Add to this the fact that WINE has taken on a pretty large challenge. Given the speed with which Microsoft can (and possibly will) change their APIs in the future (and possibly make their own apps incompatible with WINE if it becomes a threat), I don't know if running common applications is really feasible. Again, hardware emulation looks like the more viable approach to me.
Microsoft will change the Win32API to make it incompatible to make Wine and *EVERY GODDAMN WINDOWS OUT THERE* incompatible?
And you say that's likely?
Compatibility is Window's only real selling point.
Microsoft has done a lot of stupid things in the past, but this would effectively kill the Windows-dominance.
What Microsoft does is *extend* the API, not change it.
The problem is that WINE can't properly run most of the popular Windows applications, and, at the same time, alternatives like Win4Lin do a much better job at that.
Could you please post some real life experience about Win4Lin?
How stable is it?
I've heard it requires a kernel-patch, does this limit the kernel version you can use?
Does it support DirectX? Does it run Flash-plugins in Internet Explorer?
A friend of mine boots into Windows for one and only one purpose:
He has to operate a flash5-site from his company that does not work on anything else than Internet Explorer. (And yes, I have checked Netscape and Mozilla on both Windows and Linux, and yes other Flash-sites work great.)
I've played a bit with Wine and could run Internet Explorer5 (from Win98SE) but without any flash.
Did anybody successfully run IE with Flash on Wine?
We are also looking into Win4Lin, any expirences about that would also be apreciated.
So now with Solaris 9, you tell them you've switched from CDE to Qt and so now every Solaris customer needs to caugh up $2000 per developer and send it to Trolltech if they write any GUI C/C++ code or Java code.
Wrong, first I don't know where Java fits into that picture, second, you only need to pay if you want to SELL your code.
Things like Borland Delphi or Kylix or Visual Studio are not free, too.
Re:It still doesn't pass the 'wife' test...
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
In SuSE, you get a clickable StarOffice Icon on the default-install desktop, can't become much easier than that.
Have you even seen a REAL computer illiterate once? They can't even start a program unless someone tells them that they need to DOUBLE-click it.
They won't understand that A: is a floppy, B: is nothing, C: is a harddisk but E: can be a harddisk(partition), a CD-ROM, a Zipdisk or a Networkshare.
Windows is not even close to being easy to use. It's just that everybody knows the quirks of it because everybody runs a pirated copy of it at home.
KDE is not perfect either, but to a total computer illiterate it's better than the Windows-GUI, because it does not default to double-click and uses meaningful discard/keep dialogs instead of the awcard yes/no dialogs.)
Well, WPA will hopefully solve that problem for us;-)
When was the last time you *seriously* tried using Konqueror instead?
Usually I've got about 30 to 40 windows open on my 16 desktops.
When I would use Mozilla and log out, all those windows are closed and lost. What do you expect me to do? Bookmark 40 pages everytime I log out?
BTW, I seriously doubt that Mozilla can handle 40 windows and heavy surfing on those without crashing.
With Konqui, I just log in the next day and all 40 windows are opened again and everything is exactly like in the moment before I logged out.
So: Konqueror is usable for power-users, Mozilla is not. Mozilla is merely a IE-replacement, which may appeal to Windows-users, but both IE and Mozilla pale in comparison to Konqueror.
1. Because we need tight KDE-integration. For example Konqueror is the ONLY browser that respawns all windows when logging out and in again. Even the hyped-into-heaven IE can't do that. (OK, I've heard Opera can do it, but the MDI interface sucks.)
2. Because Mozilla is slow. Why do you think the author of AtheOS used KHTML and not Gecko for his Webbrowser?
3. Because Mozilla is late. Konqueror is there, and it's there now.
Anybody knows how difficult it is to use/port apps to Berlin?
Especially interesting would be KDE.
What about binary-only apps like StarOffice 5.2 or games?
What I read from the Berlin-website, it's a pretty heavy paradigm-shift, although the ideas behind it seem very reasonable, some kind of backwards-compatibility is necessary. Otherwise it won't get any wide acceptance, I fear.
