OSNews reader Pat Suwalski writes “I thought this might be original… Here is Xandros Desktop running Internet Explorer 5.0 that comes with MS Office 2000 [shot1, shot2, shot3], updating itself via windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Runs perfectly afterwards too!”
Windows Update Under Xandros Desktop
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
52 Comments
2002-11-05 4:30 pm
2002-11-05 5:15 pm
2002-11-05 5:20 pm
Anonymous
WOW thanks for that link! That looks promising.
RE: TheGimpvsphotoshop
Again, it’s not entirely about the ability to create. It’s ease of creation. Sure, I can drive my automatic car, and you can drive your stick shift.. and they both do basically the same thing, but don’t come to me and say “Hey, drive my car it’s the same as yours, it can do 65mph, it has A/c and power windows” because my reply will be “yeah, but I cannot drive a stick”.
Damn that was a good analogy 
2002-11-05 5:34 pm
2002-11-05 5:47 pm
2002-11-06 10:27 pm
Mnay have said that Linux with start to take desktop when it can run peoples favorite applications. It looks like Xandros may have gotten it right. So isn’t this Microsoft’s cue to collapse?
It looked like it was downloading updates for Windows, not Office 2000…what would Xandros do with such a download? OK, I’m very confused!
Anyone who’s used and/or purchased CodeWeavers excellent wine-based package has been doing this for many months now.
In fact, if my memory’s correct, isn’t Codeweavers licensed code running under Xandros to make this happen? I know this is the case w/the upcoming SUSE distribution, but I also thought this to be the case with Xandros.
Maybe I should send in copies of my Windows apps running under Linux also. This is really nothing new.
But I have to admit that it’s very cool that out of the box Linux solutions are finally using this code in their distributions. I absoutely dread re-installing Codeweavers whenever I reinstall Linux (when I find a new distribution worth checking out, etc.).
It’s the 1st of many steps towards making Linux more marketable for the desktop. Here’s my quick lists of “wants” though, regarding Windows under Linux:
1. The ability to run Dreamweaver under Linux -Codeweavers comes close, but it still bombs.
2. The ability to run Photoshop under Linux -I hear this is very close to completion, but still, it’s not there.
3. The re-integration of the Codeweavers product with the original Wine distribution, and with the WineX distribution. As it stands currently, the various Wine projects seem to be working against one another, rather than together. 8(
4. Make it easier for Windows apps to pick up the font settings under the various distributions. My Mandrak 9 setup has some really nice font anti-aliasing, but you’d never know it from my Windows apps! Similarly, HTML form elements look and behave differently under Linux than they would under Windows (The dropdown window’s much shorter, fonts are “rough”, etc).
Either way, things are looking up for Linux as being a viable desktop alternative. (Now if Linux only supported dual display better!)
Ok, what happens after the windows update, when you ask it to reboot? I thought that was rather funny.
In terms of speed though, does explorer fun fine?
Slightly off-topic (or is it?), I have just received my own copy, and unfortunatly I cannot report that “everything just works” just yet. It didn’t recognize my Mitsumi CD player/burner, so it could not even start the install. It didn’t give any feedback when it tried to make a boot-floppy on a floppydisk which apparantly was bad, and I had to kill the installation in Windows with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Still I got a friendly reply from support, and I hope they will be able to sort things out. I have high expectations for this distribution…
> 3. The re-integration of the Codeweavers product with the > original Wine distribution, and with the WineX
> distribution. As it stands currently, the various Wine
> projects seem to be working against one another, rather
> than together. 8(
I don’t think you know how wrong you are about this.
Codeweavers have always treated the Wine code as LGPL. Eg always submitting back patches to the main tree. There are really no differences between the wine Codeweavers ship (Plugin&Office).
WineX in the other hand is a fork by transgaming. It started back when Wine was licensed under X11. It was also the main reason for the license change. Transgaming didn’t submit any (okay, a few, but were few) patches back to the main wine tree.
