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Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software? 63

Posted by Cliff from the breaking-as-many-chains-as-possible dept.
XRayX asks: "I'm currently installing a Windows 98 PC and I'm trying to install just Open Source Software (except Windows and Drivers). Okay, there's Freeamp, GIMP, Mozilla, OpenDivX, VirtualDub, Audacity, Abiword, Tuxracer and FlaskMPEG for Windows; but I'm still missing some good Open Source Tools for Windows: a picture viewer and a GUI Zip-program. Can anyone help?" While an interesting thing to try, I don't think it will be as easy as it sounds. How many others of you have tried to pull this off and how successful were you?
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Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software? More

Using Windows w/ 100% Open-Source Software?

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  • Image viewers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's a list of open source image viewers here [sourceforge.net]

  • The Gimp (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While it is more than just a picture viewer, the Gimp runs on Windows and might fit your needs.

    My question is, unless you are doing as a challenge, why use Windows at all? I thougth the only reason to run Windows was to support all the closed source apps that have no viable alterative in the open source arena. But then again, I'm sure you have your reasons.

  • Open source GUI zip app... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...available at http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WiZ.html [info-zip.org]

    I've modified my copy to make the toolbar buttons larger and more colorful and fix a few annoyances.
  • One benefit that hasn't been mentioned is cost. While I may never make modifications to the source of the GIMP, I also will never fork out $500 (or whatever the cost is) for Adobe Photoshop. So I can use the GIMP instead of pirating a copy of Photoshop (come on, how many of you occasional Photoshop users actually paid for it yourselves???) So, I don't need the source, but since it is open source, I can "afford" to use it!
  • So good an idea in fact that it's been had before :) I used to be subscribed to the list, which was win32@lists.debian.org, but I can't find an archive of it, and i don't know if it still exists. If you search around, you may be able to find some posts describing an package repository of .deb packages built for cygwin or mingw.
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • Leave some of those computers using Windows. Maybe even throw a Mac into the mix. Getting them and the others to network together and play nice with each other might be a big headache but you'll learn a lot that you can use in the real world where such "mixed marriages" might be unavoidable.
  • With instructions, I assume.
  • Well, that and then clicking "Next" a few times. Either way, I assume that "instructions are instructions" and that if people can follow one set of instructions that they don't understand, they can follow another.

    Mind you, I don't think I would want my mom installing packages on my Linux machine either--though she has done it with help from me over the phone when I needed something remote and I couldn't be there to do it.

    When and if we ever get the GNUstep package installation software finished, it should become even easier to install binary software than it is with Windows "wizards".

  • Thanks for the pointers. I've played with Cygwin/XFree86 and it took over the whole screen - once it can share the screen, letting some windows operate under X and others run native Windows apps, it will be very useful. I look forward to a GNOME on Windows port using Cygwin/XFree86, to avoid the need for commercial software such as U/WIN and most X servers.

    One key point is that many Windows to *nix porting tools exist, including freeware options such as WINE. Not so many Unix to Windows porting tools exist, and fewer are freeware - until they are as good as the Windows to Unix tools, the temptation is for software companies to write to Windows APIs and then port to Unix.

  • Why not an open source distro for Windows? (Score:3)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Sunday July 08, 2001 @08:50AM (#101102)
    A big obstacle for adopting open source in the Windows world is lack of understanding of the benefits. The Windows culture is all about commercialware and shareware; even 'freeware' means binary-only software. Providing an easy to install set of open source tools for Windows is not a bad idea - it would be much easier for newbies to experiment with this, and if it included a set of tutorials (most are on the web already) it could make quite a big contribution to educating people about Linux/Unix culture.