WINE allows people to keep writing software for Win32, and ignore the Linux. Is that what you want?
First of all Wine lowers the entry barrier for Linux. If you don't believe me, just look at MS Office and IE:
The first versions of Office had import & export filters for other popular office suites, it allowed people to keep writing documents for those other suites and ignore MS Office, right?
IE implemented NS-plugins to be compatible. It allowed people to keep writing NS-plugins and ignore IE, right?
Wine is the second most important project for Linux (KDE being No. one) FIRST we have to gain marketshare, THEN everybody will write native Linux-apps.
A couple of neat window management features and the availability of a few good apps is not a solid foundation for a statement like "KDE beats any other GUI easily."
A couple of Microsoft/Apple marketing types constantly repeating the mantra "Our GUI is the best" is neither.
Obviously, marketing is more important than facts because if someone says "the MacOS GUI is the best" it is taken as fact, but when I say that KDE is the best and back up that claim with a lot of examples, I am attacked.
Maybe you should stop believing marketing-types and build your own opinion.
This is sort of an assinine idea of Compaq considering the following factors. Right now the economy is down, and people are scared of dumping money into tech stocks. IBM just turned it's a profit again after years of losses, and their profits were miniscule. IBM will also crush them, and considering Compaq is a IBM spinoff, more people will take IBM more serious than its clone.
In Linux world everything is slow: KDE 2, StarOffice, but I suppose this will improve
KDE 2.1.2 already comes with some optimizations (AFAIK, this is the main difference to 2.1.1) that speed up app-loading.
And in a couple of months when gcc 3 is established and used by distributors, I would also expect a small speed-up (and AFAIK there is still room, so in later versions of gcc, KDE should become even faster.)
These could be going on Solaris terminals, or even Windows machines.
Yes, but in the long term, this will make the transition to Linux much easier.
Just imagine a secretary who spends 90% in the office-suite. The jump from MS-Office to StarOffice/Windows would be a lot harder than the jump from StarOffice/Windows to StarOffice/Linux.
So I think everytime some sort of ILOVEYOU hits the world, we will see some transitions to Linux in the Department of Defense.
Yeah this is slashdot. And the "I am SOOO fair and SOOO objective and Microsoft isn't that bad after all"-apologists are in the majority by now.
But OK, let's compare DLL-Hell to shared library hell:
Windows: No easy solution available, you can't have two versions of DLLs at the same time. If the new version breaks something, too bad.
Linux: Both difficult solution (install both library versions) and easy solution (just wait for the distributions) available.
With Windows there is no distributor who will help you out of the hell, with Linux... well that's exactly what distributions are all about!
So please stop whining. It's embarassing how you Microsofties try to show Linux' disadvatages just to reveal even more advantages.
one of these desktop projects (Gnome, KDE, Ximian, whatever) to get a clue and learn enough about what interface means to really produce a useable Linux desktop (for the masses)
What do think is missing in KDE2.1? It can do everything that the Windows-interface can do, plus a lot more. Heck, KDE2.2 that is due in July or August will even do Windows XP big interface improvement (group taskbar).
So I ask again: What excactly do you think is missing in KDE2.1?
one of the free Office suites (Abiword + Gnumeric, KOffice, I don't care) to get off its ass and work diligently on complete import and export compatibility with MS Office
StarOffice is not that bad and KOffice is catching up fast.
a modern browser that actually worked (with Flash and Java) would be nice
Konqueror does Flash, Java and Javascript out of the box. And bookmark management is a lot better than that of MSIE.
I agree that Microsoft has many many market failures under it's belt. This is primarily due to their paranoid desire to be in every market possible to ensure that nobody is sneaking up on them (as they did to IBM and DEC). And their enormous cash reserves which make this sort of shotgun approach feasible.
Yes, that's true.
But one thing is changing: XBox. Microsoft is doing hardware, this could break Microsoft's neck, because failing in hardware is much, much more expensive than failing in software.
Lets do some accounting: MSFT revenues are about 20 billion $ per year, about 10 billion in earnings. Microsoft already upgraded their marketing budget for XBox from 500 million to 700 million. (they will probably spend 1 billion out of desperation).
