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Corel

Corel Linux to Access and Run Windows Apps 148

Posted by emmett from the .exe's-from-the-dark-side dept.
rawlink writes "Corel has announced that they are working w/ GraphOn to support their Bridges client software on Corel Linux. This will allow the Linux client to access Windows apps over a network connection, much the same way that Citrix does." I hope this won't be too expensive; it could instantly enlighten the minds of a lot of people wondering what the next OS for their LAN should be...
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Corel Linux to access and run Windows applications More

Corel Linux to access and run Windows applications

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  • WINE (Score:2)

    by mTor ( 18585 )
    Note: This does _not_ mean that they won't use wine. This only means that they can run win32 apps _remeotely_.

    --
    GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com]
  • This would be great, and could spell the end to my use of VM-Ware... would much rather access the programs on the network than have that dsk image on my hd.

  • VNC (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ever heard of VNC? xvncviewer works wonderfully.
  • Anyone out there in slashdot know where this things limits will be? Will it be able to have as much client/server abilities as X or is it going to be more like PCAnywhere? Inquiring minds wish to know.... :)
  • One of the main difficulties with windows apps over a network is that they have no concept of mutiple users and file permissions. For instance, the Normal.dot template in word must be writable by all users, usually resulting in some wonderful macro viruses. But my main problem is the price of Metaframe and the way that licensing is done. I believe we had to pay for NT workstation seat licenses for each connection, even though we are using the Sun clients. Bah

  • Windows Terminal Server (Score:5)

    by Tenement ( 94499 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:10AM (#1396966) Homepage
    To my memory the Windows Terminal Server is based (and licensed) off of (by) Citrix's server side windowing technologies.

    If you surf over to Citrix's Web Site [citrix.com] you'll notice that there already is a linux client for this server.

    Simply put, if you have a WinNT TSE (Terminal Server Edition) Server or a Windows 2000 Server you'll already have access to this with native Microsoft enhancements.

    With thanks

    Tenement
    --

  • So I guess this is going to be a bit like xceed otherway around. That's cool, now I can finally play minesweeper !
  • But at the same time I've got a few questions about their announcement.

    Is it running the application with it's own memory space (ie client processor churning) or is the server's processor handling it and handing off basicly screenwipes? I couldn't find the answer to that spelled out though I admit freely to not having read every page on their website.

    Does this mean that GraphOn is going opensource? Or are they only supplying binaries?


  • Haven't they announced this before? (Score:3)

    by Telcontar ( 819 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:13AM (#1396970) Homepage
    Check this story [slashdot.org] (from November): According to this "Corel Corporation will use GraphOn's Bridges(TM) software to allow access to Windows applications from Corel's(R) Linux desktops." Does this mean Corel is dropping support of WINE? As someone else has stated before, this has nothing to do with wine: Bridges is only a sort of "X server for Windows", so one can display the output of a Windoze app runner on a Windoze box.
  • does anyone know what the performance is like on a 56k modem? Can this possibly substitute fir being able to run locally? This still doesn't sound like a real solution to the Windoze problem - so instead of your PCs crashing, you will have 25 instances on Word97 running on your NT server and it will go down. Big deal. I don't think there can be a mass migration of Windoze users to Linux until you can run your Win32 apps LOCALLY on your Linux machine, with the full realiability of Linux and feature set of the Win32 app. Do you want to have to dial up every time you use Word or Excel? I don't think so. Do you want to be the Network Admin in charge of an NT box running 200 instances of Word2000? I don't think so.
  • Terminal servers promise tremendous easy of running windows clients, god knows we need that..
    So having one for Linux is a real real good thing, made me wish we had an open source TS.

    Greetz SlashDread
  • The problem isn't US wanting to run Windows apps, it's Pointy-Haired-Bosses wanting to run Windows apps!

    --
  • This product is not like VNC. It can remote display a single application running on a remote NT server on the local *nix desktop. But the remote app itself is never displayed on the remote server. This product isn't a "screen scraper" like VNC or PCAnywhere.

    Even under single-user NT, it is a multi-user product, because screen and/or input device contention is not an issue.
  • It's always been possible to do this, thankfully someone has finally implemented it across different operating systems. This will certainly speed the adoption of Linux in business, as it will not require a complete reworking of a companys ADP strategy. A couple questions, will it only link to Windows NT Server? Will this work for different hardware, such as a Linux Alpha machine running software on a Windows NT x86 machine? Will it be Open Source?
  • We really need good Native apps. That's what we need. Not everyone wants to go through the expense of setting up some kind of "Mainframe" server for applications. Native apps. Let's code.

  • Re:VNC (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unfortunately, VNC doesn't allow for separate logons with separate (Win32) desktops. It's more like BackOrifice than it is Citrix's product, or Corel's planned product. For small networks, it works fine, but for TRUE application sharing, it is not a solution.

  • It's interesting to see how much this idea of 'run it all on the server' is making a big comeback these days. That's the way my employerer (who will remain unnamed) is going...we are deploying Citrix to run lots of software all on the server. Is it a good idea, who can say? I personally favor having the client do SOME of the grunt work even though I am also enticed by the benefits of network-centric computing. It sounds like this Corel/Graphon solution is a strictly Super-Server/Dumb Terminal solution.



  • Unfortunately, compatibility isn't the only bump in the road for widescale approval of linux at the end user desktop. From the standpoint of someone who has tried (generally unsuccessfully) to bring linux to the desktop at my company, the concerns were both compatibility with clients that use Windows programs, but with the end users being able to actually understand and use the OS. It won't help if there is a learning curve for users that would actually LOSE productivity getting acclimated to a new way of doing things. Now, if Corel Linux is easy enough to use, with a windowing interface that TRULY emulates Win95, it becomes a much more viable alternative. My $0.02
  • The article talks about letting you run all your Windows applications seamlessly over the network.

