[Leaplist] Re: A letter to my Windows friends...

[Kyle Gonzales]

On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 15:29 -0500, Charity Abbott wrote:
> No version of wine works with EQ. They may claim that older versions
> of winex or cedega supported wine, but this is a lie. It worked only
> if you liked random crashes, missing textures and about 500 times the
> bugs if you were running directly under windows. Also, you need a
> currently supported program anyway because they are constantly coming
> out with new expansions and using the new features of DirectX. The
> game will not run without the very latest directx9.0c dlls. EQ even
> checks this for you and purposefully closes the game if it doesn't
> find what it's looking for. I know I'm just complaining, but I have
> done my homework on this one.
> 
> I don't need support for Windows. It runs just fine. In the 10 years
> I've owned a Windows machine, I've had one virus that caused any
> noticeable effect which I cleaned from my machine myself. 
> 
> My point is even though Windows may be the worst OS out there, there
> are some things you still can't do without it. No one is asking you to
> support it. The letter seems to be missing these key points.

Let's back that up.

You CAN play MMORPGs in Linux.  There are any number of other
Windows-based MMORPGs that run in Linux with WINE or Cedega.  There are
a number of others that are native to Linux.  Even Second Life's new
millionaires can use a native Linux client.

You just chose one that the vendor does not happen to have Linux support
for, and does not work with one of the options to run Windows programs
on Linux.

This is not a limitation of Linux.  It is a choice on the part of the
user and the software company.

Now, there ARE things out there, usually relating to some sort of
hardware activation for a cellular card, or updating Treo software, that
seem to need Windows, due to a program being compiled for Windows, not
due to anything special to Windows.  And even in those circumstances, I
have seen workarounds.  They are not the most elegant in the world, but
such is life when the vendor does not support Linux.

-- 
Kyle Gonzales <kyle.gonzales at gmail.com>
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