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Windows Operating Systems Software Linux

Ignalum Linux - A Bridge to Windows? 365

Posted by CowboyNeal from the up-and-coming-flavors dept.
linux slacker writes "Ignalum Linux 'is an intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box and offers unrivaled compatibility with Microsoft Windows' or so says their website. The company is owned by four university students in Ontario, and one of their goals is to allow companies to incorporate Linux into their Windows environment, so users could still run Word, Excel and other popular Microsoft fare."
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Ignalum Linux - A Bridge to Windows? More

Ignalum Linux - A Bridge to Windows?

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  • Or... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Canberra Bob ( 763479 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:19AM (#9081977) Journal
    Companies could run this alongside their Unix workstations to help in their migration to Windows.

    Just a thought!

    • Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:27AM (#9082029) Journal
      The day that companies start worrying about needing a stepping stone to help migrate users from Unix/Linux to Windows is a day most people here will look forward to. For one thing, it will mean that the usability and ease-of-use of Unix/Linux will have surpased that of Windows.

      • Re:Or... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kahei ( 466208 )

        You do realize there has been a thriving market in tools to help with migration from Unix to Windows for many years, right?

      • Re:Or... (Score:3, Informative)

        by jdavidb ( 449077 )

        Actually I've suffered through said migration, and I'm happy to say that the non-technical users were not happy with the change; they much preferred UNIX.

    • Win4Lin (Score:5, Informative)

      by datan ( 659165 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:46AM (#9082094) Homepage
      Personally, I use Win4Lin [netraverse.com]. It's runs windows as either a separate window or in full screen mode (think X Windows but running Windws). I sometimes like to run win4lin in full screen mode and confuse people since it's almost impossible to tell you're running it under linux until you try to do low-level stuff like configuring device drivers & network stuff. It's a really great product; but only runs Windows 98 (heard they're working on Win2K version), and doesn't do directx games. Other than that, everything works -- Microsoft Office, IE, Kazaa, chessmaster etc. I'll be happy to provide more details on request. Oh yes, I have no links to said company other than being a very satisfied customer.

      • Re:Win4Lin (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dioscaido ( 541037 )
        Sounds like VMWare, but with less OS support... I run Gentoo as my base system, and then run multiple VMWare VMs for whatever OS I need (98/2k/XP/other linux flavors). It's quite useful, and with ver. 3 performance is quite snappy, even on my 866mhz system.

    • Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)

      by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <slashdot@NoSPAm.nexusuk.org> on Friday May 07, 2004 @07:09AM (#9082340) Homepage
      Does it have unrivalled compatability with all the worms and trojans too? :)

      • Re: Unrivaled compatability with worms & troja (Score:5, Insightful)

        by elwinc ( 663074 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @10:42AM (#9084132)
        You get your choice on that. There are 2 win4lin choices that affect worm & trojan compatability. One is the choice to have it use its own IP address rather than sharing address and borrowing some ports from the host Linux environment. If you select sharing the Linux address, you lose a few features, but you are less vulnerable. Choice two is where you read your mail. If you choose to read mail with Windows/Outlook, heaven help you! On the other hand, if you read mail in Unix, and never configure any Windows mail client, the email vulnerability is gone. Which ever choice you make, you'll still have to worry about Excel and Word macro viruses. There is still no excuse for not running windows update regularly.

        Another interesting point about win4lin: it uses the underlying linux filesystem. In linux, you can copy a file into or out of the windows directory. This means you can simply tar gzip up your whole windows installation and save different versions of it. I have a basic installation saved on a CD rom, and a few more versions on the hard drive in .tgz files. If I get a virus in Windows, I can go to linux, copy out my documents and spreadsheets, rm -fR the whole infected windows file tree, and untar a clean version. Elapsed time: 5-10 minutes. Then I'd better get the clean version patched before I get re-infected, and save it as my new checkpointed version.

      • WINE Compatibility of Worms and Viruses (Score:5, Funny)

        by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @12:02PM (#9085230) Homepage

        Does it have unrivalled compatability with all the worms and trojans too? :)

        So, there I was, running Red Hat 7.3 on my desktop (yeah, I know, but it was quick and easy to install). I had a friend over who had never seen Linux before.

