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Debian

Porting Debian to... Windows 416

Posted by michael from the not-making-this-up dept.
mike_sucks writes: "The first step to porting Debian to the Win32 platform has been made - dpkg is compiling under Cygwin. Check out the post on debian-devel and the Debian GNU/w32 port's site." Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.
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Porting Debian to... Windows More

Porting Debian to... Windows

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  • At first (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PigeonGB ( 515576 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:43AM (#2653587) Homepage
    I thought this was an odd idea.
    Why would anyone want to port an OS to another OS (don't start with "Windows is not an OS, please!")?
    Then I saw what this all meant.
    If people can get used to using Debian tools and programs on Windows, then they won't be nearly as nervous about using them in a GNU/Linux environment.
    Bravo! I can't wait to see how that turns out.
    • I'm not sure I agree. The Debian tools aren't too scary; it's the Debian install that's a bear. If there was a better installer for Debian I garauntee many more people would use it. It really is terrible if you haven't installed Debian a dozen times. Most people would give up on Debian before the install is complete and just use Mandrake or something. Are there any private projects to provide an alternate isntaller for Debian?
      • Progeny Linux [progenylinux.com] was working on just such a thing. too bad they canned Progeny Debian [progenylinux.com].

        -sam
      • Yeah, seriously. The only reason I don't use Debian is because the install sucks. I mean it really sucks. I used to use RedHat because the install was SO easy, but then I switched to Mandrake. Mandrake had the hardware support, the packages, and as far as I've seen, the easiest most powerful linux installer. But I really like the way debian runs after it's installed. Debian on Windows would be cool though, because then I wouldn't have to restart my computer to do a CS lab. And I could still have my mandrakes.

      • Re:At first (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Daniel ( 1678 )
        Are there any private projects to provide an alternate isntaller for Debian?

        I'm not sure what you mean by "private", but Joey Hess (joeyh) is working on a complete replacement for the current installer, which hopefully will be used for the release after woody. (at which point the current installer will be taken out back and shot, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief)

        See Adam di Carlo's recent interview [slashdot.org] for more information on the installation system.

        Daniel

        • Re:At first (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Azog ( 20907 )
          Can someone PLEASE explain to me why the Debian people don't just take the Mandrake, or SuSE, or Red Hat installers and modify it to install Debian?

          Hmmmm?

          Writing another installer is just stupid. It's like writing another word processor.

          And what's worse is that it misses the whole point of having Free Software! Debian people should know better!
    • ...is when the team announce the latest Unstable release, Windows users will feel right at home :)

    • Re:At first (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's amazing how the slashdot people can look at the positive side of everything...

      When tools make it possible to run Windows software under Linux, it will make people switch to Linux, as they can still run there Windows software.


      When tools makes it possible to run Linux software on Windows, it will make people switch to Linux becourse they will be familier with the software anyway.


      Well have to give you credit for the spirit, if not the logic.

      • Re:At first (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aozilla ( 133143 )

        When tools make it possible to run Windows software under Linux, it will make people switch to Linux, as they can still run there Windows software.

        When tools makes it possible to run Linux software on Windows, it will make people switch to Linux becourse they will be familier with the software anyway.

        And I agree with both. The only real reasons I can see for not using Linux instead of Windows is 1) interoperability, and 2) ease of use. Once you've gotten over these two hurdles, you're going to get a mass exodus out of Windows and into Linux. Both of the above (porting Windows apps to Linux and porting Linux apps to Windows) increase interoperability, and IMHO help Linux.

      • Re:At first (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

        The trick, of course, is to get users hooked on Free Software. Whether they do this by running Windows with some Free Software programs, or Linux with some proprietary software the point is that they are running Free Software.

        The more exposure people have to Free Software the better. Once you start using one piece of Free Software you become more and more likely to experiment with other pieces of Free Software. After all, most Free Software packages rely on other Free Software packages for extended functionality. As users start realizing that there is an entire world of useful Free Software many of them will start to migrate in that direction.

        The reason for this is quite simple. Free Software is a lot less expensive.

        That's why porting Free Software to Windows has the potential to be a net win for Free Software advocates. It is advertising the entire GNU system to the people who would benefit most from a switch, end users.

    • Why would anyone want to port an OS to another OS (don't start with "Windows is not an OS, please!")?

