Linux and applications
Jerry Pournelle
Saturday, June 16, 2001
This is a cross between an exchange of letters and a report. We open with an exchange of letters and comments.
From Steven Hastings:
Someday, all the Microsoft stuff will run on Linux, thanks to the WINE project.
http://www.winehq.com/
But meanwhile, you can run all the Microsoft stuff on your Linux box using Win4Lin or VMWare.
http://www.win4lin.com http://www.vmware.com
The VMWare solution should be able to run anything, as it creates an entire virtual machine, and then actually runs Windows inside the virtual machine. But this is perhaps overkill and it can be a tad slow. Win4Lin is a compatability layer, that maps Windows system calls to their Linux equivalents, on the fly. It is sort of similar to WINE, except that it is a commercial product and it is a bit more mature. (Office doesn't run yet on WINE, but runs fine on Win4Lin.)
You can download an evaluation version of either product and try it for a limited period before deciding whether to buy it.
I would *love* to see you play with Win4Lin and write about it. Perhaps the next time you manage to go a couple of days without having the adventures that seem to seek you out. Pretty please?
Stay well.
There was one more letter:
Jerry,
The experiences of this guy and several people like him would seem to contradict your conclusions about the difficulty of moving from MS-Windows to GNU/Linux: http://aboutlinux.com/art_mv2linux_a.html
He is no more 'technically' adept than you. If he has no trouble, why do you? Are you spending too much time
trying to get around MS problems instead of having more time for real writing? Are you too stiff-necked to even try? I notice that you went ahead with Slackware (knowing that any of your readers would have a real adventure) and a not-so-great version of RedHat. Why are you avoiding Mandrake? Is it because your bubble will be burst when you have to admit that GNU/Linux is
NOT as hard as you've made it out to be? I know experts hate having to eat crow. But it only tastes bad for the first few bytes.
Alex
Which I didn't send a long answer to, the tone indicating that it would be pointless. I did point out that the problem was not the OS but the applications.
I seem to have lost my original reply and that exchange, but then came this:
> Now let's see: in order to avoid the problems of Windows we run an emulation > of windows inside another operating system? Uh -
You are joking?
* With VMWare, if Windows blue-screens, you just restart VMWare; Linux keeps rolling along. Plus you can do silly things like running NT and Win98 and Win95 on the same machine, even at the same time. (If I were developing kernel-level drivers for Windows, I would want VMWare!) I read about a web developer who used VMWare to have N versions of Windows installed, each one with a different revision of Internet Explorer, so he could test his web designs with all releases of IE without needing N computers. (IE does *not* allow you to have multiple versions installed at the same time!)
* With Win4Lin, you are not running Windows at all. If your apps run correctly, you will be happy, because you will get no blue-screens (since Linux rarely craters).
* Both serve as migration aids: if you have decided that you want to move to Linux, but you cannot live without e.g. Office, use one of these. I hate StarOffice, and GNOME Office is far from ready, thus my keen interest in Win4Lin.
Okay?
-- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
At which point I sent out a message to several people who knew a lot about this:
> I have this and another message on the subject. Are we at an era when > you > can use various Windows applications but not have to use Windows? If > so it > is a matter of importance.
Dan Spisak replied
Jerry et al,
The answer to your question is: depends on the application. This is a bit more complicated really due to a few factors.
1. WINE is not an emulator. WINE is a set of libraies that understand Windows DLL calls and translates them into something Linux can understand.
2. WINE is great at running certain applications and completely useless with others. This is evidenced by the fact that they have to have an online applications database so you can see what programs do run well or don't. Your milage may vary is not only possible but it is the norm I would say.
3. WINE has a hard time with certain aspects of windows like VxDs or say DirectX hardware access (DirectX is being worked on by a separate company trying to promote Windows games on Linux, more to come soon)
4. WINE is not for people who have just switched from Windows to Linux. Its for the techies still in my opinion.
Now onto VMWare. I've used VMWare in a few situations at previous jobs. VMWare is great and a much better solution for both the technically adept as well as those new to Linux.
What is VMWare? Basically it is a program that runs on top of your host OS and lets you boot other operating systems and to switch between the two OSes. It virtualizes most hardware correctly and generally runs pretty well. However since you are running one OS on top of another its not as fast as native code execution and you will need at least 192MB of RAM if not 256MB (this depends on the 2nd OS your running). However VMWare is great and what I would recommend to most people. For a long time I had a PII 450 with 256MB of RAM that would boot into Linux 2.4 and I would run VMWare to boot a Windows 2000 partition so I could use Office 2000 and MS Outlook and still have access to my Linux box at a keypress.