        I opened KMail. "Oh, and the best part is, it's not running Windows, so you can't get any Windows e-mail viruses!" I boldly double-clicked on an attachment with a .scr extension.

        WINE started up.

        I had just infected my Linux workstation with a Windows e-mail virus.

        Damn thing, actually associating all DOS/Windows binaries with WINE. Kind of undoes at least half of the security benefits of running Linux in the first place. [grumble]

  • Ignalum Linux 9 (Score:4, Funny)

    by RogueProtoKol ( 577894 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:20AM (#9081983) Homepage
    ...what happened to 1 through to 8? :)

  • Another one (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:21AM (#9081992)
    Does the world really need another Linux distribution? I know I'll be modded to hell for this, but why?

    "Better" windows compatability still isn't 100%. And J. R. Sixpack is gonna be as confused as hell when his system which he bought which is "compatible with Windows" won't run some random program he found on a shovelware CD.

    • Re:Another one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tehcyder ( 746570 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:24AM (#9082005) Journal
      If you look at their website, they claim to be able to run Direct X apps without modifying a single line of code. If this was true and more or less all Windows Direct X games could be run under Linux, this would be a radical breakthrough in terms of Linux for the Desktop/Average User.

      • Re:Another one (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:00AM (#9082143)
        Very true. But most of the JR Sixpacks I know don't just play games - they use their computer for all sorts of odd stuff.

        And in many cases the knee-jerk reaction to a new requirement is "find a program to do it" rather than "use the perfectly good existing software".

        So they call you to fix their computer, there's hundreds of crappy little programs on there, which may or may not have ever worked very well, and JR Sixpack's forgotten why he installed most of them in the first place. But most of them installed and ran the first time around. I simply don't see that happening with any "Windows Compatible" linux distro - much of this software is so badly written it only just runs on Windows.

      • Re:Another one (Score:5, Informative)

        by stray ( 73778 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @07:42AM (#9082439) Homepage
        no, as i read it, they say applications developed for THEIR engine will run on linux with opengl and on windows with direct x. from the article:

        > The development of a Multi-Platform 3D Graphics
        > Rendering Engine and the creation of a hardware
        > accelerated Ignalum Linux OS based on OpenGL
        > allows applications/games developed for the engine
        > to run using OpenGL or DirectX

        or do i miss their point?

      • Re:Another one (Score:3, Interesting)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )
        Sounds like a missunderstanding, lets quote a bit:

        The development of a Multi-Platform 3D Graphics Rendering Engine and the creation of a hardware accelerated Ignalum Linux OS based on OpenGL allows applications/games developed for the engine to run using OpenGL or DirectX, running on Linux or Windows, without having to change a single line of code.

        This sounds like they are just developing yet another 3D engine that runs under OpenGL or DirectX, like there are already dozens of them out there, nothing sp

    • Agreed, this is crazy. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RealityThreek ( 534082 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:25AM (#9082018)
      ... not that there's another Linux distribution, but there's yet another that tries to be Windows. Every day, I care less and less if Linux becomes a mainstream OS.

      You want 100% Windows compatability? Run Windows. :)
      • Every day, I care less and less if Linux becomes a mainstream OS.
        I'm sure Bill Gates will be glad to hear it.

      • Re:Agreed, this is crazy. (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        dude, even windows isn't 100% compatible with windows, if it was why do you think so much effort has been put into linux??

        Oh I forgot, the joys of debian install are reward enough.

        • While you got moderated funny, this is a serious point. I have a relatively large collection of Windows games that don't run in recent versions of Window (2K/XP).

          I'm starting to rediscover some of them in VirtualPC on my Mac. It's nice to be able to just save the state of a game as an entire machine state, and go back to it later.

    • Re:Another one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FooBarWidget ( 556006 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:41AM (#9082266)
      Because not everybody has the same needs. Isn't that obvious? What if none of the I-don't-know-how-many distros fits your needs, and then one day, someone comes up with a distro that does *exactly* what you want (not not what other people want)? How would you feel if Slashdotters massively scream "OMG WHY DO WE NEED ANOTHER DISTRO?!", mentally destroy the developers who made that distro, and thus destroying the one distro that exactly fits your needs?

