Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:14:11 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> To: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: IE in FreeBSD? Message-ID: <0509C4D4-F899-4DCC-BF27-4344A0821DEB@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <1126794190.9885.45.camel@localhost> References: <1126794190.9885.45.camel@localhost>
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On Sep 15, 2005, at 7:23 AM, Frank Jahnke wrote:
>> My opinion on WINE is that it merely harms people who are writing
>> software
>> for FreeBSD. If I write a wordprocessor for Linux or FreeBSD and
>> try to
>> sell it, why would a customer buy it when he can just use his
>> Microsoft
>> Word under Wine?
Because it's an industry standard. Unless you come up with a better
product and convince the masses to switch, people aren't really as
willing to learn new software albeit the fact that it may be better
in terms of features/functionality.
>> As a result the existence of these programs discourages interest in
>> native
>> FreeBSD programs, and encourages people not to wholeheartedly switch
>> over to FreeBSD. It also gives an excuse to software developers
>> not to bother
>> writing software for open source development since "they can
>> always run it on wine"
Not true. Running Wine means I don't have to have Windows installed
and thus I don't have to dualboot my machine or use a true emulator
like vmware, qemu, etc to have to run a copy of Windows on top of
FreeBSD.
> I often hear this said, but I don't think it is true. As far as I can
> tell, there is essentially no commercial software written for FreeBSD
> (and very little for Linux) as it stands, and while the FOSS software
> has improved a great deal, much of that targeted for the desktop is
> either not good enough or simply does not exist at all.
True in some respects, IMHO.
> Wine will always be a compromise: some (but with hope, an increasing
> number of) important programs will work very well, some will perform
> with limited functionality which may be OK for a few selected
> tasks, and
> many or most will not work well enough if they work at all. They will
> also continue to be difficult to integrate with other desktop
> programs,
> even more so than Linux programs which are bad enough already. They
> simply are not a replacement for native programs unless no alternative
> exists.
Very true. That's why I mentioned the fact that installing and
running IE is very difficult under Wine. In effect it's so much of a
pain in the ass I wouldn't even bother to be honest, but some people
need ActiveX, etc like I mentioned before.
> Your early proposed solution of running a remote desktop to run the
> "real" windows program also does not encourage writers to introduce a
> FreeBSD program version. Instead of saying "run it on Wine," one
> could
> always say "run it on a remote desktop." Old computers that may
> well be
> good enough for such occasional use are very inexpensive. Why then
> would anyone run a native version?
Yes. Waste of power and hardware if you ask me because I would rather
devote a machine to a greater series of tasks as opposed to running
an OS which I don't really need except for a few programs.
The purpose of my email previous was not to invoke people's
unhappiness and spite against Microsoft; I am in fact very anti-
Microsoft (or a better way to phrase it would be pro-Mac/-Unix?)
since I believe the Windows is getting more and more bloated as time
progresses and is very limiting by design. However, keeping that in
mind one must realize that one solution does not fit all problems and
as such I don't think it's right to forget that there are many
options available in Windows in terms of applications that may be
better suited to solving a problem or less time consuming to use.
Besides, a lot of people I know don't share our enthusiasm for
Unix and will stick by Windows no matter what. Heh.
-Garrett
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