Win4Lin I have not tried before but it sounds interesting. In my opinion VMWare will be the better long term solution because as Microsft changes libraries and adds new ones the WINE and Win4Lin people have to be on the ball and release updates frequently to make sure new versions don't break their translators. VMWare works around those problems because you essentially are running the right code always, just in a virtualized machine. There is a speed tradeoff for this but I think systems are not getting to the point that even with the speed tradeoff its still fast enough to be perfectly acceptable.
So in a nutshell:
VMWare: Requires you to have Windows installed somewhere but works great WINE: Doesn't require Windows at all, but is hit &; miss w/compatibility Win4Lin: Haven't used it yet so I can say but it sounds promising
Sorry for the verbosity.
Daniel E. Spisak Network Engineer/UNIX Admin for Hire http://www.nonmundane.org/~dspisak/
- And this:
Good job, Dan! I now understand
I also think the bigger message is, "Maybe a network of self-motivated but entirely independent programmers can't immediately match the world's best-known software company, but they can certainly help the world achieve a whole new level of interoperability and competition by quietly working in off hours and cooperating." Not just, from current events, Linux itself, but WINE, Win4Lin, VMWare, etc.
On the other hand--the pressures and requirements of commercializing a product are always going to be stronger than those of mere egoboo, as per the open-source movement. As soon as money is involved, suddenly the world comes into a much clearer focus. Thus, while "stone soup" collectives such as Linux are key to driving the industry, commercial products (and, let's face it, revenue streams) based on open-source material--or at least on the ideas contained by it--are as or more essential.
Comments?
--Alex Pournelle
We also got this:
> VM Ware is interesting and I have been looking into it; we will probably > build a machine to work with it.
They have a version that runs under NT, and a version that runs under Linux. Your choice.
> I don't know about Win4Lin or where to get it.
You can just download the sample version. I would have done it already if I were a Red Hat or Mandrake user, but they don't have a Debian download there at this time. -- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
And Somewhere in there I wrote this:
My reluctance has to do with Uncle Bob and Aunt Minnie:
Linux is still UNIX, the user-hostile operating system par excellance, designed as a full employment act for gurus. Cookbooks can keep the average office and home user going, but beyond that lies madness. This isn't true for people who actually want to know what is going on under the hood so to speak.
I've always written at the bridge between those two groups, enticing users to find out more of what's going on and get their hands a bit dirtier. I've also been the guy who tried to force the big guys to pay attention to the needs of both communities. Not always with success but I have some trophies.
VM seems to add new layers to old, and I am not sure I see the obvious advantage. Win4lin I have not tried, and will; the question there becomes HOW DO YOU GET THERE depending on who you are. A small office with 8 people. A doctor's office. A writer trying to collaborate on a novel, or write a screen play.
It's easy enough for people who don't find it odd to have to grep and kill and such like; but for those who don't want to lean a bunch of command line stuff and read incomprehensible manual pages....
The Linux teams are getting things to the point where an office can be maintained by a few people and don't need Greg and Miranda; but it is not there yet....
Eliciting this reply
> My reluctance has to do with Uncle Bob and Aunt Minnie: > > Linux is still UNIX, the user-hostile operating system par excellance, > designed as a full employment act for gurus.
But this is changing.
Uncle Bob and Aunt Minnie can't install Linux yet. They can't maintain it very much yet. But if someone sets it up for them, they can use it now.
Linux with GNOME running on it, with gdm running to log you in, is straightforward. The machine boots to a "login" thing, not too unlike the one NT uses. You type in your user name and password. You get a desktop, not too unlike the one in Windows. The "Start" button looks like a foot, but it works the same.
If you use a "theme" that resembles Windows, you get familiar windows with minimize, maximize, close buttons that look identical to the ones in Windows.
True story: I had booted our machine into GNOME. My wife wanted to check her mail, in Windows. With zero training from me, she found the "Start" (foot) menu, logged out, and rebooted the machine. She is slightly more computer-savvy than Aunt Minnie but not that much more.
And, while Bob and Minnie can't administer Linux, Linux usually just runs along with no attention needed. It doesn't break itself. So Linux could be enough, already, for Bob and Minnie.
The problem is applications. Word processing and such are just not quite there yet. A year or two from now, they will be!
By the way, I am a raving Debian fan. Debian is very easy to administer. If you can understand the concept of logging in as "root" and running the APT tool, you can install updates on Debian. (And a GNOME version of APT is being worked on, to bring GUI ease to the process.)