So Codeweavers is cooperating with the community, Transgaming isn’t.
> 4. Make it easier for Windows apps to pick up the font
> settings under the various distributions. My Mandrak 9
> setup has some really nice font anti-aliasing, but you’d > never know it from my Windows apps! Similarly, HTML form
> elements look and behave differently under Linux than they > would under Windows (The dropdown window’s much shorter,
> fonts are “rough”, etc).
This will be solved as soon as fontconfig support is integrated into wine. I think it will happend quite soon (in a couple of month).
As much as people might bawk at running IE under Linux… this is perfect for the average desktop user. Although I use Mozilla, I get blocked at some sites because it wants you to use IE and it gives you a nice link to M$.com for it. Of course you can change Mozilla to tell the servers that it’s IE but mom and pop and most desktop users don’t know/care how.
I cannot WAIT for the day that I can run photoshop on linux. it’s the only thing keeping me in windows 90% of the time.
This might sound like a stupid question, but have you tried ‘The Gimp’? It is like photoshop but without the price tag. If that is all you are using under windows, try this out. You could be very impressed.
> It is like photoshop but without the price tag
We talked about it before. The Gimp is not as powerful as Photoshop, not by a long shot. So, if Torrey is a professional, he needs Photoshop and naive suggestions like “try the Gimp” just aren’t good enough.
…I still can’t figure out why you’d run Win32 apps under Linux.
Why not just run them in Windows? I use Linux and Windows for exclusive reasons, and can’t fathom why I’d want to horse around with Codeweavers, Wine, or any other such tommyrot.
..dazed and confused…
Just MHO.
i laughed out loud when I saw the screenshots…
i think it’s great to have IE run flawlessy in Linux. There are alt of sites that mozilla and konqueror can’t render properly, or hanle stupid ie javascript design aspects.
i use mozilla in windows and linux, but if I want to use my company’s intranet…it’s gotta be IE. moz can’t trigger the login or use the menus properly…it’s really annoying.
with this topis though…the million dollar question is will click ‘n run work through windows! that’d be really funny.
“…I still can’t figure out why you’d run Win32 apps under Linux.”
for me, it’s because I simply prefer running linux. sometimes I need a windows app, and it’s nice to be able to run them without having to go back into my godforsaken win98 environment.
fire up ie in linux, do what you gotta do, then continue on my merry way with mozilla.
but then, I’m just a simple user. I don’t need any windows programs on a professional level, and I’m not a programmer. I just like it….so I use it.
Gimp isn’t entirely unsuitable for professional use. It all depends on what he is doing with the GIMP. For some stuff, programs like FilmGimp (which has been used in several movies) could work just great. For other things, like prepress work, GIMP wouldn’t be as useful.
yes, Codeweavers is running with Xandros, which no doubt accounts for its $99 price tag.
Yeah the gimp is a great program. The only thing I don’t really like about it as a program, is it’s scattered interface. Is there any way to dock all those windows inside one window (like photoshop does)? What is really awesome about Gimp is their scripting and the ability to pass the Gimp a command and have it dynamicaly spit out a graphic. But for most of what I do, I have to have photoshop. Although when i’m in linux I do use gimp.
And re: for the life of me
The reason people want to use Win32 apps under Linux is because some of us love the stability of linux and the customization abilities of linux but we also love our Win32 apps and certain companies (*cough* Adobe) won’t port their products to linux.
“Either way, things are looking up for Linux as being a viable desktop alternative. (Now if Linux only supported dual display better!)”
yes,, anyone have an good howto on dual monitor??
I am also a user who is stuck on Windows because of Photoshop. I would say Gimp is not for me because the interface is unlike anything else out there and when you try to make it look like something you know and are comfortable with ie. the Photoshop tool bar) it becomes unusable. If you try to do this Gimps upper menus disappear and all that shows up on the menus is “File” which then makes it unusable. The free flowing windows everywhere drive me crazy. I’m not working on a Mac and don’t want a program that uses the worst functionality of a Mac.
