Ask About Running Windows Software in Linux 456
There have been recent reports about programs from Israel, Canada, and The Philippines that let you run Windows software in Linux. Are they really new? Can they succeed? Is this whole effort worth the time and trouble going into it? CodeWeavers CEO and Wine maven Jeremy White ought to know, since he's been working to bring Windows software to Linux users for many years -- with quite a bit of success. We'll forward 10 - 12 of the highest moderated questions posted here to Jeremy, and run his answers as soon as we get them back.
Project David (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Project David (Score:5, Insightful)
I like arbitrarily lynching people without any actual evidence of wrongdoing as much as the next guy. but I'm just saying....
Re:Project David (Score:4, Insightful)
Timeline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Timeline (Score:5, Interesting)
An emulator that can handle all this would be basically a PC emulator (see VMWare) with a bunch of Windows binaries.
Does/will WINE have a version selectable compatibility ? There are quite a few windows apps out there that only run on specific versions of windows at specific patch levels and they won't run on subsequent versions or patch levels. It would seem that this kind of compatibility is very difficult. Would it even be worth while given the number of users would may have need for such compatibility?
Re:Timeline (Score:4, Insightful)
To give you some sort of answer even though I don't really know if you deserve it is this. The only way there will be 100% compatability is when Microsoft completely Open Sources their OS's. Until then you have to use something like VMware which works but can be slow depending on the app and Wine which works for only some specific apps but is improving all the time.
Priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, even if you do make a superior product, 95% of businesses use word's proprietary 'doc' type file. Instead, you can spend half the time and effort to port it over, meaning businesses wouldn't have to change much software for your average joe business user, but they get to move the OS over to something more stable and secure.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Like Word Perfect [slashdot.org]? Shoulda realized you were a troll. I'm sorry I bit on that crap.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
For many reasons, it's hard to switch, plain vanilla, from Windows/Office to a Free set of OS + applications. Any tool that aids a gradual transition is, most likely, a Good Thing.
For my office work, I cannot plausibly switch away from Office right now without a major productivity hit, mostly due to file format issues (and some VBA scripts that would take time to re-create in OOo). It isn't right, but that's the way it is. I could, however, switch away from Windows if I could still run Office well enough from time to time.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I know that is somewhat idealistic, but hear me out. When someone goes to do something they want to be able to use what they think is the best tool for the job. It doesn't really matter on what grounds they've made that choice - whether it's objetively better, whether it's the one they've always used and are comfortable with, whether it's that latest in thing, whatever. They want to be able to run their chosen app on their chosen OS.
Personally, I don't really care whether someone uses MS Office or Open Office as long as their happy using what they're using. I would, however, like to be able run Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Photoshop reliably under Linux because then I have the option. If other people are happy running open source equivalents then great. But regardless of whether Gimp is better than Photoshop, I know which I'm better at using Photoshop so that's what I'd rather use.
Working on Windows compatability is a way of reducing lock-in and promoting competition as it removes restrictions of what can run where. That way the best products should be most successful, not merely the ones that have already got market share or have managed to tie people in whether they like it or not.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about why the lock-in happens in the first place, then think about the value of at least getting those lock-in apps running on another OS.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the lock exists. Wishing it away won't change things. Contrary to popular belief, the world will not beat a path to your door if you build a better mousetrap. Not if everyone uses the old mousetrap, it works "good enough", and your new mousetrap won't fit through standard doors.
In the business world migrating desktops from Windows to anything else is problematic at best. Do you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hurdles? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its best to explain as an example:
Suppose OSOffice is an open source competitor to MSOffice.
Good sys-admin Charlie finally convinces management to convert all machines from Windows to Linux. By putting in Wine, the business users still have MSOffice and can do their jobs regularly, but they pay less money for the operating system, and still gain a stable and secure operating system in the process.
Eventually, Eugene, the marketing director, plays around in the new operating system and finds OSOffice. It can do the same things, and actually a few nice things that MSOffice can't. He plays around with it, and eventually switches to the new app. He convinces so co-workers to do the same. Before long, most of the employees are using OSOffice instead of MSOffice, and they drop MSOffice in favor of OSOffice (and save money).