    Okay, that's a neat thing to say, but what can it actually _do_? With this stuff, can I run QuakeIII over the network and get it to work on my X display? What if I don't have MesaGL installed? How does it handle displaying data? Obviously it will run in X, but is it compatible with the XFree86 4.0 stuff that's coming out Real Soon Now?

    I suspect that what this will eventually boil down to is another piece of VMware-ish. VMware uses custom kernel modules in order to provide all the neccesary hooks, and these modules have been known to cause all sorts of problems, both in causing actual faults to trying to tract them down.

  • GraphOn and Patents (Score:5)

    by Ledge Kindred ( 82988 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:21AM (#1396981)
    Remember that GraphOn is that company that claims to have a patent on displaying Windows apps over X [slashdot.org].

    Showing support for a company that goes for outrageously stupid patent things is hardly something I'd want to get excited about.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • If you don't remember [internetwk.com] Corel sold its jBridge technology to Graphon in exchange for 25% ownership a little over a year ago. This "Bridge" technology that will allow linux clients to run Windows applications is just an extension of what Corel started. I wouldn't think it would be too expensive, given Corel's share in this company and their vested interest in seeing Linux take off.

  • Re:Windows Terminal Server (Score:3)

    by acarey ( 34175 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:25AM (#1396983)
    Yes, this is interesting. Windows 2000 Server has built-in terminal services, and Citrix does indeed offer a free Linux client. Once you get past the cost of Windows 2000 Server itself, you've got a free (beer) thin-client Win32 solution. Contrast with GraphOn, where you need to buy the Bridges software itself, in addition to any Windows server costs.

    The question is, do Citrix clients work with Microsoft Terminal Services? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere some time ago that MTS is a wounded version of Citrix that only supports Win32 and Win16 clients. If that's no longer the case (or if it never was the case) then this is significant. If this is still the case, then (all other things being equal) the GraphOn solution becomes more attractive, because its licensing is better (Citrix metaframe is a per-client license on the server, IIRC).

    FWIW, the URL for the Linux client download is http://download.citrix. com/cgi-bin/license.cgi?client=linux [citrix.com]. Maybe someone with an existing MTS setup can see if this works?

    The fact is that Corel has historically (and rather tragically) always tried to offer its own solutions rather than use anything even remotely associated with Microsoft. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it may have influenced their decision to go with GraphOn rather than Citrix, assuming the products are functionally identical. But until somebody can confirm that the Citrix Linux client works with Microsoft's MTS, I'm not sure that's true.
  • Go read that patent. It's _extremely_ specific, and doesn't affect (for example) screen scraper software like VNC or PCAnywhere.

    One of the most reasonable patents ever mentioned on /., I think.
  • If it is as good as citrix, then it will run over about 20kbit of bandwidth just fine. In fact, I've been amazed at how well citrix runs over a 28.8 modem. And to answer your question about many instances of an app ( again from a citrix point of view because at one point I administered a farm of Metaframe boxes ), we were able to support 100 users running office apps very well on a compaq 1850 dual-proc pII-450 w/ 1/2Gb of ram. The architecture takes advantage of the fact that you only need to load excel/word/whatever_app into memory once, and it is just the user data that needs to exist in a protected memory space. Then your memory isn't getting eaten up by apps, but what it was supposed to be used for, data. And not to step on anyones toes, but the machines stayed up for about 60 days at a time. I know NT isn't everyones favorite OS in these parts. And because they were in a farm, when a machine went down, yes some users would get kicked off and lose some work, but they could immediately reconnect to the "Application" they were running, and one of the servers in the farm would serve the request. And to answer your comment on running win32 apps on linux, the programs will still crash on linux if they crash on a win32 architecture. Bugs are still bugs. They may not bring your machine down, but they will still crash on linux if the crash on win. Anyhow, that's enough from me.

  • Licensing is the problem! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The problems with this technology is the licensing of the products. I delt with the Citrix problem bulit a system and then had to cancel the job based on the cost of the licenses (it was a large CAD program that caused the troubles). The idea is great and the technology works, the problem is the licenseing of the products. If Corel could dop something about that, like developeing licence servers for all Windows apps that would/could help. Until the legal aspects change this technology for Windows is very limited.
  • Microsoft licensed Citrix's technology that allows one Windows box to have multiple desktops. They didn't license Citrix's protocol (called ICA).

    Thus the Linux Citrix client will not natively function with a Windows TS. Citrix sells their protocol stack separately (a TS add-on called MetaFrame).

  • I'm going to correct myself, before somebody else does...

    Once you get past the cost of Windows 2000 Server itself, you've got a free (beer) thin-client Win32 solution.

    I've just remembered that this isn't correct. With Microsoft Terminal Services, you have to pay a per-client license; it's a Windows NT Workstation license, because "you're getting Windows NT functionality". So 400 Linux desktops means 400 NT wks licenses.

    Now all of a sudden the GraphOn licensing looks _really_ attractive :)

    The question is, do Citrix clients work with Microsoft Terminal Services?

    I'm pretty sure it's a moot point, though, because I'm still pretty certain that MTS only supports Win32 and Win16 clients.


  • Actually, for UNIX support you will need to also buy Citrix MetaFrame. The server versions of WIndows 2000 will have Terminal Services, in remote administraton and full blown models, though I suspect for the full use model extra licenses will be needed.

    There will also be a Citrix MetaFrame 2000, so you can still get those cool extra features like UNIX clients, ICA, server farms, the ica browser, published apps, etc.
  • One of the main difficulties with windows apps over a network is that they have no concept of mutiple users and file permissions. For instance, the Normal.dot template in word must be writable by all users, usually resulting in some wonderful macro viruses.

