Linux Online - News Comment

News Comment

All comments on news story: GNU/Linux Desktop: The Case Against Running Windows Apps
It's a reply to comment:

MS Windows programs running on Linux	by: toxico
I have been using Linux for 7 year now as my almost only Op Sys, 12 machines run Ubuntu or Kubuntu in my lab. I have a couple of machines controlling equipment without Linux alternatives too. But the fact remains that there are 2 MS Windows-only applications that are vital to me: Microcal Origin (less and less these days, but I have lots of data in Origin format that I cannot afford to loose) and Adapt II (A pharmacokinetics modeling environment). Also one of my laptops has a Broadcom WiFi chip (I now, there is a Linux native driver but its bad) and a fast Belkin Pre-N WiFi card in another laptop and in a PC which have no Linux drivers at all so I have to rely on ndiswrapper. Also, many would like to have Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop in Linux versions (I must admit Gimp is perfect to my needs). So, Which is the best choice? Do I return my 12 machines to MS Windows or use Wine/Crossover?. Being a Linux evangelist is one thing, but being unrealistic is quite another.

Hail to the Sheeple	by: pinniped
Well, if people run WinDos for just that one bit of software, and MS continue to threaten to kill XP and force everyone to upgrade, why not let some people use WINE? At least that gets rid of one proprietary piece of software - the operating system. In my own work I do my best to avoid M$ products - in all the planning meetings I've been to, any version of WinDos is seen as a threat from so many points of view that we'd rather spend more time and money doing without it. However, sometimes suppliers provide tools (such as specialised compilers for embedded systems) which only run on WinDos. If I had a year free I could get any number of free embedded compilers to do the job - but that's one job that's just a bit too big for my resources at the moment, so I must suffer the proprietary software + WINE. My next project involves using MS-XP-Embedded simply to get a product out within 2 years (using third party software). The development plan is to spend the next 2-3 years after that to rid the systems of XP-Embedded. After all, who knows how long MS will keep XP-E around? Of course I can only do this because all the managers are technical people - your typical pointy-haired boss will refuse to spend money on getting rid of XP-E because as far as they can see it works - why reduce the profits? Bruce has got some good points, but he's being idealistic and ignoring much of reality (which I'm sure he is familiar with).

Shame on Adobe etc.	by: Janvanl
I need Flash and would like Xara pro on Linux. It simply is not there. I do not care to pay for it, but it is the vendors that keep Linux from becoming the one and only desktop. I use linux for about 85 %, promote it where ever I can but the inertia of desktop users is annoying. So I stick with XP for some apps and hope that one day REACTOS will do the job. Jan