Toolkit

Story: A little Wine with your Linux?

Posted by: Anonymous (Tuesday 7 October 2003, 6:08 PM)

Talking about Wine and Codeweavers to run Windows on Linux without mentioning the more popular and practical Win4Lin is like telling people that if they want to cross the river they need to build their own raft - each time they want to cross - without mentioning that there is a ferry right next door. Sure you have to have a Windows license - but what is REALLY free these days, or in other words, you get what you pay for. The Windows environment, running as a Linux process, gives you the fidelity of user experiece together with the greatest number or commercial and custom applications. And, most users, by denifition of being in transition, already have the Windows license so it is really a matter of being practical - accepting that you will need to use your Windows applications a little longer while you develop solid open source alternatives and operational experience - or being idealistic, and ultimately doomed, by insisting on cold-turkey conversions where you are sure to encounter user resistance and loss of productivity.

Yeah, Wine is noble and open-source and everyone's favorite pet project - but it is hopelessly flawed - the complexity matrix is too daunting. If you want to do the Linux community a service and further Linux on the desktop, you will encourage readers to make the transition in the most pain-free and productive manner possible - by using Win4Lin as a bridge for legacy Windows applications.