Comments on: Porting to Windows (part 2)

By: Timothy Tuck

Timothy Tuck — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:51:38 +0000

I have done quite a few windows to linux migrations now over the years. Also helped Co-Author the book, Windows to Linux Migration Toolkit. This is a great thing for so many reasons. For one it shows people using windows the even if Linux does not have either iTunes or Windows Media Player, it doesnt matter, cause we have something so much better than either of them. It also helps people migrate collections, anyone tried migrating music out of your iPod into Windows Media Player? fun huh. Amarok is amazing and honestly porting to Windows and Mac osX is a much more than a shot across the bow, its a hole in one and seriously threatens both platforms. Apple treats windows like second class and so does Microsoft with the Mac.

The biggest threat those is the fact you can convert people over to Open Apps such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and Amarok. It does several things It shows them sometimes the Windows and Mac Apps they know aren’t as good as the Linux Apps. But most importantly once someone is used to using all of the Open Source Apps with some assistance converting them to an Open OS becomes much less intimidating cause they are already familiar with the Apps.

Never underestimate that one fact, its the most powerful thing you can do. Switching someones OS is much like eating a Elephant, its so much easier in small bite sized pieces.

By: pd14

pd14 — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:44:23 +0000

ha, didn`t see date of last post )) lol

By: pd14

pd14 — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:42:46 +0000

After trying to use amarok for several days i had to conver to foobar on wine… (
Amarok is a very good alternative to itunes, but it can`t really compete with foobar. It just doesn`t have its string and interface customization capabilities and using it with really large collections with some badly tagged files is a pain – as any other application with tag-only media library. Also, even through wine foobar works faster than amarok. Maybe the problem is that i didn`t use mysql database, but adding large amount of files to playlist was considerably slower on amarok.

However, on moderate collections with clean tags it really stands out with some really unique features, such as last.fm integration and very nice rating system with dynamic playlists. Device support is cool too. I guess it can easily become main audio player for a lot of winamp/itunes/wmp users, and yes, many of them could later convert to linux just out of curiosity.

By: firekiller9000

firekiller9000 — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:27:57 +0000

>”you’ll have to compete with foobar2k which is lighter on resources, probably faster and more customizable than amarok will ever be.
Oh and which suport true gapless playback since forever.”
As if Foobar2k is more customizable than Amarok what kind of argument is that?
I run iTunes flat out all the time on my 512mb ram machine fine without it mattering and I have an old GenuineIntel 2.8ghz CPU. Besides just by looking at Kexi office performance on Windows. I bet Amarok will run way faster than iTunes.

By: firekiller9000

firekiller9000 — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:21:01 +0000

Let met tell you after trying ut2004 out on PCLinuxOS I would gladly change over to Linux but game developers won’t port there games over to Linux so I miss out on all the great KDE Apps.

By: Ste

Ste — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:35:23 +0000

Amarok is a great app and Windows users will benefit from it. I hate using windows at work it is so restrictive and am so glad to turn my Windows free PC on at home. I was using linux before I knew about Amarok.

It is good not to have spyware or virus stress. My little children cannot break my OS anymore and I do not have that guilty illegal software feeling. That so many Microsoft users have.

Linux is inevitably going to become more popular and if Windows users know that Amarok came from Linux then perhaps it is not such a bad thing.. although I agree I have used Amarok to convert people to switch especially version 1.4....

I know very few Windows users with a valid license for their OS and so many PC's people buy have illegal Windows installed.

Perhaps we should focus on exposing the true nature of Windows monopoly through allowing this widespread practice. After all I have to know all about patented software licenses especially non-free codes, java, flash and graphics drivers for Linux.

By: Thomas Muders

Thomas Muders — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 06:51:19 +0000

Foobar 2000 light on resources? I never looked at the resource usage of Amarok, but it’s a fact that foobar uses a lot more RAM than for example Winamp which doesn’t look very light at first. I couldn’t believe it either but it’s true.

By: Mark Kretschmann

Mark Kretschmann — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 20:48:16 +0000

@bob:

Amarok is free software, so we don't have to compete. If Amarok is well received, that's cool. If not, then that's fair enough. There's no need to "beat" Foobar2k.

(although I agree that it's rewarding to see your application succeed)

By: bob

bob — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:44:09 +0000

you’ll have to compete with foobar2k which is lighter on resources, probably faster and more customizable than amarok will ever be.
Oh and which suport true gapless playback since forever.

By: Wilfred

Wilfred — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:14:36 +0000

When I moved to linux (July 2006) having apps like firefox was a great comfort to me. Moving linux apps to windows helps ‘prime’ windows users for linux usage. The easier it is to migrate, the happier they’ll be.