Re: Microsoft - A punitive puppeteer?

[Martin Rowe <martin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 21 September 2001 5:41 pm, Bob Crothers wrote:
> Chris,
>
> Checkout VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/ ).  It will let you run Windows
> (actually, most any i86 operating system) as a "guest" under Linux.
>
> Bob

But it's still Windows - still susceptible to all the problems that
affect it running as the primary OS :( What is needed (IMHO) is for more
companies to recognise Linux as a viable choice to port their apps to.
That way people will have a choice in what OS to run on thier PC, instead
of assuming that Windows and PC are equivalent terms.

Like Chris, I run Linux at home (no MS software at all), and I'm also
able to use it at work. Apart from a few Windows based applications I
have to use (on other machines), I can do all my work fine, and in many
cases easier than my colleagues. What frustrates me is the resources IBM
is putting into Linux, but very little (on the suface, at least) seems to
be going to the desktop. No CA client[1] (or NetServer support), no Notes
client[2], no CODE/400[3] (required for the new /free RPG) and Ops Nav[4]
requires Windows. It seems crazy that you *have* to have a Windows box to
control some aspects of OS/400 :(

Regards, Martin
[1] There is a GPL Linux client and Mochasoft offer a low cost emulator.
[2] The Domino server runs on Linux, but no client. Notes web access
seems to work okay in Netscape 4.7 (& Mozilla), though it's not as
functional as iNotes or the full blown client. iNotes requires IE 5.x or
higher, so that's a non-starter :(
[3] I understand IBM are working on a Linux version, but I've not seen
anything from IBM on this, or what the timescales might be.
[4] I've also heard that Ops Nav is being rewritten in Java, so it can
run cross platform, but again, IBM don't seem to be shouting about it.
--
martin@dbg400.net / jamaro@firstlinux.net
http://www.dbg400.net  DBG/400 - DataBase Generation utilities
Open Source test environment tools for the AS/400 / iSeries and
miscellaneous database & spooled file management commands.