      Denying people to make their own distro is denying them essential human rights!

      • Re:Another one (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NodeZero ( 49835 )
        I agree. Not everyone has the same needs in a computing environment. I don't see why people are like "OMG another linux distro.. jeez", that's like saying.. "OMG another SUV" or "OMG another car" People love having choices. So cars are a lot like linux distros in a way, lots of different models/makes and have a lot of the same "packages". Would you like a cd player? 6 speakers? sunroof? moonroof?

        Why get crazy when someone introduces more choice? I think this world would be pretty dull with only one fast fo

        • Re:Another one (Score:4, Interesting)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @09:03AM (#9082895)
          I don't really like that many choices though. It's like those car commercials where they tell you that On-Star is available on 51 GM models. 51 !!! How am i really supposed to choose what kind of car i want.

          In order for each person to have a distro that fits each person's needs exactly, we would need about 6 billion distros. Instead we should focus on having a few distros to fit general needs of people. One Server distro, one desktop distro, one exactly like Windows distro, and maybe one or two others. Choice is nice, but when you are overwhelmed with choices, you just end up going with what everyone else uses, which means we all end up using windows.

    • J. R. Sixpack? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by John Starks ( 763249 )
      Who is this J. R. Sixpack you keep talking about so condescendingly? You really do need to be more specific when you talk about a class of users.

      It sounds like you're talking about the 18-35 year old male that doesn't know anything about computers. Now, tell me, what software does such a person install from "shovelware CDs?" Let's be honest. Such a user checks email, browses the web, watches video clips, listens to music, and talks on instant messenger. That's it. No one installs extra little apps th

  • uhm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Quai ( 188898 ) * on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:22AM (#9081995)
    If I wanted windows, i would be running windows.

    Slackware is more my thingy :)

    Well, I guess this will provide them with more stable computers atleast.

    Ps, stop making Linux-Windows dists. and start making apps that they could use insted of windows-apps.

    And btw, my english sucks.

  • Gamer's answer? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Raztus ( 745280 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:23AM (#9082001)
    Could this possibly be the answer to gaming on Linux? As an avid gamer, the main thing that has kept me from using Linux as my primary OS is the fact that its support for the games I grew up loving is very limited. While I love the newer open source games, I'm just too attached to my old games to fully migrate to Linux...

  • screenshots (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fewnorms ( 630720 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:23AM (#9082002)
    I am a bit wary of a Linux company that posts screenshots of their 'product' while being root [ignalum.com] every time. What kind of message does this send out ... "Yeah, it's ok to log in as root all the time" ?

    • Re:screenshots (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RealityThreek ( 534082 )
      What kind of message does this send out ... "Yeah, it's ok to log in as root all the time" ?
      Well, actually. Yes. Most people run Windows at home as a member of the Administrators group. That's precisely what they'll want to do here too. And even more than that, they'll want their password saved. (Or even, have no password) Convenience trumps security in the eyes of an average user.

    • after all, (Score:4, Funny)

      by jtwJGuevara ( 749094 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:02AM (#9082148)
      they are targeting people using Windows already :)

    • Unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:18AM (#9082195)
      If you want a Linux for the average user, it's going to have to be that way. Now we all know that su-ing to root is easy for when you need it, but it is something that will piss off and confound most users. You wouldn't think so, but it never ceases to amaze me the how the simplest things (froma geek perspective) can confound normal users.

      This goes double for an underdog OS trying to win converts. It has to offer a user experience at least as good, and probably better. Carrying on about OSS, configurability and monopolies means jack to most users. They want it to be as easy as what they have now.

      So to do that a Linux distro needs to either be root all the time, or break away from the traditonal UNIX security model and offer something like Windows NT's Administrator accounts that, while not all powerful, are capable of doing just about anything.

      This is just the reality of the average individual. I mean, why do you think the government mandidated passive safety restraints in cars? Because LOTS of people don't wear seatbelts. It's not like it's hard to do, takes you 2 seconds to put on. However, I know lots of people that don't unless reminded and even them often don't.

