IE in FreeBSD

Frank Jahnke jahnke at fmjassoc.com
Thu Sep 15 12:21:01 PDT 2005


Sorry I can't continue this as a thread -- I get this as a digest and
unless I'm copied, I can't.

>>> My opinion on WINE is that it merely harms people who are writing
>>> software
>>> for FreeBSD.  If I write a wordprocessor for Linux or FreeBSD and  
>>> try to
>>> sell it, why would a customer buy it when he can just use his  
>>> Microsoft
>>> Word under Wine?

> Because it's an industry standard. Unless you come up with a better  
> product and convince the masses to switch, people aren't really as  
> willing to learn new software albeit the fact that it may be better  
> in terms of features/functionality.

One thing that is overlooked is that office and other professional
software is much, much more than Microsoft Office.  How about complete
Acrobat, AutoCAD, electronic laboratory notebooks, solids modeling,
laboratory information management systems, LabView, and ... and ...
FOSS seems to do alright with "entertainment" software (music, videos,
IM, RSS and so forth) but is woefully deficient in so many other areas.

I give one practical example in my interview with Dru at
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7731

> Not true. Running Wine means I don't have to have Windows installed  
> and thus I don't have to dualboot my machine or use a true emulator  
> like vmware, qemu, etc to have to run a copy of Windows on top of  
> FreeBSD.

Absolutely.  Dual booting is so inconvenient that it simply is not worth
it for me.  And for workflow reasons I'd really rather run every
application from the same desktop.


>> Wine will always be a compromise: some (but with hope, an increasing
>> number of) important programs will work very well, some will perform
>> with limited functionality which may be OK for a few selected  
>> tasks, and
>> many or most will not work well enough if they work at all.  They
will
>> also continue to be difficult to integrate with other desktop  
>> programs,
>> even more so than Linux programs which are bad enough already.  They
>> simply are not a replacement for native programs unless no
alternative
>> exists.

>> Very true. That's why I mentioned the fact that installing and  
>> running IE is very difficult under Wine. In effect it's so much of
a  
>> pain in the ass I wouldn't even bother to be honest, but some
people  
>> need ActiveX, etc like I mentioned before.

Wine is indeed difficult, and it usually requires a lot of futzing with
DLLs and such to get acceptable installations.  That's once you get the
program installed from the source disk in the first place, which is
often not trivial.  That's the area where CodeWeavers' product can
really help.

>> Old computers that may well be
>> good enough for such occasional use are very inexpensive.  Why then
>> would anyone run a native version?

> Yes. Waste of power and hardware if you ask me because I would
rather  
> devote a machine to a greater series of tasks as opposed to running  
> an OS which I don't really need except for a few programs.

Agreed (again).  I use an old PIII with a small monitor for some of
these applications.  It just seems silly to waste a BSD machine with
dual monitors and dual CPUs.

>      The purpose of my email previous was not to invoke people's  
> unhappiness and spite against Microsoft; I am in fact very anti- 
> Microsoft (or a better way to phrase it would be pro-Mac/-Unix?)  

It does seem like the Mac is a good way to go to get a reasonable form
of Unix and a decent selection of commercial software.  Unless I can get
the software situation improved (like with CrossOver Office), that is
really my only option.

Frank



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