> The Linux teams are getting things to the point where an office can be > maintained by a few people and don't need Greg and Miranda; but it is not > there yet....
I agree. Certain things, such as installing a new printer, are absolutely horrible. It's changing, though. Linux just keeps getting better, never worse. I hope that trend continues. -- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" steve@hastings.org http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
Now I remind you of :
Jerry,
The experiences of this guy and several people like him would seem to contradict your conclusions about the difficulty of moving from MS-Windows to GNU/Linux: http://aboutlinux.com/art_mv2linux_a.html
He is no more 'technically' adept than you. If he has no trouble, why do you? Are you spending too much time
trying to get around MS problems instead of having more time for real writing? Are you too stiff-necked to even try? I notice that you went ahead with Slackware (knowing that any of your readers would have a real adventure) and a not-so-great version of RedHat. Why are you avoiding Mandrake? Is it because your bubble will be burst when you have to admit that GNU/Linux is
NOT as hard as you've made it out to be? I know experts hate having to eat crow. But it only tastes bad for the first few bytes.
Alex
Which sort of started all this. To which came:
Jerry,
This guy's entire write up is about his experience with the APPLICATIONS he uses as a technology journalist - NOT the OS.
You might consider reading the link I sent.
( > http://aboutlinux.com/art_mv2linux_a.html )
Alex
Which is about where things stand. The discussion isn't over, and something was I think learned. The referenced article concludes with a title "STAR OFFICE: It works for me" to which I can only comment that it does not work for me, and I will not in fact be using Linux if that is the price to be paid. Perhaps it has improved in recent weeks, but I do not think it has changed much since the last times I tried it.
I make no doubt that things are getting there with Linux and applications, and I wish the movement well; but Linux is still based on UNIX which is still the user hostile operating system, and until it is ready for Uncle Bob if not Aunt Minnie I suspect it won't take off.
There is also the small question of WHICH Linux, but I don't insist my friends like each other.
Alex Pournelle noted that sometimes the commercial software is ahead of the open-source world. Win4Lin and WINE are a good example of that. They are not identical, but they are similar... but Win4Lin is commercial, and it will run Microsoft Office; and WINE is free software, and it doesn't run Office yet.
Dan Spisak noted that WINE and Win4Lin need to stay current with Windows stuff to remain useful; he prefers VMWare. Just two points:
* VMWare requires you to have a legal copy of Windows to run inside the virtual machine. WINE and Win4Lin do not. So, if you happen to have an application WINE will run, you can run it on a free OS (Linux) using WINE (also free).
* The Win32 API isn't too much of a moving target anymore; Microsoft can't change it too drastically without hurting their huge installed base. The WINE folks can figure this stuff out faster than MS can change it.
WINE will run Office somday. Just not yet.
Here is an article about a college in Australia that decided Linux, GNOME, Abiword and Gnumeric are Good Enough for their purposes. College students in a college computer lab, with lab people around to answer questions, are not in the same boat as Aunt Minnie. But still, it's a sign of the progress all this stuff has made. I suspect that a year ago, the free software was *not* Good Enough for them.
http://it.mycareer.com.au/news/2001/06/05/FFX9ZT7UENC.html
One other thing I noticed about that article: the school is pragmatic. Some of the Linux users get into flame wars about whether GNOME is better, or KDE. The school is using mostly GNOME stuff, but they said they would use KPresent (the KDE equivalent to PowerPoint) if they needed to teach presentations.
Stay well.
Steve Hastings
Corrections and additions:
Dr. Pournelle,
I've been reading the comments re the usability of Linux on the desktop which you have on your site. One of your correspondents erred in his discussion of Win4Lin: You actually DO need a full licensed copy of Win9x for it to work. See http://www.netraverse.com/products/win4lin30/requirements.php .
Aside from that, Linux's usability as a desktop OS will depend on one's requirements. With the advent of KDE2, it's usability is about the same as Windows, IMO.
For users who do not need MS Office or 100% compatibility with it, Star Office or WordPerfect Office will serve well. Full compatablity with MS Office is still a problem on Linux. Later releases of Mozilla and Opera make quite good browsers, as does KDE's file manager-cum-browser, Konqueror. (Netscape for Linux can be made to render pages decently, but it takes some work.) The latest version of KMail is an excellent GUI POP/IMAP mail program, comparable with Eudora, and better than Outlook, IMO. For those who need a good GUI FTP client comparable to WS_FTP, look no further than gFTP. (Anyone looking for these apps should be able to find them at freshmeat.net.)