      This is essentially what Sun did with Java. It didn't exactly work out, but debian has the advantages of 1) being free, and 2) being fast. Wouldn't it be great to have compiled software that you can write once and run anywhere?

    • Re:At first (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Daniel ( 1678 )
      If people can get used to using Debian tools and programs on Windows, then they won't be nearly as nervous about using them in a GNU/Linux environment.

      I don't think this is true -- my observation is that Cygwin makes Windows bearable enough for people that they don't see it being worth the effort to install a full Linux system.

      That said, I have been forced from time to time to use a Windows computer, and so I think this port is a useful thing, although I'm very uneasy about Debian officially supporting it. (something that looks unlikely to happen right now anyway)

      Daniel

  • The first step... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After this I recommend they work on getting the Linux kernel to work, then maybe a Windowing system, XFree might do the trick, then the various utilities that Debian is known for.

    Wait a minute, that's not Windows at all...

  • Walking arse first (Score:3, Funny)

    by KarmaBlackballed ( 222917 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:47AM (#2653624) Homepage Journal
    Isnt this backward? Should we be porting software from Windows to Linux(e.g., WINE) instead of from Linux to Windows? Come on, Windows has enough good software already. Why spend time porting the useful stuff from Linux into the busted Windows environment?

    This makes it easier for people to stay in Windows. I'm gonna do some research because I suspect Bill G. must be behind this.
    • As an another post states, to make a user comfy with linux, you introduce the idea in a safe environment (I'm not saying windows is "safe", but some people believe it is). If you can set it up so that the user is in windows AND using linux, they are more likely to try it, and become comfortable with linux.

      After a while, you introduce them to linux without the windows, and they are comfortable with the idea, and may never return back to windows.

      I think its a clever way to get people using linux.

      This is explanation is assuming some people would be scared if they had all their windows software installed on linux, because they aren't comfortable with the environment, which I think is a safe assumption.
      • I think there is less opportunity here than some people think. Most of the soccer moms do not use Linux on their home PCs because of the following reason: It was not installed on her machine when she purchased it at Circuit City with 4 years of AOL service for the family to balance the checkbook and surf the net.

        That's it. Nothing more. Have the big consumer outlets sell PCs with Linux and a useful office suite running in Gnome or KDE with an Outlook clone and you have them then.

        Bring the good Linux apps into Windows? Where is the motivation for the retailers to gamble on Linux if everytime that rare soccer mom asks for that "Linux thing her kids told her about" the sales person can say, "Ohh, you don't have to do that. It all runs under Windows too!"

    • Who is this 'we' you speak of? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:26AM (#2653855) Homepage Journal
      Should we be porting software from Windows to Linux(e.g., WINE) instead of from Linux to Windows?

      Really, who do you mean by 'we'? This may be a shock to you, but there are some people who actually *ghasp* like windows, myself included. The fact of the matter is, for me, A lot of things are just easier for me to deal with in windows then in Linux, even setting up and running Apache, because I'm more used to it. I have a little Linux box for playing around with, but for the most part I like windows.

      I mean, the driving force of Open source software is people doing stuff because they feel like doing it. people doing stuff because they want to. You can't just say "we should work on WINE for accomplishing our political objectives" and then have Everybody magically want to spend their time reimplementing Microsoft skank-nasty APIs

      This may bother you, but everything on Debian is Open Source. And that means that you can take it and do whatever you want to with it, including porting it to windows.

      If this is a success, there's a good chance I'll be running it.
      • This may bother you, but everything on Debian is Open Source. And that means that you can take it and do whatever you want to with it, including porting it to windows.

        This may shock you but you cannot "take it and do whatever you want to with it". I would receive a Richard Stallman rectal exam if I were to take any of the GPL components of Debian and utilized them in a commercial product without releasing the source. I have done some stupid, dumb things in my life like bungie jumping, walking in certain neighborhoods in New Orleans after midnight and running a NT webserver but there is one thing I would never dare to do. I would never do anything that caused Richard Stallman to come in contact with me. Now that's scary.

        Respect the GPL or meet a fate worst than death!

      • Many of us live in free countries where we can dissipate Linux's desktop momentum by making Windows a platform that runs everything. Don't get your panties in a bunch, this is happening and no one is going to pass a law to stop it.

        The WE that I refer to is those people that would like to see Linux become a real alternative for every business and home user for every purpose. Not just a niche OS that is almost ready for business desktop use.