Converting people from MS to Linux isn't a "drop ms and use linux" solution. Its a slow process that needs helping. Wine is one of those 'helpers.'
Re:Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
HOWEVER. I for one think Linux has a long way to go before it can be used be Joe and Jane CompUSA customer. Simple things are missing from many distros that end up requireing extensive work to add. Untill the end user dosn't need to mess around in the kernel code it will not be acceptable. For example.
I'm building a PPTP server, which should be simple.
1. Debian has a package for Poptop. However I want to use MSCHAPv2 which requires that the kernel support MPPE (why the hell is this in the kernel?).
2. There is a kernel module for MPPE for Debian. However it needs a 2.4.x kernel.
3. Debian by default installs a 2.2.x kernel.
4. Installing a 2.4.x kernel over the default Debian install kills Lilo.
5. Installing with the 2.4.x kernel from the Debian installer breaks the included driver for the 3COM NIC in the server.
6. Vodka makes all my troubles go away for a while.
7. GOTO 6
Re:Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:4, Funny)
HOWEVER. I for one think Linux has a long way to go before it can be used be Joe and Jane CompUSA customer. Simple things are missing from many distros that end up requireing extensive work to add. Untill the end user dosn't need to mess around in the kernel code it will not be acceptable. For example.
I'm building a PPTP server, which should be simple.
Wait a minute, you're telling me that Joe and Jane from CompUSA want to build a PPTP server. I'll give you good news: with Linux they can even run a beowulf cluster of those...
Re:Is Windows binary compatibility a good thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
And a lot of people don't realize it, but the same is of course true wint Winnt/2k/XP. The Windows API is on top/along side the actual Native NT API (convienient since NT evolved from OS/2)... and how many Native NT applications do you know of?
Challenges (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Challenges (Score:4, Funny)
I have heard it said, "Windows is only good for playing games". Does that explain anything?
Re:Challenges (Score:4, Informative)
Just the latest WINE build.
Any tricks you'd like to share to get it working?
When I first tried running it, the window border showed up in fullscreen. This prevented input from being handled correctly. The problem seemed to have cleared up after the next reboot. No idea why. *shrug*
It was actually a rather funny story. You see, I had installed WINE because Sun suggests it for running programs that the Java Desktop System does not yet have support for. I then left JDS running while I went to work. A few hours later, my wife calls and asks how to get Blue's Clues running on JDS (despite a previous offer for her to reboot into Windows at any time). I thought about it a moment and had her double-click on the CD. She found the EXE file and ran it. To my complete shock and surprise, it ran! (Albeit with the previously described issue.)
Later that night I came home, rebooted to JDS, and tried Blue's Clues again. That time it worked without any problems. Pretty simple, actually.
Just remember to associate EXE files with the WINE executable, and you should be fine.
What if you have to buy Windows anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gerv
http://www.gerv.net
Re:What if you have to buy Windows anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
With Wine or VMWare or whatever, I take a pretty huge performance hit and have no guarantees that anything will actually work. By pulling my Linux apps onto my Windows desktop via X-Forwarding, I end up with a VERY powerful desktop where EVERYTHING works. I thus have ZERO use for any Windows binaries mucking up my Linux machines.
Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the opposite. (Score:5, Interesting)
Compatibility surprises? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of the various API libraries, are there any you thought would be particularly easy or difficult to port, that ended up surprising you?
I imagine at least some of the APIs worked somewhat contrary to their documented (or undocumented?) nature; in those cases have you chosen to go with the Windows implementation details in order to maintain compatibility?
Which API have you disliked working with the most?
Paradox? (Score:5, Funny)
(This is supposed to be a joke, not to insult the guys)
Re:Paradox? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgive me for posting a serious reply to a joke, but:
There's no paradox. Not only is there room for more than one significant OS (say 60% Windows, 40% Linux), but OS use is not mutually exclusive. That is, it could be 80% Windows, 30% OS X, 20% Linux. Any pie chart that shows OS use adding up to 100% is either oversimplified ("primary"? what does that mean?) or wrong.
worm compatibility? (Score:4, Funny)
How would you have done Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this effort endangered by software patents? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the EU really does pass the software patent law under consideration and the U.S. adopts that treaty that Bush is pushing, won't MS just be able to sue any compatibility products out of business?
