Tuesday, October 04, 2005

A Linux Breakthrough

Oh I just have to post this before I forget.

I showed K how to access our music files with amaroK from the SuSE 9.3 partition, and she was in heaven creating her own playlists and burning customized audio CD's. I also showed her how she could access all her documents from the Windows partition too.

Later she told me that Linux would be ideal if only we could get the boy's games to run on it...

:-)

Sure, we can do that. It just takes a little effort. Fortunately, I found just the site to help me along in this endeavor, Frank's Corner, Running Windows Applications On Linux Using Wine.1

Most of their games are older so I don't foresee any major complications in getting it done. It's taking the time to do it that is the real trick.

The breakthrough? K's convinced, the Linux desktop is for real and really usable! That, my friends, is a real triumph. I shouldn't be surprised though. It has most of the apps she uses in Windows anyway--OpenOffice (she's better at working with it then I am), FireFox, the web-based apps Google provides (poor M$, Google is making application serving amongst the masses a reality before their very eyes), etc. It's all there and thensome.

Transition made, resistance isn't futile after all... ;-)

1"Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris." --Wine HQ

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