        The people that fall into the WE category (not you) should not get too excited in a positive way when good Linux apps are delivered into the Windows OS. The folks that should get excited are the ones that want Windows uber alas.

  • The snake eats its tail... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:48AM (#2653633)
    This port is meant to run on any win32 implementation. Some win32
    implementations are free (wine, reactos), others are not (microsoft).
    free implementations are of course recommended and cygwin is proven
    to work fine on wine.


    Let's see... Install Linux, configure WINE and then....
    Install Linux!

  • One Word (Score:4, Informative)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:48AM (#2653636) Journal
    VmWare...

    Why go through the hassle of porting it, when you can just run it on any OS you like using VmWare...???
    • Why go through the hassle of porting it, when you can just run it on any OS you like using VmWare...???

      Because once you've ported it, the expense involved in using it is over and done with, and you've got every possible piece Open-Sourced.

      VMWare is even more expensive than Windows and is closed-source.

  • w32? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why not GNU/Windows?

    • Re:w32? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Make ( 95577 )
      they were thinking about calling it Debian/win32, RMS told them 'win32' sounds like someone is winning - obviously, nobody is ;)

  • I don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)

    by beth_linker ( 210498 )
    What's the point of the project? Are they porting specific tools that aren't already available with Cygwin, or are they reinventing the wheel? If I've got Cygwin running on my Win2K box, what extra benefits do I get from using Debian?

  • This is a good, if not fun, idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nirvdrum ( 240842 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:51AM (#2653656) Homepage
    I remember when this was first discussed on debianplanet, and a lot of people started flipping out. There's simply some places (such as the work office), where one is forced to use a Win32 OS, and cannot dual-boot. Besides, dual-booting is a PITA. If I can "dpkg -i" a package under cygwin, and get to using the gimp VS photoshop, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

    At best, one can say that this will deter people from linux. But then again, everyone loves linux because of all the OSS available for it. And if the whole goal is to promote OSS, why neglect the largest user base? Then when people get sick of Windows, they can convert to FreeBSD or Linux or whatever without there being a huge learning curve involved.

    I don't think I really agree with the port being called w32 though. win32 is not a moniker that promotes Windows as a winner, it's just the first syllable of the word, just like a lot of nicknames are formed. I wish RMS would spend more time coding than trying to be a politician :)

  • Yes please (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree&davidglover,org> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:52AM (#2653659) Homepage
    If they're doing what I think they're doing, this would be a very nice thing.

    One of the great advantages of the *nix platform that Windows has never really been able to match has been it's remote access capabilities.

    I run Windows on my desktop at home, but I also run a Debian GNU/Linux server, for the sole reason so that when I'm away from home, I can telnet into it and read my mail, use IRC, etc.

    I even have a Nokia 9210 [nokia.com], and using it I can telnet to my Debian box and then use IRC from anywhere in Europe, Asia, or indeed anywhere with a GSM 900/1800 signal. (Basically, anywhere except USA. Suck. :)

    Being able to do "apt-get install telnetd irc" on a Windows box would be very nice indeed!

    • You actually can. I run win2k at home, as well, and I have cygwin's server package running sshd. It's a beautiful and sick thing, being able to ssh into my home box from work.

      Just the other night I got XFree86 running on my windows box, but I'm still having a whore of a time getting KDE to run (the tarballs for it suck, bigtime. they're missing a bunch of DLLs that one needs for success)
    • VNC [att.com] If your nokia has a web browser, you can control your windows desktop from anywhere.

      Actually, windows 2000 has a telnet server if you choose to enable it. The problem is that all files are basically a+rwx in windows and you have to setup ACLs on file access for the whole system if you have any other people with log-on rights to the system if you want to have any kind of security. I'm not talking about share security, if any users telnets in they can "DIR" their way anywhere on the system and do whatever they want with the files. If you don't have anyone else using the machine it's not a problem though.

      The other problem, of course, is that you just can't really do that many on windows with just the command line :(

  • inflection point for free software ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:52AM (#2653661) Journal
    is when people start griping for commercial software as easy and smart as their free stuff.

    Yes, this already goes on sometimes (in server rooms, say), but it's still funny and as much a contrarian in-joke in many cases as it is a genuine sentiment. When it stops being funny -- well, that *will* be funny ;)

    I'd like to see Red Hat & c. (IBM is doing this a bit) play up the HUGE upgrade free software means when it comes to complexity, ongoing costs, etc.