    I'm thinking about developers and power users here, who might want to experiment with Perl, Unix scripting, GIMP, and other handy open source tools. Of course, it might be better in the long run to just install Linux, but incremental upgrades are a big reason why Windows won over OS/2 (you could try Windows 3.x but retreat to the safety of DOS without problems). Now people are running native mode Windows (NT and 2000) because it is more stable, faster, etc - why not make an incremental 'Linux tools on Windows' setup, allowing upgrade to true Linux later? Ideally, someone would take Cygwin and a bunch of other tools, and put them on a single CD including much of what's in a current Linux distro. I end up doing this on some systems, but a ready-made CD with installer would be much easier and more complete - no more systems with Cygwin but without Perl...

    The majority of users in business have to use Windows on their desktop/laptop and would get in trouble if they installed Linux, particularly if the multiboot install messed up and stopped Windows booting. Having an open source distro for Windows would be a great way to provide some benefits... 'Linux for Windows' with an easy upgrade to 'true Linux'.
  • If you're going to introduce people to a whole new world, show them the right one and not your narrow little Linux biased view.

    --
  • Sometimes it's ok to say things that people will disagree with and have it NOT be flame bait.

    Cygwin isn't about Linux on Windows, it's about Unix on Windows. Anyone who thinks or says otherwise DOES have a narrow and biased view.

    Moderation sucks.

    --
  • It all comes down to perception. If the real owner of the system (Dad, Boss, whatever) perceives non-Windows OS's to be harder to use, then he will never approve changing the OS on his systems. Also remember, people hate change.

    A good way to win someone over would be to take an extra system, or get approval to create a dual-boot box, and demonstrate Linux. Also, you would need to explain the philosophy of Open Source. That should at least get him to approve Linux for your own use, especially if you are passionate about it.
  • I have to concur here. I recently installed CygWin on a Win98 box and it's pretty impressive. Furthermore, you only listed the basic utilities that get installed. By default, you also get gcc, make, autoconf/automake, Python, Perl, CVS (In my copy, there's a strange CVS bug, where it performs the intended operation and hangs...), etc.

    Many tarballs simply work when you configure&&make&&make install, too. I installed CURL without a single problem.

    I got X working, but... it's weird. I didn't find it useful enough. I can't run X apps along with Win32 apps like you can with some commercial Win32 X servers.

    No biggie. The other thing is that I couldn't compile mc. For some reason, I need GTK installed to compile a console app. There's no configure option for "just compile *real* mc and not that terrible WinExplorer ripoff that shares only a name with mc."
  • VMWare is a good way to go, whether it's Linux on Windows or windows on Linux. I'm using Cygwin on my Win2K laptop and there are still a lot of issues with speed, program compilation, etc.
  • What are you talking about? How hard is "apt-get install " A person does not have to "acquire, decompress, compile, and install Linux applications", anything necessary can be done for you.

  • It is possible to install an awfull lot of GNU/Open Source programs on Windows.

    The hard part is spending the time to track down clones of the software you want, or software that is good in its own right.

    I suppose the biggest thing you need to think about is the kind of software you want:

    • You want graphics - get The Gimp
    • You want an editor - Get Emacs
    • You want encryption - Get GNU PG
    • You want music - Get FreeAmp

    Start at one of the meta-repositories, such as Freshmeat [freshmeat.net], or GNUSoftware.com [gnusoftware.com] - and search around.

    With enough time, and patience, you can go a very long way..


    Steve
    ---
  • If you say "Click setup.exe", It ain't gonna do squat, because they will need to double click :-P
  • Freshmeat Categories:
    http://freshmeat.net/browse/214/ [freshmeat.net]
    (Microsoft/MS-DOS & Windows Sub-categories)

    Sourceforge Category:
    http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=230 [sourceforge.net]

    Of course, where you can't find projects to fulfill your needs, of course one would want to look at Freeware/Public Domain and Shareware programs. Although, I would hope that eventually a number of these programmers would be willing to opensource their projects.
    http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/ [dmoz.org]
    http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Shareware/ [dmoz.org]
    I highly recommend the following Freeware (for non-commercial use) graphics viewer/editor:
    http://www.irfanview.com/ [irfanview.com]
  • There is currently a project, much like Wine to implament the Linux API's on windows:

    http://line.sourceforge.net

    why not just use that for most of what you need.