      Extra steps that are different from what they have now (like having to su) are the things that will turn them away. IT'll only take a few things before they whine and say "I hate this, give me Windows back".

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Mr_Silver ( 213637 )
        This goes double for an underdog OS trying to win converts. It has to offer a user experience at least as good, and probably better. Carrying on about OSS, configurability and monopolies means jack to most users. They want it to be as easy as what they have now.

        People will put up with a lot of problems if they are working with something they are comfortable with. Especially when they feel they can be more productive with it than the time taken to learn something else.

        Therefore if you want people to migr

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)

        by apoc.famine ( 621563 )
        The average user will be happy su'ing to root just as soon as someone makes a button on the desktop that reads "make me god". A button which requires a password to make it happen, and after 10 min of inactivity, releases root. Honestly, all joe user really needs is translation into his language.

        "You may not install this software unless you are god."
        joe user: "Humm, this button says it will make me god...needs password....WOW fancy colors!! I must be god!!"

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Informative)

        by Mr.Ned ( 79679 )
        I call bullshit. The user in OS X doesn't run as root, and no one calls that 'unusable' or 'hard'.

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Interesting)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
        I'll get modded flamebait for this but...

        why do you think the government mandidated passive safety restraints in cars? Because LOTS of people don't wear seatbelts.

        Whilest it's true that a very large proportion of Americans don't wear seatbelts, the same is not true around the world - we have a very high proportion of both drivers and passengers wearing seatbelts here in the UK. Infact, AFAIK the airbag system on american cars is different to UK cars because the american system has to catch people who a
    • This is the new day and age where everyone can own a Unix machine and even people who don't have a clue can be a root user.

      Live with it, dammit!

      This is a distro for people who won''t even be opening a shell... ever!

      It's like saying my phone/pda runs linux, but not as root, fortunately! (Really, who cares!) :)
    • I'm no RedHat expert, but doesn't that big red icon in the lower right of the screen there indicate security updates are available that haven't been installed? Sounds like perfect Windows compatibility to me.

  • good, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KrisCowboy ( 776288 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:24AM (#9082008) Journal
    Well, being able to run word and powerpoint sounds great..but 2.4.20 and KDE 3.1 with an old mozilla doesn't sound quite great. Looks like this distro's gonna need lot of upgrade

  • Slashdotted already (Score:5, Informative)

    by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:25AM (#9082014)
    after less than a dozen comments. Google cache: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:UpTSilLJE-MJ:ww w.ignalum.com/+ignalum+linux&hl=en Proudly karma whoring since 2003.

  • I have this terrible feeling of Deja Vu... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:25AM (#9082015)
    Wasn't Lindows going to provide near 100% compatiblity with windows?

    Haven't there been endless attempts at windows-compatible linux distros?

  • Does it also run Sasser? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Advocadus Diaboli ( 323784 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:25AM (#9082016)
    If its really compatible it should be able to run also all those nice programs that are installed over the net automagically. :-)

  • OS/2 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ent ( 88363 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:25AM (#9082017)

    So wasn't this same thing tried with OS/2? Better multitasking and the ability to run Win32 apps just as if you were on Windows? Only the apps never worked as well as they did on Windows and while some things were better - it was basically just a waste of time. I think there are enough Office Like apps that copy Office enough for usability, the focus should be on interop with file formats - I see that as what is really holding adoption back.
    • Wasn't it Win16 apps? I know there were people working on a Win32 emulation, but I'm not sure how well that ever worked.

      Also, didn't IBM license Windows from Microsoft for this? I seem to recall "OS/2 for Windows" or some such product.

      • Re:OS/2 (Score:2, Informative)

        by d99-sbr ( 568719 )
        Yes, it was Win16. And yes, they did have the Windows source code to build it from. I believe this happened because of OS/2 originally being a joint IBM/MS venture.

        As for the name, I never understood why they called it OS/2 _for_ Windows. It wasn't as if it ran on top of Windows, as many people seemed to believe. It simply had a nifty way of letting the Windows kernel run inside OS/2 and display windows as if they were native PM windows.