If you are a professional the price tag of Photoshop is not a big deal. It’s more important that you can finish what a client is asking for in a certain amount of time and make the real money.
Once the creators of Gimp can figure out how to create a usuable interface I’ll give it another try. It looks good but I don’t have enough intrest. For now I’ll wait till wine gets Photoshop to work.
Hopefully someday soon Adobe will be forced to port to Linux. I dont think anyone can deny that the Linux desktop has come leaps and bounds over the last 4 years.
-skeep
If you don’t mind, moving to Apple; Photoshop runs great under Mac OS X which is still a BSD Unix…
This is just about the most perverse thing I’ve ever seen.
What is the IDE setup? on your hdd and ide-cd, are they “cable select” or have they been defined? if they been set to “cable select”, change the settings to the correct ones, aka, Hdd as master and ide-cd and slave or what ever the configuration you have.
I never really got into photoshop and havn’t used The Gimp except one time a long time ago… In Windows I use Macromdeia Fireworks & Flash a *LOT*; Linux(or FreeBSD
) need to get something on the level of fireworks(and flash?) before I totally switch.
Well Adobe was porting Framemaker to Linux at one stage, then they stopped. As for Photoshop, it should be pretty easy as there is already a UNIX port of it. All that would be required would be an update of the code, aka, sync with Photoshop 7 and maybe port it to a more modern kit, such as qt3 or gtk2.
<-rant->
They don’t port software to Linux because Adobe and Macromedia are a bunch of Microsoft loving tosers. And don’t tell be about money as those two companies make more money than I could point a stick at!
<-/rant->
I’ll give you a perfect example. I am a diehard linux geek. I do anything I can to stay away from windoze. However, in the corporate world… m$ owns the desktop market. Many applications are written specifically for windoze using propriatary code. We are currently in the market for a new CRM. One of the solutions we are looking at is written using activex and will only work in IE. Since myself and a few other people are the only people running linux/BSD, this does not bother the rest of the company, and will likely be chosen. Being able to run IE would keep us from having to use a windoze machine, or a terminal server type of solution.
Like it or not, linux is not taking over, or even competing on the desktop level without such compatibility.
I’ve ran IE5 under Mandrake before. Fonts look ok, but you can tell that there is something ‘off’ about it .. for one thing the toolbars flicker like crazy, but it works.
And Dan, lay off the ‘windoze’ crap .. it’s tired.
A while ago Corel released a free version of PhotoPaint for Linux at http://linux.corel.com/products/pp9/download.htm. You can still download it and while it works under Wine it runs pretty well. To those graphics professionals who scoff at Photopaint I would encourage you to check it out – it’s a capable photoshop clone, and its brush selection is by many accounts better than Photoshop’s.
Hi you suckers who are saying you would love photoshop and dreamweaver on linux; I do it I use them and many other all on linux. How? try http://www.frankscorner.org/wine/ here you will get instructions how to install. I can tell It’s the best thing since linux a bit slow thoug but ok!!!!
Now since we have this apps for bsd as well (osx) I think it would be easier to do aq-wine linux emulator for mac os x. Enjoy
That’s a KDE desktop on XWindows – I’ll bet it runs like a dog. Sure it’s running Windows apps, but is it running them as fast ? Besides, the article mentions Office 2000 and that WindowsUpdate has nothing to do with Office. You have to go to office.microsoft.com for that …
>As for Photoshop, it should be pretty easy
No, porting something as big as Photoshop would be a nightmare. The X port for IRIX is very old, and Photoshop has special needs in terms of VM. A port wouldn’t be feasible without a lot of engineering effort.
Yeah but it’s Photoshop 5.5 and that is ancient. I actually make all my code and markup using JEdit. It’s open source or free… not sure and it’s pretty awesome. It is written in Java so it runs the same in Windows and Linux.