    Good point. I think Office 2000 (and new versions of apps from other vendors, I'm sure) are much better at working in a multi-user environment. Remember that older apps didn't realise they could ever be run multi-user, so resource (e.g. file) contention wasn't really seen as a problem...
  • Along with: obsurd memory requirements to support a small number of users, random crashes, application security problems (peoplesoft and certain virus scanners), administration nightmares and daily reboots.

  • SOC/RO -- Musings on Corel! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SOC/RO Update: Well it looks like Corel! has done it again. Following on the success of their earlier products, CorelDraw! Corel XARA!, and Corel Wordperfect Suite!, Corel! now has a new product: Corel Bridges! This revolutionary new product is positioned to bring Corel! into the proprietary operating system market with its Corel Linux! product, soon to be renamed Corel/OS! "How is this good for the Open/Source movement?" you ask. Simple, my dear, nothing is good for the Open/Source Movement! "But Macromedia is making Shockwave! Open/Source!" So what. What kind of world do we live in where companies are too lazy to write their own software. And then all the anonymous slaves that write it for them and get no money for it decide to revolt. This is always bad, in my opinion. Remember the slave revolts of the early 1800s?? Well get ready for the Great Open/Source Slave Revolt! of 2020. Oh man, are we in trouble. Flying cities will burn, hovercars will be overturned, and Smergfomzs will run wild in the streets. Oh, the humanity. And the humchuikity. President Fitkold from the planet Humchuiky will declare marshall law, and the national guard will patrol YOUR neighborhood wearing powered armor and driving fusion tanks. "President Fitkold, we have an incoming transmission." "A transmission? What is it?" "It is a set of different ratio gears arranged on a complicated mechanism to allow different torque/speed ratios for automobiles. But that is not important now. The Open/Source slaves wish to call on a truce -- on one condition." "One condition? What is it?" Well wouldn't you like to know. I suppose the point of all this is, in a weird sort of way, that we need to learn to respect others and ourselves if we are to ever truly get along with the Humchuikities. Let me give you an example. Suppose you have a box, with $3 and a dead cat named Belfry, and you put the $3 and the dead cat in the box. Now you bring this box to the supermarket in order to purchase toothpaste, but it costs $4.67. "Damn!" you say when you get to the checkout. "Will you just let me have the toothpaste?" you ask. "Umm.. No." says the cashier. "Well what if I give you a dead cat," you ask as you bring out the rotting, long-since lifeless body of Belfry. "Ok." she says as she joyfully takes the stinking carcass away from you, and begins jamming it in the cash drawer. You can hear the sound of bones cracking as she pounds on it trying to get it to fit. Then she begins slamming the drawer repeatedly in an effort to get it closed. But to no avail. "What's the hell is going on here?!" exclaims the manager. "I don't know, your cashier is having trouble fitting my dead cat named Belfry into the cash drawer." you explain helpfully. "Hmm.. Well let me see if I can help." The manager squeezes in past the cashier and helps her along out of the way as the exhausted cashier steps back and crosses her arms. "Fucking drawer!" the manager exlaims as he begins slamming the drawer harder and harder. Finally the dead cat named Belfry explodes. Well, it is about time.
  • While a very nice step, this only has implications for shops using NT or W95/98 right now for desktops, that are thinking about moving to Linux. I would like to see this personally, since I have to reboot my machine once a week to use a Windows accounting package (this would save me that, but then again WINE or VMWare would do as well).

    Other than that - allowing application locked shops to move to a heterogeneous network - this announcement is no big deal (but I still like to see them 8-)
  • It's _extremely_ specific...

    If I recall, (I can't find the specific patent right now) it's a patent on displaying a Windows app on an X machine by intercepting the Win32 display API calls and translating them into X API calls. Hardly "unobvious" and therefore not deserving of a patent if you ask me. The fact that GraphOn decided they deserved a patent for "displaying Windows apps on X" in the first place doesn't bode well for the ethics of the company.

    Further, if you read GraphOn's press release, they claim to have, "a U.S. patent for the remote display of Microsoft Windows applications on UNIX® and Linux® desktops with X Windows® [...] remoted, or displayed, over a network or any other type of connection to any X Window system."

    Doesn't sound like GraphOn wants anyone else to be able to display Windows apps on X no matter what the technology and is trying to make sure everyone believes they have a patent on everything that displays Windows apps on X. Like I said, it's hard for me to get excited about anything dealing with a company that likes to do business this way.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • No. VNC is a screen scraper. GraphOn (like Citrix Metaframe) is a multi-user remote application server.
  • The most obvious thing messing is there is no mention for support for other distributions. All it mentions is...

    "integrate GraphOn's Bridges(TM) connectivity software into Corel® LINUX® OS."

    What sort of support will there be for other distributions? I think this is one of the problems with Corel, they just seem to be only interested in promoting their own brand not Linux as a whole. And this being a GraphOn press release don't you think they'd want to promote the fact they'll be supporting more then just one distribution?

  • > xvncviewer works wonderfully

    You mean, xvncviewer works wonderfully SLOW. Plus, as other posters have pointed out, VNC solves a slightly different problem. It does not allow individual, multi-user application support on the client. It only provides a screen scape type interface to a Windows box. The two are very different. Furthermore, the group working on VNC does not have enough information about the Windows API to render screen updates in a reasonably efficient manner. This isn't their fault and I think what they've been able to do up to this point is amazing! I use it sometimes for my home network, but it certainly doesn't qualify as a competing product to what GraphOn claims to do.

