Heather: Windows Equivalence on Linux

You can read my philosophy, what some might call methodology, about the comparison, or just jump down to the details.

One thing I've noticed in several of SVLUG's Installfests is the appearance of a fairly common question:

I'm familiar with MS Windows... how is this similar? Show me what I'm used to, but in Linux.

Now, I have to admit that since one of the local computer shows started inviting us to do Installfests as one of the booth spaces, that we have a lot more opportunity to encounter folks who do not already know what Linux is, and therefore have their own ideas of what they want in a system. In fact, they may be at the show to buy their first computer, after comparing a bunch of them at a big show. Our visitors have probably seen a few ads about computers, though.

Many Linux'ers unfortunately don't want to even talk about Windows, much less compare them... and are perfectly aware that comparing them without understanding what the visitor really wants doesn't make much sense. To find out what sort of comparison they want with MSwin requires continuing to talk about it.

Unlike my brethren, I don't mind talking about Windows. I used to support customizing software for it. I used to support utility software for it. Say what you like about a geeky college dropout with an inferiority complex but big cujones and lots of marketing savvy... you know who I mean... he has made the interface of the Xerox Star a bright moment in hostory. "Everyone" (as defined by the trade press) loves those little icons and menubars.

On to the goodies! I have a laptop I purchased recently so I could work while at SF conventions and coffee shops. It happens to have come with MSwin, and a handful of extra toys provided by IBM. Basically, it arrived ready to use. So, if I rephrase the "comparison" to:

What would it take, on a Linux box, to have the same features as I saw when I received this machine?

...pure marketing... but a worthy question, because as Linux grows past its technical early adopters, the non-technical early adopters, who are willing to try the leading edge but just want to use working systems, will want to know if it's ready for them yet.

Subjective impressions of "faster" are based on usage of a VARstation with a Pentium II CPU and 64 MB of memory. It came preloaded with Win95 and RedHat Linux, but I haven't used the Windows side in a while (I broke it :( ) and the Linux has been updated twice. So your mileage may vary!

• Preloaded OS
• Startup Files
• Up and Running
• Graphical User Interface
• Applications

The OS was preloaded -- I didn't need to install it myself. There are plenty of companies who will preload a hard drive with your desired distribution of Linux. Some will sell you the whole system, which is nice because at least you know the hardware all works together under Linux. Do any sell laptops? Good question!

• VA Research

When I turn the box on, it does a few graphics, then reads its startup files, and launches Windows. Knowing MSwin as deeply as I do, I know perfectly well that there are non-graphical things that are going on before Windows gets going... they're just pretty fast these days.

• Linux boots pretty quick, but unlike MSwin, you see the startup sequence messages. Printing them onscreen may be slowing it down a little. I have heard that it is possible to make NT's startup sequence more verbose, as Linux is.
• Part of Linux' normal sequence runs fsck against the disks before it mounts them; in MSwin you would need to add SCANDISK into your autoexec.bat, unless it spots that you didn't shut down properly last time. In most UNIX variants rebooting is so rare that doing this basic check every time is a good idea. It's a good idea in the MS world too... but most people just haven't got the patience for it. Thankfully, fsck seems much faster than SCANDISK.

Wonder which files in Linux' startup are like the MS ones?