Where do you place the priority? (Score:5, Interesting)
API vs VM solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
GUI compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
WINE 1.0 ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Obstacles (Score:5, Interesting)
Poking the WinAPI and figuring out how and what it does?
or
Microsoft breaking what you do figure out?
has microsoft actually been as much of a hinderance as us Slashdot readers would expect them to be?
Re:Obstacles (Score:3, Informative)
As for breaking WINE -- well, Microsoft would be hard pressed to change their APIs in such a way that would break WINE, but that wouldn't break third party applications. The last thing Microsoft wants to do is to further annoy third part devs who have enough trouble with service pac
Remaining Hurdles (Score:5, Interesting)
What hurdles stand between Wine/Codeweavers and a near-flawless Windows compatibility layer?
Educational Software (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Reader Rabbit and his ilk are the only reason we still have a Windows computer in the house (but never on the net!). That won't last forever: either our kids will outgrow that, or Wine will get good enough. Our youngest is 1, so they have about 17 years to liberate our family from Windows, or it's too late.
Re:Educational Software (Score:4, Informative)
The largest part of the educational multimedia market uses software built with either Macromedia Director or Authorware or some other very high level authoring system as opposed to C++. This is because typically these applications are heavy on realtively simple mulitmedia interactions and light on intensive computing that requires stramlined code.
For the most part, these systems do already work quite flawlessly under Wine. I've developed a few of these type apps and I used to go to the Marcomedia corporate newsgroups and harrangue then to come out with a GNU/Linux run-time so educational authors could create native GNU/Linux apps in addition to Windows and Mac. But then Wine came out and I discovered that not only did my own apps, but several dozen other Macromedia based apps I tried all worked under Wine. Not only that, the authoring environment itself works under Wine. And that was at least four years ago. Probably more like six.
Since then, I've assisted a number of teachers who simply assumed that their apps wouldn't work under Wine to make them work. In every case what I have found is that Wine already did work, but the real problem was the teacher in question didn't understand how Wine worked and how to setup the fake_Windows directory. So, it's not really a Wine problem as much as a lack of familiarity with the Linux filesystem among those people who would be responsible for making the switch, ie teachers.
I don't know the Reader Rabbit series per se, but I do know that the average public school in California and Colorado where I have had direct experience in such things has purchased a copy of Macromedia Authorware for just about every single staff and the janitors too in hopes that they would take a crack at putting some multimedia lessons together and very very few of them have. However, there are a number of existing and many many bankrupt companies that devoted themselves to producing these type of titles and since they all use similar run-times which use only a limited subset of the Windows API that was supported in Wine a long time ago, the chances are your app quite likely might already work.
Funny stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Practical Tipping Point When? (Score:5, Insightful)
So at some point Linux will work on and with more old hardware than the newest versions of Windows.
And will be able to use Wine to run crusty old applications better than the newest versions of Windows. (Microsoft's biggest enemy to getting people to use its new products has for many years not been any other company but its own installed base.)
For people outside first world corporate IT departments that transition time when Linux appears more attractive will be sooner. How soon?
How do you expect the transition to desktop Linux to play out?
Performance issues (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'm wondering what provisions are being made to maintain performance levels in the libraries themselves. Simply mapping Win32 API's to U*ix API's and providing some compatibility stuff won't cut it if my Win32 apps run on U*ix system like poorly written recursive shell scripts.
all comes down to drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
Embrace and Extend? :) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Embrace and Extend? :) (Score:4, Informative)
What does Windzoze really lack? Try a fork(), proper pipes, a proper shell (or several), multiple virtual terminals, a protocol like X which can be sent across a network tolerably well, the ability to at least read foreign file systems, a way of shutting down not involving a START button, journalling filesystems, a choice of window manager,............