As for dreamweaver. I tried that site before and couldn’t get dreamweaver to launch. I only wanted it so that i could access a DAV server easier. All I want is a good program that is some what like CuteFTP but will connect to DAV and for photoshop to run on linux and i’d be a happy man.
Oh and I use pan for my newsgroups under linux and it blows away Agent in Windows. I wish pan worked in windows. If i was a talented programmer i’d try to port it some how, but i’m not. Although I start college next fall and i’ll be majoring in computer science… so.. who knows
“We talked about it before. The Gimp is not as powerful as Photoshop, not by a long shot. So, if Torrey is a professional, he needs Photoshop and naive suggestions like “try the Gimp” just aren’t good enough. -euginia”
no, in some ways it isn’t AS powerful, but, then again, in other ways it’s far more powerfull, i simply do not trust Photoshop to handle my GIMP pngs, it screws them up quite badly, as it’s own export filter is inferior to say the least, what GIMP does need is CMYK and proper Duotone support, but it’s still a great tool for a professional web graphic designer, ever tried to do the kinds of animation you can with GIMP using photoshop, dont even think about it, i personally haven’t touched photo$hop for a long time, i use the GIMP in windows as well as linux.
but, it still would be good to have some commercial software ported by the developers to linux, make the cost of running an intel box for photoshop about £550 rather than £700 odd.
“No, porting something as big as Photoshop would be a nightmare. The X port for IRIX is very old, and Photoshop has special needs in terms of VM. A port wouldn’t be feasible without a lot of engineering effort.”
so why’s are the ports between MacOS, OSX and windows maintained, because they make money, even if they’re difficult to maintain, they’re maintained because it’s worth doing, i’m sure there’s a market out there for PS on linux, although i’m sure apple wouldn’t like it.
“Now since we have this apps for bsd as well (osx) I think it would be easier to do aq-wine linux emulator for mac os x. Enjoy”
does that make any sense to anyone?
“That’s a KDE desktop on XWindows – I’ll bet it runs like a dog. Sure it’s running Windows apps, but is it running them as fast ? Besides, the article mentions Office 2000 and that WindowsUpdate has nothing to do with Office. You have to go to office.microsoft.com for that …”
why should it run like a dog, WINE isn’t actually much slower than running in native windows, in some strange cases faster in fact
.
Rockwell:I still can’t figure out why you’d run Win32 apps under Linux.
I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can cite my *own* desires…
The network at my work is currently running a thin client setup, using a Windows 2000 Server platform.
My desire is to replace this with a server running TightVNC. The advantages will be speed, stability, security, features (such as better colour depth) and cost. Metaframe done right, you might say.
There are two applications that are currently Windows-based, 1) MYOB Premier – a Windows accounting package (also on Mac with a native Mac OSX version in the works). As I am an MYOB Certified Consultant, with the company accountant using MYOB also, it is not an option to choose an alternative package.*
2) A proprietary “Block Load” programme for calculating air conditioning (HVAC) loads. The programme, which has not been updated by the writers for years, is Windows 3.x based – as such, it actually runs better under WINE than it does under the Win2K Server! (Though there are issues with the hardware dongle. I’d love an Open Source of native Linux version of this one, as we don’t need to be tied to it for historical purposes.)
All other applications (office packages, etc) have been migrated to open source alternatives (to ease the changeover for the users). Which leaves the two Win32 apps that need to run – oh, and MYOB Premier really does need to run in a thin-client environment due to the massive size of the database.
So, in order to clone the functionality of a Metaframe system (without resulting to a separate server just for the Windows apps), I need to be able to support Win32 apps. These two programmes are literally all that are stopping me.
Matthew Gardiner:
They don’t port software to Linux because Adobe and Macromedia are a bunch of Microsoft loving tosers.
Erm, Matthew, I hate to tell you this, but “Tosser” (and “Wanker” for that matter) is not readily known in US English. Explaining the definition usually detracts from the intended meaning of the insult too.