• The kernel, often called merely zimage, is roughly equivalent to MSDOS.SYS -- it contains the core behavior of the base OS.
• Since it contains a minimum of hardware drivers in order to read the disks, it handles many IO.SYS equivalent functions too. But the first process, responsible for reading the startup files and really launching more programs, is Linux' init.
• Just as you may have specialty drivers loaded to access a CD-ROM drive or sound card, special hardware drivers may be compiled into the kernel, or loaded and unloaded as modules. Anything that is an experimental kernel feature usually started its life as a module.
• The splash screen... I have seen a patch to show a penguin during the startup. Unfortunately it scrolls offscreen :)
• CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT: init reads /etc/inittab, so I guess it counts as CONFIG.SYS. But it just launches some console prompts so you can login, and another script (usually /etc/init.d/boot though sometimes it's not in /etc ) to do al the rest of the work depending on your runlevel. Those might include loading driver modules and setting up networking, which in MSwin would almost certainly involve CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and some registry entries.
• runlevel... do you have one of those custom menus, wher you have an alternate configuration for your kids to play Doom with sound and all under DOS, and another for surfing the internet? Then you have the right idea. Only instead of making your autoexec have to make all sorts of decisions, you just pick a runlevel, and it has its own subdirectory of scripts to launch. You could do this with batch files in DOS too.
• WIN.COM -- getting into graphics mode: Most Linux distributions come with a networking environment called "X-windows". Several GUI front-ends are available for it, and I've heard of a couple of very weird non-graphical ones, but basically, it's what you'll think of.
• The registry: In order to get the data that MSwin likes to keep in its registry all in one place, it would probably be necessary to run a small database system during the startup sequence. This isn't to say it's impossible... but it explains why a Win95 box with a ruined registry can be literally easier to just scrap and reinstall, than to try to repair the registry.
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE information can usually be found somewhere in the /proc filesystem.
  • Possible device interfaces are stored in /dev (for example LPT1: is /dev/lp0)
  • People allowed to login are described in /etc/passwd. This mentions what command shell they like to use; in MSwin that's normally COMMAND.COM, but you can change it with a SHELL= line in CONFIG.SYS. Of course that affects everyone, but it's hard for more than one person to use Windows at a time, so it works out. My favorite COMMAND.COM replacement is JP Software's 4DOS, but there a couple of others available, including a version of bash, the default Linux shell.
  • User profiles are controlled by a handful of "dot files" in your home directory. In UNIX a file or directory name is "hidden" if it begins with a period (a perfectly legal filename character in UNIX), so they don't clutter your normal view of files you create.
  • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT covers "associations" -- what the machine is supposed to do when you launch files of a particular type. In Linux this is handled by the kernel's "magic number" table. But printing isn't handled by entries here; it's lpr, lpd, and the magicfilter that are supposed to handle that.
  • Most applications won't have kernel tweaks, just a dot-directory in your home where they can keep special information. But, default options are probably stored near wherever the application is kept. For example, if an application is installed in /usr/local/bin then its default options, special code modules, and helpfiles will be in other directories under /usr/local (lib, include, and man respectively).
  • There is something like a registry editor called The Dotfile Generator. It still needs a lot of work though. Most control files are easier to modify with a text editor.

Once you're up and running, you login to use your system. In fact, on a Linux box, lots of people can be logged in, and you could login to it several times to keep personal tasks seperate. Prompts that are not doing anything at any particular time (they're waiting for you to type on them) will be put to sleep, saving CPU (and possibly memory, as they can be swapped out easily) for the important tasks you are working on.

• It is common to have a runlevel set up which graphically prompts you (using xdm) -- you can work in a completely graphical setup. I have seen some very beautiful customized xdm setups, so I guess you can consider it a kind of splash screen.
• If you do a lot of text editing, it may be more comfortable to take advantage of "virtual consoles" -- multiple text screens available to you. Just use Alt-F1 (or F2, F3 etc.) to switch between them. To switch away from a graphical console, use Shift-Alt-F1 etc. (Makes sense, really; it saves the Alt key for normal applications.) You could easily switch between 24 of them, using first the Left Alt, and then the Right Alt... but most systems only start with 6 to 10 text v-consoles. The "text splash" seen during a normal login is usually /etc/issue for local users and /etc/issue.net for folks logging in across the network.
• You can keep graphical apps in seperate screen spaces, but the same GUI, with programs designed to give you "virtual desktops". For MSwin, personally I've always been fond of BigDesk, though it's a Win16 program, so it acts a little strange sometimes. (In fact it predates the popularity of the World Wide Web so the most amazing thing is that it still works.) X has a virtual desktop tool too, usually already set up (I think it's called pager).

There's a nice GUI frontend for X-windows called Fvwm95. You guessed it; it looks an awful lot like the Win95 interface. Prefer a Mac or a Next interface? Use MLWM or AfterStep instead. I haven't tried Enlightenment, but I've heard you can spend hours customizing it.

• Because of its networked nature, X makes it easy to swap GUIs. All the common trimmings (scroll bars, title bar) are controlled by the Window Manager. You can tell it to load another Window Manager instead, or if it is a very simple one, you can keep a command prompt open, close the WM, then use the command prompt to launch a different one. To do this in MSwin, you'd probably have to replace a couple of DLLs and reboot. It also doesn't make it very easy to uninstall a different interface if you decide you didn't like it.
• It is easy to change the picture on your "root window" so your backdrop looks nice.
• You can change the regular cursors to any of a few hundred that come with X-windows, but they aren't colorful like MSwin cursors, and I haven't seen a way to animate them. But, a really fancy Window Manager might have fancier cursors.
• For something like Themes, you're going to want the Enlightenment WM.

Of course it comes with applications... lots of them... what good is a computer without programs to run?