You have to be joking!! Of all the things you asked for, you could have asked for things windows doesn't do well
Anyway, thats not the point there are a lot of things wrong with windows, you just need to (install XP/2003) educate yourself so you don't sound like an idiot and name a bunch of things that are accually better on Windows.
Broad Compatibility or Specific Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
Where should the focus be?
Will your efforts be a success when Crossover and/or WINE have equal compatibility with WIN32 applications as does Windows (i.e. not very good except for MS products), or will you have to be better than MS at making applications work?
Wrong approach? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that telling someone "Use this system with a steep learning curve; it's a lot better and most of your Windows programs will run a lot of the time." is a lot less likely to work than admitting a lot of people will find Linux daunting, and trying to meet those people half-way
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Moving Target (Score:5, Interesting)
Gaming? When will we see it? (Score:5, Interesting)
What options/alternatives do you see Linux gamers having with regards to DirectX emulation for popular Windows games that don't have Linux equivalents? Do you see better support for DirectX API in the near or distant future?
Re:Gaming? When will we see it? (Score:3, Informative)
Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Game's Windows Major Strong Point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Game's Windows Major Strong Point (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I would say that development tools are definitely
Tax Software? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you guys working on a deal with any of the tax software publishers to ensure their software runs under Wine each year?
If not, would you consider it?
Re:Tax Software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Native Widgets (Score:5, Interesting)
Programs running under wine however simply look just like windows programs making them a bit "alien" on unix desktops. Do you think it would be a good idea that programs running under wine look and feel more like native programs?
Transgaming (Score:5, Interesting)
Of all the games they list for compatibility, only 8 games score a "5" for useability (meaning: no glitches, no 'minor irrirations'). That's 8 out of a virtual gazillion.
While some trumpet this as a promising turn in the tide towards Linux gaming (as opposed to waiting for native ports), many feel that it's trading the virtues of one OS in order to subsidize another.
What is Jeremy's opinion on TransGaming's approach to 'Windows apps on Linux' in light of this?
(and thanks!)
WINE on Linux vs. Cygwin on Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that there are two good approaches to running Windows and Linux programs on the same box without switching between operating systems. One is to use Wine under Linux and the other is to use Cygwin under Windows. What are the advantages of each approach?
Why not do the embrace and extend thing to MSFT? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since MSFT is, to some degree, held hostage by a need to ensure compatibility back to Win 98 (or perhaps, Win2k), why not create an independent standard for ISVs industry wide? Freeze a Win32 API set that meets the needs of most ISVs, call it something like OpenWin32, and get the word out that if writing to this API will ensure that software works on BOTH Windows and Wine-like constructs.
Creating such a thing would be expensive - there'd have to be developer tools and compatibility suites created - but it'd not only help crack MSFT's lock on the industry, but it'd be a potential revenue source for Crossover (who better to create such resources?), and help popularize Windows software on non-Win platforms.
My likely misinformed $.02
Jonathan
Re:Why not do the embrace and extend thing to MSFT (Score:3, Informative)
Why? Because unless you are prepared to write better (and unencumbered) documentation for each API, no one is going to bother to read it. After all, why should they when DevStudio offers all the help they need just by pressing F1?
And even if they did read it, it still wouldn't do much good since most software is written against ATL or MFC, or in a language that doesn't even hit Win32 directly. Not to mention that WINE would still have to support the 'broken' Win32 API anyway in ord
Hmm...XWindows (Score:3, Insightful)
What's your itch? (Score:5, Interesting)
wine speed (Score:5, Interesting)
I would have thought that because the linux filesystem is faster then fat32 (the fs I'm using under windows) it would be faster in that respect. In other respect it should be equal.
Where are the current bottlenecks and will it ever be close enough to a windows platform that a wine'd application will run as fast as windows, and without any noticable differences?
(BTW, I'm not complaining, the wine crew have done a fantasic job thus far!)
Re:wine speed (Score:3, Informative)
The filesystem has about nothing to do with game performance, as any game with a chance to run fluently has to keep most of its data cached in RAM.