    Ongoing costs for software rental / licensure (and remember, companies don't *buy* most software, esp. from Microsoft -- they purchase quite restrictive licenses) are like holes in your money bag. From a business standpoint, they'd better be doing a lot of "making your memos more productive" to make up for it.

    The more software that can be apt-get installed, the flatter the (overstated) learning curve becomes. Someone will probably make sure that Windows has a cute apt-get wizard too ;)

    timothy

  • Sometimes the OS doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:53AM (#2653672) Homepage Journal
    The folks here who *have* to run windows, don't really, they *have* to run certain windows apps, because they are a defacto standard in the relevant application domain and the linux apps aren't quite up to par yet and WINE isn't quite ready for that app.

    They'll never willingly quit Windows cold-turkey, but if they can start to run debian/gnu/linux (pick one) apps on Windows, eventually the linux apps will overtake the quality of the windows apps and the people will then be using them and have no reason not to switch (cost, cost, cost).

    I used to think that linux on the desktop wasn't a goal worth persuing at the moment - then I realized every Windows/Office purchase is money for Microsoft to use on its quest to eliminate linux.

    • The OS Hardly Ever Matters.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:22AM (#2653832) Homepage Journal
      Except for some people who think choosing an operating system of importance equivalent to choosing a religion most of us don't care what OS we use. Instead most people care about what apps they can run on a given OS. My favorite apps/tools are Emacs, Perl, Internet Explorer, WinAmp, ICQ, ssh, bash, grep and Word. Windows runs all of them with the least amount of hassle and that's why I use it. This is true for most of the computer users in the world, the OS that the app happens to run on is incidental.

      I used to think that linux on the desktop wasn't a goal worth persuing at the moment - then I realized every Windows/Office purchase is money for Microsoft to use on its quest to eliminate linux.

      Short of acquiring a genie [cambridge.org] and using their three wishes to wish away Linux, Open Source, and college classes on operating systems there's no way that anyone can eliminate Linux. Most reasonable people realize this (including Linus) and rightfully don't see Linux vs. Microsoft as some sort of war that should be won at all costs.
    • I suppose that it really is about the apps, but the one I'm thinking of is the Novell Client logon application. I understand that it was working back in Linux 2.0, but it's been broken as long as I've been using Linux. This means that I can use Linux at home, but not at the office. No printer, not network server, etc. (TCP/IP gets through though). So periodically I try out a new distribution at work, and then I go back to using Win95.

      As for Debian ... I wonder: Can I generate stand-alone applications that I can share with others using Debian in a CygWin environment? I can with CygWin (when it doesn't get confused ... SmallEiffel has been giving me problems recently).

      P.S.: That Win95 part means that X Window doesn't work. There may be commercial ones that do, but the CygWin port doesn't work on my computer. So Debian would be just the text window install.

    • Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <.syberghost. .at. .syberghost.com.> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:34AM (#2653906)
      The folks here who *have* to run windows, don't really, they *have* to run certain windows apps, because they are a defacto standard in the relevant application domain and the linux apps aren't quite up to par yet and WINE isn't quite ready for that app.

      That is not true of all the folks here who have to run Windows.

      Some of them indeed do have to run whatever OS their company has selected, and don't think that what OS happens to be on their computer is reason enough to quit their job.

    • Re:Sometimes the OS doesn't matter (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      eventually the linux apps will overtake the quality of the windows apps

      Waiting...tapping foot...still waiting....yawn...
    • reminds me of using unix based apps on OS/2. When given the choice of telnetting to a box and running ircII or using it on OS/2 natively the choice was obvious.

      I know that there are better examples of this now (as BitchX -- ick runs on Windows natively already) but you get the idea.

      I had been using cp, mv, rm, etc for years on Windows b/c I was so accusomted to it I couldn't get out of the habbit of doing mv instead of move.
    • If I'm developing a program spec'ed to run under windows, developing it under linux is asking for trouble. When I'm testing, I really need to be testing on the same platform that the users will be using.

      I could write code on linux and test and debug on windows, but I'm not that much of a linux zelot, I'd rather spend time coding than switching OS's

  • Good news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @09:55AM (#2653679) Homepage
    As an experienced (~10 year) developer who has spent most of his time in the Win32 world and a little bit in the *nix court, this is good news for me.