    • Re:OS/2 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Daneurysm ( 732825 )
      I recall all of my Windows apps running perfectly, if not better...though I had no dedicated DOS/Win install to directly compare it to.

      What I believe did Os/2 in (aside from IBM's hamfisted marketing department)--and this is the same scenario--is that if it runs Windows apps too there is no incentive to develope native apps, 'cuz developing Windows apps means developing for Linux (then Os/2) and Windows at the same time with no added overhead to the development cycle, save for perhaps bug testing.

      Thou

    • Re:OS/2 (Score:4, Informative)

      by tiger99 ( 725715 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @08:22AM (#9082631)
      It was actually Win 3.1 applications, and yes, they did run very much better, and the OS did not fall over several times each day. The split between Bill and IBM happened before Windoze 95.

      The only thing that I remember as being wrong with OS/2 was the installation, at a time when few people had a CD drive, I think there must have been nearly 50 floppies in the box. Admittedly a few of them were not needed every time, but...... Yet the installed system ran beautifully on a 486DX33 with 16MB RAM, and 340MB HDD (SCSI, which Windoze does not handle very well). WordPerfect ran perfectly, also lots of DOS programs, in fact the claim that it was a better DOS than DOS was certainly true.

      Sad that it failed as a result of deceptive tactics by the Monopolist, not for any technical reason. And, of course, the Monopolist got a licence fee, rumoured to be about $20, for the Windoze content, for every copy sold.

  • Bottom line. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Willeh ( 768540 ) <rwillem@xs4all.nl> on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:26AM (#9082019)
    Will these guys be able to offer a valid alternative to the Linspire/ Lindows trainwreck? And will they not get crushed by the 800 pound gorilla that is the MS legal department? (I'm sure they're going after these guys, and 4 college students don't exactly sound like they have a lot of assets). Let's hope they survive, choice is good for us all.

  • Wine/Codeweavers Crossover? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:26AM (#9082023)
    Everything they claim is perfectly able to be done with existing sudo-emulators.

    For instance with Suse when you buy a retail version you get a liscence for Codeweaver's crossover stuff.

    You can then run Office 2000, IE 6.0, Quicktime, Quicken and other applications.

    So if you do want to run Linux but will not because it doesn't have support from your favorite windows apps, then there are options.

    Almost any distro can be made to work. But I suppose it would be convenient to have one that was designed specificly to work with Windows apps right out of the box.
  • Presumably this is done using Wine? Their home page is slash-dotted so I can't check. This page [sourceforge.net] mentions DirectX so maybe they have some deal with TransGaming and are using WineX?

  • Deja vu (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lurker McLurker ( 730170 )
    Didn't Lindows (as they were known then) try to do this then fail miserably? It's not as if this is the first distro to try running Microsoft applications. And what happens when the next version of Office, designed specifically not to work on wine, comes out?
  • Seems like a good idea to me. In making Linux apps run on Windows, it takes the battle to Microsoft's camp and gains exposure.
  • Current google cash posted above doesn't seem to work -- try this one instead people

    http://66.102.9.104/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe =U TF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ignalum.com%2F&btn G=Search

  • Questions to pose: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:33AM (#9082050)
    1) Is Ignalum a source distribution, built from LFs, or an enhanced version of an existing distribution?

    2)Are exe files associated with WINE so Windows installers just work

    3)Kernel version?

    4)Obviously KDE 3.x from the s/shot linked above, but is it a full or stripped-down version?

    5)Are they using a Windows driver wrapper to allow win32 device drivers to function as well?

    • Re:Questions to pose: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:37AM (#9082065)
      I've been a prat.. that isn't KDE. I'm going outside to shoot myself now.

    • Re:Questions to pose: (Score:4, Informative)

      by eugene_roux ( 76055 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @07:57AM (#9082503) Homepage
      1) Is Ignalum a source distribution, built from LFs, or an enhanced version of an existing distribution?

      From the Google [66.102.9.104] cache of their (hopelessly slashdotted) site:

      Updated ISO images of Ignalum Linux 9 Beta 2 are now publicly available on a number of FTP mirrors.