Microsoft loses about 100$ to 150$ per box sold and aprox. 300$ to 400$ per box produced and not sold.
Microsoft gets 5 to 10$ per game sold.
If Microsoft sells all produced boxes and sells 20 Million of them in the first year, they lose 0.7 + 2 = 2.7 billion $ minimum, probably more. Lets assume that every XBox owner buys 5 games, that would be 1 billion $ maximum, so even if the XBox is a real killer and we assume always the best, MSFT is stuck with 1.7 billion in losses, that's aprox. 17% of earnings. 3 billion and 30% would be more realistic, but even a 10% reduction in earnings means a terrible drop in stock price.
Now let's calculate the worst case scenario: Microsoft produces 20 million boxes, but sells only 10 million, despite higher marketing expenses of 1 billion. Because the XBox is used for something else (Linux-workstation, Router, cracked Windows-workstation, DVD-player) the average XBox owner buys only 2 games.
1 + 1.5 + 4 - 0.1 = 6.4 billion or 64% of Microsoft's earnings!
Both best case and worst case are probably false, but I think a 2 to 4 billion hit in Microsoft's earnings is realistic. For the first time in company history, Microsoft could have lower earnings than the year before!
And this time, Microsoft will not be able to erase everyone's memory about this failure because XBox is marketed with at least 700 million $ and is targeted at everybody, not just techies.
Actually, Office is Microsoft's biggest money maker.
That's true.
What is going to replace that, StarOffice? I don't think so.
Why not? StarOffice is may not be perfect, but it is cheap and "good enough". Being "good enough" is the big success secret behind the PC (and also behind Microsoft).
I don't know if you have noticed, but Windows has been around in a widely released form for over 10 years and it stronger than ever.
Nonsense. 10 years ago, Microsoft took over the Office market that now accounts for nearly half the revenue.
A couple of years ago Microsoft had to break the law, throw immense amounts of money into winning the browser-war, against a fresh tiny start-up called Netscape. And guess what, this time they did not get a dime out of it.
We are all running Unix-centric-protocols (tcp, ip, html), Linux became number one webserer platform, Apache is dominating the market... What else is to say?
Also, MS has just started to aggressively go after the high end server market, so that's a whole new area to push Windows in.
Come on, Linux already won the server market. It will soon be over. If IDC would not have changed their means of mesuring market-share from 1999 to 2000, that would be clear already.
Maybe YOU can tell me why Microsoft refused to publish sales figures of Windows 2000 server edition?
Come on, Windows 2000 wasn't that successful, Windows XP with Product Activation will be a disaster.
Windows may be gone in 10 years, but it would have been replaced with a new MS OS. If you think a bunch of fat 30 year old hackers reading comic books and working on KDE after work are going to topple Windows, you're dreaming.
The same short-sighted FUD all over again...
I still can hear Apple-evangelists say: "Hey the PC will NEVER be successful because it's only for geeks, I don't want to have to worry about soundcards, graphics-cards and stuff"
Now we hear the same old stupid nonsense again about Linux. When will people ever learn? The cheap "good enough" product ALWAYS wins in the long run.
That's right. In fact Microsoft lost more often than they won:
Just look at all the failures:
Windows/Mips
Windows/PowerPC
Windows/Alpha
The "Homer" Project
Modular Windows
Das "Otto" Project (1992)
MMOSA (Set-Top-boxes Operating System
Blackbird/Internet Studio (1995)
MSN
COOl (C++ Object Orientated Language)
PenWindows
And by "MSN" I mean the planned proprietary "Internet killer", not today's MSN that is just another ISP.
I'm looking forward to Windows XP. The activation thingie will make sure no sane business will use it (Admin to boss: "Do you really want to fire the guy who has all your CD-Keys?").
And at least here in Europe, where nobody pays for Windows to run it at home, Windows XP will have a hard time at homes, too.
The only worry I have about X-Box is that it may be such a complete disaster that it won't be released in Europe. (If you put in 256MB RAM, it will be a great and cheap Linux-desktop;-)))
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, sure.
