Improving copyright

João Miguel Neves joao at silvaneves.org
Fri May 14 18:22:08 UTC 2004


A Sex, 2004-05-14 às 11:48, Niall Douglas escreveu:
> On 13 May 2004 at 22:48, João Miguel Neves wrote:
> 
> > > > And what's the advantage of using an operation system over another
> > > > that is just a look-alike? -- 
> > > 
> > > If this were true, why use Linux when FreeBSD looks almost identical
> > > and can run Linux binaries?
> > > 
> > Because GNU/Linux is my first of the two and there's no compelling
> > reason for me to change to FreeBSD (the 1000% factor usually used in
> > marketing).
> 
> Which is precisely the same logic why people continue to use Windows. 
> Unless there's an obvious and compelling reason to change, the 
> incumbant has a major advantage.
> 
Fortunately those reasons are appearing and growing (viruses and license
restrictions).

> > > A free software clone of Windows would be immensely useful. For one
> > > thing it brings all the driver & application support Windows gets.
> > > It's also open source with all the advantages that brings like
> > > ability to modify, enhance & study. It would likely cost no money
> > > though that's not so important.
> > > 
> > Why isn't wine enough?
> 
> 1. No binary compatibility with Windows drivers. This is very 
> important to most people

There are some developments like the ndis wrapper driver (which I think
is a bad idea, but we obviously have very different views on how quick
users can drop a platform).

> 2. Few Windows games will run under WINE. And this is unlikely to 
> change as DirectX demands a certain driver architecture Linux isn't 
> moving towards.

You do now that there is a DirectX implementation of Wine and that the
latest work in X.org is improving in taking advantage of the hardware.

> 3. No matter how wonderful WINE becomes, running Windows applications 
> under it will always be a bit of a black art. Most people just want 
> to shove in the CD and make it go. This is why Linux is unsuited to 
> replace Windows in non-server arenas
> 
I don't get why this is impossible? Binfmt and things like nautilus
together with wine can do that behaviour without any problems. I don't
understand why you say it isn't possible.

> > And why do you think reactos will go further
> > than wine on implementing win32?
> 
> Actually ReactOS incorporates WINE, they simply provide a "native" 
> implementation layer - instead of calling Linux functions, they call 
> reimplementations of the NT kernel API.

So they'll also have to help develop DirectX for Wine to that. Nice to
know...

-- 
						João Miguel Neves


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