I feel as if it's important for people who are new to Linux know that it's entirely an option to emulate some programs that might have otherwise kept them either dual booting, or not using Linux at all. It's all about giving people just enough of what they're used to as they transition.
I believe that it is very important to look more toward open source replacements, but I don't think using windows emulation as a method of helping people get more comfortable with an OS is a bad thing.
Actions speak louder than words. If you're new to the linux world and have followed the guides so far, you will have an Ubuntu installation with a Windows VM and Wine. You're too close to Windows and most would expect that linux behaves like Windows at this point, and when it doesn't, hissyfits and ship-abandoning ensues.
As for WPS office, everyone has different requirements I guess. Personally, I have had no problem sending and receiving documents with WPS Office when the other party used Office 201x so far both at school and at work. Unless you're doing really advanced stuff I think WPS is powerful enough for the masses.
Yeah, no one likes to use that online cloud crap.
Seriously.....POL+office 2010= problem solved.
It just so happens by the sheer grace of god that 2010 supports that stupid .docx format and works on wine.
I'm really a bit surprised by this kind of thinking, overall, and I am not sure how to react to it.
I guess part of my reaction is that of a longtime software developer/systems integrator, and not as much from and end-user's standpoint. This line of reasoning just doesn't enter into anything sane or reasonable in my mind, so it always catches me by surprise.
Yes, it's true, there are a lot of good office programs available today that do everything most people need. For normal users or home computers it's really not too bad. I believe the LaTeX is the best typesetting program ever created and mac folks can eat their hearts out.
But look at this from a different perspective. Let's talk about Just the microsoft file formats. They're insane. Many folks have made great strides to deal with them. I will bet $50 that I can find 3 egregious bugs in any open source spreadsheet program when importing from "legacy" Excel files in an hour or less. The microsoft office file formats are stupid complicated. It's nuts:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html
If I were a developer (especially an open source developer) I can think of no task more sisyphean than trying to "re-create" those file formats. The delusion here is that users (read: businesses) would think those legacy formats could come into a new office program without some issues, hiccups, etc. As a developer, if someone gave me a way to run legacy code without having to re-implement it, I would probably at least buy them a beer.
New documents going forward? Absolutely, the open source packages are pretty functional and work well. Importing legacy formats? Not always, requires bookkeeping and is not automated.
The platform differences between Windows and Linux create some real problems.
Suppose their existed a program that let you run object binaries for OS X on Linux? (There used to be this for Solaris, and it worked well.) WINE would actually work better if there weren't tons of "undocumented" system calls in Windows (still). On solaris, by contrast, there were very few undocumented system calls. This meant that it was a fairly straightforward task to wrap up those foreign system solaris calls on Linux and then we could run Solaris binaries on Linux. Would you also say this is Delusional and not a transition? There are perhaps a great number of ex-solaris users out there that would disagree with you. They have made the transition to the platform, but they also avoided having to reimplement legacy code on the new platform.
When there is a good virtualization solution for GPUs (and it's here, today, by the way, in Xen server with business class graphics cards. None of this ridiculous PCI passthrough nonsense. So it'll be in consumer desktops in <5 years), you can literally run whatever you like in that Windows VM.
This is a clean, elegant and "low friction" solution because you don't have to wait for legions of pedantic neckbeards to get around to porting your exact program, and you're almost guaranteed to have less problems ("It Just Works") because no one has messed with the bits in between the App and the functionality the app is expecting from the OS (i.e. The way Wine works vs a Virtualization solution).
Are you not confident that, once a user sees the universe of possibilities open to them that they won't naturally "put down" their crutch environment? A lot of people seem to think this. I don't know why. This approach worked well to let people transition away from Solaris.
This kind of also worked well with OS/2 Warp, an OS that let you run Windows Apps on an Actual Stable platform that was not windows (that failed ultimately because of IBM mismanagement, though). OS/2 Warp took exactly the same approach as WINE (almost) but they had the docs for both the documented and undocumented parts of windows.
My opinion and position stem not really from my own personal thinking but by how I've seen these things play out in the industry through the 80s/90s/00s.