Re:wine speed (Score:4, Informative)
Most windows games use DirectX for graphics. DirectX is an API, i.e. a set of standard commands programs use. Most graphics cards provide a DirectX driver, so DirectX calls usually exploit the capabilities graphics card as much as possible.
Wine emulates DirectX through OpenGL, which is a different API. This makes for bottlenecks in several ways:
Firstly, the DirectX calls have to be 'translated' into OpenGL ones. That takes some time.
Secondly, there is the OpenGL driver.
OpenGL is unfortunately not as well supported as DirectX by card makers. This means that the capabilities of the card may not be as well exploited, and that some things that could've been done in hardware are performed more slowly in software.
The second bottleneck is the bigger of the two, and there isn't much the Wine team can do about it, except hope that the card makers get better at supporting OpenGL. Nvidia is known for some pretty good work.
The first bottleneck is more directly related to Wine, but that overhead is the smaller of the two.
I'm not certain if you should expect Wine to ever run at the speed of windows, even if it is not impossible. But after all, you are adding another layer between your program and the OS.
But as processors get faster, and games continue to utilize as much of it as possible, you could expect this second bottleneck to get less and less significant, since its size is relatively constant.
(The amount of computation increases faster than the number of system calls)
Re:wine speed (Score:3, Interesting)
What are your plans for the next Crossover Office (Score:4, Insightful)
One major problem I have with people who are currently on windows is: Financial and tax software. Microsoft Money doesn't work in Crossover Office. I know that Quicken 2002 works, but often people don't like switching after settling on a financial suite, and a lot of people use Microsoft Money. Are you planning to try to get these certain problem, and popular, applications to work in the next Crossover Office? I feel that if applications like those seamlessly worked in linux, a lot more people would be able to transition to linux.
Source-level Compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear a lot of talk about binary compatibility with Windows, but not so much about source-code-level compatibility. What sort of efforts, if any, are being made toward letting people trivially recompile existing Windows programs to run natively under Linux/X? Have any commercial software vendors considered taking this approach?
Re:Source-level Compatibility? (Score:3, Informative)
WineLib.
Thanks for playing
Microsoft Source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Viral Licensing Question (Score:5, Funny)
Wine vs. VMWare (Score:5, Interesting)
MS Security Updates Apply? (Score:5, Interesting)
As to those who ask "WHY?": I run Office 2000 and IE under Crossover Office on Mandreake 9.2.1 because many functions at work require the MS apps. Our test report is generated by a template and macros under Word 2000 that do not run under OpenOffice. Several secure web sites I have to access are not supported for any browser except IE. I can't change these things, but I have the freedom to not run Win2K for my desktop OS. So Crossover Office is a great solution for me.
Competitive advantage over Windows itself (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi Jeremy. One of the advantages I don't see Wine exploiting is that Wine doesn't have any financial need to constantly force users to the latest and greatest version of Windows. Microsoft of course is happy to deprecate features, change APIs, and so on. Why doesn't Wine offer different codebases as different "versions" of Windows are needed?
I've seen some of this -- as I setup Wine, I can select what kind of Windows widgets I want to use (95 or 98). But I've also seen some apps work for a while and then stop working as the codebase is updated. If I were able to say "run my BG2 game as Win 98" and "run my Office XP as Win XP" and so on, I could end up with a Windows that is more powerful and more capable than Windows itself. And possibly more stable too, if I can match my software to the version of Windows that ran it best.
Standardized Wine Deployment (Score:5, Interesting)
We need a standard distro supported Wine layout, such as
Similar to Java
Doing this would reinforce the fact that Wine is just one more Unix subsystem, like Java, Mono, Perl, Python, and all the others. Commericial Windows developers, who want to distribute there software for Linux, can integrate such a package layout (RPM building,
I sort of envision this creating an easier division of logic for WineX and Crossover as well. It means the common components of each could be shared. WineHQ could provide the linker, loader, and base framework, as they do, and other projects like WineX, could just provide implementations of Microsoft DLLs, such as DirectX, etc. Intead of what they are doing now (complete forks).
