[lug] WINE

[William D. Knoche]

> There are certain programs I use on Win that I require before
> I could ever completely switch over to a  Linux desktop.  For
> example, I use Adobe and Macromedia software extensively
> (e.g. PhotoShop and Flash) and I'm sure there are a lot of other
> people in my situation.  

Yep. The apps may be different but the situation is common.
For me it's Quicken, TurboTax, and Photoshop.
Linux does most everything else I need to do.
The kids games are somewhat M$ dependent but I just keep a seperate machien for them. Most of my young ones I have diverted to some web sites that have educational games. Even my 5 year old navigates Linux and Solaris just fine.

> 
> I know there are some nice programs out there for Linux that will
> do something similar, but I already know how to use these programs
> and the time investment makes it unlikely of switching any time soon.

Actually, gnucash isn't quite there as a replacement for Quicken. Does most things but I am very dependent on the Quicken credit card and the account update features for my bank and brokerage accounts. gnucahs can't really do this very well (well, you could get a qif file from each account and import it every month, but, its a pain). Wine or some other emulator is my only hope.

There is no hope for a Turbotax (although I think the IRS ought to be forced to do one since the Tax code is now so complex that without a tool it is somewhat hopeless and I should not have to pay to meet my tax obligation)

Gimp is actually a very good replacement for Photoshop though I miss the history palette. One can argue that gimp has better plugins... and the learning curve is pretty shallow since it looks/acts a lot like photoshop.

> 
> So, I think getting something like WINE to work well under Linux
> would be important to the future of Linux unless someone could
> convince companies like Adobe to port their apps to Linux.

I guess I have not tried very hard since I have not gotten Quicken or Turbotax to actually work. But, I have heard of folks that claim to have it working and working well - perhaps just a version thing or a configuration thing or ...

> 
> Since we are starting to see many of these programs available for
> Mac OS X, I would think it wouldn't be that difficult to get them
> running under Linux.  What's holding them back?

I don't think this is a technical issue.
Marketing! Installed base...

"Eat more sheep, 10,000,000 coyotes can't be wrong!"
"Follow those lemmings..."

Seriously, a lot of ISVs build their applications on M$ purely on the strength of the installed base - they hate it but they make money.
They build their support platforms by rank stacking the installed base of potential customer's platforms.

Let's see (1999 numbers, slightly better today), 

	M$ W*		91.1%
		W95		57.4
		W98		17.2
		NT		11
		DOS		 4.4
		W3.1		 1.1
	Apple		 5%
	Linux		 2.1%
	All other Unix	  .8%
	All others	 1.0%

I think the 2002 numbers show M$ with 87%, Apple 5.5%, Linux ~6%, blah...

Still, I think if everyone keeps pounding on Adobe, Intuit, etc to port to Linux it could happen. I personally call Intuit and aks about Linux once per month. Adobe called to ask when I was going to upgrade Photoshop from 6.0 to 7.0 and I said as soon as they had a Linux version, if not I would live with gimp.
If enough people ask...

The M$ momentum is huge. For example, the issue for companies like Sun is that while we want very much to help Linux since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the problem is that Sun will lose a seat for every five taken from M$ by Linux. At that rate Sun will be a distant memory and M$ will still have 80% or better.

While I don't agree with Gartner on many of these points here is something show what someone else thinks...

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2878221,00.html

--Bill