One area in which Windows leads is the ease of setting up CD burning. Doing so under Linux requires recompiling one's kernel to include SCSI emulation, if you're using an IDE burner. This is handled by a DLL in Windows. However, once that's done burning can be done from the command line or through a GUI front end. GCombust is one of these and compares quite favorably to Nero Burning ROM. I formerly had a Plextor 8x4x32 burner set up under Slackware 7.1 on a P-III/450 with 128 megs of RAM, and was able to burn CDs at 6x while simultaneously surfing the web, and not make coasters. I won't attempt that on my P-III/733 with 256 megs of RAM under W2K Pro, using Nero.
Installation of the latest Linux distributions is easier than Windows 9x or NT, in my experience. I've had hardware -- nothing funky -- which flat out refused to accept an NT4 install let me install Linux easily. Bleeding edge hardware may break a Linux install, but with less advanced hardware, it's likely to be quite easy. Let's not forget that installation isn't an issue for the majority of users, either, they get their OS loaded by their PC's manufacturer.
I'm currently using W2K Pro as my desktop OS at home, but mainly because I sometimes need to access customer servers running NT via pcAnywhere. Since my company is phasing these out in favor of Linux-powered Cobalt Qube3s for our managed services; this requirement should go away in the next couple of months. At that point I'll probably go back to a straight Linux setup, maybe with Win98SE retained under Win4Lin, so I can use MS Excel, Visio, and Notetab Light. Linux should *smoke* on a 733MHz P-III; it flies on a 450MHz box :-)
Anyway, keep up the great work on your site.
----- Dave Markowitz Yahoo: dave_markowitz dave@davemarkowitz.com frodo527@building-tux.com http://www.davemarkowitz.com http://www.building-tux.com RKBA = Freedom!
I will I guess wait for NERO and such to be available before I make a big switch. And something as good as Office. ALas, I still have to earn a living and that means using writing software that Niven can use too...
PLACEHOLDER: I leave room here for new material.
And while not strictly part of this thread, SAMBA will have to get into the discussion fairly early, so we can begin here:
From: Chris Morton To: Dr. Jerry Pournelle Subject: Linux/Samba
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
On the subject of Linux, I don’t know if you’re familiar with “Samba”, but it’s a program which gives Linux the network functionality of Windows NT. A properly configured Linux server appears to Microsoft clients as a Windows NT/2000 server and if desired, domain controller. File and print services are transparent to the Windows clients.
Until recently, there was one drawback to Samba, in that one had the choice of domain level authentication of logins, or the ability to share resources among the clients. Unlike real WinNT, Samba could not both allow domain logins and sharing of resources between the clients. This was because previous versions of Samba could not provide a user list to the clients which they could use to validate access requests. The latest version of Samba (2.20) fixes this problem. Now when a client attached to a Samba Primary Domain Controller shares a resource, a list of users is displayed for selection during the process of setting up the share, just like Windows NT/2000. In this way, access to resources on both the server and the clients is controlled by the server.
What all of this means is that the Linux/Samba combination is now a serious threat to Microsoft Small Business Server in offices where there is no need to actually run Microsoft software on the server itself. If you get the most comprehensive distribution of Red Hat Linux available in stores at retail prices, it’s still something like ten times less expensive than Small Business server, and with unlimited clients.
I would not pretend that Linux is a complete replacement for Windows 2000 Server. In fact, just last week we dissuaded a client from switching to Linux because they needed to run MS SQL Server. On the other hand, had they not needed to run MS SQL Server on the server, Linux/Samba running MySQL or PostgresQL would have been a viable alternative at a tiny fraction of the price.
Certainly Linux is not ready for the average office desktop. On the other hand, it’s eminently ready as a server operating system, and at a very attractive price.
The only real advantage of Win2k for a small office server is in per incident support. The last time I checked, unlike MS, Red Hat was only selling multiple packs of incident calls, for an inflated price. If that’s changed, Linux seems like a much better deal to me. At the same time, I recently had a terrible support experience with MS, and the day after I praised their professional support staff too!
I just thought I’d pass this along to you. Linux isn’t a panacaea, but it is an attractive server option for small to medium sized offices.
Chris Morton Rocky River, OH
Not quite ready for Uncle Bob, but getting there. We had Samba going here, but in the present state it requires access to someone of more Linux talent than I have time to become: it's still a UNIX derivative, and UNIX is still the guru-friendly user-hostile OS, and it's pretty hard to change the spots on that leopard.