IE in FreeBSD?

Frank Jahnke jahnke at fmjassoc.com
Fri Sep 16 10:04:34 PDT 2005


On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 22:12 -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

> >
> >
> >> My opinion on WINE is that it merely harms people who are writing
> >> software
> >> for FreeBSD.  
> >
> >I often hear this said, but I don't think it is true.
> 
> I saw this kill OS/2.  I ran OS/2 exclusively as a desktop OS for a
> number of years, it had excellent networking integration with UNIX,
> better than Windows.  But IBM spent way too much effort in keeping
> Windows emulation going in the OS and as a result didn't put the
> development effort where it would have helped - primariarly strengthing
> the OS on different hardware.

There a lots of opinions on why OS/2 failed.  I won't go through those,
but I do remember those days well.
> 
> >As far as I can
> >tell, there is essentially no commercial software written for FreeBSD
> >(and very little for Linux) as it stands, and while the FOSS software
> >has improved a great deal, much of that targeted for the desktop is
> >either not good enough or simply does not exist at all.
> >
> 
> Not desktop but there's a lot of commercial back-end software that uses
> FreeBSD.

I don't think that commercial back-end software is a target for Wine;
I'd guess those will continue to grow in number.  I'm talking about the
desktop alone.  The one good commercial software title for BSD is
TextMaker from SoftMaker (German; a Word clone).  They do not seem
inclined to release their new version on BSD.
> 
> >They
> >simply are not a replacement for native programs unless no alternative
> >exists.
> >
> 
> An alternative always exists.

It depends on how far you want to go with alternatives.  Sure, you could
keep a Windows box around.  You could not do the task.  Those too are
alternatives.  But if you are looking to do certain tasks on a BSD
desktop, I will say that in many cases there is no alternative, at least
no alternative that is workable.

One example: how do you suggest that complex forms in PDF format are
filled out and saved on a FreeBSD system? 

> 
> Anyway, in a way it does because it forces the user
> to go through a lot more trouble than an emulator, and the only way to
> get users to invest the time to learn how to use FreeBSD is to make the
> alternative more difficult.
> 
> Look at Macintosh software sometime, the UI for most apps is little
> different
> than what it was under System 7 except more colorful and glitzy.  Most
> Mac users don't even know UNIX is involved with their OS.  The Mac isn't
> a gateway to UNIX by any means.  Apple made it easy for Mac users to
> continue to be stone stupid, and the Mac users by and large chose to
> stay stone stupid.  Apple knows it's customer base that's for sure.

I find this attitude to be very distressing, but remarkably common.
Sure, users are not as informed as they might be, and they can do stupid
things.  But they use the computer as a tool to do certain tasks, and
they shouldn't have to know about how the computer works to accomplish
those tasks.  

My own work is in biological physical chemistry -- that's what pays the
bills.  Should I require my IT people to be conversant with that area,
and understand the experiments that we do?  If not, why should I require
my molecular biologists to understand the ins and outs of their
computer?

Indeed, the tools I am developing are designed so that the user does not
have to know all of the details about how they work.  They put stuff in,
and get useful information out.  If I had to hire Maxwell's demons to do
the work, the users wouldn't care.  It is my job to do the hard work and
tailor it to their needs.  This is not so different from computers.
> 

> Simply increasing the market share numbers won't do jack.  Look at MacOS,
> Apple has far less of a market share than FreeBSD yet has tons of
> software
> for it and more every day.  You must increase the market share among the
> people that pay money for software in order to interest ISV's in
> porting.

That's fair enough.  Many people in the FOSS community simply don't want
to pay for software.  That has to change.  Still, I would posit that the
Mac has a much larger installed base on the desktop than BSD.  
> 
> This is one of the famous catch-22 of FreeBSD.  Skilled and smart techs
> can make free applications that run under free OS's like FreeBSD work
> for them, or fix them if they don't work.   Garden variety users don't
> want to learn much and are willing to pay money to not have to do so.
> If you dumb-down the OS like Windows and MacOS is, you attract the
> garden variety users and you get a lot of money which atttracts all
> the ISV's who want to port to you, but the skilled users
> get sick of the shit and they are out of there.  For commercial OS's
> that's not a problem they just pay people to continue building them,
> but it will break the back of an Open Source volunteer effort.
> 
> RedHat understood this and that's why most RedHat Linux users today are
> pretty basic, and the skilled Linux people have fled to Suse and Debian,
> and even some to Fedora, while the RedHat owners are smiling all the
> way to the bank, and you have ISV's like Oracle who are porting to it.

