[ale] Wine

[docx at io.com]

On Fri, January 20, 2006 2:27 pm, Geoffrey said:
>
> I write perfect software all the time.  It always does exactly what I
> code it to do.

There are those who don't write code.  They buy code other folks have written.
 Does your code do exactly what someone else wants it to?

> The interesting thing I find about all this is that most open source
> betas are as stable or more then their commercial alternatives.  A very
> good example is Linux.  For the longest time I was running the
> development kernel tree.   I rarely had any problems.  Windows on the
> other hand....

Windows is something that many people are familiar with and does things "well
enough".  They don't have to edit config files, get system information from
arcane command line programs, or do anything besides point and click (and
possibly download updates and install them, but folks are used to that by
now).

For geeks (and I number among that fold), getting Linux (and most any unix,
for that matter) to do what we want is easy.  For Aunt May and Uncle Bob, it
ain't that easy.  And when you're writing software targeted at replacing the
operating system that Aunt May and Uncle Bob use, it better be as rock solid
as possible, because the first couple of errors they run intow ill make them
wonder "What the heck am I doing running this crap?  Let me just have my old
computer back.  That worked."  It's not that they're getting more errors,
necessarily, but that they're getting different errors they don't know how to
work around.

I believe that's the primary reason Wine is still in "beta".  It's really good
code, but it hasn't fixed everything yet.

-- 
Dylan Northrup - docx at io.com - http://www.io.com/~docx/
"Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's
 really worth it if you give it a try." -- Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'