Add to this the fact that WINE has taken on a pretty large challenge. Given the speed with which Microsoft can (and possibly will) change their APIs in the future (and possibly make their own apps incompatible with WINE if it becomes a threat), I don't know if running common applications is really feasible. Again, hardware emulation looks like the more viable approach to me.
Microsoft will change the Win32API to make it incompatible to make Wine and *EVERY GODDAMN WINDOWS OUT THERE* incompatible?
And you say that's likely?
Compatibility is Window's only real selling point.
Microsoft has done a lot of stupid things in the past, but this would effectively kill the Windows-dominance.
What Microsoft does is *extend* the API, not change it.
Could you please post some real life experience about Win4Lin?
How stable is it?
I've heard it requires a kernel-patch, does this limit the kernel version you can use?
Does it support DirectX? Does it run Flash-plugins in Internet Explorer?
Thanks a lot.
That's not true. I think Win98-compatibility (and maybe WinNT4 for some business apps) would be enough.
Just tell me one Windows app that does not run on Win98 and/or WinNT4, systems that are more than 3 years old!
For most apps, even Win95 compatibility (6 years!) would be good enough.
And since (according to Microsoft themselves) more than 75% of Windows users still run Win9x, it's gonna stay that way for a loooong time.
My best wishes and my deepest regards to the Wine project,
Roland
Hi!
A friend of mine boots into Windows for one and only one purpose:
He has to operate a flash5-site from his company that does not work on anything else than Internet Explorer. (And yes, I have checked Netscape and Mozilla on both Windows and Linux, and yes other Flash-sites work great.)
I've played a bit with Wine and could run Internet Explorer5 (from Win98SE) but without any flash.
Did anybody successfully run IE with Flash on Wine?
We are also looking into Win4Lin, any expirences about that would also be apreciated.
Thanks for every hint!
Wrong, first I don't know where Java fits into that picture, second, you only need to pay if you want to SELL your code. Things like Borland Delphi or Kylix or Visual Studio are not free, too.
In SuSE, you get a clickable StarOffice Icon on the default-install desktop, can't become much easier than that.
The better GUI of KDE alone would be worth it:
http://roland.seuhs.com/en/index.php/Linux/KDE
But there are other reasons like ssh, ReiserFS, stability, su/sudo etc. of course, too.
Have you even seen a REAL computer illiterate once?
They can't even start a program unless someone tells them that they need to DOUBLE-click it.
They won't understand that A: is a floppy, B: is nothing, C: is a harddisk but E: can be a harddisk(partition), a CD-ROM, a Zipdisk or a Networkshare.
Windows is not even close to being easy to use. It's just that everybody knows the quirks of it because everybody runs a pirated copy of it at home.
KDE is not perfect either, but to a total computer illiterate it's better than the Windows-GUI, because it does not default to double-click and uses meaningful discard/keep dialogs instead of the awcard yes/no dialogs.)
Well, WPA will hopefully solve that problem for us ;-)
1. Context menu (KDE 2.2 and higher)
2. You can put it on a toolbar.
3. Simply not true, you can access menus both ways.
Usually I've got about 30 to 40 windows open on my 16 desktops.
When I would use Mozilla and log out, all those windows are closed and lost. What do you expect me to do? Bookmark 40 pages everytime I log out? BTW, I seriously doubt that Mozilla can handle 40 windows and heavy surfing on those without crashing.
With Konqui, I just log in the next day and all 40 windows are opened again and everything is exactly like in the moment before I logged out.
So: Konqueror is usable for power-users, Mozilla is not. Mozilla is merely a IE-replacement, which may appeal to Windows-users, but both IE and Mozilla pale in comparison to Konqueror.
This is the reason why I used kfm already A LOT.
1. Because we need tight KDE-integration. For example Konqueror is the ONLY browser that respawns all windows when logging out and in again. Even the hyped-into-heaven IE can't do that. (OK, I've heard Opera can do it, but the MDI interface sucks.)