> >In the short term, I have work to do that requires windows programs, or
> >at least the function of certain windows programs.  Not IE, as the
> >original poster of this thread, but others that are common in the
> >Windows world.  I'd like to use a single computer and its tools for this
> >purpose -- the workflow is so much more convenient.  As it stands, I
> >cannot turn "wholeheartedly" to FreeBSD until I can perform the sort of
> >tasks I need to -- I will always need a Windows box for too many things
> >otherwise.  And I certainly can't subject my employees to this
> >situation, unless they are "Unix heads" like me.
> >
> 
> The problem is your thinking like Microsoft wants you to think, that
> your workflow must be desktop-driven with desktop programs.

No, I am looking to perform certain tasks from a single location, and
have the ability to share information between applications with a
minimum of bother.
> 
> I use Windows every day and will probably continue to use it for
> years - but I don't use it for much more than what you would use a
> Wyse Winterm for.  In short, most of my real work is done on the
> server and the Windows box serves to run xterms and terminal emulators
> and such.  The last real app that I have left on Windows is Outlook
> and that's only because I have about a decade of mail stored in it.
> But that isn't going to last much longer because the IMP/Horde framework
> has finally matured to the point that it can replace it.  I've been
> waiting for that to happen for years.
> 

> 
> I think it's a better thing to continue the work on OpenOffice under
> FreeBSD, frankly.  I would rather run an xterm on my Windows box and
> run OpenOffice on the FreeBSD server.
> 
> The era of the desktop being the main computational engine is really
> drawing to a close.  [snip]
> 
> We are going to have to move away from this new-machine-every-2-years
> model that the hardware industry is trying it's best to shove down our
> throats and start treating the personal computer like an automobile.
> Desktops need to last at least a decade or two.  And that will only
> happen if the desktop becomes totally insignificant and simply a
> means to get to the important stuff on the server.

I'm not arguing about architecture: I personally prefer a
centrally-located and -maintained server to handle user software.  I did
that 20 years ago when I used SunOS, and it makes sense.  That's not
germain to the argument, really.

I think your view on how computers are used is very limited.  You seem
to view computers from an IT-department perspective.  That's fine, of
course.  My view is limited as well to things I need in a scientific,
engineering and laboratory environment.  And that world is far more
diverse than simply running MS Office or OO.o.  That's the least of my
worries, though even here compatibility issues do come up.

It seems that you are arguing the the BSDs (Free, Net, Open and so on)
should be used only for servers (and perhaps a few other applications
like embedded systems), and to leave the desktop to the Mac and Windows.
You are certainly entitled to that opinion.  I think you will find,
though, that there are a lot of technical users like me, who use the
routine Unix tools routinely, and have needs for some commercial
applications every now and again.  I personally don't care much for the
Mac, and find the interface to be counter-intuitive and just too damn
cute.  I also don't care for the restricted hardware choices, and the
fanboy nature of the community.

I also think the emphasis on bespoke software as opposed to "consumer"
software to be misplaced.  Programmers are expensive, and in my opinion
many software titles are remarkable values.  I'm very pleased to be able
to distribute the cost of software development across a wider community
without shouldering it all myself.  Many of these titles are for things
that the OSS community is frankly not interested in, many times not even
aware of, and probably never will be written.  One example: an
electronic laboratory notebook that complies with FDA tracability and
data integrity requirements.

Finally, I think the implied position that a product like CrossOver
Office will bring down the whole OSS movement to be horribly overblown.
There currently is no desktop BSD market.  If anything, getting people
like me to use it will help more software titles to become available for
it, which can only be a good thing.  I understand your position, but
here I think we have to agree to disagree.
> 
> Ted

Frank



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