Yeah, that's basically how it works. CodeWeavers build on top of it to provide easy management etc, and also it's normally easier to get applications working on their stuff as they have app specific hacks, friendlier setup tools and so on.
If you wanted, you could set this up using only WineHQ builds and some shell scripts - as is often the way, it comes down to time vs money.
Oh, just thought of something else. CrossOver Office despite the name can run more than Office. Microsoft may well have the terminal server situation locked down, but what about other apps?
Well, I'm not going to condone that. It'd be a rather not nice way of avoiding licensing fees. I guess this is most useful for the usual reasons application servers are useful, ie central control, "instant upgrades" etc.
Microsoft licenses its desktop application products on a per-computer basis. Per-computer licensing means a valid license must be obtained for each "device" (please see the device definition later in this document) that "runs" (please see the run definition later in this document) the product.
Hmmm. Interesting - they don't seem to define "terminal server" anywhere, and the document appears to assume that you'd use Windows Terminal Services, rather than simply exporting an X display (which doesn't actually involve a terminal server at any point, client and server are reversed in X).
You're probably right though, their definition of "device" and "run" seems fairly watertight, but IANAL etc.
Yeah, but with those you need a desktop in a window (as far as I'm aware). With Wine it'd appear in a window assuming a rootless X server just like any other program.
In fact, other than the fact that all the text/labels/menus etc would be antialiased, I don't think you'd be able to tell it was running remotely on a Linux server at all.
Oh, except clippy wouldn't work. Rejoice! I can see the headlines now - Clippy dies in wave of corporate cost cutting.
The irony is that you are spending all kinds of time to develop an aplication that merely goes through additional potential points of failure to accomplish, well, nothing of substance. I hope you don't count this as a win...
I think you missed the point. Because the Office licenses are per-machine, rather than per-user (as far as I know), 1 license of Office can be used to serve hundreds of clients with a fast enough machine. It's a pretty big loophole in their licensing, but due to the lack of multi-desktop remoting in Windows I guess they never thought any body would figure out how to exploit it.
Are there really more users who own 3G phones AND want to watch movies on them AND who will pay the horrendous bandwidth charges required than there are desktop Linux users who want to watch movie trailors? I don't think so.
See here and here for a discussion of why appfolders and static linking are bad ideas.
Linux has got the right idea - see how easy and powerful apt/ports/emerge is? One day, everything will be able to be installed in that way, and dependancy hell will be a thing of the past. At least, I hope so:)
If M$ Office were suddenly to appear on Linux and every other version of UNIX, it's just possible that MS would kill any last vestage of competition.
Well that's already happened, anybody that wants to can run MS Office on Linux via CrossOver. Running an app under Wine is pretty much the same as running it on Windows integration-wise, the only difference really being themeing (or lack of it). But somehow most of use all use OpenOffice. Perhaps because, good though Office is, it isn't worth the price they charge for it?
Embrace, extend, control. After a while, everyone will write software for Microsoft X# or X++ or X-Windows(tm) or whatever they call it, and MS will call the shots.
Considering the almost rabid hate of Microsoft that characterises a lot of the Linux developer community, I think that Satan would be going to work in a snow plough before that happened.
Oh, and who's to say X won't be better than the Windows GUI system by that time? X already has features that Windows doesn't even if you ignore network transparency. I prefer the graphics on my Linux box in fact, I get better antialiasing on it.
I think you are assuming that the only things MS wants is "control", while the aim is profit: control is only a mean to it. And this new scenario does not bring in any additional profit.
Well, the whole IE vs Netscape thing didn't really get them any profit did it. IE has only ever made a huge loss - the only reason it seems to exist was because Microsoft were afraid of losing control.
Remoting is the closest thing to a CORBA replacement, but its not a great replacement. I personally like CORBA more for plenty of reasons that I hope one day I will write down.