    Thomas Dorris
  • I think they'd start to suspect and look at you funny when everyone else is getting bluescreens 10x a day and you're just sitting there being all productive and stuff. If you're smart put the BSOD screensaver on that linux box.


    mcrandello@my-deja.com
    rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.

  • musings (Score:4)

    by xeno ( 2667 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:48AM (#1397008)
    I see some pros and cons:

    • This means that users can run windows apps on a free OS, which is good. However, connection or per-seat licenses may be required by MS, since the app is actually running on a Windows system. Lightweight clients, heavyweight licensing restrictions; windows is like glue -- you touch a box with a running MS kernel, you have to play/pay by their rules.
    • It also means that the apps stay remote. On the good side, it might encourage users to adopt Linux-native apps locally, but is also might make them feel like second class citizens -- tied to a network to get familiar apps. This becomes less and less of an issue as KDE and Gnome environments begin to provide more and more general-office functionality.
    • It's nice to see some movement towards server-based apps on a true multi-user system (multiple people logged into the same NT box simultaneously, a la NTTS). However, in my explorations, the licensing fees for such a config is more expensive than just buying one cheap system per anticipated concurrent user (a farm of cheap single-user-OS NT boxen) and using VNC.
    • It doesn't preclude the use of WINE. This is good, because binary compatibility would be the death of the whole Win32 platform. ("A better Windows than Windows") On the flip side, it takes away some of the motivation to continue WINE development, particularly from Corel, which promised much support for WINE.
    • Graphon's model means sending screen scrapes over the network & potentially over the internet. Is it encrypted well? On the flip side, using SSH to tunnel VNC is rather intimidating to the typical human.

    Just some thoughts, and no real conclusion. I guess I'll stay here on the fence, and throw some more support/feedback to the WINE folks.

    Jon
  • Along with: obsurd memory requirements to support a small number of users, random crashes, application security problems (peoplesoft and certain virus scanners), administration nightmares and daily reboots.

    And the sad thing is that dealing with that is preferable to administering a network of Windows 98 boxes :)

    I'd rather deal with the problems you mention above (you _are_ exaggerating a bit, though! aren't you?) on one box than on an entire network of 'em.

  • The next desktop OS in our corporation (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:50AM (#1397010)
    I am the head network administrator for a DSP design house with three locations around the U.S. Right now, NT is our primary desktop OS. However, as our tools become available on Linux, our users are gradually asking for it. Right now about 10% of our end users dual boot Linux (one of them is running it exclusively). I'm personally excited to be in a position to help these pioneers along. Although our network is based on NT file, print, and authentication services (sorry, that predates my employment) we also have a NIS+ domain for our E450's and I've been tying the new Linux systems into that domain. The feedback has been excellent. Our users have a true "roaming desktop" under Linux. They can seemlessly tie into the filesystems in the Sun farm. Our VCS jobs run faster under the same hardware running Linux than on NT (a matter of HOURS faster). The next big push I'm sticking my neck out on is eliminating Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for source code control, and migrating to CVS. Most of the network is accessible from any OS but the source control system is still M$-only. Once that wall breaks down, we'll see more Linux on the desktop. And yes, it's ready. It runs WickedFast on our P3 machines (as opposed to "acceptable" for NT 4.0). Most of the apps we need run and run well on this platform. And it is a very graceful network neighbor that makes my job a lot easier.

  • Cheezy solution (Score:3)

    by twdorris ( 29395 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:51AM (#1397011)
    Corel seems to be billing this as support for Windows applications under Linux. This isn't quite correct. They even go so far as to say it provides support for Windows applications with no additional hardware. That's blatantly incorrect. Not only do you need additional hardware, you need a whole PC! This is nothing more than a Windows Terminal Server solution. You have to have an existing Windows PC sitting around somewhere on your network and run the applications off it. GraphOn merely "exports" the display of those applications to the Linux client. Big whoop. This isn't the problem most people are interested in having solved.

    Thomas Dorris
  • I'm not sure I understand the enthusiasm here. Linux running M$ apps, why? With all of the complaining about M$ that occurs here, why do so many people see this as a great thing? Isn't the whole point to keep Linux separate from anything M$? I'll admit I use M$ products because I really don't have much of a choice, it's what I know and have used since DOS 5.0 and I don't have the cash to build a Linux only machine, but this seems so *against* everything that open-source stands for. Can someone clarify?
  • This is cool, but... We're still dependent on running 3rd party software on an existing Windows machine. I think what we all really want is for somebody to crack enough of the current Win API to be able to load and execute windows programs natively in X.

    If anybody out there is successful at this, please figure out how to distrib it anonymously enough that the MS lawyers can't find you. ;-)
    "Una piccola canzone, un piccolo ballo, poco seltzer giù i vostri pantaloni."

  • This would be great, and could spell the end to my use of VM-Ware... would much rather access the programs on the network than have that dsk image on my hd.

    IMHO disk space is so cheap, it's almost a non-issue with vmware. I would much prefer vmware to remoted apps... running something remotely imposes some limits on what you can do. There aren't really any problems like this with VMWare, and when all the DRI stuff is done it should be almost as fast as running the apps in straight win95 with no virtual machine.

    I also don't want to depend on some flaky NT machine being up so I can run my windows apps... hell, if VMware crashes, you just restart it.
  • Cute. Here we keep hearing about how maybe Linux is an OK server OS but Win* is the only choice of the desktop, and what happens? We get a big push towards using an NT server with Linux desktops!

    Actually, we've been doing something similar to support legacy X apps (OK, X makes this much easier.) We have legacy servers sufficient for the workload, and the obsolete apps run on them transparently (the local jobs are just RJE scripts.) Given the gorking huge pile of legacy WinCode, this is something that corporate admins are going to need someday regardless.
  • Pointy-HAIRED-Bosses. Can you say "Dilbert"?