2. Because Mozilla is slow. Why do you think the author of AtheOS used KHTML and not Gecko for his Webbrowser?
3. Because Mozilla is late. Konqueror is there, and it's there now.
Especially interesting would be KDE.
What about binary-only apps like StarOffice 5.2 or games?
What I read from the Berlin-website, it's a pretty heavy paradigm-shift, although the ideas behind it seem very reasonable, some kind of backwards-compatibility is necessary. Otherwise it won't get any wide acceptance, I fear.
First of all Wine lowers the entry barrier for Linux. If you don't believe me, just look at MS Office and IE:
The first versions of Office had import & export filters for other popular office suites, it allowed people to keep writing documents for those other suites and ignore MS Office, right?
IE implemented NS-plugins to be compatible. It allowed people to keep writing NS-plugins and ignore IE, right?
Wine is the second most important project for Linux (KDE being No. one) FIRST we have to gain marketshare, THEN everybody will write native Linux-apps.
Embrace & extend.
A couple of Microsoft/Apple marketing types constantly repeating the mantra "Our GUI is the best" is neither.
Obviously, marketing is more important than facts because if someone says "the MacOS GUI is the best" it is taken as fact, but when I say that KDE is the best and back up that claim with a lot of examples, I am attacked.
Maybe you should stop believing marketing-types and build your own opinion.
Roland
KDE beats any other GUI easily.
cu, Roland
P.S: Feel free to send additions/comments to me per mail.
The main reason is that AMD does not have enough fabs to produce for the whole market.
So in a way, the slowing market is a great chance for AMD...
This is sort of an assinine idea of Compaq considering the following factors. Right now the economy is down, and people are scared of dumping money into tech stocks. IBM just turned it's a profit again after years of losses, and their profits were miniscule. IBM will also crush them, and considering Compaq is a IBM spinoff, more people will take IBM more serious than its clone.
Could be from an IT-newspaper 10 or 15 years ago.
Roland
KDE 2.1.2 already comes with some optimizations (AFAIK, this is the main difference to 2.1.1) that speed up app-loading.
And in a couple of months when gcc 3 is established and used by distributors, I would also expect a small speed-up (and AFAIK there is still room, so in later versions of gcc, KDE should become even faster.)
Roland
Yes, but in the long term, this will make the transition to Linux much easier.
Just imagine a secretary who spends 90% in the office-suite. The jump from MS-Office to StarOffice/Windows would be a lot harder than the jump from StarOffice/Windows to StarOffice/Linux.
So I think everytime some sort of ILOVEYOU hits the world, we will see some transitions to Linux in the Department of Defense.
Roland
But OK, let's compare DLL-Hell to shared library hell:
Windows: No easy solution available, you can't have two versions of DLLs at the same time. If the new version breaks something, too bad.
Linux: Both difficult solution (install both library versions) and easy solution (just wait for the distributions) available.
With Windows there is no distributor who will help you out of the hell, with Linux... well that's exactly what distributions are all about!
So please stop whining. It's embarassing how you Microsofties try to show Linux' disadvatages just to reveal even more advantages.
Roland
Yeah, just wait for the distributions to catch up.
(I think this is rather straightforward and - compared to Windows - quite easy)
Roland
What do think is missing in KDE2.1? It can do everything that the Windows-interface can do, plus a lot more. Heck, KDE2.2 that is due in July or August will even do Windows XP big interface improvement (group taskbar).
So I ask again: What excactly do you think is missing in KDE2.1?
one of the free Office suites (Abiword + Gnumeric, KOffice, I don't care) to get off its ass and work diligently on complete import and export compatibility with MS Office
StarOffice is not that bad and KOffice is catching up fast.
a modern browser that actually worked (with Flash and Java) would be nice
Konqueror does Flash, Java and Javascript out of the box. And bookmark management is a lot better than that of MSIE.
Roland
Yes, that's true.
But one thing is changing: XBox. Microsoft is doing hardware, this could break Microsoft's neck, because failing in hardware is much, much more expensive than failing in software.