    Nate Custer

  • Re:this topic reminds me... (Score:4)

    by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) on Saturday July 07, 2001 @08:02PM (#101113) Homepage
    Actually, there's a very good reason why ordinary users (non-developers) often prefer open-source programs over other alternatives: they know that it's much less likely the program will die.

    I can think of many great Mac and Windows utilities that are no longer available because the original author lost interest. However, if a program is open-source, there's a much better chance that someone will continue to maintain it.

    Of course, it's silly to use an open-source program when it's simply not as good as a closed, but free, or cheap shareware program. Support open-source, but don't sacrifice productivity! For example, Audacity, the open-source audio editor I'm developing, is usable now, but doesn't have as many features as CoolEdit (yet). So if you are running Windows, and can afford CoolEdit, you're still better off buying it (of course, I love it if you use Audacity when you can and send in bug reports!).

  • You've already commited "the sin" of using Windows

    Is there a way to get a workstation with the quality of a national brand at a reasonable price without committing such sin? Can you use an NVIDIA video card at all without committing the "sin" of installing proprietary drivers? Non-proprietary hardware is quickly becoming too expensive for consumers to afford.

    so why not get the best tools that run on Windows

    Because GIMP is $100 cheaper than JASC's Paint Shop Pro, its approximate equal. (Photoshop costs so much more because most of what you pay goes toward licensing the PANTONE technology for the Print... command.)

  • you can just as easily as the developer of the program to release a binary with some different feature

    It's hard to get a proprietary software publisher to even release an out-of-print title, let alone improve it. With free software, you can fork it and pay a developer to add your feature.

  • How about something that starts up quickly, allows me to browse all the images in a directory at the same time

    In Windows ME, Explorer.exe can already view thumbnails of images in a folder. From the View menu, choose Thumbnails. (On some Windows versions, you may have to enable thumbnail views.)

    and doesn't leak memory?

    In that case, forget I even mentioned Explorer. Once, on my Windows 98 laptop, it ate 400 MB of RAM.

  • There are ImageMagick binaries available for the Win32 platform which would solve your simple image view/edit problems. You might have a little digging to do to find them, but ...

    Anyway, start at http://www.imagemagick.org/

  • I did a quick scan and it looks like no one even mentioned Star Office. The Star Office 5.2 version works quite well on windows 98 and it includes all the normal office suite type applications including some image viewing.

    dzimmerm

  • If you AREN'T doing it for political or philosophical reason, but are merely getting the best tools for the job, there are better inexpensive/free, (closed source) tools, so use those.

    I don't get it. If open source isn't better, why would anyone want to use it for political or philosophical reasons? It certainly doesn't hurt anyone to use closed source (freeware) programs.

    Personally, I try to use as much open source software as is reasonable, even though I run Windows 2000. Actually, the reason I run Win2K is the same reason I run IE instead of Mozilla. I can't stand Mozilla, and I can't stand Linux as a desktop machine. But open source certainly does have a number of *practical* advantages. For one thing, you have much more assurance that there are no secret backdoors. Open source is generally more compatible with extensions and plugins. Future versions of open source software are likely to always be free. Open source is more likely to be cross platform.

    Bottom line is that the amount of openness of software is a feature. It's not a black and white issue. I chose MSN Messenger over AOL Instant Messenger solely because MSN Messenger had an open protocol. Has nothing to do with politics or philosophy, I simply prefer using an instant messaging service which I can write a bot for. Eventually I hope someone will write a good open source client for it. That hasn't happened yet, though.

    For those of you willing to dive head first into the open source movement, more power to you. Every 6 months or so I decide to give Linux a shot. Usually it takes about 6 months for Win2k to get so corrupted I have to reinstall it, so I install Linux for a week or so, and get so frustrated with it that I go back to Win2k. Maybe someday...