    --
  • I wouldn't necessarily classify Microsoft's OS efforts as 'dangerous'. The biggest risk we run using NT around the office is the worry that one of our developers is going to get so sick of NT crashing during compiles that he/she sticks his/her head through their monitor :-)

    'Supremely frustrating' is the phrase I'd most commonly use.

    --
  • A couple questions, will it only link to Windows NT Server? Will this work for different hardware, such as a Linux Alpha machine running software on a Windows NT x86 machine?

    Check the products page [graphon.com] on their website. They actually have products to display applications from Unix to Windows, Unix to Java, Unix to NT. Something tells me that they'll have clients for all sorts of OS's.

    -Brent

  • It doesn't remove the need for WINE (Score:4)

    by Ian Schmidt ( 6899 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @10:43AM (#1397024)
    Specifically, Corel is involved in WINE so they could easily port their apps to Linux. They are by all accounts almost done with this for their first round of apps (they recently split their tree from the WineHQ one so they could do beta testing without us all possibly breaking their stuff - we'll remerge once they ship :). They are even paying Wine's leader (Alexandre Julliard) money to fix Wine's last major architectural problem (only 1 address space for all processes) despite the fact that the problem doesn't directly affect their applications.

    (as an aside, the Wine team has seen interest from some other "name-brand" commercial software vendors about using WineLib to port their stuff now that Corel's done the hard part - we may have enough apps to conquer the desktop sooner than you think :)

    As has been stated before, GraphOn's system has completely different goals and is more like WinFrame or VNC than Wine.

    -Ian "wine-devel" Schmidt

  • We really need good Native apps. That's what we need. Not everyone wants to go through the expense of setting up some kind of "Mainframe" server for applications. Native apps. Let's code.

    We may need native apps. But the fact is, there's a lot of Windows apps that can't be just dropped. We need to be able to continue to support them. And Graphon is providing a way to do that.

    -Brent
  • With this stuff, can I run QuakeIII over the network and get it to work on my X display?

    Something is telling me that this probably is intended for business applications. Not to take the place of your playstation.

    -Brent
  • This GraphOn thing is just a commercial copy of VNC, which is already in your favorite distro.

    *smack*

    Click on a few links and find out what we're talking about. Then come back and share.

    Thanks,

    -Brent
  • I think this is one of the problems with Corel, they just seem to be only interested in promoting their own brand not Linux as a whole.

    What a minute. Corel exists only to promote their product. What else did you expect them to do?

    And this being a GraphOn press release don't you think they'd want to promote the fact they'll be supporting more then just one distribution?

    This was a joint press release between Graphon and Corel. I think all the important players were mentioned, don't you?

    -Brent
  • I'll admit I use M$ products because I really don't have much of a choice.

    BINGO!!

    -Brent
  • Yes, the intent of it is definately business-app oriented. But I'm more interested in its capabilities and how it does the neccesary forwarding/displaying of information. I just used QuakeIII as an example of a piece of software that is not likely to work with this stuff. The article gives the impression that _all_ Windows software will work "seamlessly". I'd say no OpenGL/DirectX stuff tends to be a pretty big seam, wouldn't you?
  • ...and while I'm at it, you spelled 'bosess' incorrectly.

    Stones.... glass houses.... ?

    --
  • Cute. Here we keep hearing about how maybe Linux is an OK server OS but Win* is the only choice of the desktop, and what happens? We get a big push towards using an NT server with Linux desktops!

    Actually the cool thing here is that you can use a Linux server with Samba to run MS-Office over the LAN to a Corel Linux desktop with Bridge. The only MS part of the equation is Office. Right now the only thing really keeping businesses from mass-installing Linux on the desktop is the "requirement" to run Office.

    I think that's cute. Let's turn MS into a little app company.

    ---

  • Is this only going to work on Corel Linux? Are Corel now trying to do a Micro$oft on the Linux market?
  • But I'm more interested in its capabilities and how it does the neccesary forwarding/displaying of information.

    I know that for displaying Unix apps on Windows it works very Citrix-like. I'd say the other way around is probably going to be similar

    The article gives the impression that _all_ Windows software will work "seamlessly". I'd say no OpenGL/DirectX stuff tends to be a pretty big seam, wouldn't you?

    Not really. That's like a farmer seeing an commercial for an SUV that "has power to do anything". However, he quickly finds out that it doesn't plow fields very well. Yes, even though they both have 4 wheels and an engine the both do different things. And when Graphon says that their product seamlessly displays Windows programs remotely, they are obviously talking about a certain market segment of applications. Not everything that is made up of 1's and 0's.

    -Brent
  • Microsoft and Citrix are actually rivals in this thin-client technology. Citrix produced the ICA protocol, which was much better than the original RDP protocol Microsoft made for their Terminal Server product. However, Microsoft is due to take this market back with their new version of RDP. This means Citrix would be better moving into more diverse markets.

    This is where it gets wierd. Citrix HAVE produced a Linux client, and some Linux roll-outs in the enterprise sector are actually based on this. But it's a really old version, and much more limited than the DOS/Win16/Win32 versions they have brought out. There are also web and java versions of the client, but Citrix are really shooting themselves in the foot by not paying more attention to this ripe market. Come on Citrix, update the client!!!
  • "That's cool, now I can finally play minesweeper !"

    Actually, there are a bunch of open source mine sweepers around. IMHO, the nicest is the one that comes with kde (and you don't have to run kde to run it.)

  • This is how Corel could do it:

    Release your own version of Linux, all open source

    Release attendant proprietary apps, all closed source

    Rig the app so it'll seg fault all over the place if it tries to run on another OS, because of some inconspicuous changes in, say, the libc library.