    A lot of people think Windows is inflexible because it does not have a layered windowing system ala X, but this is not an issue if someone wants to write a shell for the OS to replace Explorer (see http://www.geoshellx.com for a very basic implementation). It's not easy, but it's not forbidden or blocked by the OS architecture in any way. If someone wants to bring this type of good stuff to Windows, I think everyone will be more than happy.
  • I can't imagine he would be too happy with GPL licensed software being ported to a proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft. But then again, after Fink utilized GPL software for porting to Mac OS X (half free source/half proprietary), this is not too far fetched of an idea.

    • Uh, why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 )
      the GNU system ran for half a decade on commercial UNIXs. It was designed on commercial UNIXs, this is really nothing new, other then the fact that its got a different interface

      Of course, who knows how Stallman would actually feel. He opposed GNU work on the original Macintosh, and he clearly isn't the most rational man...
  • I think a lot of people who are already using Cygwin (for instance if they have no other choice at work than to work with windows) will be very pleased with this.
    Apt-getting all your software in stead of compiling and recompiling and recompiling everything would be a huge improvement. Lots and lots more software will get availible for the cygwin users this way...

    I will follow this with great interrest
  • Please take a breath, it's only dpkg compiling under cygwin. Nothing more.

    Debian under w32 ... Look at the HURD and tell me what it is that you see.

  • "Debian" or "Linux"? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jbeamon ( 208826 )
    I feel this has been done. There's already a bash-for-windows and a ksh-for-windows, both of which come with a number of common Unix tools. There's vmware itself. It strikes me that a lot of "Debian tools" are simply GNU tools, freeware, open source software, and Linux ports of historical Unix tools. I visited the sourceforge "homepage" for this, and it was a few paragraphs about getting windows users accustomed to using "Debian tools". I did not get the feeling this was anything new or unique, or that it was Debian-specific, except for maybe the apt-get system. That's about it. Am I missing something?

    --
    -j

  • I don't think this is good.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:00AM (#2653709) Homepage
    By giving Windows developers access to the great development tools of Linux/Unix (Cygwin et all..) I think you make it easier to have developers stick with windows than switch.

    I worked at a small software house that had a linux "mainframe" . Developers machines were dual boot Linux/NT. The NT had a Xserver and once Cygwin was installed on the NT side almost noonne booted into linux ever..WinCVS and SAMBA, TCL for windows, emacs, perl and Java, X made it super easy to do development on NT as opposed to using those tools in the native linux world. once compenets were build they could be loaded onto the linux machine and tested.

    I think it may make some more open to using linux, but not as many as those who stick it out with windows longer because the tools are almost the same now.

    • Why is this bad? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mindjiver ( 71 )
      How can using Free Software on NT ( or any other non-GNU system ) be bad? I just think its great that there are tools that make a mixed development enviroment work smoothly. I fail to see how this is bad..

      Linux isnt the answer to all the questions out there and its really nice to use familiar tools no mather what platform your on.

    • Any application that you get away from MSVC is one that is easier to port to Linux.

      Given my druthers, I wouldn't reboot either. What needs improve ment are the screen builders and the report writers. Glade is promising. "Nearly useable" in practice. Report writers? The category seems to be missing.

      I understand that MS got their report writers from CrystalReports, but it works. And their Screen Builder is pretty good too. IBM does that as well, in their Visual Age Java (though Linux releases seem slow). But with Linux the best choice is to write out a tex or docbook file that you hand design, and then have a shell script create the report. Doable, but quite clumsy. And the Glade Screen Builder just isn't really quite adequate (though I LIKE the multi-language feature! Using the same screen builder for C, C++, Ada, Eiffel, and Python is obviously the way to go. [I just wish that Ruby was on the list]). Unfortunately, most of the languages seem to have their build modules broken, so all I can generate is C (and this is on a vanilla install from Red Hat). And even when it works ... being able to place the cell where you want it, to drag it around, and to resize it by dragging with the mouse is so obviously better than ...

      Well, perhaps I'm just not sufficiently used to it. I rarely really want a dialog that interfaces to C.
      .
  • The biggest problem with ports of GUI apps to Windows is the requirement of an X server. If Xlib could be ported to Windows in such a way that it draws to Windows directly instead of using the X protocal, then other X toolkit and applications could be ported-over, and would seem more like native apps.