Joel Spolsky also has a lesson about Microsoft Excel adoption -- just as soon as Excel could "save" in Lotus 1-2-3 is when it took over the market. Excel was the superior product over Lotus 1-2-3 for 1 maybe 2 generations, but it didn't have widespread adoption in companies. The reason? Those companies needed to exchange files with other companies, and Lotus 1-2-3 was the defacto format. Excel could import from 1-2-3 for ages, but until it could also save as 1-2-3 it did not take over the universe.
Another anecdote has to do with Windows 95. This was a tough transition for Microsoft. Remember booting to MSDOS to play games? Microsoft did an insane amount of work behind the scenes to make dos games work well under windows 95 when often the dos games were buggy as hell. SimCity, famously, was one of these games. It would crash under Windows 95. Without the source code of SimCity, Microsoft Developers debugged SimCity and determined a bug existed in SimCity whereby it would free memory, and then read it one last time before it was 'really' free. On DOS, this bug never manifested because DOS does not technically run more than one process at a time. However, on Windows 95, it was possible this freed memory would be used by a background process. The fix to Windows 95 was to make the memory allocator behave differently when simcity was running in the background.
My point is that in this modern era of vast computer memories and computational horsepower, there is simply no need to waste developer resources on these kinds of problems. The pragmatic solution here is to sequester these types of apps to some kind of virtualization or emulation and move forward with a new modern and sane system. In time, the legacy or emulated bits can be abandoned.
Sitting around waiting for developers to code the perfect 'save as 1-2-3' function or "SimCity Work around" (however those tasks take shape -- with games, with office software, with whatever legacy program) or forcing everyone to do without until they code a "new" solution would seem to be the direction OP wants us to go in.. but why bother not moving now, when we have functional software today, and can use virtualization for our other legacy needs?
I don't think it is the case that the user would not use 'native' software after a time. Are users that dumb? We do need some kind of 'save as 1-2-3' overlapping functionality that also doesn't put developers to work doing silly things when they've got real work to do. That kind of broad spectrum compatibility 'low friction' stuff is what must come first for en mass migrations imho. It's also why Linus is always saying 'don't break user space!' and the friction that goes with that.
And these first few videos were shaped entirely by questions from the community, and I think (hope) that the community is responding positively making the transition while also having options for whatever "legacy" things they might want to do. I would hope I've made it clear Linux is not a drop in replacement for Windows from that.
What would you have us do instead?
I'm not. And I think you've missed the commentary on why these topics have been discussed.
Drops mic
And? So what?
Look I am all for helping people, but I am not about to sit here and wag my finger at wendell because he did not coddle people into making an informed decision.
Your argument would make sense if they were blatantly saying "ALL YOUTUBERS MUST CONVERT TO LINUX AND HERE IS HOW YOU DO IT"
That is not what they are saying, that is not even what they are implying.
You guys are fussing over people who have free thought and free will. They SHOULD go to multiple sources and educate themselves on what linux can and can not do, and THEN make an informed decision.
If these people just want to jump head first into the water, then that is their prerogative, and they get to live with their decisions.
As for WPS writer or any other writer, it generally works if you are just making a very simple word document. I do want to make that clear.
It is only when you try to do fancy things like make a table that things start to become problematic.
Read Wendells Post, then play this video.
Literally i was looking for that video when i made my reply lol
I agree, nottoo much time should be spent on legacy stuff that is de facto economically already outdated.
This is very much true for the proprietary MS-Office document formats, and that leads to pretty absurd situations. Many cities and governments are migrating to open source, especially in Europe. This means that the default document format that is used by those governments and services, is the open document format. The problem with MS-Office is, that at first install, Microsoft tells you to chose sides, either go with Open Document format, or go with their own format, and they threaten users that not all features will be available if they go with Open Document format, so most users chose proprietary format, and if it's preinstalled, that is certainly the case. The problem is that when these people get official government documents, or documents from courts or police, they have serious issues opening it up in MS-Office, as the formatting goes haywire and simple forms to fill out stuff, are just not usable any more. This has already lead to a lot of frustration. In fact, recently, the Berlin police department has vented its frustration about a lack of open source friendliness of legacy solutions, like proprietary video formats of security cameras that aren't by default present on open source systems, and they have to phone IT support to install those because on the user end, they can't, and about people complaining that they can't use opendocument governmental forms in legacy software like MS-Office 365. On top of that, most users, especially companies, that still use MS products, use very old versions, like Office 2003 or 2007, whereas Microsoft pushes ever new proprietary crap into newer versions like the present latest legacy office solution, MS-Office 2013 aka Office 365.
