I don’t much like Windows. I don’t hate it with a pathological hatred, like some people, but I do think that monopolies are bad things, in general, and Microsoft’s effective monopoly grip on desktop operating systems has been incredibly hurtful to the computer industry and humanity in general. By suppressing competition, we’ve been robbed of the real benefit of a free market economy, innovation.
Fortunately for Microsoft, but not so fortunately for me, the people who write the games I love to play don’t write them to run on Linux. They write them to run on Windows. So, while I’d love to use Linux as my normal desktop operating system, I’ve been reluctant to make the leap.
An announcement on June 18, 2008, brought the day of my emancipation from Windows a little bit closer.
You can read about it on SourceForge News – WINE 1.0 Announcement . WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) 1.0 has been released. This is a project that has been working hard to provide a stable working Windows API (Application Programming Interface) on Linux, which would allow you to run just about any Windows program on any Linux operating system.
“Hah!’, you say, “but that is only 1.0, how can I trust it? It’s barely a baby!”
But that’s not true. The makers of WINE long ago decided they wouldn’t release a 1.0 version until they had something rock solid. It has taken them fifteen years of beta testing and ongoing development to get there. While it’s still not 100% perfect, there are thousands of Windows programs that now run successfully on Linux, courtesy of WINE. You can check this list, at the WINE Application Database Headquarters. They rank programs by how much configuration you have to do to get them to work cleanly. There are over ten thousand applications listed in this database, so you can probably find yours.
One of the ones I care most about, Dungeons and Dragons Online, is rated Platinum. Lord of The Rings Online, my other MMO addiction, has some issues with the launcher, but there are people outside of Turbine (the company that built LOTRO) are working on. Since games, and in particular MMO games are extremely fussy, it’s likely whatever business application you want will work just fine.
Linux now looks a lot more like Windows than you might expect. You’ll even find that many of the eye-candy features of Vista are readily available on Linux, without the other problems.
Still, Linux is not yet the best choice for those who don’t like to have a bit of a learning adventure, you’d be surprised at how similar it looks to the OS you’ve been using, and all the things that it can do. (It’s pretty cool to install an OS that already has the word processing, spreadsheet, accounting, email, web browsers, drawing packages, and almost anything else you can name, already set up and ready to go.)
Oh, if you are interested in trying out Linux, you can download and burn a CD for a Live installation of most of the various flavors. I’d suggest starting with Ubuntu, which you can find at www.ubuntu.org. Once you’ve downloaded the .iso file, you can use your CD burning software to create a CD. If you boot up with that CD, you’ll be running Linux, but it won’t alter anything on your computer, without your permission. (That’s kind of nice, huh?) If you decide you like it, you can install it. There’s lots of good information on how to do that and lots of friendly Linux users that are ready to help you, all over the Internet. Maybe it’s time for you to get away from Windows, too.