• Solitaire: Oh wow, have we got solitaire. There are lots of games in /usr/games or /usr/local/games. If their names start with an x they are generally X-windows graphical games, and if the names start with vga they probably are SVGAlib games, which should be run from a text console. The first build of Doom for Linux was an SVGAlib game. Any other games might have an X interface, but probably should just be run at a text console or in a xterm prompt.
• Notepad: Use vi. It has a few more features but pretty much you have the right idea.
• Wordpad: For WYSIWYG editing, your distribution may have a copy of LyX (pronounced "lick"). It generates LaTex files, (pronounced "la tech") which are often used in publishing. LaTex has a lot more power than LyX can manage to put in a document, just like the MSword format. However, since it is basically text with lots of weird text markup (feels like HTML, if HTML was \{} instead of >lt;), a broken LaTeX file can often be fixed by a knowledgeable user using vi.
• HyperTerm: I've heard there's a modem app called seyon that's very good for graphical users. Not everybody has kind comments about it though, and there are a bunch of plain "dialup terminal" programs for Linux. All the distributions I've seen come with minicom but my husband and I prefer kermit (yes, it's a terminal program, not just a protocol).
   
  You'll need to make sure your /dev/modem entry is correct; it's the only way your modem applications know that your modem is plugged in.
• Internet apps: telnet definitely. For ftp I sincerely recommend ncftp rather than ftp even though a Linux box probably has both. For browsing netscape and lynx are the most common (a system usually has both), but there are others: I've seen Red Baron, Grail, HotJava, and Kfm. For email there are lots of options too: elm, pine (stands for "Pine Is Not Elm"), MH...
   
  Of course your networking needs to be set up, but a decent distribution asks you your host details during the install and you shouldn't have to touch it very often.
• Explorer: I personally favor Midnight Commander although it's designed for a text interface (it looks a lot like Norton Commander, if you remember it). They have been working on an X interface and you should definitely check it out. Compare it to Kfm or xfm.
• Productivity apps: these may well be what you're thinking when you want to compare the two. You can try Corel's Office Suite, WordPerfect, StarOffice from StarDivision, Applixware, and maybe others if you want a commercial product. If you like to see source available, check out the work of the Gnome Project; their rivalry will certainly make both stabler, more complete products as they vie for our attention.
   
  Or you could use emacs... if there's anything it doesn't have in it, someone has probably already written a lisp package to add it.
• Multimedia: Mounting CD-ROMs is easy. Plenty of types of sound can be played. I'm not as certain about video, but there are X drivers for a handful of TV tuner cards, and certainly players for plain MPEG. Also there are RealAudio plugins for Linux.
   
  Make sure your soundcard's driver module is either compiled into your kernel or loaded in memory.
   
  We don't have singing, dancing, spinning demo apps to show off how wonderful it is, though. If you want to write one I will definitely check it out!
• Easy installs: Anything shipped in an rpm format installs in a quick commandline:

  rpm -i name-of-package

  If it's an upgrade to an existing app you can say so (-U instead of -i) and you can always uninstall with -e (think "erase"). The Redhat Package Manager is way more powerful than the MSwin Install/Remove Programs feature; if you're curious, run man rpm for the details.
   
  However, many applications are published as source, so you run tar xzvf to unpack them, and a couple of make commands (one liners! really!) to compile them and install it. This isn't as hard as it sounds -- I "installed" WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator; it runs MSwin apps, but it isn't nearly done yet) in about 20 minutes with only a few commands:

  tar xzvf Wine-980628.tar.gz
make depend; make
make install

  Most of those 20 minutes, I spent editing my web pages. Most MSwin installs take over the entire machine for a little while and ask you a few questions. Sometimes they make you reboot at the end. Linux apps almost never make you reboot -- though you might stop and start a service, even that is extremely uncommon. On the other hand, MSwin apps usually add themselves to your GUI menus, and most Linux apps don't... but they'd have to second-guess which GUI you chose to do a good job at that one. They could, but most authors assume you want to customize your own GUI rather than have an app go in there and maybe break it.
• Networking: "Shares" are great stuff. Linux, like most UNIX variants, is great at networking! You can actually provide MSwin compatible shares with SaMBa, Macintosh compatible shares with netatalk, Netware compatible file services with mars, or Sun-style file services with nfs. You can also definitely share your Linux printer using SaMBa.
• CompuServe, AOL, and other online services: Unfortunately, they haven't seen fit to issue clients for Linux yet. However, Compuserve had a plain-terminal interface at one time, and if it still exists it can certainly be used with your terminal program. I have read that the Win95 version of AOL 3.0 works, if somewhat rockliy, under WINE if you avoid some features. As WINE improves that probably will. The DOS form (based on GeoWorks) might run under dosemu successfully first. (Yeah, the DOS client, which they never plan to upgrade. *sigh*) It's kind of a bummer, really... they might never come out with a real client for X.

(more to come...)