    -Karl
  • Right now, Cygwin has a working version of XFree for win32 that now works on all Win9x/NT/2K/XP playforms. This is great news as it's also very much free (as in beer) compared with other X server solutions for Win32.

    However, Cygwin's default install method is that you have to download about 20 files from their site, extract them, then use a script to get everything installed right. Not impossible nor difficult to follow, but is mind-numbing. (The split of packages is similar to that for XFree in other distros; the engine, the fonts, the programs, the libraries, etc. Cygwin just tends to trim packages down to the floppy 1.44M level so some of the packages have multiple parts).

    Having dpkg available, with cygwin as the sources, will allows them to distribute the XFree files as a single task, making the job of installing them that much easier as well as keeping them up-to-date. Two commands (update and upgrade), and one can be set!

    • Having dpkg available, with cygwin as the sources, will allows them to distribute the XFree files as a single task, making the job of installing them that much easier as well as keeping them up-to-date.

      Wouldn't it have been easier to zip the files and create a GUI installer using one of the various tools available for doing just that?

      • Wouldn't it have been easier to zip the files and create a GUI installer using one of the various tools available for doing just that?

        Open Source GUI installers such as... ? I've heard some good reviews of the installer GNUe uses called "Inno setup", but deb packaging is probably superior and less time-consuming for these kinds of tools. I think integration with the Add/Remove control panel would be absolutly killer though. the latest versions of apt-get work with rpm, too, so don't think RPM vs DEB crap.

        • http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/gnue20011124_4.html#3
        • http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm

        -l

  • The GNU meme must flow... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by noser ( 114367 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:09AM (#2653769)

    My first exposure to the GNU project was through programs like GNU chess ported to Windows, and the djgpp C compiler for DOS. I think that as people are given the opportunity to see that GNU software solves their problems, they will become more interested, leading to more interest in Linux and GNU software in general. This could be a great way for more of the public to "stick their toes in the water".

  • The Application is King (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quixotal ( 132989 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:13AM (#2653786)
    I use native win32 ports of gnu tools [weihenstephan.de] daily. Why? Because they are small and just work. The application is king. I don't really care where I run it. quixotal

  • Computers are Tools (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

    The whole idea of open source software is that people can extend it to do the things they want to do. In other words, it allows them to get the job done in the way they want to do it.

    Why do people get upset when others extend the capabilites of a system in a way that they find useful? If you don't like losing control over a piece of software - don't release the source.
    • No, no, no... Computers are not tools, they are sacred instruments of religious worship. Every Windows CD microwaved is a sacrifice to Linus the Great. There is no god but Linus. Praise the Penguin! Grovel before the Beatified - RMS, AC et al. Soon the Kingdom of OSS is to come, and the Mighty Redmond will perish. The geek shall internet the Earth.
  • ..is that they recommend to do all this "...with free implementations of win32 (Wine)...".

    This is plainly hilarious.

    I know that cygwin will compile under Wine. But using it under Wine to run dpkg ... the idea is just beyond my mind!

    Let me quote the whole parragraph:

    This port is meant to run on any win32 implementation. Some win32
    implementations are free (wine, reactos), others are not (microsoft).
    free implementations are of course recommended and cygwin is proven
    to work fine on wine.

    Who had the idea in the first place? Terry Gillian [fortunecity.com]? Pratchet [amazon.co.uk]? Benny Hill [vgernet.net]? Jay Leno [nbc.com]? Chiquito de la Calzada [m3d.uib.es]?

  • Read the mailing lists ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:23AM (#2653833) Homepage Journal
    First off like any linux mailing list whenever you make mention of the word Windows you piss off the die-hards. So that really didn't surprise me at all, but then for some unknown reason they make mention of RMS.

    I know RMS is the God of GNU, but he is NOT the deciding factor on a damned thing when it comes to peoples ports. If it's in compliance with the GPL (source code is re-released) then there is no reason why you can't make a Windows 32 port of debian.

    Looks too me like all that's been accomplished thus far is a ./configure, make to Debian Base inside Cygwin, no big deal, but you HAVE to have some place to get your feet wet.

    Then we hear the rants about how sourceforge is the devil? Since when? I would love to see another FREE (as in someone else gets stuck with the bill) For LOTS of bandwidth and lots of server space. Not to mention free web-hosting, Free CVS, Free advertising, and a whole lot more ... so what if they're owned by VA ... so's /. ...