  • For those of us who can't stand Emacs and love Vi, may I suggest:
    • You want an editor - Get VIM [vim.org] - Vi IMproved
    Flamers spotted at six o'clock, Sir!
  • use imagemagick for graphic viewing
  • You were right up to a month or two ago, but they moved it to shareware (I don't know if they added nags, I haven't upgraded) as of 7.0 (see the FAQ for their words). It was sad, since that was the first (and only) GUI-based archiver that supported my favorite format (bzip2) and was free (gratis) to boot. I guess the dot-com/advertising-revenue fallout hit them as much as everyone else.
  • If you want to try installing Linux without sacrificing Windows (and you've decided against risking non-destructive repartitioning), RedHat and others (if RH does it, Mandrake surely does; I didn't look to see if Debian will do it as a default installation option) offer the ability to either install as a big FAT file (containing the ext2 filesystem) or as files on an existing FAT partition (a less optimal solution, but available if necessary). I know I've set up more than one dual-boot on computers used by average folk (it defaults to Windows after a few seconds) without any problems (though readjusting the screen when switching OSes is a pain). These ideas may be good compromises that allow you to demonstrate Linux without bringing scary (to more casual users) repartitioning into the question.
  • powerarchiver.com has a good gui zip program that is free but not open source.
  • This does actually make lots of sense, if you have already paid for windows (either by lack of choice or needing it for other reason). It also makes lots of sense if you dont have any choice of OS due to company policy. It will also help to get people used to open source software and make transition to linux much easier (sometimes).
    Embrace and Extend

    You want a Cross Platform open source word processor then get Abiword. You need more power then get Star Office (and openoffice) which has all the functionality of MS Office and then some (mmm vector graphics.)
    http://www.abisource.com
    http://www.sun.com/staroffice
    There is a graphical version of Vim availble for windows, but its a command line app so you may as well just use the copy that comes with the (full dowload of) cygwin.

    Cross platform: the holy grail of software, the OS becomes irrelavant (it already is to most desktop users).

    I also really like Xnview, a file viewer and thumbnail browser. It supports loads of formats (i think it uses some of the IMagick .dlls)

    Use CDEX for your ripping needs, yes it supports Ogg.

    Need an IDE? Try VIDE for Java or C/C++, it seems okay, have not used it myself though
    http://www.objectcentral.com/vide.htm

    Best of luck. Try and contribute back to open source software any way you can, most people even appreciate bug reports and criticism (try and be diplomatic).

    I quite like Pingus, a lemmings clone. Its quite slow, and not yet complete but the devloper is looking for people to design more levels.
    http://pingus.seul.org

    Need a telnet client? No really you dont (and im not talking about the one included with windows), you need an SSH client with support for the insecure legacy protocol that is telnet. use putty.
    http://www.google.com/search?q=putty

    If you want realplayer support, or quicktime support your pretty much screwed. you have to at least install those apps, you could possibly get other media/video programs that use their .dlls.
    Is OpenDivX;) really open? I think i heard the license was not really very open.

    Wish i'd thought of posting this to Slashdot. Please get your progress included in Slashback.

  • I work with win2K at work but try my best to use Open Source tools whenever possible. I have found the better solution is to use vmware in windows and use all the good GPL software under Linux. Second I setup an older machine as a Redhat box as a server. (The vmware Linux uses DHCP
    At home I simply use a dual boot machine for the odd game or application.

    I think you will save a lot of time with this technique. Instead of hunting down older versions of applications - you can grab fairly up to date ones from your favorite distributions CD. (I use Redhat, Suse, and Debian).
  • they know that it's much less likely the program will die.

    Oh yeah?! Mozilla crashes on me all the time...

  • This topic reminds me of an "Ask Slashdot" I've been meaning to send in. For 99% of the population, they wouldn't know what to do with the source of MS Office even if you gave it to them.

