Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 1st Oct 2004 00:16 UTC
A senior IT executive at a major pharmaceutical company summed up the challenge for Linux at the ZDNet UK IT Priorities conference when he asked one simple question: what are the benefits in migrating from Microsoft to Linux at the desktop?
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In theory, it might (and that's a big might) be possible to use the Visual Basic to VB.NET source code translators that VS.NET provides (I'm pretty sure there's some tool out there that does it), and then re-compile on Mono once their winforms implementation matures.
app for years, last years we're using VB6. Of course we've experimenting with VB.NET and code translators - it [VB.NET] is highly incompatible with all little and big tweaks, included into our main VB code. These tweaks, btw, are one of the most important part of our app's speed, GUI, visual look etc - all what the users love (and pay for). If even .NET is incompatible with VB6, how about mono and .NET compatibilty then? I think it's somewhere about 80% or less (but I hope I'm wrong).
In practice, such migration can be big pain in the ass. I'm working in a little company, developing one
Some years ago we weighted possibility to use java (cross-platform!) - no way. Interface looks ugly, is slow, no good components for data manipulating and reporting (well, things are somewhat changed since then) - and no users, needing something other than winodws.
Truth is that there's no point make commercial software for linux, at least not for little companies.
About WINE - so far no success to make our app work with it. Installer uses COM "in not supported way". Component installers use COM "in not supported way" or just crash. Copied executable (+ all dependent files) won't run - similar and other errors. And we have no incentive to develop WINE further - nobody will pay us for this.