    So where do I stand in my views of Debian ... Like GNU I will not let the views of a few define how I feel about a project as a whole, but it pisses me off and makes me want to kill the whole thing and go to slackware (ohh yeah ... BTW, a little FYI ... apt-sucks ... no one is allowed to make fun of redhat any more ...) And the only reason people from slack like to compile from source ... SIMPLE ... you _can_ compile from source on slack ... try outta the box compiling on RH or Mandrake ...

    This Victory Strengthens The Soul

  • Some people.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by atyr ( 531369 )
    Ok I could be wrong but has anyone noticed on those posts ANYTHING from Branden Robinson that didnt have some uber hacker wannabe slang in it? just a little curious as to the intellectual integrity of some of the people involved in the distro ;D

    Why is it that people even care. I wonder, what is it going to bother people if anything is ported. I dont think its quite made for them to use now is it? If you dont want to use something DONT! Maybe someone NEEDS windows for something. Like i believe it was an earlier slashdot article about spell checkers and linux. Editing atm is superior on windows, why use windows the way it is if you can use apps you like. Just like wine, some people want the stability of linux but like some windows apps. Why are we being so close minded. I dont want to hear any "oh its M$ cra..." Think beyond the box, realise that not everyones needs are the same as yours. This does not show my personal opinion. I personaly think its a waste of time and everything should all be on some type of unix varient =] but its just no rational to think this will happen. We need to learn to deal with this, and bringing linux to windows in more ways than one is a step in the right direction.

  • pre-installed @ OEM's (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Agent Drek ( 18979 ) <derek.marshall@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @10:34AM (#2653909) Homepage
    maybe it's too hard for OEM's to preinstall RedHat or Debian (insert your fav here), but once they are allowed to 'modify' the default windows desktop (after the court case) then I wonder how many OEM's could be convinced to preinstall cygwin or debian? The results would be a generation of kids growing up on gcc, bash, etc. That would be cool.

  • WINE on Win32 (Score:2, Funny)

    by DVega ( 211997 )
    I'm dying to see WINE ported to Win32! :-)
  • Has anyone read this: msg01641.html [debian.org]

    Ben Pfaff wrote: > Last I heard, RMS really hates the moniker "win32" because it has > the string "win" in it, implying that there's something winning > about Windows. I suspect he'd like w32 better than win32 for > what that's worth. During Emacs 20 development, rms insisted on changing all the elisp win32-* variables to w32-* for precisely that reason, so it seems he's happy with w32. Craig Jesus Christ. Somebody needs to get a life.

    • As my mother said (speaking about activism):
      "You have your tree shakers and your jelly makers."

      Translation:
      You have your people who make a whole lot of noise and get everything all shaken up. These people are often zealots who are viewed by most rational people as being partially out of their gourds.
      Then you have the people who "gather the fruit," so to speak, of the zealots efforts and make something constructive out of them.

      You need both types. The tree-shakers are often willing to push boundaries and to take risks that might seem insane, but that in the end serve to advance the cause as a whole. But people rarely listen to nut-jobs, it's up to the level-headed people to transform the work of maniacs into something suitable for everyone (and to filter out the psychotic ideas).


      So pay no heed to RMS. He's nuts, and most people recognise that, but thanks to his extremeism, lots of good things have come about (only due to the people who know when to listen to him and when to tune him out).

  • A lot of people are saying "why port Free stuff to windows?" or "why would you want to do this?"

    Well, some of us still "have" to run windows sometimes. That's just how it is.

    I've been using cygwin (in the larger sense, not just the .dll and one or two apps) and it is GREAT. A real shell, nano (my favorite editor), grep, sed, less, tail, uniq, which, etc. It is all packages in a nice installer (afaik it is just called "setup.exe") which reminds me of the BSD ports system.

    The point is, when you are "stuck" with windows the more "real man's" tools available the better!

    OTOH, it bugs me a little that this seems to be under the name Debian, which stands (in my mind anyway) for 100% free, no fillers or meat by-products.

    -Peter

  • Speaking as a user with no Linux experience... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...you Linux proponents should be *ecstatic* over this! Seriously! I want to mess around with Linux and such, but I'm not going to go through the hassle of dual booting- but seeing something like this- I'm like hmmm, well maybe I'll give it a shot, so...

    ...next thing you know I might just be using various Linux apps, now I'm getting use to all of this Linux stuff, say this is pretty cool...hmmm maybe I don't need Windows after all...