Please do. One thing I don't understand is where Bonobo fits into all of this. Up until I saw the Python bindings for Bonobo, I was of the opinion that CORBA was really slow and too heavyweight for the desktop, based on no real evidence except what I'd heard other people say, the morass of C glue I'd seen in the gnome source tree and the "killev" script.
The Python bindings (and the plans for the Ruby bindings) though seem to show that constructing Bonobo/CORBA components is actually quite easy if you use a higher level language, and considering that GNOME2 uses corba all over yet still feels snappy and responsive to me, the speed of it can't be that much of an issue.
So where do Bonobo and Mono fit together? Wouldn't it be easier to improve the tools available for GNOME hackers by encouraging the use of higher level languages like Python and Ruby rather than C? I understand the argument about sharing class libs, but it seems to me that so far anyway virtually all Mono/.NET code is written in C# anyway, and using lots of languages together seems not to happen so much in practice.
Of course with good tools you need good documentation, and although desktop documentation is quite good in gnome developer docs aren't so great - I know, I know, if I had time I'd try and do something about it but my plate is full with other stuff. It seems that'd be another way to improve gnome developer tools that isn't quite so drastic.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mono is a fascinating project and regardless of whether it catches on as developer tools for Linux, it'll be invaluable for Windows compatability anyway.
To avoid emulating Win32 ourselves, we chose to use WineLib as the foundation for implementing Windows.Forms. Later to match the native look of the linux desktop we will provide the Wine team with patches to use the Gtk rendering engine on Unix and the Cocoa rendering engine on MacOS.
Hmmm. Considering the amount of effort that was required to make WineLib work correctly on Linux/PPC, are you seriously planning the totally enormous investment of resources it'd take to port Wine to MacOS as well? Considering the primary motivations seem to be to improve GNOME development tools and increase Windows compatability, is the MacOS port just a throwaway comment or are there serious plans?
Only porting the core windowing and widget library would probably cut down the amount of work involved, but for instance Wine is heavily dependanct upon X11 currently....
Look at it this way, a few hundred years ago in england there was a convicted thief. He was going to be hanged, as was the norm. The trial was over, he was found guilty.
Nonetheless, he did not die. Under an ancient law, if you could show the judge a knot that he had never seen before, your crimes were excused - repaid by this valuable contribution to society.
By tying a knot in a piece of rope that the judge could not figure out how to untie, nor retie, he escaped death. Do you think this story would make Jon feel any better?
3 people died in my city last night. They were killed by some guy on a street corner shooting at cars that drove by. One was a 20 year old woman- 2 months pregnant. Her and the baby died.
A sad story indeed, and I don't mean to be disrespectful by saying this but.... what would you have done?
I have difficulty seeing you driving the car, noticing the guy on the street corner pointing a gun at the car and somehow withdrawing your own weapon, aiming (from a moving vehicle) and killing that guy before he shot you.
Outside of the Matrix, how does that work?
The whole "guns for self defence" argument seems to be based around the idea that you can kill your attacker faster than he can kill you, but if your attacker has a gun, then he can kill you pretty much instantly without you even being aware they are there anyway. Where's the benefit?
Rates of violent crimes in the United Kingdom have been steadily rising for years
That's due largely to an influx of cheap drugs. In particular, in London there are big problems with Yardies blowing the living daylights out of each other. Rather ironically, the "violent crimes" are often perpetuated by criminals against themselves.
There are other factors at work as well. For instance, in the UK if somebody gets raped, unless they are trained in martial arts or something, I hate to say it but if the opponent is stronger there isn't much that can be done (as far as I know). In the US, I'd guess the rapist would get a bullet through the head.
Is this better? Well, it's an interesting question. As society, should we let take a hypothetical person and let them be raped, or let them kill the rapist? By implication, if we let them kill the rapist then we should be willing to execute all rapists. Outside of a few states in the US capital punishment has been eliminated however. Where does that put us now?
By definition, being criminals, they will not surrender the firearms in their posession. So they they have them, and no one else does.