That said; you summed them up succinctly!
* A pity, when you consider that Quickbooks now runs under CrossOver Office. I also would like to point out that I offered to port MYOB to Linux & BSD for MYOB free (to them) so that they may pick up the sales in this area for a $0.00 cost. The offer was not picked up. (Note: An NDA would not be the issue, as I am already under an NDA for the relevant areas – plus I’d sign 200,000 more if necessary!)
My only other option is to write a programme to effectively act as a wrapper – to process all of the “front of store” work, and pass it through either an ODBC link into MYOB, or use its import facility with a tab delimited text file.
(Then again, maybe I should start working on an MYOB clone (under GPL) which could then be compiled for Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows – push it to the accountants for free, thus ensuring their support for clients running it!)
have you had a look at Kapital that is sold by TheKompany? From the screenshots, it looks pretty feature complete.
Thanks for the suggestion Matthew.
Kapital is aimed at the Quicken/MS Money market.
MYOB Premier is the “Premier” MYOB product, with multi-user, multi-currency, enhanced perpetual inventory (including qty-breaks, pricing levels, custom categories), integrated payroll, perpetual debtors and creditors journals, contact management etc. This is on top of all of the features found in the Quicken-style products.
Finally, and very importantly, is the taxation compliance. MYOB products can produce the BAS (Business Activity Statement) as well as operate with the company accountant (who can either load the datafile on any of their computers, since Win32 & Mac use the same datafile) or even load it into “MYOB AccountantsOffice” which produces all of the formal reports ala Solution6.
I’ve looked into a few other products (such as “My Books”) which offer native Linux versions. Unfortunately, after the nightmares and disruptions caused by changing accounting systems 3 years ago, management will not tolerate another change in software package.
I’ve been watching the GNUe and SQL-Ledger projects for a while, however, the “no new programmes” rule still applies.
I would say Gimp is not for me because the interface is unlike anything else out there
You mean it is unlike any Windows app? Isn’t that to be expected? It is a *NIX app, not a Windows app. It works like other *NIX apps. It seems like your definition of ‘usable’ is ‘a clone of an equivalent Windows app’. There are plenty of ways to get from A to B. Try to keep an open mind.
and when you try to make it look like something you know and are comfortable with ie. the Photoshop tool bar) it becomes unusable.
Why must The GIMP be a clone of Photoshop? It has its own ways of doing things. Back when I was using Windows, I used Paint Shop Pro. When I first tried The GIMP, it felt strange because it wasn’t like Paint Shop Pro. After spending some time learning it, though, I learnt the logic behind how it works. After that, everything seemed to make sense. The interface isn’t particularly pretty or user friendly, but it is logical and efficient.
The free flowing windows everywhere drive me crazy. I’m not working on a Mac and don’t want a program that uses the worst functionality of a Mac.
Aaah, so it’s “the worst functionality” because you don’t know how to handle it? Having multiple windows is great, because you can organise your screen space better and have multiple apps onscreen at the same time (great when you find yourself switching back and forth between apps). To do this in Photoshop, you need to reduce the size of the entire app, which limits the size and placement of all Photoshop windows. That sounds very limiting to me.
Even if you don’t switch between apps while running Photoshop, there is still some benefit to be had from this approach. Unlike Windows and Mac OS, most *NIX window managers support the concept of multiple desktops. All you need to do is switch to an empty desktop and open The GIMP. You can then manage all GIMP windows in isolation from your other apps. GIMP windows are just like any other window, so they inherit the full functionality of your window manager (this is best experienced if you use a ‘different’ WM like Fluxbox). If you use a taskbar, all GIMP windows will show up in it, making window management and manipulation easy.
Sorry to point this out, but the EULA of Internet Explorer has never been challege in court, and therefore it is a de facto license over IE. And since IE 4.5, IIRC, you can’t run IE on operating systems other than those specified by Microsoft (for example, you can’t take IE 6.0 and run it on Windows 3.1, even if you manage to do it).
