************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * April 2004 * * * ************************************* News and Comments The importance of free software (particularly LINUX) continues to grow. Microsoft and others that provide proprietary operating systems recognize that the impact of this free software revolution could be very destructive to their business models. I believe that the recognition of LINUX as a potent adversary was instrumental in the recent settlement of lawsuits between Sun and Microsoft. Instead of competing with free software, companies like IBM, Novell, Apple and Oracle have decided to embrace and extend free software to their advantage. Software usage changes slowly. But three to five years from now, free software, and LINUX in particular, may have made the computer world look quite different than it looks today. We continue to test, use and provide DB/C DX and FS for various versions of LINUX. This month's article describes some of our recent discoveries about LINUX. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** LINUX LINUX on the server is well established and has had a large impact on the computer industry. IBM has made a major commitment to LINUX on its entire product line - x86, iSeries (AS400), pSeries (RS6000), zSeries (mainframe). To further demonstrate their support, DB2 is available for LINUX on each of these platforms. Dell, HP and other major x86 server manufacturers offer LINUX pre-installed on servers that they sell. And LINUX is the preferred operating system for web servers and various other kinds of servers. DB/C DX and DB/C FS have just been ported to LINUX for the IBM pSeries. We did the port because of a customer request. This was actually a surprise to us because the pSeries is the platform for AIX which we have traditionally considered to be a very robust, stable implementation of UNIX. The port of DB/C software was simple and appears to work very well on the LINUX/pSeries system. LINUX on the desktop is a different story. Windows owns the desktop and Microsoft isn't going to let that change without a fight. Aside from Microsoft's entrenched monopoly status, there are several technical reasons why LINUX has so far failed to make an impact on the desktop market. One reason is the interminable Gnome versus KDE argument. In a nutshell, LINUX desktop users can't decide on which API/look-and-feel to use for the desktop. And Gnome and KDE are incompatible from a programmer's point of view. Another major LINUX disadvantage is that Windows comes pre-installed on all desktop computers from almost all manufacturers in the US. Dell, IBM, HP, Gateway and even the no-name manufacturers all bundle Windows XP on every desktop and laptop computer they sell. There are no exceptions. We couldn't even buy a no-operating-system desktop computer at Micro Center, our local computer super-store. In desperation, we bought a bare-bones system, a disk drive and a CD drive, and assembled it ourselves. That appears to be the only way to avoid the Microsoft 'tax' on desktop PCs. Our suspicion is that Microsoft still uses its sales contracts to enforce its monopoly status, regardless of the settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit with the US government. With high hopes, we installed the Xandros Desktop Deluxe version 2 of LINUX on our newly-assembled bare-bones system. Just like the Xandros advertising said, we booted off of the Xandros distribution CD and, using a graphical installation wizard, installed LINUX with just a handful of mouse clicks. When it rebooted LINUX, instead displaying the typical UNIX character-mode gobbledygook, a nice Xandros splash screen was displayed, followed by the display of a graphical login dialog. After logging in, a desktop was displayed that looked very similar to Windows and the system tray across the bottom of the screen functioned just as a Windows user would expect. Everything worked fine; it met our initial expectations. Then came the big test - running the Windows version of the graphical DB/C DX runtime - dbc.exe. We used Wine, a Windows emulator that runs under LINUX, Solaris, FreeBSD and other UNIX-based operating systems, and which is installed by default with Xandros. We ran our two sample graphical test programs, PAINT.DBC and FILEMAINT.DBC. They worked great! Xandros also includes CrossOver Office which provides complete installation, registry emulation and Wine interface support for installing Microsoft Office XP, Adobe Photoshop and other major Windows software products. The Business Edition of Xandros even includes support for Windows 2000 Active Directory, Citrix thin client support, and other enterprise-oriented software. And it's supported by Xandros. However, it's not free. We bought the Deluxe Edition of Xandros for $79.95. LINUX on the server will continue to displace Windows, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, and other proprietary operating systems. The outlook for LINUX on the desktop is very bright. If you are considering LINUX on the desktop, give Xandros a try. Here are some useful web sites: www.ibm.com/linux www.hp.com/linux www.dell.com/linux www.novell.com/linux www.redhat.com www.xandros.com www.winehq.com www.linux.org www.debian.org ****************************************************************************** DB/C DX Class Schedule Class: DB/C DX Fundamentals Date: June, 2004 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, send email to admin@dbcsoftware.com. ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you monthly, just send an email message to 'dbcnews-subscribe@dbcsoftware.com'. The newsletter will be delivered to the email address from which the message was sent.