By definition, if gun ownership is illegal then it doesn't matter whether they will, or will not voluntarily give up guns in their possession because the law can take them off those people.
And the police being what they are, they cannot be everywhere at once.
That's a crap excuse. By that definition, why bother having laws at all? Why bother having laws against rape, when hardly any rapists are caught red handed by the police. Lack of policing resources is an entirely separate issue.
A firearm in the hands (or closet) of a lawful, responsible person is no threat to you, if you do not break into his home or otherwise attack him.
And who decides who is a lawful, responsible person? What if yesterday said person was lawful and responsible, but today they have become a criminal? You can't separate the two, either you take guns away from everybody or nobody. Guns in the hands of lawful people have the potential to become guns in the hands of unlawful people, but no guns in anybodies hands makes things safer for everybody.
Would you, as a presumably anti-gun person, be willing to put a sign in your front yard "This house is gun free!" ?
Er, yes, as would most people in Europe. Let's get this straight now, in England it's possible to get weapons for personal use if you're a criminal. But, you have to deliberately locate a seller on the black market and buy them. If they are found, they will be confiscated and destroyed. A lot of crimes are not meticulously planned with plenty of resources weeks or months in advance, they happen very quickly, sometimes without any thought at all. Removing guns helps prevent their use in those sorts of crimes. It makes getting hold of them for crime in advance harder.
No, they did not. Being able to use an emulator is not "giving them choice". What if they want to, golly gosh, play games?
Real choice would have involved them going to the students, individually and saying "What do you want? This is what we can afford". Some would have said Macs. Some wouldn't (surprise, Windows is still quite popular). Better still, just give them educational discount vouchers that they can spend on computers, books, gym membership, extra courses, whatever they like as long as it's educational.
Saying this is choice because you can get an emulator is ridiculous - it's a well known axiom that any computer is capable of emulating almost any other (within hardware limits). It doesn't mean they can do it well, or that it's something you'd want to do.
Good question. So? The stuff you happen to like isn't necessarily the best for these people at college. More to the point, who decides best? If I was at the college, I'd want an x86 Linux laptop, not a Mac. But I wouldn't be given a choice, would I?
This is a great plan and gives students a great leg up with the ultimate college computer. I wish that i had had the opportunity 12 years ago when i went to college to get a PowerBook 100 (included with tution price).
I wish my school had these kind of resources - they'd have spent it on books, rebuilding the classrooms that were torched by the local arsonists, and on keeping the teachers they had before they went elsewhere.
If the college had wanted to negotiate discounts, even 100% discounts on laptops within certain prices/specs then that would have been fine assuming they weren't cutting back elsewhere. As it is, they raise the cost of tuitition (which is already high) even further, regardless of whether a student wishes to pay for the hardware or not.
Having a laptop of any sort, but especially a Mac laptop (nobody can deny the kind of margins they make on them), "included with the price" is far too much like having Windows "included in the price" of a PC for my comfort.
The issue at hand is that commercial software has started to force consumers to fall into such schemes to maintain features that they already had. Today it is Quickbooks, but what about tomorrow?
It's true actually... when I started my job back in September I was using Windows XP, and as there didn't seem to be any chance to switch to Linux coming soon I settled back into life as a Windows user, at work at least. Despite not really needing much software, I found I needed a truckload of commercial utilities to get anything done. We have a slightly dodgy connection, so a download manager that supported resuming (as neither mozilla nor IE appear to support this) was a must. On goes Download Accelerator. We need WinZip of course. Hmm, WindowBlinds FX looks nice (and it is nice). The BBC only streams in RealAudio so to save myself going insane I put on RealPlayer so I can listen to the radio while working.
After a month or so, I realised if I could get the Adobe SVG plugin in IE working under Linux I could switch over to it, and so I got CrossOver (patched Wine to fix some bugs [sigh]) and was very happy.
