WinGnome.txt
PHOTO: Gnucash.gif or gimp-apache.gif or gnome-help-browser.gif
495 Words


There's a Gnome in my Windows

Are your Windows friends just a little jealous of your slick GNOME desktop? How about letting them run GNOME on Windows?

That's what Charles Northrup, CTO of Global Technologies Ltd., Inc. (www.GTLInc.com), decided to try about four months ago. While at AT&T, Northrup worked on U/WIN, a Win32 application that provides the KornShell Plus under Windows, complete with over 300 shell commands and utilities. KornShell Plus has been ported to 23 different systems, so a port to Windows was inevitable. (There are many different products called "Korn shells," but GTL is the only vendor of the official KornShell, ksh93c, by Dr. David Korn of AT&T Labs Research.) "Only under U/WIN can you run KornShell scripts between OSes, including Windows, without having to change a single line of code," Northrup said.

Which led him to attempt something "completely bizarre." He downloaded the code for Ximian's GNOME Desktop (www.ximian.com). "What was absolutely amazing was how easy it was," he continued. "This Open Source software compiled so easily, I was really impressed." Four million lines and 1.5 weeks later, Northrup had successfully compiled GNOME for Windows. Only 100 lines had to be changed.

When he started running the desktop, Northrup was dismayed. "The Windows Posix DLL is not up to snuff," he said. "So we spent the next three months working on 47K of code. Dave Korn did some absolutely amazing things. He actually got fork() to work under Windows." GTL's improvements are now being integrated back into AT&T's version of U/WIN.

If you want to try it, here's what Northrup suggests. First visit www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin and download the U/WIN installation package. It's free for education, research, and evaluation purposes. U/WIN includes 300 standard UNIX utilities, X11 clients, Perl, and a software development kit. "You start it up just like a word processor," said Northrup. "You get a UNIX command prompt which understands NTFS and NT Domains."

Next, visit www.gtlinc.com and download over 100 ported packages. You could download Apache, bash, or GNOME. You can even still start Microsoft apps from the GNOME desktop. "We  still need to resolve a few technical issues," said Northrup. "It's fairly safe, but we've seen it crash a Windows 98 machine." You can get it all on a CD from GTL for US$25.

Northrup's real passions are Daytona, his terabyte-sized database, and his new patent, GAMIX. GAMIX stands for Global Access Method Independent Exchange. "In UNIX, everything is viewed as a file," he explained. "In GAMIX, everything is viewed as a point of service. There's a Thread Directory Service which provides back an identifier letting you know what's running. GAMIX then connects you with that service, just like a telephone operator. The service might also be connected to many other services, but you don't have to care about that. Called the Configurable Application Service, it offers true OS independence, and even allows a service to be replaced in real time."