So basically your argument is learn to deal with Linux and its program uniqunesses and don’t complain? The same arguement could go for windows – learn to like it for all its crappiness. Why don’t you troll with a smaller word count next time?
Hey, Vince.
<tongue_in_cheek>
A piece of friendly advice; do a bit of religious research before belittling someone with the name “Yama.”
If it’s the real “Yama,” then you have much cause to be afraid. Hint: “King of Death” will narrow down the search on Google…
</tongue_in_cheek>
🙂
Apparently, the point decided to miss you. The original poster wasn’t saying that “the GIMP interface sucks, but you can get used to it” he said “it’s hard to learn, but efficient once you learn it.” I don’t know whether that’s true, I haven’t used either Photoshop or GIMP very much. But being hard to learn or being unique isn’t that big a deal for a program like GIMP, what matters is efficiency once the user has a handle on things. If a program’s UI is 20% more efficient than another one’s, and you spend a good deal of your time working with that program, who cares if it takes a while to get used to? For example, I used to hate Blender’s interface. Then I heard lot’s of people who swear by it for modeling tasks. So I decided to give it another shot. I still don’t like it to much, but I think I’m starting to see what they’re talking about. I can definately see how it’s keyboard paradigm could be more efficient than a more toolbar/menu oriented program.
(Off topic a bit I know but had to comment) Just because The Gimp is a *NIX app doesn’t mean the last 20 years of interface development should be ignored. Forgetting for a moment about the whole “Unix/Linux rules/Windows sucks” argument, apps are apps. Most users couldn’t give a toss about the OS underneath as long as the app does what they want it to do and in a way that makes sense. Graphics software like Photoshop looks and works the way it does because it’s evolved that way from the feedback of professionals and everyday users about how they want/expect it to work. Tossing that experience out the window and forcing users to change just for the sake of “It is a *NIX app, not a Windows app” is just plain stupid.
Being challenged in court or not, but in many countries you can not throw away your rights. Even if you signed the EULA, it wouldn’t be enforceable. But in the case of the EULA, you don’t even need to sign it, so it won’t work as a legal document.
This might not hold for the USA, but i believe it to be true in most of Europe.
OT:
The fact that you can’t throw away your rights have lead to some pretty interesting cases requarding ownership of school projects created in cooperation with companies. If the companies wishes to use the result they actually have to license it as the students have full copyright unless they were suitably paid for the work.
Does anybody know how they managed to get AA fonts in Xandros windows apps? All the times i have run wine the fonts have looked dodgy, is this a feature of crossover or can it be enabled in standard wine?
from http://www.winehq.com/news/?view=141
“But none of the above happened to be the big of the week. That prize goes to an article on linuxguru.net about Wine running the Klez virus. This isn’t the first time Wine has had the distinction of running viruses intended for other operating systems, but Klez is a little more known than the others. Several people pointed out KMail really does ask whether programs should be executed, as shown in this screenshot . It should also be noted that Wine only runs with the same permissions as the user executing it. So if a user can mailbomb friends by accessing a local MTA, so can Wine.”
so much for running win32 crap on Linux (and yes, I’d love Macromedia to port damn Flash MX to Linux, and let me change my license from Windows to Linux
I haven’t really had much experience with photoshop, so I can’t say which one is better, but I can see that the Gimp interface did not take long to pick up.
Different windows for every toolbar seemed annoying at first, but once you start dealing with multiple images open at a time, it’s fine, efficient and a smart way of doing things. Just put it on a different virtual desktop.
Like I said, it *is* just *my* opinion, but I find it easy to create decent graphics in, and I’m sure that counts for something
If you want windows apps, then just run windows, period. If you want to run a new os then make (or get people to make) better apps
Why don’t you guys give this software a try. It’s a basically a photoshop clone, which cost a lot less than photoshop and runs on multiple platforms including Linux.