A week or so ago I rebooted into Windows, and was assaulted by raw commercialism. WindowBlinds had come to the end of its trial and popped up a window on every boot asking me to buy it. RealOne insisted on popping up adverts for its new features and offers, while cleverly not appearing to be running. WinZip of course has a nag screen whenever you run it. Download Accelerator inserts a blinking lightbulb into the system tray. It was almost physically unpleasant battering my way through all this garbage to get to what I wanted. I had become desensitised to it as I started using Windows again, then going back to it after so long was a real shock.
After a while, you realise that seemingly every Windows app comes with some extra code whos only purpose is to try and make you spend money, or sell your eyeballs for a bit. It has nothing to do with enhancing the app, and this is true even for basic must have utilities like decompression programs and audio decoders. I wish I could suggest an alternative to Quickbooks but I don't really use programs like that. Except I know support was recently added to Wine for it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you wanted, you could set this up using only WineHQ builds and some shell scripts - as is often the way, it comes down to time vs money.
Well, I'm not going to condone that. It'd be a rather not nice way of avoiding licensing fees. I guess this is most useful for the usual reasons application servers are useful, ie central control, "instant upgrades" etc.
Hmmm. Interesting - they don't seem to define "terminal server" anywhere, and the document appears to assume that you'd use Windows Terminal Services, rather than simply exporting an X display (which doesn't actually involve a terminal server at any point, client and server are reversed in X).
You're probably right though, their definition of "device" and "run" seems fairly watertight, but IANAL etc.
In fact, other than the fact that all the text/labels/menus etc would be antialiased, I don't think you'd be able to tell it was running remotely on a Linux server at all.
Oh, except clippy wouldn't work. Rejoice! I can see the headlines now - Clippy dies in wave of corporate cost cutting.
According to this and discussion seen lately on the mailing lists, it seems QuickBooks support is fairly close now. Let's hope so shall we?
I think you missed the point. Because the Office licenses are per-machine, rather than per-user (as far as I know), 1 license of Office can be used to serve hundreds of clients with a fast enough machine. It's a pretty big loophole in their licensing, but due to the lack of multi-desktop remoting in Windows I guess they never thought any body would figure out how to exploit it.
Are there really more users who own 3G phones AND want to watch movies on them AND who will pay the horrendous bandwidth charges required than there are desktop Linux users who want to watch movie trailors? I don't think so.
Linux has got the right idea - see how easy and powerful apt/ports/emerge is? One day, everything will be able to be installed in that way, and dependancy hell will be a thing of the past. At least, I hope so :)
I should have paraphrased that with - when it works. Check out these screenshots: http://users.theshell.com/~vinn/ss/Mike_Hearn/
Well that's already happened, anybody that wants to can run MS Office on Linux via CrossOver. Running an app under Wine is pretty much the same as running it on Windows integration-wise, the only difference really being themeing (or lack of it). But somehow most of use all use OpenOffice. Perhaps because, good though Office is, it isn't worth the price they charge for it?
Considering the almost rabid hate of Microsoft that characterises a lot of the Linux developer community, I think that Satan would be going to work in a snow plough before that happened.
Oh, and who's to say X won't be better than the Windows GUI system by that time? X already has features that Windows doesn't even if you ignore network transparency. I prefer the graphics on my Linux box in fact, I get better antialiasing on it.
Well, the whole IE vs Netscape thing didn't really get them any profit did it. IE has only ever made a huge loss - the only reason it seems to exist was because Microsoft were afraid of losing control.
Why bother when Wine Notepad (an almost exact recreation) is LGPLd?
Please do. One thing I don't understand is where Bonobo fits into all of this. Up until I saw the Python bindings for Bonobo, I was of the opinion that CORBA was really slow and too heavyweight for the desktop, based on no real evidence except what I'd heard other people say, the morass of C glue I'd seen in the gnome source tree and the "killev" script.
