I gots a question.

Post #32,906 by acagle 3/20/02 5:46:42 PM Reply	I gots a question. So what if Lindows/WINE/whatever actually does get to the point where it runs native Winblows applications nearly as well as the original. Would that necessarily make Linux viable on the average desktop? I tend to think not. After all, that was one of the big draws of OS/2, that it could run Win 3.x apps as well (generally) as Win 3.x. I recall some commentator commenting (as commentators are apt to do) that just doing what the competition does is not enough; you have to do something different from the competition. I.e., "Why should I use this to run Windows apps when I can just run them on Windows?" Or from a developer's perspective, "Why should I develop for OS/2 when I can just write for Windows and OS/2 can run them anyway?" Supposedly better (from the basic user's standpoint) multitasking, etc., wasn't really something to differentiate it enough to make people switch; and admittedly there was a performance hit in many circumstances for the sort of "emulation" OS/2 used. Myself, I loved OS/2, but eventually realized that with a couple of exceptions, all I was doing with OS/2 was running Windows apps in "emulation", OS/2 development was going nowhere (for many of my basic apps, e.g., SPSS), and Win95 apps wouldn't run on it. IMO, unless there is some sort of standard file format (XML maybe?), the whole WINE thing is totally moot.
Post #32,914 by wharris2 3/20/02 6:18:02 PM 3/20/02 6:20:09 PM Reply	On the computer I had I tend to think not. After all, that was one of the big draws of OS/2, that it could run Win 3.x apps as well (generally) as Win 3.x. I never found that to be true. When I tried to run Windows stuff, it always ran rather erratically - of course the early Windows programs always ran erratically anyway, even Microsoft-written programs, at least until Quicken and Ami Pro came out. The killer (at that time) for me was Doom. Doom never could handle sound under OS/2, or indeed most peoples' sound cards. (I heard rumors that some did work, but never saw it happen myself.) The death knell for OS/2 on my computer was the (first) enthusiastic announcements of porting Doom to OS/2, the rumors of betas, then the long silence, then the idsoftware .plan file saying "We don't know what's going on with OS/2 Doom, and stop asking." When I realized the only things I were doing under OS/2 were Nethack and Galactic Civilizations (who, from reports, had an unbelievably hard time getting it to work around the so-called OS/2 graphics module that was going to be the direct competition to that pre-DirectX Microsoftie ploy (geez, I can't even remember its name, it faded so quickly from the scene), it was over. Doom ran perfectly under Windows 95. I missed Galactic Civilizations, but oh well. At that time I only had one computer, and OS/2 was just sitting there eating disk space. [edit - added the last paragraph] "I didn't know you could drive to Europe." -- An eavesdropper, piping in when he overheard a conversation about someone who had driven to Montreal. Edited by wharris2 March 20, 2002, 06:20:09 PM EST Expand All History
Post #32,923 by inthane-chan 3/20/02 7:03:24 PM Reply	WinG. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #32,951 by wharris2 3/20/02 11:28:01 PM Reply	That, was it and personifies Microsoft evil WinG was the do-all and end-all of Windows games, better than sliced bread, was going to ultimize the gaming experience... until Microsoft tossed it out. It was the ULTIMATE in Microsoft crap, pre-announcing, doing stuff that wasn't worth sherlock until they got their real plans in gear. There was a Windoom that used WinG, and I'd bet id software kicks themselves for falling for the Microsoft bullshit. "I didn't know you could drive to Europe." -- An eavesdropper, piping in when he overheard a conversation about someone who had driven to Montreal.
Post #33,056 by acagle 3/21/02 5:56:16 PM Reply	For me, the bane of OS/2 was Access 2.0. It was bizarre. After the first installation, it would run. Then I'd have to launch it a couple of times before it would actually run. Then 10 times. Then 20. I swear they put some random number generator into the launch sequence so it would only start up if said number was divisible by five times the square root of the elapsed second of the current hour. Or something.

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