[LinuxUsers] Fwd: Microsoft-buntu

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Dino K <socallinux at cloudcomp.info> wrote:

> By disagreeing with me you couldn't have put what I wanted to say into
> better words.  There's just no Linux counterpart to a lot of things and the
> environment is not familiar to Jane in accounting which uses her JDE or
> MAS90 apps...
>

Well with MS/Linux those programs would work and the UI would be
Windows so it would be familiar. How many WIndows programs directly
use any kernel interface? And even those that do would work fine withe
 WINE like compatibility layer.

I have to say I do a lot of vintage computing and I am usually
pleasantly surprised that old DOS apps "just work" under WINE, from
the command line even. And with mono, even .NET apps often work. I
just chmod +x BLAH.EXE and I can run them directly.

If MS were to make such an OS the old applications would continue to
work since it would have a Windows userland.

Someone brought up the issue of volume names (forward vs. backward
slash is another burble). Those are fairly minor issues and if it can
be done by a rag tag bunch of free software programmers under WINE
(and it can), MS could do an even better job of making it seamless
with some funding.

-- John.