Lets do some accounting: MSFT revenues are about 20 billion $ per year, about 10 billion in earnings. Microsoft already upgraded their marketing budget for XBox from 500 million to 700 million. (they will probably spend 1 billion out of desperation). Microsoft loses about 100$ to 150$ per box sold and aprox. 300$ to 400$ per box produced and not sold.
Microsoft gets 5 to 10$ per game sold.
If Microsoft sells all produced boxes and sells 20 Million of them in the first year, they lose 0.7 + 2 = 2.7 billion $ minimum, probably more. Lets assume that every XBox owner buys 5 games, that would be 1 billion $ maximum, so even if the XBox is a real killer and we assume always the best, MSFT is stuck with 1.7 billion in losses, that's aprox. 17% of earnings. 3 billion and 30% would be more realistic, but even a 10% reduction in earnings means a terrible drop in stock price.
Now let's calculate the worst case scenario: Microsoft produces 20 million boxes, but sells only 10 million, despite higher marketing expenses of 1 billion. Because the XBox is used for something else (Linux-workstation, Router, cracked Windows-workstation, DVD-player) the average XBox owner buys only 2 games.
1 + 1.5 + 4 - 0.1 = 6.4 billion or 64% of Microsoft's earnings!
Both best case and worst case are probably false, but I think a 2 to 4 billion hit in Microsoft's earnings is realistic. For the first time in company history, Microsoft could have lower earnings than the year before!
And this time, Microsoft will not be able to erase everyone's memory about this failure because XBox is marketed with at least 700 million $ and is targeted at everybody, not just techies.
Roland
That's true.
What is going to replace that, StarOffice? I don't think so.
Why not? StarOffice is may not be perfect, but it is cheap and "good enough". Being "good enough" is the big success secret behind the PC (and also behind Microsoft).
I don't know if you have noticed, but Windows has been around in a widely released form for over 10 years and it stronger than ever.
Nonsense. 10 years ago, Microsoft took over the Office market that now accounts for nearly half the revenue.
A couple of years ago Microsoft had to break the law, throw immense amounts of money into winning the browser-war, against a fresh tiny start-up called Netscape. And guess what, this time they did not get a dime out of it.
We are all running Unix-centric-protocols (tcp, ip, html), Linux became number one webserer platform, Apache is dominating the market... What else is to say?
Also, MS has just started to aggressively go after the high end server market, so that's a whole new area to push Windows in.
Come on, Linux already won the server market. It will soon be over. If IDC would not have changed their means of mesuring market-share from 1999 to 2000, that would be clear already.
Maybe YOU can tell me why Microsoft refused to publish sales figures of Windows 2000 server edition?
Come on, Windows 2000 wasn't that successful, Windows XP with Product Activation will be a disaster.
Windows may be gone in 10 years, but it would have been replaced with a new MS OS. If you think a bunch of fat 30 year old hackers reading comic books and working on KDE after work are going to topple Windows, you're dreaming.
The same short-sighted FUD all over again...
I still can hear Apple-evangelists say: "Hey the PC will NEVER be successful because it's only for geeks, I don't want to have to worry about soundcards, graphics-cards and stuff"
Now we hear the same old stupid nonsense again about Linux. When will people ever learn? The cheap "good enough" product ALWAYS wins in the long run.
Roland
Just look at all the failures:
Windows/Mips
Windows/PowerPC
Windows/Alpha
The "Homer" Project
Modular Windows
Das "Otto" Project (1992)
MMOSA (Set-Top-boxes Operating System
Blackbird/Internet Studio (1995)
MSN
COOl (C++ Object Orientated Language)
PenWindows
And by "MSN" I mean the planned proprietary "Internet killer", not today's MSN that is just another ISP.
I'm looking forward to Windows XP. The activation thingie will make sure no sane business will use it (Admin to boss: "Do you really want to fire the guy who has all your CD-Keys?").
And at least here in Europe, where nobody pays for Windows to run it at home, Windows XP will have a hard time at homes, too.
The only worry I have about X-Box is that it may be such a complete disaster that it won't be released in Europe. (If you put in 256MB RAM, it will be a great and cheap Linux-desktop ;-)))
Roland