      The Ignalum advanced Internet-sharing and IPv6-over-NAT capabilities are not included in this release, but will be incorporated into the next release of Ignalum Linux which will be based on the latest Fedora Core.

      Looks like it's either a RedHat 9 or a Fedora hack...

  • Winning the battle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:33AM (#9082051)

    In many companies, a much easier battle is to get the company to move, say, for Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird, or IE to Mozilla. Also of course MS Office to OpenOffice. I think this is a much better battle to try to fight than trying to get the whole desktop moved to Linux. Once the company has moved the desktop applications over to open source ones, then it is time to move to Linux.

    Trying to get companies to move to Linux by moving MS Office to Linux is nuts.

    • Re:Winning the battle (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:10AM (#9082169) Homepage
      In many companies, a much easier battle is to get the company to move, say, for Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird

      FOr small companies that use Outlook only as an email client perhaps. Thunderbird is no substitute for Outlook when you start talking about company wide contacts sharing, resource scheduling, shared calendars, meeting invites, voting buttons and all the other things organisations are used to using on a day to day basis.

      You might argue that an email client isn't the place for such features but no-one's going to drop their client that offers them in favour of Thunderbird when no other app is available to offer the missing feature set.

      Like it or loath it, until there's a real Outlook replacement linux lacks the groupware companies are used to and desktop adoption will be restricted.

      • You might argue that an email client isn't the place for such features but no-one's going to drop their client that offers them in favour of Thunderbird when no other app is available to offer the missing feature set.

        Yes, I would argue that a web browser is a much better interface for all those things. So try to persuade your company to do that stuff in the web browser, convert to mozilla, then you'll be able to drop outlook.

        Taking your attitude means that your organisation will never move to Linux on th
    • In many companies, a much easier battle is to get the company to move, say, for Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird

      It is? Have you used Outlook in a corporate environment? Do you know what not only does it support email, but also a calendar, contacts, journal, notes and tasks? That you can book appointments and have it automatically send the requests to them, check availability and add it to their diary, review and manage other people's diaries, act as a delegate for sending mail on other peoples behalf, ass

  • grr. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SinaSa ( 709393 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:38AM (#9082068) Homepage
    It's projects like this that really piss me off.

    Sure, the goal of the project is very admirable. More compatibility, no matter where (as long as it isn't breaking things) is a good thing.

    But why didn't these uni students spend their time helping the projects that are already there. Now, we have an extra project, using existing tools (presumably hacked to be better), and now the existing tools have to find out what hacks were used to make their improvement.

    These guys have put themselves an unwanted middleman in the compatibility/innovation process, and it annoys the hell out of me.

    • Re:grr. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheClarkey ( 546286 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:57AM (#9082133)
      If you'd read the website you would have seen that the goal of the project is to allow the University to showcase the talents of its students and staff.

      What many people forget is that there are a whole lot of people coming out with degrees in comp sci and se, you have to make yourself stand out from the pack. This is a great way for them to do it.

      I doubt this initiative is about trying to make any money from linux, its about making students more employable after they graduate.
    • Yep. Good job if it was for school, but but if they wanted to prove how leet they were they should've just made a set of packages or patches for Debian or whatever. If they want anyone to use their distro, they now have the task of supporting an entire OS based on an obsolete distro. Not smart. Additionaly, if their mods are all that, how long untill they find their way back to WINE and friends for mainline integration? They've done well for a group of students, but they must've missed the class on project

  • Nuked as usual (Score:4, Funny)

    by po8 ( 187055 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:48AM (#9082100)

    "...or so says their website."

    Uh, no. Their website doesn't say anything anymore. Indeed, it's apparently powered by something called "PostNuke".

    /. --- because the net needed a gratuitous Heisenberg effect.

  • Screenshots (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ensignyu ( 417022 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:49AM (#9082104)
    The screenshots look incredibly ordinary. No emulated Windows programs, or even anything that looks remarkably different from Fedora Core. It doesn't look that much easier to use either.

    We'll see how useful it really is when the reviews come out.

  • Support? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:58AM (#9082137) Homepage Journal
    The company is 4 guys who cobbled together a distro out of existing parts.