The Python bindings (and the plans for the Ruby bindings) though seem to show that constructing Bonobo/CORBA components is actually quite easy if you use a higher level language, and considering that GNOME2 uses corba all over yet still feels snappy and responsive to me, the speed of it can't be that much of an issue.
So where do Bonobo and Mono fit together? Wouldn't it be easier to improve the tools available for GNOME hackers by encouraging the use of higher level languages like Python and Ruby rather than C? I understand the argument about sharing class libs, but it seems to me that so far anyway virtually all Mono/.NET code is written in C# anyway, and using lots of languages together seems not to happen so much in practice.
Of course with good tools you need good documentation, and although desktop documentation is quite good in gnome developer docs aren't so great - I know, I know, if I had time I'd try and do something about it but my plate is full with other stuff. It seems that'd be another way to improve gnome developer tools that isn't quite so drastic.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mono is a fascinating project and regardless of whether it catches on as developer tools for Linux, it'll be invaluable for Windows compatability anyway.
Thanks for your time Miguel.
Hmmm. Considering the amount of effort that was required to make WineLib work correctly on Linux/PPC, are you seriously planning the totally enormous investment of resources it'd take to port Wine to MacOS as well? Considering the primary motivations seem to be to improve GNOME development tools and increase Windows compatability, is the MacOS port just a throwaway comment or are there serious plans?
Only porting the core windowing and widget library would probably cut down the amount of work involved, but for instance Wine is heavily dependanct upon X11 currently....
Nonetheless, he did not die. Under an ancient law, if you could show the judge a knot that he had never seen before, your crimes were excused - repaid by this valuable contribution to society.
By tying a knot in a piece of rope that the judge could not figure out how to untie, nor retie, he escaped death. Do you think this story would make Jon feel any better?
A sad story indeed, and I don't mean to be disrespectful by saying this but .... what would you have done?
I have difficulty seeing you driving the car, noticing the guy on the street corner pointing a gun at the car and somehow withdrawing your own weapon, aiming (from a moving vehicle) and killing that guy before he shot you.
Outside of the Matrix, how does that work?
The whole "guns for self defence" argument seems to be based around the idea that you can kill your attacker faster than he can kill you, but if your attacker has a gun, then he can kill you pretty much instantly without you even being aware they are there anyway. Where's the benefit?
That's due largely to an influx of cheap drugs. In particular, in London there are big problems with Yardies blowing the living daylights out of each other. Rather ironically, the "violent crimes" are often perpetuated by criminals against themselves.
There are other factors at work as well. For instance, in the UK if somebody gets raped, unless they are trained in martial arts or something, I hate to say it but if the opponent is stronger there isn't much that can be done (as far as I know). In the US, I'd guess the rapist would get a bullet through the head.
Is this better? Well, it's an interesting question. As society, should we let take a hypothetical person and let them be raped, or let them kill the rapist? By implication, if we let them kill the rapist then we should be willing to execute all rapists. Outside of a few states in the US capital punishment has been eliminated however. Where does that put us now?
By definition, if gun ownership is illegal then it doesn't matter whether they will, or will not voluntarily give up guns in their possession because the law can take them off those people.
And the police being what they are, they cannot be everywhere at once.
That's a crap excuse. By that definition, why bother having laws at all? Why bother having laws against rape, when hardly any rapists are caught red handed by the police. Lack of policing resources is an entirely separate issue.
A firearm in the hands (or closet) of a lawful, responsible person is no threat to you, if you do not break into his home or otherwise attack him.
And who decides who is a lawful, responsible person? What if yesterday said person was lawful and responsible, but today they have become a criminal? You can't separate the two, either you take guns away from everybody or nobody. Guns in the hands of lawful people have the potential to become guns in the hands of unlawful people, but no guns in anybodies hands makes things safer for everybody.
Would you, as a presumably anti-gun person, be willing to put a sign in your front yard "This house is gun free!" ?