These are the same kind of transitional discomforts as not being able to run obscure MS-Windows only games on other platforms. In the end, it will all settle as time goes by and technologies evolve. It is simply not possible to hold technology because of proprietary formats.
That video format example is actually something that is about to evolve also. Every manufacturer pretty much uses his own proprietary codec. And it's hugely obnoxious. For instance, Rode makes this great thing called SmartLav, which is a USB directional mic for use with smartphones. If you use it with an iPhone, the audio it records can pretty much only be played with iTunes and processed with Final Cut Pro. If you use it on Android/Tizen/SailfishOS, it will do whatever you want. It doesn't even work on Windows Phones or Blackberries. At the same time, video codecs and RAW file formats are the same nuissance. Samsung however has now released the new NX1 for instance, which by default uses h.265 encoding. That will radically change the landscape, other manufacturers will be forced to also offer the universal codec, not only because it's really efficient (which the likes of Sony are not keen on, because they also sell "audiophile SD cards" for five times the price of an normal SD card (the madness is simply offensive at that point lolz)), but also because people will get more comfort out of the open format. The same goes for RAW formats. Sooner or later, there will be a breakthrough product that will offer an open format, and everybody will have to adapt, but that will not happen for quite some time, because graphene based sensors will not be available for years to come, and sensor technology will probably keep gropwing closer together until then without changing the market significantly.
There are plenty of people that make a career out of providing legacy support in software and hardware. There is a market of people that never want to change anything and are willing to pay heavily for that. Microsoft is one of the leaders in that market, as they've probably earned more by providing custom extended support for customers that don't want to leave XP yet, than they've made by selling licenses during the lifetime of XP. So the people that are in that business, good on them, but it means nothing on a global scale, it's not progress, and it's hugely inefficient. The only way is forward in technology, and that means that in order to leverage new technologies, standards have to evolve towards open standards. Just like MCA died because of PCI, MS-only or OSX-only will die because of open source software, and that includes proprietary formats.
There's no pleasing you guys. You want people to use Linux. But then they aren't using it right. lol
Wat.
I'm not sure where this hate for easing the transition of Windows to Linux is coming from. Yes Linux is a different operating system, but there is no reason to put Linux in a different league that Windows.
What's the purpose of the operating system? It helps people get things they want done. If they want to play certain games, you might need a couple extra steps to getting them working properly on Linux versus Windows. Not everyone needs to know underlying differences of the OS's. It's purpose is to act as a platform for people to create and use.
To be honest, there are a lot of commercial software that's lacking on linux simply because there is no demand from the sheer lack of users compared to Windows. From this perspective, I don't see how virtualizing Windows or using wine is a bad aspect of using linux.
Well, I agree that there is nothing wrong with showcasing the power of linux by providing legacy compatibility with Windows and the likes (which is more than Windows has ever been capable of), but I disagree that there is no reason to put linux in a different category than Windows, because the two are simply not comparable, linux is a powerful open development environment that can do a lot of stuff, Windows is a software console and a commercial distribution platform. If there is a comparison to be made between linux and a legacy solution that is comparable, it would be DOS, DR-DOS 5.0 or something maybe, but then with a lot of extra software to do a lot of things that linux does right from the kernel that DOS could never do (but then it's a legacy solution). Linux is a UNIX compatible solution, so it would make more sense to compare it to UNIX or even Minix (not monolithic though) for that matter, as linux evolves towards a more modular system, and even starts to get some features that Minix also had in terms of modularity. At this time though, Linux is in the same league as BSD, but those are pretty much the only players in that league, everything else is in a much lower league.
I agree with zoltan legacy compatability is important for the future of linux.
