Cooperative Linux 0.51

Cooperative Linux 0.51

Posted Jan 25, 2004 23:16 UTC (Sun) by rjw (guest, #10415)
In reply to: Cooperative Linux 0.51 by einstein
Parent article: Cooperative Linux 0.51

This is great for transitioning.

Think about it - masses of corporate desktops have stupid little Win32 apps written by morons in MFC, VB, or some other abortion of a dev framework running on them right now. A lot of them rely on ridiculously specific behaviour of Excel, Access, or IE. No matter how much we would like it to happen, people can't port this stuff overnight.

What this allows is a gradual transition:

1. Windows upgrade treadmill nightmare.
2. Parallel run some free apps -Mozilla and OpenOffice.org - with the usual suspects of Office and IE. Start porting the insane spread sheets to OO, get rid of the scary IE aspects of your web pages. Switch your servers to Linux over time.
3. Switch fully to OO + Moz.
4. Run the free apps on CoLinux and gain access to a whole bunch more. Start porting the custom Win32 rubbish piecemeal or sourcing replacements.
5. Switch to a full linux distro, and run the remaining rubbish on either:
   • Terminal Servers with rdpclient if its an occasional annoyance rather than a full time workhorse app.
   • VMWare/Win4Lin if you have the cash
   • PleX86/ qemu if they are fast enough at that point.
   • CrossOver/Wine if they good enough at that point.
6. Finish porting, be free of the tyrant.

So this adds another stage to the transition, and I think it is an important one. Of course these stages can all be done in parallel in different areas and reordered a bit if required.

BTW, you maybe able to run XP as an app with Free Software in the not too distant future. Of course there is the dog slow bochs, but qemu is coming on by leaps and bounds. I've not heard much from Plex86 recently, but maybe it'll be resurrected. And of course Wine is always getting better.

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