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Convert Linux to Windows

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Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#151

Post by csdvrx »

coderenegade wrote: post #124
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/requirements says, > Windows application submissions that are using Wine or any submissions that aren't native to Linux desktop and is using some emulation or translation layer will only be accepted if they are submitted officially by upstream with the intention of maintaining it in official capacity. Although, I am curious why; they don't seem to have a general problem w…

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…

> Probably because it's implicitly pirated.

It doesn't have to be. Old software is cheap, even shrink wrapped ("new old stock")

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#152

Post by CrossVR »

> 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 its own version of the VC++ runtime and the application is expected to redistribute the version of VC++ it needs.

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

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#153

Post by HappMacDonald »

dartharva wrote: post #129
pdonis wrote: post #68

To the extent binary distribution is "unstable" on Linux, it's because users aren't expected to just download random binaries from wherever, as is normal on Windows (and Mac, for that matter). Users are expected to either obtain binaries from their distro, or compile them from source. In either case, all of the issues about binary distribution being "unstable" are invisible to users. Which is the point. People who wa…

Speak for yourself. I have been using Linux for a decade and would want nothing more if standalone application setups like those in Windows became the norm of software distribution. Centralized package management is a curse. Apps should be responsible for their own updates, not the OS.

OTOH I view application installation as a separate skill from $THING_THIS_APP_DOES.

So I would rather the app authors just focus on perfecting their apps, while said apps can then be packaged and distributed in bulk by different sets of people trained to handle those challenges.

What I very certainly do NOT want is:

* Apps automatically checking for updates on startup — since they can't check while they are off — leading to needlessly leaked data crossing the network about exactly when I'm starting up exactly which apps (since they dial home to predictable locations regardless of TLS usage)

* Apps constantly filling systray with their own bespoke updaters (and "accelerators" which just means the app is running 24/7 but minimized to tray ;P )

* App launches updater, updater window says "can't update because app is running". Close app, wait for update, now I have to go hunt down the document I had originally opened the app with. Next time an app launches an updater, I leave it on its splash screen and go to close the app.. naturally that also closes the updater since this time around the one is a sub-process of the other. (I recall earlier versions of Wireshark causing me much grief on these fronts, for example)

* More diverse attack surface area for hackers to infect my PC: instead of trying to juke a distro who has at least some experience and vested interest in defending against poisoning, just juke any single software author less specialized in distribution security and take over their distribution channel instead.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#154

Post by andai »

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…

I remember trying to get a program installed on Windows. It complained that I didn't have the right VC redistributable.

I had like ten of them installed — I think several from the same year! — cause every program usually bundles its own.

I found the exact version of vcredist installer I needed but then that one refused to install because I already had a slightly newer version. So I had to uninstall that first.

As far as I'm aware this problem still exists in Wine, I installed something in Wine yesterday and I had to use winetricks commands to get the vcredist installers from Microsoft's servers. (Also illegally download some fonts, otherwise my installer refused to start...)

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#155

Post by jchw »

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…

Is libc updates really the primary problem with the ABI breaks on Linux? Glibc isn't perfect but it has versioned symbols going back a long time now. My guess would be the problem is actually abandoned versions of other libraries (e.g. SDL1, old versions of gtk2?) and maybe a handful of other things.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#156

Post by ndiddy »

dartharva wrote: post #129
pdonis wrote: post #68

To the extent binary distribution is "unstable" on Linux, it's because users aren't expected to just download random binaries from wherever, as is normal on Windows (and Mac, for that matter). Users are expected to either obtain binaries from their distro, or compile them from source. In either case, all of the issues about binary distribution being "unstable" are invisible to users. Which is the point. People who wa…

Speak for yourself. I have been using Linux for a decade and would want nothing more if standalone application setups like those in Windows became the norm of software distribution. Centralized package management is a curse. Apps should be responsible for their own updates, not the OS.

Great news, there's a distro called Slackware that eschews centralized package management (besides optionally delivering updates for preinstalled packages). It's been around for ~20 years before you started using Linux. If you'd like to rid yourself of the curse of centralized package management in favor of running "./configure && make && sudo make install" like a real man, you should give it a try.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#157

Post by notepad0x90 »

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…

In Winapi land, the equivalent of "the c library" is NTDLL,its wrappers and other supporting libs (advapi32,userenv,etc... and Win32 specific libs which I consider equivalent to X11 libs). MSVCR in my opinion is there to provide the stdlib for C/C++ programs. In Linux land, the library that provides the C stdlib also wraps syscalls, in Windows, the C stdlib is a wrapper/interface for Windows api's.

My opinion is that they're both great. I really like how clean and well thought out the Windows API's are. Compared to Linux equivalents they're very stable and easier to use. But that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with C stdlib implementation on either OS. But for system API's, Linux is a bit messy, that mess is the result of having so many people have strong opinions, and Linux trying to adhere to the Unix principle of a modular user-space ecosystem.

For example, there is no "Linux graphics api", there is X11 and Wayland and who knows what else, and neither have anything to do with the Linux project. There are many highly opinionated ways to do simple things, and that is how Linux should be. In the same vein, installing apps on Linux is simply querying your package manager, but on Windows there is no "Microsoft package repo" where everyone dumps their apps (although they are trying to fix that in many ways), and that's how Windows should be.

Let Linux be Linux and Windows be Windows. They're both great if you appreciate them for what they are and use the accordingly.

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#158

Post by csdvrx »

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.

> 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 made for AI, but wine copy/paste and a few scripts work surprisingly well!

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#159

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

coderenegade wrote: post #124
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/requirements says, > Windows application submissions that are using Wine or any submissions that aren't native to Linux desktop and is using some emulation or translation layer will only be accepted if they are submitted officially by upstream with the intention of maintaining it in official capacity. Although, I am curious why; they don't seem to have a general problem w…

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…

They do cover that in https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/requirements#l... , but I don't buy it in the general case because Windows isn't synonymous with proprietary isn't synonymous with non-redistributable licenses. Sure, I doubt there's a legal way to ship Microsoft Office on flathub, but there are plenty of shareware programs that I think would be fine (though IANAL, ofc) right up to FOSS that happens to target Windows. For instance, Notepad++ is GPLv3[0] and WINE platinum rating[1]; why shouldn't it be on flathub?

[0] https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/blob/... [1] https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...

Re: Convert Linux to Windows

#160

Post by scheeseman486 »

pdonis wrote: post #130
scheeseman486 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasons to avoid Windows outside of package/software management. Linux has appimage, it's already capable of running "loose" native executables like Windows does. Flatpak, Snap and Docker all break the "distro repository or compile from source" model. The primary method of playing video games is installing Steam and running Windows software inside a container. This purist vision you have of Linux d…

> This purist vision you have of Linux doesn't exist. It does on my computer, and I suspect on a lot of Linux users' computers.

Linux users? That is, people who use a device that runs Linux? Like Android?

Or you mean desktop Linux users, though there aren't "a lot" of those. There's the business/corpo/science deployments but I don't think we're talking about that, but rather specifically home use. So we're talking mostly enthusiasts. I'd imagine many of those and perhaps even most at least lightly game and Steam is effectively the default place to purchase games on Linux. Do you run anything in an emulator? Impure! Purge with fire!

The software repository+compile from source paradigm isn't "Linux", it's not even "desktop Linux". Linux can execute software in a myriad of different ways, what makes Linux Linux is that it's infinitely flexible.

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