I Am Going Back To Windows

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(part 1)

Seems that I'm hearing a lot of people and companies saying, "I'm going back to Windows." The obvious question is: Why?

From what I can tell, many go back to Windows for the following reasons:

1. "Software package" has no suitable equivalent under Linux.
2. Linux is simply too complex to understand.
3. We are being forced to go back by our management.

No Suitable "Software package" Equivalent

There is certainly a lot of truth there. However, if you consider the relative youthfulness of Linux, the number of packages available is immense. And of course, most all Linux software programs are free. When I look at Linux and compare it with Windows of 10 years ago, suddenly Linux does not look all that bad in this area.

Crossover Office

One popular solution to getting Windows products onto Linux is Codeweaver's Crossover Office. However, Crossover Office only supports (officially) a handful of applications and though it's namesake comes from its ability to run Microsoft Office, it does not support newer versions (post Office 97/2000) completely. Version 6 of Crossover Office finally adds some support for Microsoft Office 2003. So... if "no suitable app" means the lack of true Microsoft Office, then Crossover Office may be a good alternative. Crossover Office is built on a custom derived version of Wine which is software that allows x86 Windows applications to run on Linux natively without using Microsoft Windows OS or libraries.

Another more radical solution that is gaining in popularity is to run a full copy of Windows under a virtual machine. Of course, this means that you really have two machines, one with Linux and one with Windows even if the Windows machine is a virtual guest on your Linux box. The good news however is that you can still have the application stability of Linux for most applications and just use the virtual Windows guest for running those few must-have Windows applications. The bad news is that this kind of solutions incurs the same software costs (for the most part) of having a full second machine running Windows. Current virtual machine solutions include:

• VMware
• Xen
• Parallels
• Linux KVM (patch to the Linux Kernel)

The solution from VMware is the most mature and provides full hardware virtualization which allows creation of virtual machines on hardware without CPU virtualization support (found only in 2006+ CPUs from Intel and AMD). Both Xen and KVM will allow you to run Windows as long as you have CPU virtulization support.

The cost of doing virtualization is too high for most, so application equivalence is always going to be an issue when moving from Windows to Linux. Btw... application equivalance can also be a problem going from Linux back to Windows. But you will rarely hear people complain about the lack of stability, lack of applications and certainly the enormous software costs of going back to Windows. Simply put, corporations are used to spending millions of dollars for Microsoft software and they are content with that.

To be continued... Back to Site Blogs