a long way in improving but they have a fundamentally flawed underlying design and need to fix that, the file system and several other core problems before they can stabilize the entire system.

Speaking as someone who uses all three platforms, there's a reason why Mac and Linux people make these complaints when talking about Windows. It's because it's fairly true.

Re:There are better ways

[argent]

I know it isn't the norm to compliment Windows, but Windows has been solid since 2k (minus Vista).

Well, I spent 20 years as a network administrator, and while the NT-derived Windows has been pretty solid, it's never reached the point where I can say the only time I've had to reboot is to upgrade software, nor have I been able to treat the Windows desktops I've supported as cavalierly as UNIX. And, too, the deep security issues in Win32 haven't been seriously addressed yet.

In my new job attempting to remove Outlook and downgrade it to something that wasn't infested with the Vista cult broke my computer so badly I had to get it reimaged. Not only shouldn't this be rocket science, but I'm metaphorically a rocket scientist and it's still too hard.

I've seen this at home, too: my daughter's Windows 2000 desktop had to be reinstalled every six months because she broke something. She's gone about 3 years on her Mac mini without incident.

This will not boost linux kernel adoption

[Pausanias]

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.

Linux to run cross-platform apps?

[radarsat1]

While I think this is sorta cool, I find their choice of applications a little odd. Here's the list from their web page:

• Firefox (Flash & Java): runs on Windows
  
• OpenOffice.org: runs on Windows
  
• KPdf: Probably will run on Windows when KDE4 is out?
  
• Kopete: Same as above?
  
• Skype: Runs on Windows
  
• Thunderbird + Enigmail: runs on Windows
  
• Gimp and Digikam: Gimp runs on Windows
  
• Inkscape: runs on Windows
  
• Scribus: runs on Windows

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.

Based on colinux, similar to andLinux

[josath]

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.