    See what I mean? If I can have access to Linux software from my Windows computer then eventually I might just kick the Windows habit- at the very least I'm using more OSS and am more likely to support it in the future.

    This could well be my gateway into the world of OSS!

  • So much for OS neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MouseR ( 3264 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @11:19AM (#2654122) Homepage
    Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

    It's interesting to note that, while porting anything TO Linux is acceptable, porting Linux to something else irritates some.

    I think this is something positive. If you can give users of other platform a taste of your own cooking, chances are they'll come for a full meal at some point.

    Or at the very least, make them taste something else and open up their minds.

    I see this as a teaser, and a pretty good way to get some free software (like Gimp), other than the OS itself, a chance to open up to a new crowd.

  • How 'bout BSD? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Eck ( 2901 )
    What I'd like to see is a Debian distro on the BSD kernel. They've got a HURD distro, which is very cool. If they're trying to show how unbiased they are, wouldn't it make more sense to help heal the smaller divisions with the BSD community first? Not to mention that it would be extremely handy to be able to do apt-get updates on a BSD pf firewall...

  • According to the Cygwin [cygwin.com] web site, Cygwin is "a UNIX environment for Windows...a UNIX emulation layer".

    So I must raise a question of symantics: Is this technically "porting" or mearly something akin to "cross-compiling"? After all, it's not compiling under Windows but a Unix facade over top of Windows?

    • AFAIK, Cygwin != Linux (exactly). Code that compiles cleanly on a stock Linux (be it Debian, Mandrake, etc) is not guaranteed to do the same under Cygwin. While Cygwin provides a Unix-like environment, it has its idiosyncracies which may require some hand-hacking, be it in Makefiles, or in the code itself.


      So I'd say that while some of the code may not require any modifications, there is probably enough tweaking involved that I would count it as porting.

      • Makes sense you looke at it that way. So, technically it's porting Debian to Cygwin -- but since Cygwin only runs under Windows anyway..

        Sir, I am now enlightened.

        Imagine, actually having an intelligent reply on Slashdot. Who'd a' thunk it? :)

  • Who is this really about? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Proud Geek ( 260376 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @12:07PM (#2654316) Homepage Journal
    Is this about doing good for the users, promoting their freedom to run software on whatever platform they happen to be using?

    Or is this about confining users by forcing them to use proprietary software just because their OS is proprietary, in the name of the ongoing battle between free and proprietary software?

    If so, this reeks of exactly the same thing as the DMCA, geek profiling, and dozens of other violations of our rights. You have to be very careful when fighting the enemy that you don't become the enemy.

    Philosophically, this is the question of, "Does the end justify the means?" I don't have the space to get into that whole debate here, but the short answer is that before you squish a project like this, you better be damn sure it does.

  • Why are people so against this?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 3141 ( 468289 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @12:08PM (#2654320) Homepage
    Most of the posts here seem to be upset that Debian can now be run in a proprietary environment. Don't people realise that Open Source programs are not simply used because they are "free", but because of their superior functionality? Now it is possible to do something that was impossible before, and people are complaining?

    Open source developers aren't simply trying to get Linux used everywhere 'because it's Linux,' they are actually trying to make the software world a little better, more functional.

    You would think Slashdot readers would be pleased at a technological advancement.

  • The "controversy" (Score:5, Informative)

    by Daniel ( 1678 ) <dburrows&debian,org> on Tuesday December 04, 2001 @12:46PM (#2654522)
    A lot of people seem to think that the posters on debian-devel are trying to somehow suppress or forbid this port of software. Although some of us may be uneasy about it, I haven't seen anyone actually suggest that.

    The question causing argument is whether this port should be officially recognized by the Debian Project, given that one of our foundational documents says "Debian will remain 100% free software", and that software which depends on non-free software to run is considered "not part of Debian".

    The crux of the matter is this, from a post on the list by Stephen Langseck:

    I recognize the advantages of a dpkg-based system for cygwin, and think
    it's an interesting idea that will benefit many people who can't
    necessarily choose the OS of their computer; but even so, I have
    misgivings about using the Debian name on such a port. If the non-free
    archive is not part of Debian, should a port built on a non-free kernel
    be called 'Debian'? After all, unless all the compiling for this port
    will be done using Wine and gcc, you effectively will have an entire
    port with build-dependencies on non-free software.

    Daniel

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