For the benefit of any who might be interested, SpecOpsLabs has just
announced the completion of beta testing on David. David is now being
deployed in Japan as a component of Turbo Linux. Turbo Linux is a key
SpecOpsLabs partner. Turbo Linux will now being attempting to further
debug David and optimize it to the Linux platform. As David matures it
will be available in more markets.
As some of you might be aware, I am really excited about David. I know
that most consider David simply a WINE ripoff, but I think that is
because they really don't understand what David is. I use the following
outline to illustrate the uniqueness of David and why it works as well
as it does:
Consider various currently popular ways of running MS Office on Linux (I
have personal experience with all of these) ...
1) VMWare (Runs almost all Windows apps with heavy CPU penalty - high cost)
Application Level: MS Office (Proprietary)
OS API Level: Genuine Windows OS (Proprietary)
OS Hardware Abstraction Level: VMWare (Proprietary)
2) Win4Lin (Lower CPU than VMWare with less Windows app compatibility -
med cost)
Application Level: MS Office (Proprietary)
OS API Level: Genuine Windows OS + Win4Lin (Proprietary)
Hardware Abstraction Level: Linux (Open)
3) WINE (Extremely low CPU with poor Windows app compatibility - low cost)
Application Level: MS Office (Proprietary)
OS API Level: WINE (Open + Proprietary)
Hardware Abstraction Level: Linux
Contrast this to David:
DAVID (Low CPU with near total Windows app compatibility claimed - low
cost for non-business/med cost for business promised)
Application Level: MS Office (Proprietary)
OS API Level: WINE (Open + Proprietary)
Hardware Abstraction Level: David (Proprietary)
So as you can see, David introduces a totally new approach. By
emulating the hardware abstraction layer, they avoid most of the
pitfalls one finds with WINE. How many Windows apps fail to run with
WINE because they can't find the CDROM drive or they get confused as to
where the hard drive is? My experience is that this is the achilles
heel of WINE. With conventional WINE the API layer has to not only
interpret Windows calls, but also interface with the Linux hardware
abstraction layer. This means that many native application functions
that communicate directly with hardware get screwed up, because the
Windows hardware they are looking for doesn't exist. With David the
simple emulation layer transparently deals with that aspect, and they
app that fails to run on conventional WINE suddenly runs flawlessly
because it finds a familiar hardware abstraction layer. Codeweavers and
Transgaming attempt to deal with this problem with kludges, but EACH
application requires a custom kludge. David simply does it all in one
sweep with their hardware emulation. And at the same time they maintain
the Windows OS free environment that WINE is famous for.
I know that right now both Codeweavers and Transgaming seem quite
hostile to David, but I suspect in the long run David will be their
freind. It will allow them to concentrate on API issues, rather than
getting hung up on hardware issues. David can ultimately be the
platform that really gives their products legs.
Most of the original funding for David came from IBM and SpecOpsLabs has
nearly half of that amount left. For them, David is just the
beginning. Its purpose is to allow them to move into another space.
The space currently occupied by products such as K12-LTSP. They are
attempting to beat MS to the punch in terms of fully networked computing
for business where the apps can reside on a remote server (running many
Windows apps on Linux) and the desktops are mere appliances(running
Linux of course). SpecOpsLabs is IBM's million dollar attempt at an end
run around MS. Once you can run legacy Windows apps transparently on
Linux, Linux becomes a real contender in the business desktop space, and
once Linux becomes a contender in the business desktop space, you can
move all those Windows legacy apps to an IBM mainframe (emulated to
Intel by David) and supply basically Linux driven Xterms as the
clients. And given enough bandwidth you can do it over the Internet.
Sound familiar? .net anyone?
At this point SpecOpsLabs has made it a point to thank the free software
commuinty for all their hard work on WINE. They have also commited to
following the GPL to the letter in terms of releasing all modified GPL
source back to the community. And they have additionally indicated that
it is their intention to offer David as a free download for
non-commercial use.
Latest press release from SpecOpsLabs:
http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=60585
|