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A niche for WINEA niche for WINEPosted Aug 15, 2008 23:26 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)In reply to: Better support for Windows applications and drivers - ugh by khim Parent article: Three things the Linux desktops needs to do to beat Windows (ComputerWorld) There's a lot of old, infrequently-released, but hard to replace Windows software out there. Surprisingly at a lot of companies the deal-breaker for desktop Linux isn't something big like Adobe Photoshop, but some old application that they originally installed on Windows NT 4.0 or something and have kept going ever since. Add a solid WINE to the migrator's toolbox and you might succeed at some of those companies.
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A niche for WINE Posted Aug 16, 2008 0:19 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] Agreed. Unfortunately, its usually some old one-off VB app with a jet backend, and that is where Wine seems to have the most trouble. I always get a sort of "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" feeling when I run into those situations.
Wine won't work for... Posted Aug 16, 2008 1:10 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] There's a lot of old, infrequently-released, but hard to replace Windows software out there. Surprisingly at a lot of companies the deal-breaker for desktop Linux isn't something big like Adobe Photoshop, but some old application that they originally installed on Windows NT 4.0 or something and have kept going ever since. A sysadmin friend recently lamented that his company can't wean itself off of SCO servers for part of their business because of a single 3rd-party proprietary application that they use. He told me that when he asked the vendor if/when they would release their product for Linux (or even Solaris), he was rebuffed with a reply similar to, "SCO is the only Unix there is." I've seen a lot of ISVs make related silly claims about Microsoft Windows, but I was certainly surprised to hear that at least one vendor feels the same way about SCO! Strange...
Wine won't work for... Posted Aug 16, 2008 11:49 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] This sort of small specialist ISV tends to see porting to Linux as an expense they'd rather avoid rather than as an opportunity to make their software more attractive. And they may even be right. If you sell the only software in the world for managing an inventory of Boeing commercial jet parts then logically every single company that could have a use for your software (that is, companies which operate and maintain Boeing passenger jets or the freight variants) already has it, and they buy whatever hardware and software you tell them is necessary. So porting to Linux doesn't mean more customers, it only means some of your existing customers are happier. If they won't quantify that additional happiness in terms of hard currency, why should you care ? But as an end user, at least in 2008 you don't need to manage and maintain hardware for all these vertical applications, because most of them can be virtualised inside managed RHEL machines. So there's no risk of embarrassing situations where you have to explain to the board that the fan broke on a ten year old PC under someone's desk running even more ancient DOS software that turns out to be essential to the minute-by-minute operation of your airline, costing $3 million in compensation to passengers.
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