Hmm. Food for thought.
how long for win95-level platform (Score:3, Interesting)
If so, how long do you think it will be before Wine has matured to the point that we finally catch up with Win95? That is to say, I can install Wine and be confident that 99% of the windows apps targetted for Win95 will just work with no fuss? Same question for Win98?
You got it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux shortcomings (Score:3, Insightful)
Work for Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Another way is better (Score:3, Interesting)
run Linux in Windows.
http://www.colinux.org
I like it very much.
I can work in X session in Linux while playing
pinball and have my modem (strange Toshiba software modem, closed source
Works great!
Is Windows Compatiblity a Good Idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
I fear it could "Kill" the linux developer community.
OS/2 was highly windows compatibile, and this lead to people not developing application for OS/2 -- they could just build it for windows, and it would work on OS/2. People never took advantage of the more powerful APIs and other tools available in OS/2.
From a developer point of view, developing for OS/2 made no sense, if I developer for OS/2 -- I get that market, if I developer for Windows -- I get TWO markets.
Do you feel this is a valid concern?
The road to .NET ? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the Wine project's strategy for enabling compatibility with applications that are not "pure
Furthermore, what are the pros and cons of each approach?
WINE cert, or automated test tools (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows vendors want delivery targets - not "date releases" of runtime platforms. I work in Software QA... you tell me you want the app certified on Windows XP SP1, Windows NT4 SP6a, and Windows 2000... I'll do it. Same with Windows 98, ME, and 95.
But you start talking about Linux, and then I have to ask which base distribution and which release of Wine.
The only way to know your application works in Linux + WINE is lots and lots of grueling, manual test effort.
Multiply this by the number of Linux distributions, versions, and that Wine is often distributed by "date releases" not "versions", and it is impossible to support.
The same can be said about Microsoft's systems... wierd things that crash on 98 but work on XP... BUT there are automated test tools. Record, edit, cleanup and you have an automated test library that can be run against every 32-bit Intel version of Windows.
There's no such support for WINE, and there's no developer incentive into manually auditing such a liquid platform.*
*(And that's not an insult.. I happen to think most of the innovation is happening on Linux, but my job's hard enough without putting extra hours testing a platform that won't make or break sales. Without real SQA certification tools, any sensible Technical Support manager won't touch WINE either.)
.NET, WINE, and Mono (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you expect WINE and Mono to move closer together or merge into one project when the next Windows OS ships with .NET as an integral part?
Ignalum doesn't claim MSWindows compatability (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps the story contributer could clarify why he thinks Ignalum is claiming MSWindows runtime compatability?
LGPL Licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
- Stealth Dave
WinFX and deprecation of win32 (Score:4, Interesting)
WINE will succeed... (Score:4, Funny)
1. Code their Windows apps in a way which makes it easy to run them on WINE
2. test / support WINE as a platform
If this happens, XAML and all future Microsoft dominance is doomed. What we will end up with is the common set of easy, sensible Win32 APIs usable across multiple implementations, and the crufty, proprietary, unnecessary crap being ignored.
Doesn't anyone remember the other proprietary OS [bell-labs.com] this happened to?
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, that can't happen FOREVER. -- But until Linux gains widespread support, its the best example of 'using their own weapons against them' that the Linux movement has.
Re:See OS/2 (Score:4, Insightful)
OS/2 ultimately failed because the IBM didn't market it well and couldn't break the barrier that Windows bundling deals formed. Linux won't suffer this same kind of fate in part because nobody and everybody owns it. Linux couldn't die if it wanted to! I don't know if Linux will ever be much on the desktop in the US, but I suspect that in the rest of the world, Linux on the desktop will become the standard. That's the scenario that Microsoft is most concerned about.
Re:OS/2 revival (Score:3, Interesting)
While it's never easy to guess what killed a particular company, one could argue that that has already killed Linux native gaming. [lokigames.com]. If you can play a Windows game by simply rebooting to Windows or emulating them, who will pay a premium price for a special Linux-only package? Who will take the risk of porting? Thus Linux users are unlikely to see in the direct future w
technical solution (Score:3, Funny)
I think to really do it right would require a kernel patch though.