Debian win32-loader Goes Official

An anonymous reader writes "After a long process of review and polishing, the win32 loader from goodbye-microsoft.com has finally made its way to official Debian CDs. Latest daily builds of lenny (the development version) are including it, making starting Debian Installer as simple as just a few clicks (OGG). The win32-loader version, now based on GRUB 2, includes new features such as detection and pre-seeding of Windows settings, and is translated to 20 languages."

Huh?

[spuke4000]

Since none of the links in the story explain what the win32-loader is, can anyone explain what it does?

Re:What?

[LinuxGeek]

Yup, including everyone running Ubuntu like me.

Re:Kind of Ironic...

[suv4x4]

For an organization that dislikes Microsoft Corporation and the platforms distributed by them, they seem to spend an aweful lot of time developing software on or for it. [...] With such hypocracy, maybe they can join forces with the Global Warming crowd...

That makes as much sense as calling it a hypocrisy that creating cure against illness require that you have ill subjects to test on.

My first thought is virus

[ACMENEWSLLC]

My first thought following the link is that this is a virus. When I follow a link that says "Good bye Windows" which wants to launch an .EXE with no explanation, what else would I think?

I run Ubuntu in VMware. I thought from the article that perhaps I could run Windows programs inside Linux with this. Another WINE.

Sid

[Anonymous Coward]

>But, more specifically, you're running Debian Sid, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Sid is great - up to date and at least as stable as most non-Debian distros. I think it makes a perfect geek desktop. However, I wouldn't pick it as the first distro for someone coming straight from Windows, especially someone too timid to do the install from a bootable CD.

>I may consider using it on my desktop at home. I want /home encrypted at the very least because that's where irssi/gaim logs are stored, and I'd rather not have a malicious person with physical access to my machine be able to get those logs.

Er, do you have "malicious people" at your house that you trust so little that you feel you need encryption of your logs? If so, you have bigger problems to worry about than privacy of your data.

Re:EULA

[Anonymous Coward]

It always annoyed me that everyone seems to leaves these details out when comparing software.

If you include the time needed to read, study and understand the EULA, then installing binary software on Windows takes way longer than installing from GPL source in Gentoo.
There are only a couple of open source licenses, and they are usually short and easy to understand, while every little piece of closed software comes with a different license that usually changes on every update, or even without notice.

Having a (good) lawyer read and explain the license to you, on every update of every piece of software hurts your TCO badly too. this could easily be the biggest part of the TCO, but is often left out.

I don't have time to to read licenses (and probably could not understand the implications anyway), so I use these simple steps: click "I don't agree". If it doesn't install, add "+gpl" to your google search....

Here's why OSS doesn't attract most Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

The above site doesn't give even the slightest information on what the installer does.

Will it overwrite the Windows partition or will it resize it and install itself on a newly created one in the disk free space? Or will it rather install on a disk image file in the Windows partition? Will it backup my existing data automatically or give me tools to do it by hand?
If you don't give this information on the installer and expect someone to run it on a disk where the user presumably stores his own data, you're a fool.

Editors, please, don't publish stuff like this on /. If we want common people to embrace OSS and Linux we must give proper documentation or we'll achieve a strong well deserved opposition.

Re:Huh?

[westlake]

Only if you choose to do so from within the installer.

--- and only if the installer does what you tell it to do.

I see a zealot's website with two sparse pages of text, some crappy screen shots, and links that lead nowhere in particular.

Nothing that inspires trust in a program that can do unlimited damage to my system and files.