Dan Kegel
Cebit 2009
DRAFT
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The opinions expressed in this talk are my own, and not those of my employer
Pay attention, there will be a quiz at the end
The world fell in love with Windows in 1995
CTV: "Millions of computer buffs swarmed into stores..."
but some people are starting to look elsewhere
Mac now has 10% of the market
These coffee-lovers seem to prefer the Mac
Firefox and Webkit/Safari now have 30% of the browser market (up from 25% last year)
Governments all over are switching to Firefox, OpenOffice, and Linux
Reasons given include:
Encourage competition in the software market
Independence from software suppliers
Lower mid-to-long term cost
Easier to maintain
More secure
Local jobs
Broadband adoption 30% in EU, 50% in US
120 million people use Web email each day
The Web has multiple killer apps
New Web browsers run Javascript fast enough to handle more complex apps snappily
With HTML 5, Web apps will work even when offline
Cellphones with awesome web browsers now cost $199
Dell Mini 9n netbook: $250
In short, people now are much freer to switch away from Windows.
Fine, people are switching away from Windows, and entire nations are considering switching to Linux.
So what? I'm comfortable with Windows.
Linux comes with tens of thousands of free applications
and free updates
With Linux, there's no worrying about activation,
and you can install it as many places as you like
With Linux, every programmer in the world
is potentially available to fix bugs for you.
You can even dive in yourself, if you're so inclined.
With Linux, you're never forced to upgrade to a new version
And with Ubuntu Linux, new versions are always free
Linux has only 1% to 2% as many viruses as Windows (netlux.org)
If you have to cut a million bucks from your IT budget,
switching to free software can save a lot on software updates
Some organizations are running Linux pilots to improve their bargaining position
OK, you've convinced me, I guess I should try switching to Linux.
But there's just one more thing:
I have this old app I need to run... can I take it with me?
Why can't Linux just run Windows apps?
Linux cloned Unix
Can't we clone Windows, too?
As it turns out, yes. Here, have some Wine!
Wine is a free implementation of the Windows APIs
It can run thousands of Windows applications, including Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop... and vital apps like World of Warcraft and even VeggieTales Dance Dance Dance
You can install Wine in Ubuntu Linux with "Add/Remove Applications"
If you need the latest test version, you can download it from WineHQ.org
Firefox is listed as Platinum
so it should work well
To install Windows Firefox, just double-click on its installer
After installing Firefox, it shows up in the user's menus under Wine
Wine stores your "C: drive" in your home directory under .wine/dosdevices/c:
Powerpoint 2007 is listed as Silver
because you have to use Winecfg to work around a bug
Six mouse clicks and one word later, Powerpoint is happy
Safari 3.2 is listed as Bronze
because https and bookmarks don't work
and you have to install a font to use it
Winetricks makes it easy to safely grab missing fonts or DLLs
Hang on, did you say Wine is free?
It's not like elves are doing the work; programmers have to eat, don't they?
If Wine is so good, why give it away for free?
Because doing it as a community project makes it easier for everybody to help
Together, sufficiently motivated users can move mountains
Things That Don't Work Yet
WPF / XAML
Some copy protection schemes
Some USB drivers (e.g. iPhone sync)
Win64 support
Direct3D 10
with Linux or Web apps:
because then you have fewer people to blame if something goes wrong
The Czech law firm Kindl & Partners runs Firefox, OpenOffice and Linux on ten computers
They use Wine to run ASPI,
a standard Czech legal software package
Xavier School in Manilla has 600 computers
Sticking with Windows would have cost them $50,000 + $25,000 annually
So in 2007, they migrated to Linux
"We are quite comfortable with Open Office as a replacement for MS Office.
Email is provided by Lotus Notes or webmail on Firefox.
We are using Wine every day in high school for WinPlot, and every week in grade school for custom Chinese programs (written in VB6).
The City of Munich has 14,000 workstations.
All run Firefox; about 8,000 run OpenOffice, and 1200 run Linux.
250 workstations use Wine to run Geoinfo, WS-FTP, and a legal reference book.
0. Keep it simple
1. Find willing volunteers
2. Switch to open source or web apps (e.g. Firefox) on Windows
3. Then switch just people that need no Windows apps to Linux
4. Let people that need lots of Windows apps keep using Windows
5. Find people that need just a few Windows apps,
test with Wine, file bugs, and get help
To see if an app is known to work with Wine, check the Wine App Database
Where to get help when things go wrong:
Free web resources (FAQ, wiki, forums, Bugzilla, etc.)
Inexpensive Commercial support (Codeweavers, Canonical)
Heavy-duty Wine development (Codeweavers consulting)
If you just need a little help, support is cheap...
but implementing missing features can get expensive.
Codeweavers plows most of the revenue from their support offerings into salaries for fulltime Wine developers
Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the most popular desktop Linux.
Both Codeweavers and Canonical are fanatically devoted to supporting free software.
Wine development is guided by our conformance test suite
Each change to Wine must pass tens of thousands of tests flawlessly
We fix about 150 reported bugs every month
Most are small bug fixes or very small missing features
For each one, we try to add a new conformance test
Wine is under increasingly active development
You say Wine runs Windows apps without Windows?
Doesn't that violate Microsoft's copyright or something?
Clean room design techniques are used to ensure Wine is legal
and free of copyright violations
Q U I Z
If ohloh.net says Wine cost about 21 million euros to develop so far,
1. Can you think of an effective way for the EU to encourage competition in the operating system market?
Financial contributions to the Wine project may be made via the Software Freedom Conservancy
Penguin happy because he drank a lot of Wine
Clickable presentation online at www.kegel.com/cebit
Text copyright 2009, Dan Kegel
Bar charts drawn with gnuplot (thanks, Tom!)
Images trademarked and copyrighted by their respective trademark and copyright holders, and used here under the fair use doctrine.
The opinions expressed in this talk are my own, and not those of my employer