On Mon, May 09, 2005, Amos Shapira wrote about "Re: Moving to Linux": >... > Debian (and other distro's) convenience is that it packages many utilities > and add-ons in an easy uniform interface to download/install/config. > > This should be possible to do also on Windows (there is nothing special > about the Linux kernel), only it haven't been done yet. People > can probably come up with many reasons (one I can think of is the > proprietary and non-free-as-in-speech nature of the licenses of > most Windows utilities).
Interestingly, when it comes to Unix-like software for Windows, such a tool does exist: cygwin. Not using cygwin (or windows) for a few years, and recently trying it out again, I was surprised to find out that it switched to a model very similar to the Linux distribution model (like apt or yum), where you have a utility that can list the available packages, download one for you, update all the packages that you have installed, all automatically. I see no reason why this mechanism should be specific to Unix-like software - it could be theoretically also be used for classic Windows software. Why hashn't it, though? I can think of several possible reasons. None of them are very strong, so this situation is very likely to change in the future. 1. Much of the available Windows software is not free. Automatically installing such software might not be very useful. 2. Most, or nearly all, of the available Windows software doesn't come with source code. Repackaging it becomes very hard (if at all legal), so the user will need to continue to deal with the packaging idosyncharsies of individual programs (installation menus, directories, dlls, etc.) without the "distribution" being able to "normalize" these issues for the user. 3. One of the biggest strengths of Windows over Linux is exactly in the fact that its software distribution isn't centralized like in Linux (where users have grown accustomed to getting all their software from the distribution). When you buy some peripheral for your computer, you get a CD-ROM with a Windows (only) driver. When some new startup creates a software, they usually create (only) a Windows version on their site. A centralized distribution, even if big as Debian, can hardly match this sort of variety. -- Nadav Har'El | Monday, May 9 2005, 30 Nisan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The two rules for success are: 1. Never http://nadav.harel.org.il |tell them everything you know. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