    So what's the point of open source being used on an entry level machine with Windows? It has no benefit to the user, other than taking up space on hard drives and cd roms.

    Even if there was a bug that a developer was able to fix in the code, they wouldn't be able to compile it again anyway - they'd have to wait for a binary.

    So I guess my question is, is there any benefit of open source to the newbie? Or even an advanced, non programmer type user?

  • If Linux serves the need of what you're doing, and you are able to administrate the boxes, and you're really that geeky, why do you have any Windows boxes, period?

  • Right - but an advanced user could contribute bug reports, suggestions, give feedback, etc without the source. Having/not having the source is irrelevant.
  • Because I'm not the only one who uses the computers

    Are you admitting that Linux is not easy enough / not ideal for the beginning user? If Windows better meets their needs, why try to force them to use Linux?

  • You're making my point again - you can just as easily as the developer of the program to release a binary with some different feature, regardless of whether YOU have the source.

    They might say yes, they might say no, but whether or not you've got the source is irrelevant.

  • Assuming that you have someone to set it up for you, yes. But if you're the "administrator" of your own box, no way.

    Windows at least makes an ATTEMPT to be user friendly (although it frequently fails miserably) whereas with Linux you are really on your own.

    Joe Idiot, the computer user, can at least install some programs and probably a printer on Windows by reading a printed page of instructions. I don't think it can be said that Joe Idiot can figure out how to acquire, decompress, compile, and install Linux applications, without a guru looking over their shoulder.

  • But see, you only know what "apt-get install" is because YOU'RE A GEEK.

    My mom is not going to be able to figure that out. She can, however, install simple programs under Windows.

  • If you count "click setup.exe", I guess those are "instructions".
  • Yeah, but you can afford to use it because it's cost is $0, not because it's open source. It could be closed source, and freeware, shareware, $20, postcardware, and you could afford it too.

  • No offense but.... (Score:4)

    by jchristopher ( 198929 ) on Saturday July 07, 2001 @05:53PM (#101137)
    Seriously, what's the point of this exercise?

    If you are choosing GPL/GNU/Open Source because you are making a political statement, or doing it for philosophical reasons, you shouldn't be using Windows.

    If you AREN'T doing it for political or philosophical reason, but are merely getting the best tools for the job, there are better inexpensive/free, (closed source) tools, so use those.

  • What do you need an image viewer for? Mozilla will display gif, jpg, png. What else do you need?
  • I think this idea has some merit and is actually quite feasable. In addition to Cygwin, I'd add the packages mentioned in the post as well as some alternative GUI stuff ported to Win32. The basic problem with this is the state of free software X servers for Windows is poor at the moment. Other projects are based on recreating the POSIX primatives: Gnome Desktop on Windows [gtlinc.com]. This has been discussed at /. before [slashdot.org]

    Apparently, it needs a free-for non-commercial use unix library and an X server, so no real joy yet. Since the Gimp uses a non-X layer for Windows, it must be somehow possible to port other GDK based stuff to Windows.

  • Since when was VMWare open source?
  • No, he wants VI[M].
  • Cygwin [cygwin.com] gives you many of the most familiar commandline utils from the unix and Free Software worlds: (at random, ottomh) bash, tcsh, ash, sh, cron, mutt, grep, ls, ps, less, hell Ieven got gpg to compile under it. If you want to go the full distance XFree86 now compiles and runs, as does WindowMaker. "Be the envy of other major governments! Wopw, this is big league stuff..." ;)

    HTH...
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • Other good reasons for Free software on Windows are (a) if you've got 5 years' worth of Windows skills paying your rent, but want to move over to Linux or BSD, it lets you get familiar with shells, GNU utils etc (and, to some extenrt, the Think Unix philosophy of everything's a file, pipes, redirection etc) without dropping you in at the deep end; and (b) it lets you do what I did, subvert a clsoed All-Microsoft shop from within. The Partner in charge of IT at Bain, London, wasn't too happy when he discovered that our intranet was now powered by Apache and Perl... oh look, we haven't had to reboot the machine for six months! spooky...
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
  • granted, X is somewhat, um, experimental at present... but the coolness factor makes it well worthwhile. I've had some problems along the way (currently I can't get Mutt going, presumably [I'm fairly clueless about how mail works in Linuxland] because it's looking for Sendmail, rather than my existing local (nonfree) mail server.

