Simple solution [LWN.net]

Simple solution

Posted Sep 20, 2011 21:18 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Simple solution by martinfick
Parent article: Garrett: UEFI secure booting

The Wintel PC has a limited life expectancy at this point

I don't agree. There are still many tasks for which a desktop or laptop computer is far more suitable than a portable device. Especially in business settings, I think desktop/laptop computers are going to be around for a very long time.

As for Windows, part of what keeps the Windows ecosystem going are the thousands (if not millions) of strange and specialized applications ranging from veterinary practice suites to niche scientific tools and so on. Those vendors will howl bloody murder if MSFT attempts to force them to sell through an app store. (Time for them to start porting to Linux now so they have leverage, I guess. :))

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Simple solution

Posted Sep 21, 2011 7:15 UTC (Wed) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]

Porting to Linux? For the majority of these vendors, porting to something like ReactOS would be far more practical. It would be hard to devise a more effective strategy to promote competition in the Windows compatible OS market than this one.

Simple solution

Posted Sep 21, 2011 11:11 UTC (Wed) by dvandeun (guest, #24273) [Link]

Or routinely testing software under Wine and putting a "Wine Compliant" sticker on it.

Simple solution

Posted Sep 21, 2011 14:15 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Writing against winelib is a perfectly good porting strategy in many cases, so sure!

ReactOS? Really?

Posted Sep 22, 2011 16:22 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]

And what, pray tell would one run ReactOS on? Has it ever been booted on real hardware? If Microsoft allows emulated operating systems to run on the future version of Windows that tightens the chains to the point it won't run Win32 apps anymore people would simply run Windows (N-1) in the emulator and achieve a near 100% compatibility vs the 1% compatibility ReactOS offers more than a decade after beginning the project.

Hint: If they ever clamp the chains, emulation will become an enterprise feature, and on the enterprise versions Win32 apps will still run anyway. Microsoft is evil, and although not geniuses they also aren't stupid.