Er, yes, as would most people in Europe. Let's get this straight now, in England it's possible to get weapons for personal use if you're a criminal. But, you have to deliberately locate a seller on the black market and buy them. If they are found, they will be confiscated and destroyed. A lot of crimes are not meticulously planned with plenty of resources weeks or months in advance, they happen very quickly, sometimes without any thought at all. Removing guns helps prevent their use in those sorts of crimes. It makes getting hold of them for crime in advance harder.
Naughty Jon
No, they did not. Being able to use an emulator is not "giving them choice". What if they want to, golly gosh, play games?
Real choice would have involved them going to the students, individually and saying "What do you want? This is what we can afford". Some would have said Macs. Some wouldn't (surprise, Windows is still quite popular). Better still, just give them educational discount vouchers that they can spend on computers, books, gym membership, extra courses, whatever they like as long as it's educational.
Saying this is choice because you can get an emulator is ridiculous - it's a well known axiom that any computer is capable of emulating almost any other (within hardware limits). It doesn't mean they can do it well, or that it's something you'd want to do.
Good question. So? The stuff you happen to like isn't necessarily the best for these people at college. More to the point, who decides best? If I was at the college, I'd want an x86 Linux laptop, not a Mac. But I wouldn't be given a choice, would I?
This is a great plan and gives students a great leg up with the ultimate college computer. I wish that i had had the opportunity 12 years ago when i went to college to get a PowerBook 100 (included with tution price).
I wish my school had these kind of resources - they'd have spent it on books, rebuilding the classrooms that were torched by the local arsonists, and on keeping the teachers they had before they went elsewhere.
If the college had wanted to negotiate discounts, even 100% discounts on laptops within certain prices/specs then that would have been fine assuming they weren't cutting back elsewhere. As it is, they raise the cost of tuitition (which is already high) even further, regardless of whether a student wishes to pay for the hardware or not.
Having a laptop of any sort, but especially a Mac laptop (nobody can deny the kind of margins they make on them), "included with the price" is far too much like having Windows "included in the price" of a PC for my comfort.
It's true actually... when I started my job back in September I was using Windows XP, and as there didn't seem to be any chance to switch to Linux coming soon I settled back into life as a Windows user, at work at least. Despite not really needing much software, I found I needed a truckload of commercial utilities to get anything done. We have a slightly dodgy connection, so a download manager that supported resuming (as neither mozilla nor IE appear to support this) was a must. On goes Download Accelerator. We need WinZip of course. Hmm, WindowBlinds FX looks nice (and it is nice). The BBC only streams in RealAudio so to save myself going insane I put on RealPlayer so I can listen to the radio while working.
After a month or so, I realised if I could get the Adobe SVG plugin in IE working under Linux I could switch over to it, and so I got CrossOver (patched Wine to fix some bugs [sigh]) and was very happy.
A week or so ago I rebooted into Windows, and was assaulted by raw commercialism. WindowBlinds had come to the end of its trial and popped up a window on every boot asking me to buy it. RealOne insisted on popping up adverts for its new features and offers, while cleverly not appearing to be running. WinZip of course has a nag screen whenever you run it. Download Accelerator inserts a blinking lightbulb into the system tray. It was almost physically unpleasant battering my way through all this garbage to get to what I wanted. I had become desensitised to it as I started using Windows again, then going back to it after so long was a real shock.
After a while, you realise that seemingly every Windows app comes with some extra code whos only purpose is to try and make you spend money, or sell your eyeballs for a bit. It has nothing to do with enhancing the app, and this is true even for basic must have utilities like decompression programs and audio decoders. I wish I could suggest an alternative to Quickbooks but I don't really use programs like that. Except I know support was recently added to Wine for it.
Why? Windows, MacOS X and IRIX are all to some extent POSIX compliant, as is Linux.
Linux has something none of those do of course. I won't bother going into what that something is, I think we've all got the general idea by now.
Shouldn't it have occurred to him that might not have been such a hot idea?