IE in FreeBSD?

RW list-freebsd-2004 at morbius.sent.com
Tue Sep 20 06:35:24 PDT 2005


On Thursday 15 September 2005 02:28, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> As a result the existence of these programs discourages interest in native
> FreeBSD programs, and encourages people not to wholeheartedly switch
> over to FreeBSD. 

That would be true if you could download any windows software, run the 
installer and have it work just like on Windows. That's not the case, wine is 
nowhere near that good. Most applictions that run at all are a pain to setup 
and use. 

I know from personal experience that the current situation, where wine 
promises more than it delivers, is very helpful in getting people to swap 
over. One of the applictions I didn't want to lose was Forte Agent (1.x). 
This has a reputation for working well under wine; even so I had so many 
problems that I started using Pan as a stopgap until I got Agent working 
properly.  In the end I just got used to Pan.

However bad wine is for day to day use, and however good the native 
alternatives get, there remain occasions when it is essential to use an 
industry-standard Microsoft application. For example, if you are applying for 
a job, you have to check that your cv/resume views correctly on a real  
microsoft word.


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