    However, Corel would not get very far because it wouldn't take much for the libc coders to figure out what it is in the code that makes the app run right. It would take a lot of comparing and diffing between the corel libc and the normal glibc 2.1 and patching in the diffs and then taking them out one hunk at a time to see which hunks are needed to keep the app stable.

    Of course there are other theories:

    Corel might lock up some part of the Corel Linux OS kernel/core OS as closed source. Not possible. They're locked into the GPL.

    Corel's apps might work with other Linux distributions with the appropriate library patches, or just right out of the box, and thus this whole thing might be a false scare.

    My hat is off to RedHat. They have managed to have it so all kinds of new commercial apps (like UT) rely not on RedHat, but glibc 2.1 - which is, basically, the only reason I see for getting RedHat 6.1.

  • I don't consider "We are making it appear through press releases that we own the patent on displaying Windows apps remotely on X Windows, but if you are a patent lawyer and study the patent in close detail, you might find out that its coverage is not quite as broad as we are proclaiming it to be" an ethical business practice.


    -=-=-=-=-

  • Actually the current version of the Unix clients aren't all that outdated. The biggest missing feature is the "Program Neighborhood" functionality; that basically alows you to login to the Neighborhood and get a list of available applications for your account and, I believe will automatically log you on when you run the app. Without this functionality all of the individual apps must be made available in a world-readable list. Now, about my subject. . . Citrix is developing a new web-client, code-named "Charlotte," that will include Program Neighborhood functionality. (I plan to test the beta next month if I'm not pulled off for another project.)
  • From my experience: 1- Reading Corel's licenses. 2- Installing Corel's (downloadable) version of Linux. 3- Looking at Corel's partnerships. 4- Trying to understand Corel's long-term visions. I've come to the conclusion that Corel is not interested in Free or even Open Source software. Nor are they interested, per se, in the success of Linux. Their motivation seems to be related ONLY to destroying the Microsoft monopoly. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, it's just that I think it's important to remember that Corel's motivations are not the same as our own, or at least MY own.
  • this is true, although corel has done alot of work for wine. i've posted the rest of this comment before on the last corel story but nobody responded so i'll post again as i believe its a big issue:

    first off corel does a few stupid things like change library names (they changed qt from libqt to libccqt) which is tricky to get some sources to compile if you didn't compile their version of qt and get the odd file names. but what really bothers me is i downloaded the kde package and tried to compile it and its missing several files, i proceeded to download the entire distro in source form and couldn't find them, i've emailed them several times and they won't respond. also if you take a look at their license you will see they actually have broken their own license by not providing the changelogs with work they've done. i've submitted this before but nobody saw it i guess, its odd cause slashdoters usually have a field day with a situation like this.
  • ...They are even paying Wine's leader (Alexandre Julliard) money to fix Wine's last major architectural problem (only 1 address space for all processes) despite the fact that the problem doesn't directly affect their applications.... we may have enough apps to conquer the desktop sooner than you think :)

    This is great. There are a couple of windows apps that I find is very difficult to leave behind, like Eudora, Agent, and Lotus Organizer -- mostly because I'm a fuddy-duddy and used to them. The mo-better these work through WINE, the mo-closer I am to platform bliss. I have precisely -zero- desire to run these thru Graphon or VNC tools; I want 'em on my linux laptop. The only criticism I've had for the WINE dev crowd is that y'all need to publicise your achievements more -- but I see that the website is much more informative & friendly than it used to be.

    J
  • The answer is No. You must have Term Server + Citrix Metframe to use any of the Citrix produced clients. They only work with their ICA protocol. You can also use the NT 3.51 based Winframe product. It's a complete OS, not just an add-on to 3.51.

    I have a laptop running Linux and I attach to my Metaframe server and run Office 2000 under X quite well. Feels blasphemous every time I do it though.
  • Yes we all know that Microsoft is so successful because of "good marketing" and OS/2 and everybody else failed because of "poor marketing". Quite an incisive analysis.

    The truth is OS/2 was hamstrung by some technical issues, product positioning issues, pricing issues, IBM's dubious relationship with the rest of the PC industry, and so on. (I could go on, but OS/2 is way off topic). All issues related to marketing, certainly, but nothing that affected the actual promotion of the product.

    The fact is IBM carpet bombed people with free or cheap copies, had huge TV ad campaigns, the OS/2 Fiesta Bowl football game, and huge influnce. Every person who was in IT in 1990 was well aware of OS/2. It had limited to large deployments at virtually every large corporation. This whole "poor marketing" wrap just makes it sound like it died in obscurity, which certainly isn't true.
    --
  • At this time there is no proof the App is restricted *IN CODE* to Corel's linux. This is speculation.

    But there *IS* a restriction none of you can get around. A licence restriction that says you are only licenced for Corel's linux.

  • This is a slap in the face of the collective OSS community. Not only is this product propietary, it's also PATENTED! This is a serious conflict of interests. I just hope Linux won't suffer too much from Corel's latest move.
  • Oh please, show me a BETTER equivalent of PowerPoint, Excel, Word and Access in Linux. Star Office only takes about 2 minutes to load, then tries to take over the entire desktop, and crash at the same time.

    They make proper choices, most people can handle using Word with their eyes closed.

    And you're using Linux, I wouldn't be talking about stability, ever had the file system crash on you multiple times? Ever seen X croak consistantly?
  • I've always hated that statement...so if there's no network, there's no computer?

    Scott McNeally rulez, oh yeah! Oh and his buddy Larry Ellison rocks too.
  • The problem for Linux is that you still don't get packages which point and click install. Everyone is still doing their own thing, from custom scripts (Oracle, Adobe) to DIY tarballs. Right now, as far as OS platforms go, there isn't one Linux, there's several, and Red Hat, SuSe, Debian and Corel all have their own agendas. No-one apart from the Linux vendors uses RPM, and not all of them do.