Once we start taking about UNIX, DOS and BSD, I feel like we are diving deeper into territory that doesn't matter for 90% of the users. Granted the Tek is catered toward power users, but power users and developers are not always synonymous. How often will a user run into something unique to unix systems?
What makes Windows an inferior development environment? Generally, people like OS X and linux for their easy access to the unix shell. It's easy to open a file in vim, hack away and create something in minutes. In Windows, I suppose majority of the development is catered to be done in Visual Studio. However, there are tools like cygwin that let's Windows users to the same thing, with some caveats I'm sure. Another reason developers choose unix is because most servers run linux and it's nice to have the same tools with you and you do on your servers. Windows has a lot of servers as well thanks too the large non-tech corporation who rely on them everyday. Azure is doing a lot nowadays as well and is probably looking to compete with AWS someday.
So while I do personally think linux is superior, I don't think we should be too quick to discredit Windows as an operating system. The under the hood things don't matter to most people.
All I took from @Zoltan Posts is that all these companies complaining. Need to get with the times with open standards instead of supporting ancient software. and i don't see anything wrong with that, the issue i see is that maybe companies are just too lazy to learn something new. they rather use what they are used to instead of what will benefit in later on. I've seen a bunch of my local [Non-Tech] Related businesses in my area they are still running Core 2 Duos and Windows XP.
You have companies that would pay to keep running ancient software, than to spend free time learning something new.
All these companies that are running out-dated software should be left in the dust. forget about supporting older things. in my personal opinion.
I didn't say that per se though. The benefit of an open platform is that those that care about legacy compatibility, can easily implement it, because it's open. The future of linux is not at discussion any more, linux is the future, and the future is happening, linux is already the present. That doesn't mean that legacy solutions or closed solutions are done for completely. Just like there will always be closed gaming consoles (but even Nintendo opens up to linux now, which is quite spectacular, there was never a license by Nintendo for Windows, but now there is for linux, first official licensed Nintendo developed product ever that is not on a Nintendo platform!), and there will always be software consoles (SteamOS, Android by Google, etc... are linux-based, but they are pretty much closed down software consoles, even if they are very easily hackable because of the underlying linux framework). A closed source product is always a snapshot, whereas an open platform like linux is always a work in progress. There is a huge difference between the two concepts. As technology and humanity evolve, open solutions will always win. There was a time where snapshots were the end-all-be-all solution, like the Bible for instance. Later, this evolved, for instance in Islam, the "source code" is much more open, leaving opportunity for development of insights. Of course, there is a part of Islam that doesn't like changes or evolved insights, they like the medieval version, because they can't wrap their heads around evolved thoughts or because of personal benefit. The very same motives can be found in the software or hardware world. Microsoft doesn't want to evolve because they benefit from their legacy snapshot, and many users don't want to evolve because they can't wrap their heads around the evolution. It is what it is, and the main thing is that there will always be providers that supply the solution that keeps everyone happy.
To be honest, I prefer an MS-Windows user that doesn't venture into linux because he is satisfied with what MS-Windows does for him, over an open source fanatic that finds no solution ever satisfactory. There are a lot of those around, those that don't like this or that distro because of reasons they can't even give, that are never ever satisfied with anything. They don't like software consoles, but they hate open source. Those people are beyond salvation lolz
Very simple answer: kernel access. If you want a custom kernel, you can just go for it in linux, and all the tools to do that, are provided by default. On top of that, there is the fact that you can reuse everything that is made by others, making it much easier to develop. The development tools are built into the very fabric of linux, both on the kernel level and on the GNU/Linux distro level. In a software console, you can only develop what Microsoft lets you develop, and what you pay for, and you can't optimize anything that Microsoft doesn't optimize for you. It's like the difference between Digikam and Picasa...
No harm was done, what new Linux users interest the most is what they could do on Linux, and less painful approach. I think it was even suggested in the video that users can dual-boot if they need Windows (wich most likely will be the case, especially for gamers).
I understand your point tho., Linux is not Windows, and it is not goal to become Windows, but, nevertheless, that video can help users to spend more time on Linux, instead of swiching baack to Windows for every little thing they might find incompatible.