    They can't even keep their webserver up. What would make anyone think that this support for this new splinter distro will be sustained for any period of time?

    • Re:Support? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kidlinux ( 2550 )
      Do you think these 4 guys have the resources for a webserver and net connection that can handle a slashdotting? Honestly, we've all seen much larger companies get slashdotted.

      So instead of being an asshole and not giving these guys a chance just because they couldn't handle a hogillion requests from all the critical pessimists on slashdot, give them some encouragement. What we're seeing here is the result of the freedoms provided by open source, and everyone should be supportive rather than critical.

      And
      • And yet they have the balls to have a poll on their site asking "Should Ignalum Linux 9 be considered as one of the best free offerings among linux distros?"

  • On another note (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I like the microsoft ads at the top of the slashdot page.

    What is the world coming to?

    Next thing you know Virus Scanners will allow certain virii made buy paying customers... oh wait that already happens.

  • http 404/403 error (Score:5, Insightful)

    by themusicgod1 ( 241799 ) <.jeffrey.cliff. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:20AM (#9082202) Homepage Journal
    In the meanwhile, I wonder how "Free" this distro is. Is it merely a hack-together-proof-of-concept or hack-together-lets-do-some-cool-stuff or is it more of a serious-linux-distro-that-we-can-distribute-under- the-terms-of-the-GPL-or-LGPL?

    I've been wanting to use windows for awhile, but despite shitty software the main reasons are all legal -- I don't want to give microsoft any money, or agree to anything that I havn't read and agree with(namelessly any shrinkwrap EULA). the GPL I have read many times and agree not only with it as a 'oh...kay...fine whatever.' but as honestly agreeing with it in spirit.
    If it's not Free that's fine with me, I still like to see progress in the direction of windows...but...I'll be particularily interested if it is, in fact I'll likely devote a computer or two to it in the future ;)
  • I'm not sure this makes an appropriate stepping stone. What comes under the umbrella of 'Popular Microsoft Fare' which isn't already provided by OO.org in an almost identical fashion to the Microsoft applications?

  • Compatible with windows? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ciupman ( 413849 ) <luis.pinto@gmail ... inus threevowels> on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:39AM (#9082255) Homepage
    Why not make it compatible with all the linux distros around? Like same /etc structure (conf files and init), package compatibility (rpm, apt, tgz, deb, etc), etc, etc. Linux doesn't need windows compatibility, linux needs uniformization, stable libraries, stable and well documented API, a good programming IDE, and less application bloat. Linux needs to draw the attencion of the windows developers, for them to start developing good NATIVE apps for it. Please stop throwing at them the EMACS editor, i might like it .. but a MS Visual Studio user will just laugh at it.

    And to be on topic again, the minute i saw "fedora based" i though to myself ... naaa! If you guys had based your distro in LFS i would be more sympathetic with your "noble" cause!

  • coLinux (Score:2)

    by tobe ( 62758 )
    What about running Linux natively as a service on your Window box:

    http://www.colinux.org/

  • Heated exchange (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2004 @07:24AM (#9082387)
    You should read this [softwarefreedomday.org] exchange between Daniel Ho of Ignalum and Henrick Omma of the OpenCD. Funny stuff, and it gives some insight into how these Ignalum guys approach the OSS community.

    • This is classic! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gleng ( 537516 )
      " ... Based on his belief in Linux, Daniel founded Ignalum Software, Inc. in 2002 and created the Ignalum Linux OS, when it became clear that without some of his input making its way into mainstream Linux, Linux will likely continue to suffer as a high maintainence Operating System."

      Hahaha! Cheers mate! There was me slaving over a hot server, and your mainstream Linux input has made things so much more low-maintainence!

      Good luck with the slashdotting :)
  • There was an article in the National Post yesterday about these guys. Nothing appeared to be even mildly remarkable. They mentioned Transgaming and CodeWeavers as things they were "intending" to include with their Fedora Core based distribution. Basically, they looked like they were very much in beginning stages of their execution of the concept. Surprisingly, their marketing materials looked reasonably professional, so I would guess their skills lay more in promotion and presentation than technical exe

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