    Hmmm, now there's a thought - isn't Sendmail ported to win32?

    There's a ton of other s/w that will run under win32 outwith cygwin - Bind, for instance, which I'm now running here (as a cacheing only server of course), and the aforesaid Sendmail, Apache, mod_perl, etc. The most frustrating thing is how much of that kind of stuff requires MS VC++; I was most disappointed that moz wouldn't build with gcc , though I suppose it makes sense.

    Now all we need is for the FreeNT project to come through and voila, a Microsoft-free Windows... :)
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • or for that matter, if you're a Gnome person, Red Carpet is so easy anyone that can read English and use a mouse can probably figure it out...

    Now, if only they'd put the RPM browsing/installing features back into Nautilus...

  • the Zip-Program looks kinda cool and jcdsee isn't bad overall. Now why I'm doing this: Mainly I'm currently waiting for my dad giving me the permission to install Linux on all PCs in our Network. I played around with Debian Potato, Caldera OpenLinux Beta and Suse 7.0 Evaluation, but they did'nt statisfy me overall. So I decided to stay with Windows (with OpenSource) until I have the permission from my dad and chosen a good distribution (RedHat's or Suse's newest). X
  • I think there is, because the advanced, not programmer, user can help the development team in giving serious bug reports and feedback as beta testers. And if it's an OS-Project the bug will be fixed in the next version or the feature will be probably added. For the normal newbie Windows User okay, he doesnÄt benefit from OS Software even if it's fuckin good. He'll us M$ Products forever. But such advanced users as described can really help the Development team. Just my point of view. X
  • Because I'm not the only one who uses the computers. I have a dad, who believes that Windows is good, and a brother that doesn't even know how to spell linux! So they wanna stay with windows and so i have to do, at least until XP comes out and they see how bad M$ is... X
  • In this point you are right. But the difference is the way Oopen source and Close Source Software in developed. Let me give you one example: Projectmayo has a cool DivX Player named the Playa, it's cool because it even plays not completed DivX Moviez and has some other cool features. The only thing I didn't like about it was the installer. It was bloated up with the codec and i wanted just the binary. Okay, I could download the source and compile it myself, mayve easy for some users. But it wasn't for me at that time (now I'm a little more experienced), so i asked in the Forums, if it would be possible to release a binary only distribution and one day later the author of the program reacted and put the binary only online. I don't think the guys of Winamp would have done that, too. X
  • (of course, I love it if you use Audacity when you can and send in bug reports!) What did I say?
  • As explained before, I'm doing this not only because of politically and/or philosophical reasons; I'm doing this: a) just for fun b) until my Dad gives me the permission to install Linux on all the PCs in our Network c) to show my friends how great Open Source is (Use ogg instead of MP3 etc.) d) to statisfy my geekiness while staying at Windows e) because of philosophical reasons X
  • Photoshop Elements is 90% of photoshop at 1/10 the price. And it blows GIMP seven ways from sunday. Elements can be bought from Adobe or online. Do a google search for "Photoshop Elements". It's either $99 or $69 with a rebate.
  • one word. vmware.
  • This young person is obviously at the start his learning curve. So whats with the pointless opensource fanatical diatribe blast? I guess your world must really be a narrow one. You probably walk around sideways. No offense! yea right!
  • Don't get me wrong, I hate that damn paperclip as much as the next man, but staroffice falls a long way short of MS office. Caveat: I haven't used staroffice in about a year, and I guess it *could* have come a long way in that time.

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