    We still have people running around producing libc5 distros, which may be cool and geeky but it doesn't help unify Linux when everyone else is using glibc.

    Against this backdrop, we have 95% of Win32 stuff which will point and click drop onto anything from Win95 to Win2K, and it even puts the latest version of Internet Exploder and 17 buggy DLL's on for you at the same time.

    When you only have 5% market share, fragmenting that won't get you anywhere.

    What Linux needs is a standardised install API that all software vendors can use, supported by all major distros, that will drop a piece of code on any x86 Linux system, and ensure it will work, right down to adding window manager menus and performing dependency checks.

    You have to decide where your dog is in this fight - if you are happy for Linux to continue to be a fringe OS that requires serious hacking skills to run, then the status quo is fine. If you want to use it to take on the Redmond monopoly, then a standardised platform is essential.

  • Finally, we can have a LAN with just 1 computer running all those Win/32 apps. This might be a good start. If only some game publishers like ID and Activision would start importing their games to Linux compatible format. That would be the final punch for Windows (but I'm sure MS will buy the US government and forbid Linux or somethin').

    I only say Goddamnit because Microsoft bought God(TM)

  • Re:huh? (Score:1)

    by mr ( 88570 )
    >Is that license really in Corel Linux?
    At this point, no one even knows if the Corel app in question is Corel specific...its VAPORWARE still. The press release can be read to interpret that it is a corel only feature. (It could also be market-speak)

    You are asking if a licensing restriction that is the only legal way they can stop the use of their code on system that aren't theirs, on software that is vaporware, exists.

    >What are they going to do if I run the app in another Linux?
    They can sue you. If the software is licensed ONLY for Corel Linux and you are running it someplace else, you would be in violation.

    >Monitor me?
    Its their software. They can put in monitoring code if they wish.

    >Bust me?
    If you violated the license, then you have to stop using the software or do what it takes to become back in license compliance.

    >Sue me?
    Yes. What part of license violation are you having a hard time understanding? What part of contract violation are you not groking?

    >Please. Let 'em try.
    Odds are however it is not worth the time of Corel to "Take some license breaking Anonymous Coward to court and have a judge explain to her the ideas behind contract law, and bust the arrogant, in their face software pirate."

  • I strongly suggest everybody to double check any statements made by Corel. They have been hyping their stock price via lots of Linux related press releases. But the truth is, earnings have gone way way down. They are not selling anything and their CFO had to quit last month. I don't believe anything Corel says anymore, sorry, and I do not think they are an ethical company.
  • This technology Corel is trying to integrate acts like X. It just sends the display to another machine. It doesn't run Windows, it just lets you look at Windows running somewhere else.

    So, unless you can run Windows and Linux simultaneously on your PC, you're out of luck.

  • We have a Citrix 4 TS without Metaframe and I use linux clients all the time. You just have to have the ICA stack. It works great from 95,NT,MacOS or Linux. The only problem is the cost per connection. You get raped for 2 NT workstations if you use NT, But with Linux you just pay once and you have WIN32 API for all.
  • Oops My bad we do have metaframe 1.00 installed.
    I had to log in and check.

  • Corel has been doing a great job popularizing and developing Linux OS. Wall Street does not like Corel since its analysts have been in love with M$ monopoly. You sound like a scared M$ shareholder and shame on you to post in this place. You'll find more friends in MSN, CNBC or MSNBC NG's. Besides, this NG is not dedicated to discussing stocks

  • ...considering Corel is the original developer of GraphOn's "Bridges" program. When Corel was working on it, they called it "jBridge", then they sold it for a 25% stake in GraphOn.

  • Re:VNC (Score:1)

    by FiNaLe ( 4289 )
    If I understand what your saying, you just described the underlying precepts to the X protocol.

    i.e.
    export DISPLAY="CLIENT:00"
    xterm &
    logout


    I would love to see the X Protocol extended to allow resuming of broken connections, it seems like it could be implemented server-side, with some sort of X-proxy. Not like VNC mind you, straight X.... Geeze, odds are it's already implemented and I'm the last to know..
  • Corel gave legitimcy to Linux in back in 98. I do not really care why. If Corel did not do what they did would the IBM, SGI, Inprise, Oracle, Dell, Compaq, snowball been rolling like it is now? Corel was the first name that had recognition to people outside the industry. Corel even has forced Adobe to take notice. During 1941 I would get along with the most loyal son's of Stalin.

  • I must admit to be rather (or thoroughly) inexperienced in enterprise deployment of X Windows, but could someone discuss how well X can be locked down.

    We use Citrix and NT where I work for getting high performance database software out into our manufacturing facility without deploying high-end workstations. However, one of the key concerns is the ability to lock down those remote workstations so that there is little to no administrative overhead or problems with inexperienced users messing things up.

    Could we do that just as easily with X on the clients? If so, it would be a lot cheaper probably. It would be almost transparent to the user, I expect, and would save us from having to pay the obscene Citrix and NT licensing fees.

    Micah the nicknameless

  • I think you're on the wrong track. As far as I can tell from their low-content website ALL the work happens on the remote machine and only the display info is passed back over the net. For example, this means that you use the X server on the remote machine, not on the local machine (as you normally would). Your Mesa library wouldn't be used since your machine wouldn't be rendering OpenGL -- only raw display data.

    Their server wouldn't have to be on the same order of magic as VMWare. They would hook display events, render the image, and send it to the client. Likewise they'd hook the input mechanism (keyboard/mouse) to read from the client instead of the hardware. Really, it's not conceptually any different than a telnet server.

