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Convert Linux to Windows

philipbohun.com

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Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#161

Post by pdonis »

dartharva wrote: post #144
pdonis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apps should be responsible for their own updates, not the OS. Distros are not quite "the OS". You don't need a distro to run Linux. The role distros play as far as Linux applications are concerned is more like an app store in the Windows (or Mac) world. Of course Apple has locked down their smartphones that way basically since their inception, and their desktop OS has been becoming more and more like that. So has W…

> Of course Apple has locked down their smartphones that way... So has Windows. Is that where we want desktop Linux to go?

If you mean, do we want desktop Linux to have distros, that ship sailed several decades ago. Yes, you don't need a distro to run Linux (as I said before), but most people who run Linux use one.

However, Linux distros, while they play an app store-like role, are still very different from the Windows or Mac app stores. First, they don't restrict what else you can install on the system; you don't have to jailbreak your Linux computer to install something that the distro doesn't package. Second, they don't insist that you set up an account and hand over your personal information, or nag you constantly if you don't do that.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#164

Post by squiggleblaz »

csdvrx wrote: post #158
doublepg23 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting seeing Office suites from the 90s and wondering what really needed improved. Google Docs pioneering “auto saving” in the cloud is the only one I can think of.

> wondering what really needed improved Maybe not much? A few months ago, I ran out of power (my mistake, I use full screen apps to avoid the distraction, so I didn't realize I was unplugged) After plugging in and restarting Linux then the ancient version of Word I was using, I got a pleasant surprise: the "autosaved" version of the document I was editing, with nothing lost! As for llm, Excel 2010 may not have been m…

Autosave has been part of Excel for ages. I had it enabled back in the early 1990s with the version that was distributed alongside Word 6 as part of Office 4.3 (I don't remember the Excel version number).

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#165

Post by pkulak »

How much more of this opinion should I read when it’s established in the third paragraph that the author doesn’t realize that AppImage does not bundle a libc? Flatpaks do, and Snaps are a closed system that bundles _Ubuntu_, so really the answer is Flatpaks. And the rest of the world has also come to that conclusion.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#166

Post by sebazzz »

CrossVR wrote: post #152

> While the Linux syscalls themselves are very stable and reliable, the c library on top of them is not. Practically all of userland is based on libc, and therefore by proxy Linux itself has a binary compatibility problem. People who primarily use Linux often forget that Windows has the exact same problem. In the case of Windows libc is distributed as part of the Visual C++ runtime. Each version of Visual Studio has…

> The only thing Windows does better is ensuring that they maintain backwards compatibility in libc until they release a new version of Visual Studio

But they are installed side-by-side, major versions at least.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#167

Post by Hasnep »

cookiengineer wrote: post #146
coderenegade wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it's implicitly pirated. No one is sharing windows freeware this way, because there's no demand for it. It'll be MS Office, Photoshop, CAD, etc. -- stuff for which there's still no good OSS alternative, and for which the barrier to entry is high. It would take a large organization with enough connections to cut through this. You'd probably need to cut a deal so you could distribute their software, an…

I am just thinking out loud. Wouldn't it be better then to just share the reproducible recipes similar to sharing Dockerfiles? For wine, specifically, it could be similar to just using FROM wine-1.23. As long as we keep the recipes maintained and "pinned" to their old dependencies. I think this could work as a translation layer because containers already abstract away everything on syscall level. There must be just a…

This is similar to what Bottles [1] does, it uses a YAML file to describe the installation instructions for a Windows app here's an example: [2].

[1] https://usebottles.com [2] https://github.com/bottlesdevs/programs/blob/main/Games%2Fit...

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#168

Post by d3Xt3r »

cyp0633 wrote: post #77

I still can't get MS Office 365 working on Linux over Wine, while no alternatives make me comfortable. Comparing Linux and Win32 ABI on Linux is nonsense without talking about Wine compatibility.

Have you checked out OnlyOffice recently? If so, I'm curious what are the deal-breaking features you find that it lacks compared to M365.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#169

Post by duskwuff »

doublepg23 wrote: post #150
csdvrx wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely efficient: cold starting Word from an old Office suite is much faster than starting Libreoffice. It also uses less RAM. A few years ago I purchased a few shrink-wrapped Office on ebay for each of the versions Wine claimed to support best, tested then with wine32 and wine64, and concluded the "sweet spot" was Office 2010 in wine32 (it may have changed, as wine keep evolving) Yes, it's 15 years old softw…

It is interesting seeing Office suites from the 90s and wondering what really needed improved. Google Docs pioneering “auto saving” in the cloud is the only one I can think of.

Collaborative editing? "Track Changes" just doesn't hit the same way.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#170

Post by Ycros »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #60
nine_k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatpak could work better because it already knows how to factor out common parts, so it could bring in only one (or just few) version of Wine.

Unfortunately Flathub (the biggest Flatpak repository) doesn't allow Windows apps, despite it working on a technical level

This seems reasonable to me, surely it should be its own repository.
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