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Strong opinions, weakly held

Month: November 2002 (page 8 of 9)

The argument against the argument against Windows emulation

Brad Choate argues that Wine and other Windows emulation packages for Linux are a bad idea, because once Linux attains full Win32 compatability, people may just decide to write Windows apps and ignore writing native Linux apps altogether. I disagree.

First of all, the emulators provide a way to counter the old “if only” argument. “If only Linux could run Outlook, I’d use it as my desktop OS.” “If only Linux could run this inventory management app we use at work, I’d install it.” Emulators provide flexibility that some people could not run Linux without. Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. First, here’s the core of Brad’s argument:

Huh? How’s that? Waitaminute — Microsoft loses if you don’t need Windows to run Windows apps, right? No — Linux loses because there will be less incentive to develop native Linux software. Worst case, the Linux application development community shrugs and starts learning Visual Studio and MFC. Because if Linux can run Windows apps, they might as well make Windows apps, since Windows certainly can’t run Linux software. And if there’s little to no development going on for Linux, then eventually people will realize that they might as well be running Windows for all their Windows software.

I think Brad is a bit confused about what motivates Linux software developers. Windows is already running on like 95% of the computers out there. Let’s face it, the people who are writing Unix software right now are people who want to be writing Unix software, whether it’s because of the tools, or because they like free software, or because they enjoy using Unix. If they wanted to write applications for everybody, they’d write Windows applications. The fact that Windows applications can run under Linux isn’t going to woo software developers to Windows, because those apps will still be Windows applications, not Unix applications.

Brad is also flat out wrong about Windows running Unix software. It’s easier than ever to port Unix applications to Windows. Most really popular Unix software already runs on Windows, by virtue of Cygwin or people just doing the work required to get it there. I run Windows on my laptop at work, and the applications I use most of the time are Emacs, vim, bash, cvs, and Mozilla. The rest of the stuff I use is mainly Java-related. You know what? Windows still sucks. If the Linux desktop gets just a smidgen better, I could see myself dumping Windows altogether (except for games).

The bottom line is that emulation holdes a lot of promise for Linux. Imagine a day when you can do all of your productive work in a Unix environment, with virtual desktops, a killer file system, real ability to access the machine remotely, Unix copy and paste, and the ability to start up that killer new game you picked up last week, all without rebooting. If anything is going to get us there, it’s emulation. No fear.

Brad emailed me a response to this piece, and I followed up on that here.

Just good enough?

Meta-CVS is a new version control system based on CVS. It seems to be designed to be CVS plus a few new features that improve things that suck about CVS. The lack of grand ambition here may be the key to its success. Besides, how can you argue with a guarantee like this one:

If you are not fully satisfied with Meta-CVS for any reason, simply change to your installation directory and type “rm mcvs*”. Your disk space will be promptly refunded. No questions asked (unless you use rm -i, of course).

For the record

In this state’s Senate race, the endorsements are rolling in:

The prevailing opinion among the papers seems to be that Erskine Bowles will serve as an advocate for the interests of North Carolina if elected, whereas Elizabeth Dole will be a rubber stamp for the Republican party agenda.

NaNoWriMo.org

You know, I was thinking today about National Novel Writing Month. It really is a very cool idea. I was also struck with the sudden urge to sign up and see if I could crank out 50,000 words this month, but then I remembered that in my world, November is local computer book revising month, and I’m getting paid to do it. So perhaps my interest in a different writing project is just a form of procrastination. Maybe next year I’ll try to do it, and get my wife to join in and take a crack at it herself.

Another Threatening Storm review

Josh Marshall reviews Kenneth M Pollack’s The Threatening Storm for Washington Monthly. This is the book I’m currently reading, and judging from the first third, I’d recommend it very highly. Regardless of what you think of going to war with Iraq, the book raises issues that must be addressed one way or another. Pollack does a brilliant job in laying out the complexity of the current situation, and comes to the conclusion that it’s going to be war now or war later. He may be wrong about that, but while his argument may be wrong, the evidence he provides is compelling. I’m looking forward to plowing through the remainder of the book.

Human Rights Watch on suicide bombings

Human Rights Watch has made its position on suicide bombings perfectly clear. It issued a report yesterday stating that suicide bombers and the people that plan suicide bombings are war criminals. One of the common complaints about human rights organizations is that they are generally biased against Israel in favor of the Palestinians, which is kind of odd given that HRW has issued a ton of reports condemning Palestinian terrorist acts (and other human rights violations) over the years. However, more condemnation for terrorism is always welcomed.

The columnists on Microsoft

Here’s what the columnists have to say:

Microsoft ruling review

Here’s a quick survey of what the big publications had to say about the Microsoft ruling.

Jonathan Krim in the Washington Post: Judge Accepts Settlement in Microsoft Case

Microsoft Corp. won a resounding victory in its antitrust case yesterday as a federal judge here rejected and at times belittled efforts by state prosecutors to impose stiffer sanctions on the company than it had agreed to in a settlement with the Justice Department.

The Economist: Not quite settled

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blockquote> Ms Kollar-Kotelly’s judgment may prove final, but it doesn

Steve Champeon on IP

Steve Champeon had an email published on Interesting People today. Congratulations, Steve.

Post EJB

Russell Beattie’s Post EJB post is great. I’m in a situation now where I write a ton of Java, but have nearly no experience with EJB. In fact, the only time I’ve ever used them was a project where I migrated an implementation that used EJB to one that did without them. I really need to get up to speed on the EJB world, but it seems like a lot of pain for the payoff that they provide.

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