    As for running something like Quake, I would expect one of the following to happen if you tried to run Q3A: (actually, Q3A is a bad example; let's say some DirectX game that's actually friendly to Windows)
    (1) nothing happens because their product can't eat full-screen display events
    (2) the game runs nicely on the window machine, and the 60 frames per second (or whatever) worth of updates are streamed across the network to your linux box causing the worst lag ever.

    Unless they're doing something really clever (they're probably doing something clever, but not REALLY clever -- their executable is too small) running a video-intensive app is going to suck. Consider a simple case: 1024x768 resolution, 16 bit colour (= 2 bytes/pixel) at 60 frames per second. That's 1024*768*2*60 = 94,371,840 bytes = 90MB of video data per second. Do you have 720Mbps of network bandwidth to waste? Didn't think so.

    For a standard business/web type app you don't have the same problem because you have a smaller data set that changes far less often. Pounding keys as fast as I possibly can results in about 30-40 characters per second. 60fps is overkill, 6 would be fine. What's more, only a small part of the screen is actually being drawn to (just one line in this case).

    Of course, I'm talking out my ass here so feel free to ignore me.
  • however, since we run NT servers we had to get an NT Workstation license for every seat. This ends up being about the same per seat cost as getting a Site License for the entire MS line. As a result, we also switched from WordPerfect, Lotus 123, and cc:Mail/Notes to MS Office and Outlook.

    A clear example of MS leveraging its (hopefullly soon to be eroding) monopoly position.

    No, you could have switched your NT servers to Linux or something, then kept WP, Lotus, and cc:Mail/Notes for the WS

    This MS FORCED us to do this, is a bunch of bull, you're not obligated to run these products from them. If you don't like any of MS Licensing with NT Terminal Server, then don't run it. Then you have solved your problem

  • The patent is on the IBM patent server. The press release is a fairly accurate summary, but if you care, read the patent yourself [ibm.com].

    You don't need to go to lawschool to read this stuff; a decent command of English and logical reasoning is sufficient, and as an engineer, you better learn how to read and write patent claims.

  • Actually, to say that Citrix and Microsoft are rivals in this market is a bit of an overstatement. The story is, Citrix developed (or expanded) NT with the capabilities to handle multiple users, and Microsoft has licenced this technology for NT Terminal server edition. In addition, I believe Microsoft has a significant ownership of Citrix.
    Anyway, the biggest problem with any of these "remote windows NT" - systems is that Microsoft seem to think they can charge for anyone connecting to their servers. (Remember when microsoft wanted to sell web-servers with requirements to buy licences for everyone connecting to them?) This is exactly what they are doing with any thin-client technology based on Windows NT.
  • The patent claims are actually quite broad; you can find the claims here [ibm.com].

    If their implementation works well, GraphOn has done a nice programming job. However, as far as patents go, I think this one is of low quality even relative to the already low standards of today; dynamically translating between two window system APIs is a straightforward engineering solution to a common problem. If GraphOn's engineers think that this is something new, they didn't pay attention in their college CS classes.

  • use windows very seldom lately. want to keep it that way. maybe I will just order star-office or something and forget this conversation ever took place. bridges? we don't need to stinkin' bridges. paul
  • So, unless you can run Windows and Linux simultaneously on your PC, you're out of luck.

    .. which you can do using VMWare (or the upcoming free clone).

    Does this Bridges software just give you a whole Windows desktop in a window, or does it present each Windows-window in an X-window? If it does the latter, I can see a lot of benefit in running the Bridges server under VMware, and using the Linux Bridges client to interact with your Windows apps.

    ... until Wine is finished, at least :)
    --
  • The Citrix client does not work with Microsoft terminal server, the terminal server uses the RDP protocol while Citrix use their own ICA protocol.

    Microsoft bought version 4 of Citrix WinFrame and integrated it into NT4, thus creating NT TerminalServer.
    Citrix however sells an add on product to TerminalServer called MetaFrame that has support for the ICA protocol (and therefore adds support for more clients).

    So to get the thin-client solution you have to buy Win2000 and Citrix MetaFrame. Unfortunately MetaFrame is the more expensive license.
  • what we all really want is for somebody to crack enough of the current Win API to be able to load and execute windows programs natively in X

    i thought this was what WINE was!

    i hope i'm on the right track because i expect loads of angry mails if i'm not :-0

  • As someone who develops on Solaris and HPUX in an overwhelmingly Windows centric software development house I can tell you that if your NT machines are crashing during compiles then you've got serious hardware and/or driver problems.
    I can understand if you said that crashing the VC++ compiler is easy. It is. But NT crashing during compiles points to memory hardware problems (or NIC and HD problems if compiling on a network share).
  • And you're using Linux, I wouldn't be talking about stability, ever had the file system crash on you multiple times?

    No.

    Ever seen X croak consistantly?

    Properly configured, no.

    Any more questions?

  • >A license approach to making it 'corel linux only' would be practically unenforceable.

    That does not mean they can't take this option however.

  • Any more questions?

    You could try answering all my questions first.
  • Nope no exaggeration here. On a 4 processor machine with 1 GB of memory, typical number of users supported 30. Random crashes are a weekly occurance. Virus scanner was causing peoplesoft to hang for at least a minute and during that minute you could log on to another instance of peoplesoft with the same security of the hung instance. Administration nightmares, now why has my desktop changed again and where are my printers. Daily reboots, yep every night 11pm.
  • Anonymous Coward writes:

    Would it be possible to run the server and client on the same box..

    I don't think so. You might be able to run something like VMware to boot an NT session, and then connect from the Linux session to the Windows session, but there wouldn't be much point to that, since you could already run Windows programs from the VMWare windows session.

    --
    Steve Molitor
    smolitor@erac.com
    "Emacs is the Computer"

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